The surprise in the latest saga involving Malcolm Turnbull is not that he has been dumped as chair of the NSW government’s net zero emissions board but that the government ever considered the appointment in the first place. It was a foolish, incendiary and unworkable appointment that had to be revoked; it was today, just a week after it was revealed.
The NSW environment and energy minister, Matt Kean, is a moderate factional colleague of Turnbull’s and similarly enthusiastic about renewable energy and net zero aspirations. How he got the former prime minister’s appointment through his Coalition cabinet remains a mystery but soon enough, driven by public incredulity, internal resistance forced Kean’s hand.
This is not to say former prime ministers should not be put to good use in government roles. But the question of suitability is crucial.
Turnbull lost the federal Liberal leadership in 2009 (I was his chief of staff at the time) because he wanted to pass Labor’s Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme and the bulk of his party did not. He lost the same position and the prime ministership nearly a decade later because he was proposing a climate and energy plan that would mollify Labor.
For the NSW Coalition government – already at odds with the Morrison government over climate and energy policies – to appoint a former prime minister who had twice divided the party, and failed to deliver, on this portfolio mix was ludicrous. This was an appointment that could only have created more policy and political tension, and probably generated more division.
Turnbull, for his part, has already declared his “disappointment” and blamed the decision to dump him on “bullying” by News Corp. Speaking on the ABC (where else?) Turnbull said he had been subjected to a “pretty ferocious campaign, a vendetta really” in News Corp media. “”Its goal was to bully the state government into not appointing me chair of this net zero board,” he said.
This has become a predictable and delusional refrain from Turnbull which overlooks crucial facts such as his own history on climate and energy policy, the reality that Nine Media’s 2GB broke the story of his appointment and led the outrage, the antagonistic public response to the news, and how it triggered an internal revolt within the Liberal and Nationals parties.
All this has been unfolding as the NSW Coalition faces a crucial by-election in the Upper Hunter, an area where Turnbull owns property and was campaigning as recently as last week against the expansion of coal mining that has been the region’s lifeblood.
Clearly after journalism, law, banking, e-business and politics Turnbull needs a sixth career. Sniping at his former colleagues through media appearances will not cut it.
But it cannot be advising Coalition governments on the policy area that was his Achilles Heel. That would have been a zero sum game.
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