Australia is compromised with this result and without the credible policies the Coalition had at the previous election, it would be better for the nation to go to the polls again rather than seek to secure empty and vain political deals in an unmanageable Senate. To continue with such an ungovernable situation would be a dangerous and profligate waste of taxpayers’ money and would effectively be a decision to cripple the country. Both the economy and the integrity of the Australian parliament must be restored and a new responsible result sought from the people.
Mary Jardine Clarke, Spearwood, WA
Malcolm Turnbull is doing what he did in his failed advocacy for a republic in the aftermath of the 1999 referendum. He is blaming others and saying they told lies. In 1999, his target was direct-election republicans. In 2016 he is blaming Labor.
He has only himself to blame. He should have won with a big margin due to the economic perils facing our nation and the business credentials of the Liberal Party. The pathway for redemption is to accept responsibility for the result and to deal with the Senate instead of attacking it.
David Muir, Indooroopilly, Qld
The election result is one Malcolm Turnbull deserved but the nation didn’t. In one of the most insipid Liberal campaigns since John Hewson’s Fightback, a double dissolution election was called over union corruption but nary a word was said about it.
Labor had much to answer for, but no attacks were uttered over Labor’s denial for a plebiscite vote on same-sex marriage, its support for the Safe Schools program disguised as an anti-bullying campaign, Labor’s costly 50 per cent renewable policy, the likely return of asylum-seeker boats under Labor, and especially union corruption and Bill Shorten’s support for enterprise agreements denying workers their penalty rates.
All we heard about was a nebulous plan that incorporated an attack on superannuation which had strong elements of retrospectivity and was a betrayal of the Liberals’ conservative base. Malcolm Turnbull displayed feet of clay. His heart was not in fighting for the issues that mattered.
Mort Schwartzbord, Caulfield, Vic
Leadership spill needed
Your editorial tells us that Malcolm Turnbull is wounded, perhaps fatally (“Disruption ahead as voters reject political contortions”, 4/7). There’s no “perhaps” about it. Tony Abbott was shafted on the basis that he would lead the Coalition to defeat. Despite the self-serving protestations of Liberal turncoats, we will never know if that’s true. But he could hardly have done much worse than Turnbull, whose treachery could have been stomached if he had won a resounding victory with a strong mandate to get the one thing done that Abbott had hitherto failed to do — get the economy back under control.
If he can eventually form government, Turnbull will not have much of a mandate for anything other than not privatising Medicare.
Turnbull should call a leadership spill. Whichever way you look at it, he lost the election. For him to be negotiating with crossbenchers before he has sought his party’s verdict shows arrogance beyond measure.
Peter O’Brien, Kiama, NSW
Let’s not be too hard on Malcolm Turnbull. When he took over as PM, the polls were running 47-53 against him, and his party was heading towards becoming a right-wing Tea Party. He has all but won this election which was always going to be tight. And he did not make unfunded promises to do so. He can manage the economy into the future, he handles himself as a statesman on the international stage, and he can lead the great Liberal Party forward in its true traditions of liberalism and fairness.
Ian Morison, Forrest, ACT