If you attended the Australian American Leadership Dialogue in Melbourne over the weekend, you might have caught a most unusual sight: Australia’s noble Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull, and his Shadow, Jason Clare, breaking bread together in a most congenial display of bipartisanship.
This picture was tweeted by Julie Inman Grant, the public policy lead for Twitter Australia, who also appears to have been attending the event. According to the executive, the pair enjoyed a “morning coffee together”. Also at the conference, according to Inman Grant, were representatives from a number of American tech companies — Instagram, Amazon Web Services and Salesforce.com. Interesting.
Our only question is what the pair had been saying to each other. Any thoughts? Post your suggested caption in the comments below.
This photo also reminds us a fair bit of the picture below — taken when Turnbull was Shadow to Communications Minister Stephen Conroy. What both photos show — and what is not perhaps well understood outside political circles — is that politicians (and their staff) from opposing parties are usually quite congenial to each other in public at events — even if their relationship is acrimonious in the two parliamentary chambers or at press conferences. They’re often in each other’s company, after all — it usually pays to get along.
“So we’re agreed, we’ll move forward on Scenario 4 and from now onward, the NBN will be a true bi-partisan affair”.
Sorry Renai but do you really expect anyone interested in broadband in this country to have any sense of humour left? (rolls eyes)
Is that a big fat yellow envelope behind you Turnbull?!
Malcolm Turnbull switching sides, welcomes the new incoming minister for communication , Jason Clare
Is it just me, or has Turnbull aged visibly in the past two years? He looks ten years older…
Jason Clare seems to be another ineffectual mouthpiece rather than a minister truly committed to understanding this challenging portfolio. Maybe the reason the ALPs position on FTTP is a result of key people like Clare and Shorten simply failing to understand the project, its importance to the industry and to the whole economy and the incalculable debt it will leave the country in? Remember that the scheme was championed by Rudd as much as Conroy, but almost certainly no longer has executive buy-in.
Just imagine how much worse he’d look if it wasn’t for that portrait hidden away at the mansion.
Turnbull says “I don’t know who he is either. He just asked for a selfie with me.”
“You give me the shits! That’s OK, the feeling’s mutual”.
“So Mal, when do we get our bums measured for those cushy Telstra boardroom chairs you were telling me about?”
Would be funny if it wasnt so likely to be true
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