Turnbull Says Australians Would Be “Appalled” In His Final Press Conference

That’s the end of Malcolm Turnbull, folks. The now-former Prime Minister has delivered his final speech in front of a throng of journalists, defending his record and generally being pleased as punch that the insurgency didn’t result in a victory for Peter Dutton.

Turnbull said that Australians would be “dumbstruck” and “appalled” by the chaos on display in the Liberal Party over the past week, in a completely unsubtle jab at the conservative MPs who worked to knife him.

He listed what he considers as his achievements: same-sex marriage, economic growth, tax reform, defence, the redress scheme for child sex abuse, the TPP, and the US refugee resettlement deal. He also went into great detail about the cities deal, which has barely been floated as an ‘achievement’ before this. Look, he’s definitely scraping the bottom of the barrel with some of these – and activists might have something to say about the marriage equality victory.

He addressed the elephant in the room and confirmed that climate change is an almost insurmountable issue in the Coalition partyroom, and that much of the opposition has been ideological. He doesn’t provide many solutions on that front, and Scott Morrison is not a climate warrior, but there you go.

He also confirmed that he’d be leaving Parliament sooner rather than later, but did not commit to a time. That means earlier reports he would quit immediately were off-base.

But there we go. He’s definitely looking much happier, that’s for sure. It’s entirely possible that being Prime Minister was a terrible experience for him. But he’s also rich as hell, so who cares.

A hilarious endnote: he took some questions from journalists, but – as many have pointed out – seemed to deliberately avoid journos from News Corp. The News tabloids have never been on his side from day dot, and now I guess he doesn’t need to pretend he likes them either.

Well. What next?

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