In the cut and thrust of politics its fair and reasonable to attack the opposition over policy, performance, agenda etc. But in the case of PM Turnbull he seems more intent on attacking Opposition leader Bill Shorten personally, than the Labor Party and its policies in general.
In February Turnbull labeled Shorten a “simpering sycophant” and a “parasite” a strong personal attack indeed. Yesterday he attacked Shorten as the “most dangerous left-wing leader in generations”, I am not sure if that is to be taken in an Australian context or world wide.
What ever the case may be Turnbull is now fixated with Shorten personally. Has Shorten got him well and truly rattled? Is Turnbull operating under instructions from his advisers? Does Shorten let him forget Abbott, or the terrible performance of his own government? What ever it is, the polls tell us its not working.
As they say play the ball, not the man, the voters wont cop too much personal abuse at another, it paints Shorten as a victim of Turnbull’s bullying.

Mike Bianchi , journalist, is an abusive ignorant gutter crawler:
"One of them, Mayweather, is a serial abuser of women and the other, McGregor, is a bigot.

Mayweather has been accused of violence against women too many times to chronicle here. If he competed in a respectable sports league instead of the sleazy endeavor of boxing, he would have been banned long ago. He has pleaded guilty twice in domestic-violence cases and another time was actually convicted only to have the charges erased years later. Six years ago, he served 90 days in prison for hitting his ex-girlfriend in front of two of their children.

As if Mayweather’s despicable transgressions aren’t enough to make American sports fans cringe, McGregor’s racially charged comments leading up to the farce, er, fight were disgusting as well. The racist remarks are too insulting to repeat here as are Mayweather’s own profane homophobic slurs."

Dear Paul,

I guess that our Prime Minister is possibly using
his attacks on Bill Shorten as a deterent from
the troubles he is facing within his own party.
He may be wanting to appear strong and in control.
But this sort of behaviour tends to have the opposite
effect. He's making Labor appear stronger.

I expected Mr Turnbull to have a bit more savvy.
A bit more class. Still I suppose politics is a dirty
game and eventually they all succumb to playing
it by underhanded methods.

A shame really. And I did have such high hopes for
our PM.

nicknamenick - What are you smoking, your comments above have no relationship to the topic?

Hi Foxy,

Some question whether Turnbull was the great progressive that many perceived him to be in the past, or is he simply a liberal conservative, that when pressured shows his true colours. Politics is about numbers, and the last election did not produce a favorable number for Turnbull, a one seat majority is not good in any political leaders language. The result left Turnbull, not only relying on every right winger in the parliamentary party for support, it gave that faction led by Tony Abbott a new authority to dictate the governments agenda. Abbott has been trying to do that since day one.
The other problem for the Prime Minister is, he is not winning the debate when it comes to articulating the issues, Shorten appears to have it all over him the majority of the time. This makes Turnbull look like a weak leader of a divided party, and by default Shortern, a strong leader of a united party. Ask the voters to choose what they want, and its goodbye Malcolm.

Dear Paul,

I, like so many others, had such high hopes for Malcolm
Turnbull. However I suspect that so many within his
own party did not see him as a true conservative (whatever
that means). Also there was always going to be the former
Prime Minister - Tony Abbott who we all knew would not be
content to be on the back-bench forever. So trouble was already
brewing within the party. Now to me, it seems that he's
desperately trying to keep his job by abandoning what he said
he believed in - so long ago.

It's hard to tell what's really behind his actions. And what
motivates him. I'm no pundit - so I hesitate to predict
what's going to happen next. I watched Q&A the night they
had Bill Shorten on to face the public and I must admit that
I was not impressed with him.

Anyway, all we can do is speculate as to the future out-comes.
They say that voters get things right in the end. We can only
hope that this proves to be true.