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Canberra Today 14°/16° | Friday, March 29, 2024 | Digital Edition | Crossword & Sudoku

Macklin / Popular Malcolm’s bandwagon just rolls on

THE Turnbull bandwagon rolled on through the week sweeping all before it. First he zipped across the ditch and charmed the Kiwi PM John Key.

Robert Macklin
Robert Macklin.
He returned to a poll showing the Coalition ahead 53/47 with the PM so far in front of  Labor’s Bill Shorten that you could barely see Bill for dust.

Then his Health Minister Sussan Ley promised to legalise medical cannabis; and in Parliament, Malcolm foreshadowed legislation to secure marriage equality if it won a plebiscite… much to the chagrin of the conservative rump led by Senator Eric Abetz and our own Zed Seselja.

And to top it off, his Minister Michaelia Cash raised the public service pay offer to 2 per cent a year while Labor waved the China Free Trade Agreement through the Parliament.

LITTLE wonder there’s talk of leadership unrest in the Opposition. They are facing an exquisite dilemma: under Shorten they risk a Turnbull landslide; but if they turn to Albo to save the furniture and he loses big, they will have sacrificed two leaders in vain.

THE usual bathetic effusions from friend and foe accompanied the departure of Joe Hockey from the Parliament for a soft landing in Washington DC.

And his partner in politics might soon be joining him. To hoots from the social media Tony Abbott has signed with the Washington Speakers Bureau. For $40,000 he’s happy to talk on anything from China to the global economy but especially, they say, “with a profound depth of experience, he is keenly positioned to offer unparalleled insight on leadership”.  Honestly.

IN our own little 2016 election campaign, Lib leader Jeremy Hanson is desperately trying to make it a referendum on light rail. Polling suggests the community is fairly evenly split. So the real test will be whether Jeremy can sell himself as an engaging alternative to affable Andrew Barr. While it’s still early days, at present he seems more in the Tony than the Malcolm mould.

SPEAKING of image-making, southside voters were this week treated to a “special community edition” of  MP Gai Brodtmann’s regular “Bulletin”, a six-page, full-colour folder keeping them up to date with her activities.

It featured no fewer than 20 colour photos of Gai in a dazzling variety of costumes, from Sikh to Muslim scarf to hard hat to friend of the aged and to passionate lecturer on “our precious democracy”.

There was even a competition on “the best way for [me] to communicate with you” in 100 words or less. The lucky winner receives “a lunch for four with me in the Members’ Dining Room at Parliament House”. She’ll be deluged.

AND on a happy sporting note, when the world’s two best rugby teams  decide the fate of the World Cup next weekend, the All Blacks will be favourites, but we reckon the difference might just be Canberra’s David Pocock. If he’s fit, our money’s on Australia.

It would be a nice riposte to the Kiwis, whose cricket captain Brendon McCullum got a laugh at the reception for the PM’s XI when he addressed Turnbull as “Sir Malcolm”; but he brought the house down when he said, “John Key told me to”. Cheeky buggers.

robert@robertmacklin.com

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Robert Macklin

Robert Macklin

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