Could Malcolm Turnbull go rogue? - crikey.com.au

Could Malcolm Turnbull go rogue?

Bernard Keane writes:

What will Malcolm Turnbull do if he loses tomorrow, as seems likely?

The conventional wisdom is he'd pull the pin, resigning from Parliament and exiting politics. The ensuing by-election would be extremely difficult for a divided and disrupted Liberal Party to win. Wentworth voters would see the Liberals as the climate denialists who forced their bloke out.

You can bet Labor would definitely stand a candidate this time.

But not so fast.

Yesterday Christopher Joye offered an intriguing take on the Turnbull leadership and his problems. This morning, Joye floated a fascinating thought bubble on what Turnbull might do: establish his own political party, freed from the encumbrance and historic problems of the Liberal Party.

The idea has apparently occurred to others. David Speers tweeted this morning that the idea of Turnbull establishing a new party was being discussed amongst Liberal MPs. It is not coming from Turnbull or his camp. You can bet Turnbull is focused entirely on the challenge of defeating Nick Minchin and whatever candidate the conservatives throw at him.

New parties have not had a great track record in Australia of late. Putting aside the death of the Democrats, One Nation, Meg Lees's Australian Progressive Alliance and Family First are (with apologies to our friends at the Australian S-x Party) the most significant new parties in the last decade. One National flamed out, Meg Lees's cranky reaction to being turfed from the Democrat leadership never got off the ground, and Steve Fielding, who regularly shames the Senate with his asinine and offensive comments, is only there because of Stephen Conroy's lunatic preference deals.

But Turnbull has several things going for him that others don't have. He has a huge profile, he has the financial resources to start things rolling, and a capacity to tap into the business sector for financial support.

A Turnbull party – possibly the Australian Republican Party – would be committed to action on climate change, an Australian republic, a low-tax, small-government economic philosophy and a progressive social policy. "Warm and dry", to use Nick Greiner's classic self-description.

The target would clearly be the moderate wing of the Liberal Party. The first task would be to retain Wentworth next year. His main opponent there would be Labor, not his Liberal successor, but he would pick up preferences from both and if he outpolled the Liberal candidate would have a strong chance of getting over the line on preferences, keeping the seat he spent so much treasure on snatching from Peter King six years ago.

Labor might even run dead to keep him in Parliament, making life difficult for the Liberals.

The next challenge would be to build a membership base. The goal would be to lure moderate Liberal members, hostile to the Minchin-led party's climate change denialism and Tony Abbott's monarchism – wealthy and leafy suburban seats.

The biggest problem would be perceptions that the party was entirely a vehicle for Turnbull's ego and fury at his former party. He would need to recruit substantial figures to provide a counterweight to the image of it being all about Malcolm. The business community would be first port of call. With Joe Hockey as Nick Minchin's puppet leading the Liberal Party, business might not be as enthusiastic about donating to the Liberals as they are under Turnbull.

Turnbull is not a dyed-in-the-wool Liberal, although he married into the Hughes clan. He flirted with joining Labor. In truth, he does not entirely belong in either party. And while we know Turnbull is politically-motivated by his own ego, he is also genuinely committed to public life, and passionately wants to change and improve his country. His record on the republic demonstrates that. Setting up a new party, without the baggage and conservative deadweight of the Liberals, could yet allow him to make a major contribution.

Becoming Prime Minister is the highest achievement in Australian politics. But successfully establishing a new party?

Who has really done that since Robert Menzies? That's a challenge big enough to intrigue Turnbull.

Triple Truth in Tiantai Doctrine

Phenomena are empty of self-nature.
Phenomena exist from a worldly perspective.
Phenomena are both empty of existence and exist provisionally at once

- Tiantai doctrine (via Nagarjuna).

Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiantai



http://www.thepresentparticiple.blogspot.com

My Own Minor 419 Eater Skype Victory

After reading about the 419 Eater group online last year when they forced a Nigerian internet scam to video the whole Monty Python Dead Parrot sketch (which I've linked below), I decided that every time I receive spam like that I'd have a play in return.  I always do it from a designated hotmail address so I don't let them know that my actual accounts are active, but this time, I couldn't help myself when a faux-teen chanteuse was trying to spruik me on Skype.

http://www.thepresentparticiple.blogspot.com

Judith Pickering on Love in the face of Otherness

"Inklings of intuitive insight disappear when we attempt to over-define and reify.  Insight is often a case of very subtle realignments in our understanding.  It might be seeing a situation in a more symbolic, less literal or concrete way.  We slip off the mark by creating false dichotomies or conflating two aspects of truth which although interdependent are not one.  Non-duality is not the same as monism.  To say we are relational rather than isolates is not to say we are fused and inseparable.  The search for truth as an attempt to uncover another's reality under our projections does not deny their inscrutable alterity.  The Buddhist concept of non-self (anatman) does not meant that we have no self and the all is nothing, but it refers to the absence of a permanent, autonomous, persisting, unchanging ego.  The Buddhist concept of sunyata likewise does not mean simply emptiness in a nihilistic sense but empty of false selfhood.  Bion's no-thing is not nothingness but an apprehension of the latent plentitude of the void of O.  Non-attachment does not mean a schizoid detachment or disengagement from loving relations.  It means freedom from a possessive self-centered clinging to an object of desire.

Our relations with eachother are all interdependent.  So are the terms we use in the attempt to express this.  We need to discovers a language of subtle distinctions that more finely discern the different and varied forms of love, and so may better catch their respective truths and more accurately gesture towards the ultimate.  Can we say love exists as a thing in itself, without lovers loving, or without the daily contingencies of interpersonal experience?  Love exists in the particular circumstances of loving which entail lovers relating as both beloved and lover, where the subjectivity of each is created anew in each encounter, ever seeking to be known and ever eluding definition.  Love, alterity, exogamy and intersubjectivity can only accurately be understood in terms of interdependent relationships with each other.  Alterity becomes meaningless and a form of philosophical dualism if we overemphasize radical Otherness such that no engagement or connection to another is possible.  Exogamy incorporates the notion of becoming more fully ourselves in a love which is understood as intersubjective, and which recognises and respects the paradox of communion and alterity, epistemophillia and opacity".

From Judith Pickering's Being in Love: Therapeutic Pathways Through Psychological Obstacles to Love.

If I Owned a Café...

I'd have a menu with Berocca and Hairy Lemon next to the Virgin Marys. I'd have solid iron, flat Chinese tea pots. When the jazz trio were taking a break, I'd stream springtime folk music and sing along. With a tongue firmly planted in my cheek, I'd master Italian inflections on each of the coffee names, embarrassing the zits off my blessed teenagers. You'd love the books that'd line the wall. They'd be organised by life history (an idea I had long before Nick Hornby in High Fidelity) and you'd walk away understanding how I got here just a little more subtly. I'd have all kinds of sweeteners for your tea - raw sugar, stevia, agave and maple syrups, apple juice concentrate and some of that new low-GI blend everyone's talking about. I'd finally own a full range of squeezy bottles - one for chocolate, one for honey, passionfruit sauce, egg mayo, hollandaise, bernaise, salsa verde, aioli... I'd have a shrine for Mum, to give her dreams a taste of what her health, fear and circumstance never allowed. I'd import elderflower from England, that Earl Grey from Sri Lanka rich in bergamot orange and Voll Damm from Barcelona. I'd have chess nights, left-bank themed reading groups, hedonistic absinthe-soaked openings for local street artists.. and a great relationship with the local police. My wife and I would sometimes sleep over, hugged in the pride of what we'd accomplished. I'd have large fold down windows to let the ocean air run across the ceiling. I'd make mixtapes, zines and shameless little books of verbose poetry which would come with your bill. I'd size you up and decide which of those three I thought'd suit you best. Advice would be as free for the young as dinner would be for the old. I'd ride a Vespa around our beachside locale, and drum up business with a yarn, wink and a warm handshake. My family and age-old friends would be there, always, and we'd spread out onto the pavement and get old slowly.