From mellifluous Mal to interminable Turnbull
James Jeffrey The Australian March 3, 2017
When Brendan O’Connor gets to have the best line of question time, you know something out of the ordinary has happened. That something was supplied by Malcolm Turnbull.
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Just as every action must have an equal and opposite reaction, so the Prime Minister’s “blowing and sucking” tirade against Bill Shorten was balanced yesterday by one that felt more like an open-eyed coma.
The road to oblivion was paved with fighting over who was most responsible for the cutting of penalty rates. And then, late in the piece, Shorten launched his suspension of standing orders, a self-granted licence to administer a prolonged kicking on that very subject.
There was a brief falter when Speaker Tony Smith pulled him up on a technicality (“You buggered it, Bill,” offered a government MP), but he then ambitiously threw the switch to Churchill: “Labor will fight this issue in the house. We will fight it when we go out after this place and we will fight it all the way to the next election.” His troops noisily pummelled their desks.
And then, like a blanket lowered on to
the flames, Turnbull’s voice.
Normally a silky, mellifluous instrument, it was frayed, its owner sounding tired and unprepared. Armed with these unpromising ingredients, the Prime Minister embarked on his response.
Had it been contained to the brief couple of minutes of a standard answer, it may just have been endurable. But not this.
There was none of his joie de vivre, none of his anger, none of his delight in his own rhetorical acrobatics. It was a wasteland of words. It was a trudge across a plain of soft, grey clay. It was a ramshackle edifice that had been near neither architect nor council approval. It made the Finance Department’s viral video look agile and innovative in comparison.
On it went and the only thing that was clear was that he was losing the room. Behind him, among the very people who had so lapped up the tirade, faces blanked and brains slipped gears. Ministers glanced at their phones or had faraway looks. Conversations went on in earnest on frontbench and backbench alike. The only person who looked happy was George Christensen, reclining resplendently in his seat and holding court.
And still Turnbull went on.
Labor’s Tim Hammond and Ed Husic (who’d already copped a text from his mum during a disciplinary moment: “Behave or else!”) used their hands to mime nosediving planes. It’s possible they were just trying to keep their blood circulating. Then it was over.
One of the few who didn’t looked dazed was Labor’s O’Connor, who popped brightly to the dispatch box and called, “Wakey wakey everybody.”
And lo, the spell was lifted.
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