Politics

Turnbull effectively signed the death warrant on forests in a whole brace of reserves. He also endorsed logging of 159 forest coupes already listed by Tasmanian Premier Will Hodgman for clear-felling in other Tarkine forests, including in the headquarters of the Frankland River where protesters up trees have held off logging during the past year.

You know a government is racked by self-doubt when it spends more time back-pedalling after it has thrown the first punch. Junior woodchuck minister Angus Taylor was sent out earlier in the week to demand that Bill Shorten come clean and prove he has renounced his dual British citizenship. By midweek the government’s most senior strategist, Christopher Pyne, was refusing to join the fight. The prime minister never did.

The question of whether cashless welfare card payment programs, which the government claims to be evidence-based, are effective is crucial. Do they work to improve behaviour? There exists a range of reports and official evaluations of the Northern Territory and other income-management programs, as well as some initial data on the cashless debit card trials. These include a major $1 million government-funded evaluation of the NT program that has failed to find any serious evidence of its effectiveness.

Katter says there are two sets of rules at work here: one for Matt Canavan, a less senior minister in the Nationals, and one for the number two in the Coalition government, Barnaby Joyce. He says Turnbull can have no credibility with the Australian people for such a “hypocritical double standard” and says he doesn’t deserve to have any either.

Fired, ousted, ineligible or disgraced, our politicians keep showing up to work anyway, George Costanza-style, barrowing doomed legislation and talking points that expired a decade ago. The Turnbull government has failed. If recent history is a guide, this means they now have jobs for life.

The Abbott grab bag of alt-right grievances amply demonstrates his crusade against same-sex marriage is merely a proxy against the sort of modernity he identifies with Malcolm Turnbull and contemporary Australia.

Earlier this year, the city’s biannual street count identified 433 people sleeping rough in the City of Sydney and 489 people in crisis or temporary accommodation centres that are operating at 91 per cent capacity.

There are three policy areas that hitherto have been identified with Turnbull: climate change, marriage equality and the republic. While it is true that politics is the art of compromise, any accommodation becomes dangerous if it is seen as a sellout. Voters are weary of the betrayal of a belief for no other purpose than realising an ambition.

Already there is some natural justice in politics. The prime minister was quick to condemn the Greens for “incredible sloppiness”, while Trade Minister Steve Ciobo was even harsher, accusing the Greens of amateur-hour incompetence. Those assessments have now come back to bite them, though Ciobo refuses to acknowledge it.

By now we’ve all seen enough of Turnbull not to expect a tough guy. We want the guy who knows stuff, who is across his brief, who can explain things in detail and persuade us he has it all in hand. Instead, this week, we got Turnbull as played by Sly Stallone, the action hero who couldn’t give directions to get to the pub across the street.