Queensland left wanting after leadership crisis

AFTER the ugliest scenes in Australian politics in 50 years, Scott Morrison might save a swath of seats south of the Tweed but he’ll have a tough time winning over much of Queensland, writes Paul Williams.

• How Dutton failed in bid
• Spill ends ‘Bishop era’
• Problems ScoMo will face

IT was the ugliest, clumsiest leadership fight in the last 50 years of Australian politics.

Not since 1967 — when Country Party leader “Black Jack” McEwen refused to serve in any Coalition headed by Liberal lightweight Billy McMahon after the death of Harold Holt — has a leadership transition been so ungainly.

So loud the criticism and so deep the disgust that, no matter how unpopular any future PM becomes, it will be a very long time before any governing party is brave enough to force another spill.

The leadership crisis saw the ugliest scenes in Australian politics in decades.

But, despite this week’s horror, the Liberals might just have chosen, in Scott Morrison, the candidate best placed to give the Coalition at least a fighting chance at a federal election many still expect Labor to romp in.

Most nervous backbenchers in marginal seats (or way down the Senate ticket) in New South Wales and Victoria would have baulked at Queenslander Peter Dutton’s deep conservatism, fearful that dog-whistling over immigration, ethnicity and crime would be grist for Labor’s mill deep in multicultural Australia.

In that sense, Morrison was always going to be the “compromise candidate” — more conservative than Turnbull or foreign minister Julie Bishop but more moderate than Dutton — and Turnbull’s delay in calling a party room meeting was a brilliant ploy designed to allow Morrison time to marshal support.

Scott Morrison is sworn in as PM. Picture: Saeed Khan/AFP

Peter Dutton after his defeat. Picture: David Gray/AP

Sadly, more than a few boys in suits in the Liberal party room must have felt the time for a woman Liberal PM had not yet arrived. And that’s too bad for the Liberals: a Bishop prime ministership would have been a genuine political re-set — perhaps enough to halt Bill Shorten’s momentum.

Many a Queensland LNP MP will be disillusioned at Dutton’s defeat. Dutton challenged the PM this week largely because Turnbull’s prime ministership would have lost all eight Queensland LNP seats sitting at, or under, 4 per cent margins. A Dutton prime ministership — aimed not at Brisbane, Sydney or Melbourne but at a regional Australia (and especially Queensland) panicked by electricity prices, immigration and national security — might have saved most of those, including Dutton’s own.

But now we have an evangelical Christian and fiscally austere PM who resembles a prime ministerial template even Liberal Party founder Robert Menzies would be proud of. Ideologically and behaviourally closer to John Howard than either Turnbull or Tony Abbott — Morrison this week rejected Dutton’s populist call to remove the GST on power bills. Morrison’s “responsibly centrist” position may yet save most of the 20 seats that were, until last weekend, heading to Labor.

The problem for Queensland’s LNP MPs is that fiscal austerity is about as popular in the cash-poor regions as Turnbull’s innovation — itself only slightly more popular than ebola. Morrison might save a swath of seats south of the Tweed, but he might save only a couple north of Caboolture.

The issues facing (especially regional) Queensland are obvious: power costs first, strong and stable leadership second and substantial services third. Morrison as PM must therefore waste no time in touring regional Queensland — always the key battleground state — to talk up cost of living, jobs, leadership and health spending.

Will it be enough to save the Coalition overall? Probably not. Labor needs just seven seats to form government at the next election and it’s difficult to see how an already annoyed Australia, now infuriated over internal party squabbling, can forgive the Liberals in time when the party remains so evenly and deeply divided.

Of course, timing is everything. A snap election for October or November might capitalise on any goodwill for Morrison. But waiting till May will prove disastrous.

Dr Paul Williams is senior lecturer at Griffith University.