Fed: Turnbull fires another shot in history wars
By Karlis SalnaFri Sep 11 01:11:47 EST 2009
Thu Sep 10 15:11:47 UTC 2009
CANBERRA, Sept 10 AAP - Malcolm Turnbull has referenced the central character in George Orwell's epic novel 1984 to describe the prime minister's version of recent events as intellectual larceny.
In 1984, the character Winston Smith works as a clerk in the Records Department of the Ministry of Truth where his job is to rewrite historical documents to match the party line.
Mr Turnbull says that Kevin Rudd is similar to Smith in that when he is confronted with unwanted historical facts, he "drops them down a memory hole so that they are obliterated".
"Kevin Rudd is treating the recent history of this nation as a political plaything; something to be manipulated - in the Orwellian style of the Big Lie," Mr Turnbull said.
"The reality is you can't airbrush history aside, and that is what Kevin Rudd has been endeavouring to do," he said.
The opposition leader was addressing a Liberal Party dinner in Canberra on Thursday night which marked 100 years since the fusion of protectionists and free trade advocates into one party.
Mr Turnbull's criticisms are the latest shot in a history of war between the Labor and Liberal movement.
At the launch on Monday of Paul Kelly's The March of Patriots, Mr Rudd claimed economic reform as largely Labor's own.
"... we would describe our opponents as indolent - perhaps not always opposing the great transformational reforms engineered by Labor during its 13 years in office, but barely adding to that reform agenda during their 12 years in office," Mr Rudd said.
The comments follow his assessment in The Monthly magazine earlier in the year in which he declared that the great neo-Liberal experiment of the past 30 years had failed.
But Mr Turnbull says Mr Rudd's version of events is self serving and ignores that both sides of politics share a legacy of economic reform that has improved the lives of Australians.
"He claimed then, as he has done all this week in the parliament, that the economic strength and resilience that has buffeted Australia from the worst effects from the current global downturn can be ascribed either through reforms delivered by his Labor predecessors or to his own government."
"These claims are as audacious as they are mendacious."
"The true reasons for Australia's superior recent economic performance have very little to do with the fiscal stimulus, or any other Rudd government policies," he said.
Mr Turnbull says the advantages Australia now enjoys are a legacy of economic and structural reform under governments of both persuasions, from the 1980s onward.
"We in the coalition are not so conceited to claim all the credit," he said.
But he says like Winston Smith, Mr Rudd will meet his demise.
"Of course Winston Smith came to a bad end after being betrayed by his girlfriend Julia, but that's another story," Mr Turnbull said.
It was an obvious reference to Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard, in a speech which attacked the other side's economic credentials.
Interestingly, in 1984, Winston Smith eventually surrenders to Big Brother with his final demise coming when he accepts the assertion that 2 + 2 =3D 5.
