The Age: How Turnbull gets it wrong, and right

With every political memoir comes a barrage of salacious headlines, often obscuring the forest for the trees. Malcolm Turnbull’s book is no exception. While I disagree with him on many points of fact and policy, Turnbull’s major contribution is his account of the Murdoch media’s pernicious role in Australian politics. Hence, News Corp’s relentless denigration of both the book and its author, even leaking it before publication.Wherever I go, foreigners are astounded that Murdoch commands 70 per cent of Australian newspaper circulation. In Queensland, a key electoral battleground, he owns 14 of the 15 daily newspapers. This media monopoly is a cancer on our democracy. Turnbull’s thesis echoes my own: News Corp behaves like a political party in alliance with the Liberal right. Leaders who resist Murdoch, or outlive their usefulness, are destroyed.Compliant conservatives, such as Scott Morrison and Peter Dutton, earn positive coverage and ruthless campaigns targeting their opponents. Rupert Murdoch’s declaration to Kerry Stokes in mid-2018, never denied, that "Malcolm’s got to go" reveals who signed the death warrant of an Australian prime minister. In a democracy, that’s for voters to decide. Turnbull’s book reinforces the case for a royal commission into abuses of media power.However, some of Turnbull’s other recollections are wrong. Here are my top five.First, his chapter on broadband is a shocker. It opens with Liberal folklore about Labor designing the NBN on a beer coaster mid-flight to Brisbane (or was it a napkin flying to Darwin?) and then claims his subsequent butchery saved $30 billion. Hogwash. The facts are: Turnbull's copper NBN is now three years overdue, $21 billion over-budget and ranked 62nd in the world for speed. His claim that Labor’s NBN was secretly over-budget is political fantasy, akin to Barnaby Joyce’s prediction of $100 lamb roasts under climate action. If Turnbull had kept our full-fibre plan, the rollout would virtually be finished, costing about $45 billion instead of $51 billion, with speeds around 100Mbps.Second, Turnbull’s claim he never backed me for UN secretary-general is fiction. Malcolm personally urged me to run while visiting my New York home just before his leadership challenge in 2015. That November, we discussed it in his Canberra office, where he sought a list of countries to lobby. He authorised a full diplomatic campaign, which I then planned over several meetings with Australia’s UN ambassador and her staff. As Julie Bishop confirms, she was "told to campaign quite heavily" and "worked very hard to promote" my candidacy. Turnbull also asked New Zealand’s then prime minister, John Key, to release Australia from Tony Abbott’s earlier commitment to Helen Clarke, which Key then did publicly.Turnbull backflipped at the last minute to avoid a cabinet revolt by the far right. This duplicity was disappointing because, while prime minister, I selected conservatives for many senior roles, sending Brendan Nelson to Brussels, Peter Costello to the Future Fund and Tim Fischer to the Vatican. Malcolm also seems to have forgotten how, after Abbott’s ascension, I asked him to become ambassador for the environment (mere months after he falsely accused me of corruption during the "Utegate" affair). Prime ministers shouldn’t be afraid to reach across the aisle.Third, Turnbull claims Labor damaged relations with India by cancelling the quadrilateral security dialogue with it, Japan and America in February 2008. Wrong. It was John Howard who withdrew from the "quad". Defence minister Brendan Nelson announced in June 2007: "I have reassured China that the so-called quadrilateral dialogue with India is not something we are pursuing." Japan cooled on the quad after changing leaders in September 2007, while India’s Manmohan Singh rejected it in January 2008.Fourth, Turnbull maintains his opposition to our stimulus strategy during the global financial crisis. Eleven years on, his facts are still wrong. He claims our stimulus was excessive by world standards. In fact, it equalled roughly half the regional average and was in the middle of the pack globally. Its design was acclaimed by the International Monetary Fund and the The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. The three major ratings agencies maintained Australia’s AAA credit rating. Above all, it worked – no recession, no mass unemployment, and debt and deficit levels among the world’s lowest.Fifth, Turnbull blames me for Liberal disunity over the carbon pollution reduction scheme. While attacking me for not negotiating with him personally, he omits that Penny Wong was fully empowered to do just that. She made concessions to help Turnbull unite his party. Then Turnbull, paradoxically, accuses me of micro-management. Go figure. My government never abandoned the CPRS. After the Liberals and the Greens blocked it, we deferred implementation for two years. Julia Gillard later axed it.Where I unite with Turnbull is on the fundamental threats to our democracy. The character assassination of Turnbull by the Murdoch media goes way beyond rational disagreement on policy. It’s about something deeper. It’s punishment for having the temerity to challenge Murdoch’s choke-hold on Australian political power.Published in The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age on 30 April 2020