The Shadow Communications Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, has again lamented the “game of politics” and decried the dumbing down of political debate.
Speaking at the Woodford Folk Festival on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast, Turnbull said “it has never been easier to get away with the glib one-liner”.
Turnbull said “broadcasters, or politicians or writers…who think that they are respecting ‘struggle street’, the battlers, …by dumbing things down into one-line soundbites are not respecting them, they are treating them with contempt.
“Because it is our job, above all in politics, to tackle the big issues, and to explain them and have the honesty to say to people, ‘there are no easy solutions here’. If the answer to global warming was obvious and simple, we’d have it licked by now.”
Turnbull said politicians need to deal in “facts, not spin”. He said the current situation “has never been worse”.
- Watch an extract of Turnbull’s speech (11m)
- A Channel 10 report on glib politics:
