Libs’ latest move won’t fix their woes

Will new leadership challenge rules make it hard for the Libs to ditch a dud? Or will it give leaders wiggle room to ignore noisy outliers? The only sure thing is, it won’t solve their current crisis, writes Dennis Atkins.

There’s a strong case for pinpointing Malcolm Turnbull’s loss of authority as prime minister to meetings of his Cabinet followed by one of the Council of Australian Governments in Canberra in April, 2016.

After struggling with tax policy for more than two months, Turnbull lit on a plan to give taxing powers to the states.

There was little cohesion between Turnbull and his Treasurer Scott Morrison and the Premiers were blindsided.

This shake up of tax policy — which would have been one of the biggest in Australia’s history if it actually happened — didn’t last more than three days. The premiers told Turnbull during a dinner at the Lodge it wouldn’t fly and they complained there was no detail.

“There was no shape to it,” said one.

“No green paper, no white paper, no draft proposals. Just an idea. And not a very good one.”

Even those premiers who wanted to help Turnbull couldn’t believe the way it all unfolded, watching a national leader bleed political capital and end up empty-handed.

Tellingly, one of the bureaucrats who go to these meetings — known in conference speak as sherpas — said Turnbull had walked into the meeting with one problem and walked out with at least four.

“I just don’t think he’s any good at this,” said this senior official.

Scott Morrison and Josh Frydenberg announce new leadership challenge rules in Canberra yesterday. Picture: Gary Ramage

This has been a constant critique of Turnbull’s time in politics — he’s actually rubbish at it and he gets into trouble because he always gives in to a tendency to overreach.

He did it again this week when he jumped in, boots and all, to the middle of an internal New South Wales preselection involving a particular nemesis, Craig Kelly, who had worked tirelessly to bring Turnbull down.

Within 24 hours, Turnbull put himself on the front page of the national daily, The Australian, posted a lengthy Facebook note on his mission to stop Kelly’s preselection, called in to Radio National’s Breakfast program and provided an impromptu mini-news conference in the grand streets of Point Piper.

By lunchtime Monday, Turnbull had all but lost any support he still had in federal parliamentary ranks and hardened the sentiment of NSW Liberal state council members who proceeded to endorse all sitting MPs planning to run again, including Kelly.

After a Cabinet meeting early Monday evening, Morrison called a special Liberal Party meeting where a new rule was introduced which would ensure the coups against Tony Abbott and Turnbull during the past three or so years would never have happened.

The new rule sets a higher bar for those wishing to topple a sitting prime minister than the measures Kevin Rudd imposed on Labor during his brief return to the top job in 2013.

Any move against an elected prime minister would need the backing of two thirds of the party room — a threshold that would have protected Abbott in September, 2015 and Turnbull just over three months ago.

The new rules would have been enough to save Malcolm Turnbull and Tony Abbott’s primeminsterships. Picture: Dan Himbrechts/AAP

After the backlash apparent during the Wentworth by-election in late October and the Victorian state election last month, the Liberals had to address the hangover of ditching Turnbull as leader. Voters, particularly those in Liberal heartland, didn’t like what happened and were willingly taking out their rage on the party’s candidates by giving Labor a tick for the first time in their lives.

The immediate benefit for Morrison and the Liberals from this new move is they can use it to address criticism from voters still smarting because of the sacking of Turnbull.

It also means they can assure voters in the lead up to next year’s election that if the prime minister comes from the Liberal Party there won’t be any more plotting and scheming and another behind-closed-doors coup.

The few critics of the change caution the party will be denied any emergency measure to get rid of someone who has lost well over half of the support of the party room, leaving them with someone who is ineffective and incapable of providing genuine leadership.

Even though there is a two thirds hurdle to get over, challenges are not forbidden which still would allow an insurgent group to cripple the incumbent.

The flip side of this coin is that a leader like Turnbull — who spent so much of his time looking over his shoulder for the inevitable assault of the hard Right Wing — could get more room to move on policy.

This is a necessary move to be welcomed but anyone who thinks its solves all of the leadership problems in national politics has another thing coming.

Dennis Atkins is The Courier-Mail’s national affairs editor.

@dwabriz

Don’t miss Dennis Atkins and Malcolm Farr’s politics podcast Two Grumpy Hacks, available for free on iTunes or Soundcloud.