Sun is setting on the tainted Malcolm Turnbull era
The Sunday Telegraph October 28, 2017 11:00pm
In his blighted term in office Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has succeeded in making even some of his most incompetent predecessors look like geniuses. Those who once ridiculed Billy McMahon as the worst leader in recent memory have been forced to reconsider.
The past 12 months have been nothing less than a re-run of the classic Turnbull failure script featuring a lack of clear policy goals, indecision, tepid embrace of conservative issues and support for inconsequential social programs which do not resonate outside the inner-urban circles Turnbull and his ever-present wife, Lucy, inhabit.
Unfortunately this is a movie the electorate has seen before and is long tired of.
I take no pleasure in being among those who early recognised Turnbull was not up to the job and now deeply regret supporting his first move up Canberra’s greasy pole, the challenge to the then MP for Wentworth, barrister Peter King.
After winning preselection following a bitter and divisive battle which split the local Liberal Party branches, Turnbull spent $600,000 in the 2004 election campaign and was rewarded with a 10.3 per cent drop in the Liberal primary vote.
Always ambitious, Turnbull unsuccessfully challenged former health minister Brendan Nelson for the party leadership after the Howard government lost office in 2007, but, supported by the ever-treacherous Christopher Pyne, managed to roll Nelson less than a year later in September 2008.
It was during that period of his leadership that the scales fell from my eyes.
Tony Abbott did not plot against Turnbull before the party handed him the leadership. He was truly the accidental candidate, stepping into the leadership contest brought on by Joe Hockey, the night before the December 1, 2009, ballot only after Hockey withdrew his challenge.
Abbott did not so much win that party room competition as Turnbull lost it.
Turnbull, showing the same sort of political stupidity which has marked his prime ministership, arrogantly agreed to support Labor prime minister Kevin Rudd’s grandiose scheme for an emissions trading system which Abbott called “a great big tax on everything”.
In the 2010 election, Labor, led by Julia Gillard and the Coalition, led by Abbott, each won 72 seats in the 150-seat Lower House but the gormless independents Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott betrayed their conservative electorates and gave Labor their support.
Abbott as Opposition leader gave Turnbull a shadow ministry, Communications, and tasked him with prosecuting the case against Labor’s Godzilla-like NBN project.
The record shows Abbott’s clear messages “stop the boats, axe the tax” and so on, had real cut through and when he took office, the Coalition held 90 seats to Labor’s 55.
But true to form, Turnbull immediately began seeking out support from the malcontents who felt they had been overlooked or poorly treated by Abbott and his office, notably led by the hard-nosed Peta Credlin. The coup worked but those involved had no idea of the very apparent flaws in the character of the man they had made prime minister.
Now, thanks to Friday’s High Court’s ruling, the Turnbull government, which saw the loss of 14 of the seats hard won by Abbott, is governing with the vote of the Speaker. It is a government on its knees.
Turnbull shows no sign of having learnt anything from his political experiences. He appears to have no one of any political nous in his office. If anyone in his inner circle has ever offered him critical advice, he has clearly not heeded it.
Fundraising for the party has remained at a low ebb (remember Turnbull personally donated $1 million to get the Liberals through his double dissolution election last year) and will not pick up while he holds the leadership.
Earlier this year I wrote that there was a considered view among senior Liberal figures that Turnbull had until Christmas to turn things around. That still seems to be the case.
The party’s dilemma is clear. What is not so clear is who it will now turn to stop Labor’s seemingly inexorable march to the Lodge.
Bill Shorten is unfit to be PM as transcripts of his evidence to the Heydon royal commission into trade union corruption show.
This is a man who stitched up the lowest paid workers in the nation while ensuring union bosses like him benefited from the companies that they were negotiating with.
There is still a case to be prosecuted against Shorten on these counts but Turnbull is not the man to do it.
The next leader may have to come from without Cabinet and I think the electorate would welcome a cleanskin.
The party has been given a number of great backbenchers but two quite brilliant newcomers stand out — Andrew Hastie and Angus Taylor — both with extraordinary real-world experience if not the sort of pants-seat polishing parliamentary time-serving that some think counts with the electorate.
I would relish seeing Shorten reproach someone like Hastie, former SAS captain, about his lack of political runs.
For when Shorten was stitching up his union members in dodgy deals, Hastie was stitching up murderous jihadists with 9mm rounds in the ungoverned badlands of Islamist fundamentalism.
The electorate is ready for that showdown and I have no doubt who would win.
