Malcolm Turnbull Just Described Scott Morrison As The Steven Bradbury Of Aussie Politics
That's... not a good thing.
Well, we were all waiting to see how Malcolm Turnbull sledged Scott Morrison on Q&A tonight, and the reality ended up being better than we could have hoped for. In short, Turnbull basically described Scott Morrison as the Steven Bradbury of Australian politics.
Steven Bradbury, in case you’ve forgotten, is this guy: the speed skater who won a gold medal after all of his much speedier opponents crashed and burned.
Turnbull basically calls ScoMo the Steven Bradbury of Australian politics #qanda pic.twitter.com/AYdfCnf8ZU
— Junkee (@junkee) November 8, 2018
The burn was not actually Malcolm’s idea, of course — as much as he’d like to think he is, he’s not that good. Instead, the line was handed to him by a questioner, who got in a sick burn of his own when he addressed Turnbull as “Prime Minister — former prime minister, I do apologise”.
“I want to know,” the audience member asked, “what role did the Prime Minister play in your ousting? Is ScoMo a Steven Bradbury, or Niccolò Machiavelli?”
“Um… well, look,” Turnbull said. “He… I take Scott at his word. The insurgency was, ah, was led by Peter Dutton, and was obviously strongly supported by Tony Abbott and others. Scott did not support it. And he’s said that publicly.”
“So by Steven Bradbury, I assume you mean he took advantage of a situation that was created by others? Well, I suppose, you know, that is how he’s presented the circumstances himself, and I’m not in a position to contradict that or question that.”
Turnbull was also later asked to tell us which Muppet ScoMo would be, but he declined to answer. But he did say that Morrison probably regrets describing his own MPs as muppets. He also shared that Morrison is “very tactile and friendly” when asked about ScoMo draping his arm around Turnbull just a few days before Turnbull was knifed.
Later, when asked about the Liberal party’s loss in Wentworth, Turnbull basically blamed ScoMo’s poor decisions, especially the suggestion that Australia’s embassy in Israel might be moved to Jerusalem.
All in all, Turnbull spent a lot of the night quietly throwing his successor under the bus.