Monday 18 April 2016

Time to get rid of Malcolm Turnbull


When 54 Liberal MPs and senators abandoned Prime Minister Tony Abbott on 14th September 2015 (44 remained loyal to the elected PM) the winning Malcolm Turnbull had claimed that "the [Abbott] government is not successful in providing the economic leadership that we need. ... We have lost 30 Newspolls in a row. It is clear that the people have made up their mind about Mr Abbott's leadership."

Today he faced the same situation: The polls as published in The Age are against him. "Labor and the Coalition are fifty-fifty in the latest Fairfax-Ipsos poll, as Malcolm Turnbull's once-soaring approval rating continues to decline. Voters have reacted savagely to the reality of Malcolm Turnbull as Prime Minister when measured against their own expectations, sending a clear warning to the Coalition that the election will be close and victory cannot be assumed. A massive 25 per cent drop in his ability to make things happen headlines the decline. This seems to sum up the sense of disappointment in voterland at the slow pace and performance of the Turnbull government and a disturbing tendency to set out ambitious policy goals and then retreat from them.

"The Prime Minister's net approval rating has dropped by 10 points since March and his preferred prime minister rating has also fallen by seven points over that time.

"Mr Turnbull's disapproval rating has jumped up six points as voters marked him down severely on a range of 11 leadership characteristics including a staggering 25 per cent drop in his ability to make things happen, a 20 per cent drop in his perceived strength as a leader, a 17 per cent drop on his authority over his party, and a 13 per cent drop in his perceived competence."

The wake-up of the voters as well as of Malcolm Turnbull should not come as a surprise. It is a déjà-vu of his tenure as Leader of Her Majesty's [Loyal?] Opposition, which was ended by Tony Abbott and it deserved this comment, written on 2nd December 2009:
The past fifteen months have shown, how a darling of the media, a republican messiah even, fell from grace and is now seen - even by his republican mates - as a disaster!
Nothing has changed. Turnbull started as the darling of the media and the public, but everybody soon realised what a dud he really is. Time for the Coalition to dump him and send him to the Cayman Islands, where his money is parked.

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