The great divide
19 May 2010
Sean Russo
WHEN I lived in Perth the Swan River tribalism was a source of great amusement. Not a substantial body of water but a clear demarcation zone. In fact it seemed to me the two halves of Perth were so divided that two people from the north side wanting to have an extra marital affair need only meet up south of the river and they were unlikely to be seen by anyone they knew (or that they cared knew of their arrangements).
Of course it is no different in Sydney: south of the harbour, north of the harbour. I had a south of the harbour friend who would visit me on the north side but only if I compensated him for the bridge toll. The fact it is only charged for going south only confirmed for him he lived on the premier side of divide.
While not unique I am one of those rare birds that has lived on both sides of the harbour, although I have spent much more time living north. My wife, a Perth girl from south of the river, wants to move south of the harbour – something about looking north over water I guess. I have been resisting, having managed to sort myself out with an eight minute walk to the office which is perched on a hill in North Sydney where we look out at all our mates struggling across “The Bridge” to go and work in town. After attending the RIU Mining conference last week I will resist no more. I make only one stipulation: we must live in the federal seat of Wentworth. Then for the very first time in my life I will get out of bed on polling day with purpose, not only feeling excited about getting my chance to be part of that process we call democracy, but actually being enthusiastic about who I get to vote for.
Malcolm Turnbull didn’t quite have the audience at hello, but after K-Rudd’s little missile he was on the right side of the ledger from the start.
The auditorium was full to overflowing and outside people huddled around the monitors with a hushed reverence I associate with archive footage of people standing around waiting for utterances from war time prime ministers. I can never remember any politician drawing a crowd at a mining conference; they are usually politely tolerated at best. If you didn’t know who was about to speak last Monday you might have thought Pierre Lassonde was on stage talking up gold, not the almost “one-term Turnbull”.
My favourite lines were his description of the SRRT with its bond rate threshold as the “slightly-better-than-thoroughly-anaemic tax”, and his description of our fearless leader as “lacking both confidence and conviction - a diabolical combination”.
But there was more to what he said than a couple of clever one-liners. If the government was serious about change he said, they would have consulted with industry ahead of time and what’s more they should have released the Henry report when it was published. Why is this not mandatory? We the voting public paid for that report. Why is it that such a report and all like it are not released to the public immediately?
As for prior consultation it defies belief the column inches that have been committed to comment on this tax and yet at the end of last week no one actually seemed to know the detail; certainly not the prime minister. I never cease to be amazed how arrogant some of our biggest mining companies are, both in the way they treat their shareholders and the key buyers of their products, but our prime minister leaves them in his wake. Both sides should heed the adage, “pride cometh before a fall”. Meanwhile, the broader industry must at the grass roots level do everything they can to fight this tax, whatever it is, and not even for what it is but simply for how it was delivered.
The government has scored an own goal on this issue and in the process have brought Malcolm Turnbull back from the brink and in so doing they have made crossing the bridge an easy decision for me. He’s not perfect – who is? – and he might be perceived to be a little aloof for some, but as he spoke to the crowd at the RIU conference it seemed clear to me that people responded well to his anecdotes about his own business dealings during his time on our side of the harbour, or river – name your divide. Here was guy who actually knows what is like to work for a living, to take risk, to invest, to succeed despite the best efforts of Canberra. It really hit home for me why Malcolm Turnbull was nearly a one term wonder: he’s from our side of the water and politicians of all colours didn’t like one of us being over there.
Just like your body will work hard, sometimes for years, to eject a foreign object like a splinter, the body politic tried everything to eject him.
Confidence and conviction, he has them in spades. I feel very strongly that we are all better off for having a man like that in Canberra. Wentworth here I come, roll on polling day!