Looks like ALP campaign manager Tim Gartrell is out for more Liberal blood. He didn’t waste any time getting this website up, skewering newly-elected opposition leader Brendan Nelson’s positions on education, workplace reform and climate change. After Saturday’s rout, the new Liberal skipper is in for a rough ride. Here is Nelson on nuclear power:
Is it not time to consider in the longer term the most obvious power source, nuclear power?… It is not only in electricity production that nuclear energy offers potential for Australia. It could also be used to fuel water desalination on a large scale. [Most obvious? Only if you consider exorbitant cost, long construction time and hazardous waste to be the way forward for the Australian energy industry.]
And WorkChoices:
Through reforms to workplace relations, we have made it easier for employers and employees to step outside a combative union versus employer dichotomy and a one size fits all award system, to negotiate the arrangements that best suit them. [This is classic Howard in its supposed ‘inclusiveness’ and its suspicion of the trade unions and their pesky insistence that workers be granted (gasp!) basic rights.] Nelson also refuses to apologise to indigenous Australia. But he’ll need to change his tune if the Liberals are to come through the next three years intact. It was disappointing that Malcolm Turnbull missed out on the party leadership after showing so much promise, but I’m beginning to fear it will take more than a hasty reshuffle to drag the Liberals back towards the centre. A couple terms in the wilderness may do the trick.
2 comments
Yosh says:
Nov 29, 2007
It seems a possibility that the Liberals chose to keep Malcolm Turnbull in the bag until closer to the 2010 election, or, indeed, 2013. They would have to be thinking in the long term, at this point – many senior Liberals must question their chances of winning in 2010, and I imagine some long-term strategising is going on within the party. Whether or not Dr. Nelson is a part of the strategising is another thing.
gill says:
Dec 2, 2007
If there are any positives to Nelson’s appointment, it’s that (a) he’ll most likely be challenged eventually by Turnbull (or hell permitting, Tony Abbott) and (b) it wouldn’t hurt for MT to have more experience anyway — we all remember what happened with John Hewson…
Think of the shift in Australian politics if Turnbull leads the Libs — a leaning towards small ‘l’ liberalism, sustainable ideas on tax reforms, etc. Krudd v. Turnbull: now there’s a contest worth watching. Now, if someone could break the Minchin-Abbott praetorian guard-like sronghold on the Liberals, they might have a decent chance three years on.