It only took him two weeks of wasting everyone’s time, but Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has finally given flogging the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) dead horse. From The Guardian:
Malcolm Turnbull has walked back a commitment to ratify the Trans Pacific Partnership agreement in parliament because it is not clear whether the legislation will pass…
Asked if the government would still introduce legislation for ratification when parliament returned, Turnbull equivocated on Thursday.
“We will make the decision as to when legislation is introduced based on continuing discussions with other countries and, of course, the position in the Senate,” Turnbull said.
“It’s not my practice to introduce legislation into the parliament that isn’t going to be passed. We’ll assess that on its merits.”
Earlier this week the opposition leader, Bill Shorten, refused to commit Labor to ratifying the agreement in the parliament. Asked if Labor would vote against the TPP, Shorten said the agreement was dead.
“The TPP is dead,” Shorten said. “How on earth can Mr Turnbull want to waste the time of the parliament, asking the parliament to ratify an agreement which includes America, when America’s not in it? It is just the peak of delusional absurdity.”
It’s worse than that, Bill. It also took Japan and Canada pulling-out of the TPP for our inept Prime Minister to finally accept that the pact was dead.
Lucky the Coalition has a packed agenda for “jobs and growth” to attend to [sarc/].
