Andrew Bolt: Sticking to Tony Abbott’s script gives PM hope
LAST week was Malcolm Turnbull’s best since becoming PM. If he sticks with Tony Abbott’s script, he may yet — incredibly — survive, writes Andrew Bolt.
Andrew Bolt
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LAST week was Malcolm Turnbull’s best since becoming Prime Minister two years ago. If he sticks with Tony Abbott’s script, he may yet — incredibly — survive.
But this applause junkie must learn the lesson: The Liberals win not when they are praised by the media pack, but attacked.
Take last week’s pivotal event — the High Court’s rejection of a bid by same-sex marriage activists to stop next month’s postal plebiscite.
Turnbull never wanted the people to have this vote. Like Labor and most of the media, he wanted a vote of politicians.
The plebiscite was actually Abbott’s idea as prime minister, and most of the media still savage it for fear the public may not support gay marriage as politicians do.
Turnbull stuck with Abbott’s plebiscite only because he was forced to by conservatives in his government, but he must now see he’s been given a huge weapon.
Labor still opposes a vote of the people, which makes it look dangerously arrogant.
Labor leader Bill Shorten vowed last Thursday that even if Australians voted against gay marriage next month, he’d still legalise it within 100 days of being elected.
Really? Labor would make this gigantic change even against the expressed will of the people?
Turnbull could fight Labor on this at the next election, siding with the people and democracy against Labor and the same-sex marriage bullies who have appalled so many voters already.
Of course, the public could instead say yes to same-sex marriage next month, but that also helps Turnbull. He could then make gay marriage law by Christmas and rob Labor of its signature issue.
Either way, he wins. So can he admit Abbott was right on the plebiscite?
But Abbott is right about something else — and again Turnbull and the media pack are wrong. Electricity.
Turnbull, like Labor and most of the media, believes our emissions, particularly from coal-fired power stations, heat the world dangerously and must be cut.
But now we see the chaos caused by the renewable energy targets imposed by government to force us to use more wind and solar power, which is more expensive and unreliable.
Our power bills have doubled in a decade, and so many coal-fired power stations are being shut that the Australian Energy Market Operator last week warned we could run out of electricity in summer.
Once again, Abbott has the plan that takes the fight up to Labor. Scrap the targets and stop the blackouts: “Instead of talking about renewable energy targets, we must talk about reliable energy targets set at 100 per cent reliability.”
Turnbull now realises he could win the next election by fighting Labor on power prices — especially since Labor promises to force us to use even more wind and solar power.
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The Prime Minister last week stepped up his abuse of Shorten: “I mean Blackout Bill, fair dinkum, as my old dad would have said, ‘he is so hopeless he could not find his backside with both hands’.”
But Turnbull’s talk is not matched yet by his walk. His own policies are not much better than Labor’s. Both want to slash emissions, which inevitably means putting our existing coal-fired power stations out of business, sooner or later. The only difference is that Labor will move faster to (allegedly) stop the warming Turnbull wrongly agrees is a menace.
If Turnbull wants to win the next election, he must choose between cutting emissions and cutting electricity prices, if only to sharpen the difference with Labor.
He should also challenge the lie that our global warming policies produce a gain to the planet that’s worth the pain to our pockets. In truth, our emissions are too tiny to make any difference to a warming that isn’t producing the predicted disasters anyway.
True, Labor and the warmist media will turn feral, but Turnbull must realise the Liberals win by promising to do what Labor won’t — and being loudly criticised for it.
Look back to the decisive contests of the past: the Liberals won an election by promising a GST, which Labor opposed; by sending illegal immigrants to a “Pacific solution”, which Labor opposed; by turning back boat people, which Labor opposed; and by scrapping a carbon tax, which Labor opposed.
And in each battle, most of the media sided with Labor, but voters with the Liberals.
Yes, junking renewable energy targets is another Abbott idea.
But as Turnbull must now know, Abbott is better at strategy.
Let Turnbull comfort himself by being better at execution.
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