blog As you may remember, when Malcolm Turnbull seized the Prime Ministership from Tony Abbott two weeks ago, I took the chance to publish an examination of the Member for Wentworth’s history leading the Communications Portfolio over the past five years for the Coalition. The article was notable at the time because it was one of the few articles published to really go into Turnbull’s recent policy history, as well as being one of the few to criticise the new PM for what many in Australia’s technology scene have seen as his demolition of the National Broadband Network project.
The article was one of Delimiter’s most popular articles of all time, and of course it also attracted many comments. But what you may not have known is that it was also mentioned on the floor of the House of Representatives.
On the Thursday of the week that Turnbull seized the Prime Ministership, the Opposition filed what is called a Matter of Public Importance motion in the House of Representatives. This allows the House (and the Senate has a similar mechanism) to debate a certain topic for a period of time. The topic, as filed by Shadow Communications Minister Jason Clare, was “The Prime Minister’s mismanagement of the NBN”.
Various speakers from both sides of politics arose to make their case on the issue — with MPs ranging from Clare himself to Turnbull’s Parliamentary Secretary Paul Fletcher, to Shadow Minister Assisting for Communications, Ed Husic, Wyatt Roy and others. However, it was (Labor) Member for Griffith Terri Butler who referred to Delimiter’s article. Butler said at the time:
“… unfortunately, this Prime Minister, who was also the communications minister under this government, is completely unable to deliver the NBN that this country needs. His incompetence in the portfolio has been remarked upon widely within the sector and within the community.
In fact, in his article entitled ‘Malcolm Turnbull was Australia’s worst ever Communications Minister’, published on Monday of this week, Renai LeMay of media outlet Delimiter said … ‘He might be charismatic, he might be popular, and pretty shortly he might be Prime Minister.’ That turned out to be right. This was Monday. ‘But when it comes to technology policy, Malcolm Turnbull has been a disaster. The Member for Wentworth will be
remembered as Australia’s worst ever Communications Minister’ … and isn’t that true? He was a hopeless communications minister.”
Butler is only new to Federal Parliament — she replaced Kevin Rudd, who resigned after losing the 2013 Federal Election to Tony Abbott — but the MP is already making waves in Australia’s technology community. Butler is one of the three founders of the cross-party Parliamentary Friends of the Internet group and quite engaged with the technology sector in general.
You can find the full Hansard transcript of the debate online here in PDF format (debate starts on page 65 of the document), and a full copy of the debate is also available here on the Parliament’s ParlView system (starting at 15:14:09) if you want to watch the whole thing. There’s a lot of waffle in there, but you also get a good idea of where each individual MP who participated stands on the issue of the NBN.
Video credit: Parliamentary Broadcasting
Way cool.
:D I always enjoy it when we’re quoted.
Thank you Rene, keeping democracy alive and thank you for coming back and firing up the Big D again! Great to be seeing your influence and reading your journalism again. #great #thenbnmissedyou
Awesome work!
Cheers, appreciated!
Now you’ve done it Renai.
You’re off Malcom’s Christmas card list forever. I look forward to your commentary at being the first case of being Call of Duty SWAT’ed by a Prime Minister.
Just kidding.
Great job!
Heh we’ll see. I did eventually make it onto Conroy’s Christmas card list — I still have the card to prove it :)
Who’s in charge of updating the press gallery website? You’re still not listed on there.
The Press Gallery Committee, I assume — no idea how often it’s updated. I would assume very rarely ;)
I would be hiding my cat if I were you.
As keep saying to people. You can more influence on the outside then being on the inside :P
My view is that the most influence comes from being an ‘insider/outsider’.
That is, someone who has been on the inside but then transitions to the outside.
Working for certain companies groups and groups. You start to notice a invisible leash where someone or something tells you “You can say that…” and therefore some of the elements of the conversation were missed out or not debated, because you gotta censor yourself.
Dan’s Dangerous minds talk last month explains alot on this. Particularly satire role in political debate
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0Yg5bplukE
I wonder if you get one of “these” phone calls from M.T. You know, the one Paul Budde received……
Wonder if he really got any inside information or simply got “scared”….either way, his tone changed after “that call”….
Keep us posted Renai….and Great Job!!!!!!
Regards
Alfred
Not very scared. Paul has bounced back today http://goo.gl/REQiWg.
Thanks for the link…I was a bit concerned good to see Paul is back
Regards
Alfred
love playing the video puts a big smile on my face
+1 Renai
I’m looking forward to this article also appearing in Hansard.
Your stint in Canberra is milking some nice fruit Renai :)
Comments are closed.