A New Shade Of Stupidity

Et Tu Malcolm Turnbull? 

Good God. I do begroan with all. Malcolm Turnbull no less is singly madly like the rest of the conservative numbskulls. It's really hard to believe this is the man who once defended at the Spycatcher trial.

In a fiery interview on the ABC's Insiders program on Sunday morning, Mr Turnbull told host Barrie Cassidy he had "lost the plot" after a series of questions about the government's attack on the national broadcaster. 

Prime Minister Tony Abbott said last week that heads should roll after the ABC allowed Zaky Mallah into the audience to ask junior minister Steven Ciobo a question on the government's proposed citizenship laws. 

Mr Turnbull said on Sunday that allowing Mallah into the audience was a security issue because Q&A was a "very high profile target".

If you watch the video, Barrie Cassidy responds with incredulity that the ABC studio is a very high profile target and that the audience in the studio is a high profile target. Malcolm Turnbull presses on by saying allowing Zaky Mallah to even step in the studio represents a major failing in the ABC's thinking.

Barrie Cassidy to his credit asks, then how is it different to Zaky Mallah stepping into a shopping centre. Malcolm Turnbull then says that Cassidy has "lost the plot". Which, is a pertinent point. If Mallah is so dangerous and can't allowed near a TV studio and its live audience, then surely he's too dangerous to be out in public and able to wader into places with lots of unsuspecting people. Implicit in that is that Mallah is a free man - is he the kind of threat Malcolm Turnbull is making him out to be?

"Are you pulling my leg? After the Martin Place siege, you are saying to me there is no security issue with putting Zaky Mallah in a live audience?" Mr Turnbull said.
"If you can't see that, I'm sorry.

"Seriously, you've lost the plot there with all due respect. This is a high-profile audience, very high-profile target. This is a fellow that has threatened violence in the past, threatened to kill people, gone to jail for it." 

Mr Turnbull said the ABC had undermined a legitimate debate about national security and proposed citizenship laws that would see dual nationals involved in terrorism automatically lose their citizenship. 

"In any discussion of national security laws, citizenship laws, counter-terrorism, counter-insurgency in Afghanistan, there is a big debate – is the measure counterproductive, will it create more problems than it solves? That's a legitimate point," he said. 

"Why would the producers choose the least reputable, most discredited, arguably one of the most dangerous individuals to put that view? 

"The answer, I suspect, is because in a sort of undergraduate, playing at tabloid journalism style, they wanted to create the biggest shock and awe and sensation instead of running the program like a responsible current affairs program on the national broadcaster that, frankly, should do better." 

Mr Turnbull denied sending in investigators was interfering with the ABC's independence and editorial judgment. 

He said the government was entitled to ask questions about how the decision to feature Mallah was made and "who knew what, where and when".
"We are not questioning the editorial judgment in terms of free speech issues," he said.

This is what is bothering the Coalition so much? It is not what Zaky Mallah said, but the fact that he was there to ask a question in the first place because he's a security threat? Isn't the problem with the Anti-terror law that it couldn't make its charges stick with Mr. Mallah? Malcolm Turnbull is essentially arguing that where the state failed to get a conviction, the ABC should still be screening out Mr. Mallah because he was charged with threatening violence against a public official. Then he is imputing a motivation to the ABC for their failure to police this, by saying it happened because it had an undergraduate, tabloid journalist style? It doesn't even make sense.

How can he be questioning the editorial judgement in terms of free speech at the same time saying that is not what he is doing? That's doublespeak. Or rank stupidity. When you can't quite tell one from another, I think we've hit some kind of terminus of stupidity.

Maybe these Liberal Party MPs are living in some kind of weird bubble that keeps them apart from the real world and thus makes them rather incapable of understanding it. Christopher Pyne was saying only days ago that it was the ABC and its supporters that are trying to make it an issue of freedom of speech when it wasn't, but failed to explain how that was the case. Now we have Malcolm Turnbull saying the producers choosing a disreputable, discredited and potentially dangerous individual to appear in the studio is the problem because the individual might be a security risk and has nothing good to say.

Let's overlook the point I covered a couple of days ago that Mr. Mallah does not appear to be a terrorist nor a candidate for ISIL at this point in time or in the future. If the Coalition is saying he is still potentially dangerous, the onus is on them to produce the evidence, warn the ABC and all the other media outlets not to let him near a broadcast studio (because he'll do what exactly, I have no fucking idea). I mean, really, Malcolm? Is that what you've got for us? Is that all you've got for us?

It looks more like they're upset because the ABC found exactly the right person to ask exactly the right question and the MP who answered it - Steve Ciabo - looked like a total and utter dickhead caught in an ambush. And now it looks worse for the Coalition because they're now publicly shown they are upset and flustered, saying all kinds of stupid things that don't make any sense.  Thus, when Mr. Turnbull accuses Barrie Cassidy of "losing the plot", it's most probably projection on Malcolm Turnbull's part.