Ever since Mal Turnbull got the job as Australia’s Tory top-dog all we’ve heard about is ‘the politics of envy’.
The Daily Telegraph was spewing forth about the great piles of envy being heaped on Mal in a recent editorial.
It told us the people who dared to point out Mal’s fabulous wealth would make it hard for him to understand the concerns of ordinary Australians were guilty of a great sin: envy.
“Envy is a corrosive, potentially ruinous force. This is the case regardless of whether one envies a schoolmate’s runners or a politician’s wealth,” the Terror whined.
“Countless acts of violence and criminality have been committed throughout history due to compulsive envy… Certain political philosophies are even based on envy.”
Sure envy is bad. It’s even a deadly sin. But isn’t greed as well?
Pity The Daily Terror wasn’t whinging about the ills of greed and ruthlessness from last week’s pulpit.
A quick look at Mal’s life, as the richest MP in parliament, might have proved for fruitful research.
Let’s start with recent history. This is a man who, even though he’s worth $133 million, has devised a cunning system for making sure he gets every cent possible of his parliamentary perks.
This is a man who uses his taxpayer funded travel allowance to pay $175 a night rent to his wife for him to stay in her Canberra townhouse.
Wouldn’t you think a man of his spectacular means would give the taxpayer a break, buy a house, and then bunk there when he was down Canberra way?
But let’s look a bit further back.
Let’s look back to his 2004 preselection for the seat of Wentworth that incidentally takes in the battler’s suburbs of Rose Bay, Double Bay, Vaucluse, Woollahra and Paddington.
In one of the most bitter, vicious and unprecedented preselection fights in recent history big Mal actually deposed the sitting Liberal member Peter King - again using his enormous wealth and silvertail contacts.
And what about a bit before that when Mal was the Chairman of Goldman Sachs?
Well this is where it really does get interesting because it was during his time there that he was involved in the biggest corporate collapse in Australian history.
Basically, Mal advised FAI directors on the proposed takeover of the company by HIH. This was after Mal had turned down a deal that would have seen Goldman Sachs take over the company, presumably because it was in bad shape. But he didn’t tell the FAI directors that and they sold the worthless company for around $295 million to HIH. The sale caused it to collapse.
Thousands of ordinary Australians and their small businesses lost millions and millions.
Liquidators for HIH have threatened to sue Mal over the affair. But a deal is already being done which may save him from many embarrassing court appearances in coming months.
But regardless of the legal outcome it doesn’t look great. If big Mal didn’t know FAI was worthless and didn’t fib just to make a quick buck – then he just did a bad job and didn’t manage to pick up what a dog the company was.
Either way, the episode should do nothing to endear him to Australian voters.
Of course, it doesn’t really matter to Mal, because you and me picked up the tab for the $5 billion collapse. It was the Federal Government which had to step in and save the ordinary Australians burnt by the massive corporate fallover.
In fact, ironically, it’s the Federal Government that is the main creditor who would get paid out if Mal or any of his corporate mates were to get fingered over the fiasco.
A Federal Government that Mal now wants to lead.
But in a world where rampant greed from the big end of town has almost ruined the global economy - is it really a ruthless ex-corporate cowboy we want running our government?
Do we really want a guy of Mal’s cut-throat reputation looking after the schools our kids go to and the hospitals our grandparents visit?
Sure Malcolm Turnbull may not have much reason to be envious of others – but when it comes to greed, recent history has shown he’s world class.
