Malcolm Turnbull Is Trying To Downplay Claims He Made About “African Gangs”. Nobody’s Buying It
Malcolm Turnbull has expressed regret over comments he and Peter Dutton made about "African gangs." But what good does it do?
Malcolm Turnbull is on a press blitz at the moment, promoting his new book, sitting down for ‘personal’ chats with Leigh Sales, and being more active on Twitter than ever.
The purpose of this new social aspect to his character is to shift units, of course — A Bigger Picture, his autobiography, is already selling well, and he no doubt wants it to sell better. But there’s also been some not-so-subtle revisions going on. Most notably, Turnbull is trying to distance himself from comments he and Peter Dutton made back in 2018 regarding the threat of “African gangs.”
According to this new, friendlier Turnbull, he had great regret over the comments made by Dutton.
“The answer is no I wasn’t [happy about Dutton’s comments],” Turnbull has now said. “It may be that I was being too understanding — too trusting perhaps.”
According to Turnbull, Dutton’s problem is that he lets the big kids put words in his mouth.
“I often attributed Dutton’s sometimes offensive remarks to verbal clumsiness and awkwardness, or as he often used to do, he would get on programs with shock jocks like Jones or Hadley or Bolt and they would sort of lead him into agreeing with them.”
But nobody’s buying this left turn from Turnbull. 2018 wasn’t that long ago, anyway, and we can all remember the then-Prime Minister getting as involved with the dog-whistling as Peter Dutton.
After all, Turnbull explicitly said that there was “real concern about Sudanese gangs”, less than two years ago
“I’ve heard people – colleagues from Melbourne – say that there is real anxiety about crime in Melbourne,” he claimed. “It is a real issue.”
Basically, nobody’s buying this new direction from Turnbull.
Who gives a shit tbh. This stuff isn’t a game. Turnbull and his government fostered racist attitudes against African-Australians, it’s unforgivable. https://t.co/2AbN5X2syl
— Osman Faruqi (@oz_f) April 24, 2020
I keep coming back to the question of what he is going to do with his regret? At the moment his mea culpa exists only to publicise his book. There’s no indication that this serves anyone but himself. https://t.co/7v9J5Y8EQj
— Sam Twyford-Moore (@samtwyfordmoore) April 24, 2020
The truth is people I interviewed when this happened expected those comments from Peter Dutton, but it broke their hearts to hear it from prime minister of the country. https://t.co/BaME1dJ2pi https://t.co/scCXbfmTes
— Luke Henriques-Gomes (@lukehgomes) April 23, 2020
Malcolm Turnbull might want to try and clean up his record now that he’s retired. But he should know that not many people are going to help him in his revisionist exercises.