blog It’s all well and good that cool head Jason Clare has been appointed Shadow Minister for Communications, but we think the real story is the appointment of Member for Greenway Michelle Rowland as his assistant Minister. On Delimiter 2.0 today (subscriber content), we publish a history of Rowland’s parliamentary activism with respect to the National Broadband Network. Rowland has had a habit over the past several years of taking down Turnbull in the portfolio, or, as the MP has liked to describe Turnbull, “the Shadow Minister for dial-up”. A sample paragraph from one of Rowland’s speeches:
“We heard about Labor’s NBN plan being cobbled together. If you want to see something that was cobbled together, the Liberal Party’s broadband and telecommunications policy is a complete embarrassment. Of all the laughs I got during the campaign, this gave me the most. This was an absolute special. I prefer to call it the dial-up policy actually. It is a very good dial-up policy. I would be absolutely embarrassed to have gone to the election with this.”
Word. It’ll be fascinating to see how Clare and Rowland can team up to go up against Turnbull and his own offsider, Liberal MP Paul Fletcher (who, by the way, Rowland has also taken down in Parliament on occasion). The team approach appeared to work well for then-Communications Minister Anthony Albanese and his offsiders Ed Husic, Kate Lundy and Sharon Bird during the election, Let’s hope Clare and Rowland can step it up a notch now.
Image credit: Parliamentary Broadcasting