Why this has been the Coalition’s very worst week

TURNBULL’S lost the bloke who would defend him when others wouldn’t. Meanwhile, his ministers busy themselves piling on Abbott whenever he raises a legitimate issue, writes Peta Credlin.

THE Coalition has had some bad weeks but this has been its very worst.

While the Prime Minister finally got his way, and forced his deputy to resign, his ministerial colleagues turned on Mr Turnbull’s predecessor and put the government, yet again, at odds with the voters it needs in order to get re-elected. So, after a week of political cannibalism, the government’s second-best retail politician has been sent to into exile on the backbench where he joins the government’s best retail politician, and election defeat seems so much more certain.

The Joyce affair has highlighted the government’s total lack of political savvy.

After baying for Barnaby’s blood and kicking along the backgrounding of journalists, the PM’s allies have got what they wanted; but by wounding their once strong ally, they’ve also wounded themselves because the power of the Coalition partnership has always been the ability of the Nationals to connect with the people who felt at home with their brand of conservatism.

Across much of Australia, it was a lot more of Joyce than Turnbull that got the government over the line at the last election, albeit by one miserable seat.

There’s no doubt Barnaby Joyce brought the intrusive, and very personal, media attention on himself. He’s recognised the hurt he’s inflicted on his wife and four daughters; but the way this has all played out is not just the fault of Joyce but of all the Coalition insiders who knew what was happening and didn’t manage it better. For a government with well over 400 highly paid advisers, there doesn’t seem to have been much advising going on.

Barnaby Joyce has been banished to the backbench. (Pic: Marlon Dalton/AAP)

I’ve been told by multiple sources that the Prime Minister’s Office had been holding meetings with the Joyce office for months about “how to handle the Barnaby affair” but no one seems to have made a decision to get in front of the inevitable story and manage the release of information.

This is symptomatic of a government that spends a whole lot of its time talking, inquiring into, asking experts, and talking again — without ever really taking the tough decisions.

The Prime Minister has now admitted he’d heard about the rumours for months and, as someone who knows how it works, I do not buy the claims he didn’t know. The language is too much clever lawyer’s words and in time, it will all come out.

Right now, Malcolm Turnbull has lost the one bloke who always defended him when others wouldn’t and the man that only a few months ago, following his by-election win, was lauded by the Prime Minister as his close friend.

In an opinion piece this week talking up the Australia-US alliance, the Prime Minister wrote “mates stick by each other through good times and bad” and “mates have each other’s backs”.

If the Prime Minister’s treatment of his deputy is “having someone’s back”, who would want to be Malcolm’s mate?

This is a government that has been turning on itself at least since the “empty chair” leadership spill of February 2015. You’d think the government would retain a modicum of civility to the man who’d led them into office, particularly as the Turnbull experiment is fast turning into an unmitigated disaster, but not so.

When Tony Abbott gave a thoughtful and considered speech last Tuesday calling for a substantial scaling back of Australia’s record immigration, senior ministers fell over themselves to pile on even though has was raising the issues that ordinary people want debated, while the government was just talking about itself, and Barnaby’s bedroom.

Abbott pointed out that migration has averaged 220,000 a year over the past decade — up from just 110,000 a year in the previous one. Inevitably, he said, when immigration alone is increasing our population by about the size of the city of Adelaide every five years, there’s downward pressure on wages, upward pressure on housing prices and a huge extra burden on already clogged roads. Then, of course, there’s the integration question, particularly in places like Melbourne, when 58 per cent of the refugees who have settled here in the past 10 years are living on welfare and 70 per cent aren’t proficient in our national language.

The fact that Abbott’s critics can’t see this inside the Canberra bubble says everything about why Liberal supporters are upset and why the polls keep pointing to a Shorten landslide (it also shows how jittery they are about the 30 Newspolls and anything to do with Abbott).

Even when Tony Abbott raises sensible, considered issues, Turnbull’s ministers immediately pile on. (Pic: Brendan Esposito/AAP)

Right across the country, on local radio, talkback, online and letters to the editor, Australians

are hungry for a national debate about the rate of immigration, energy prices, safety in our communities, housing prices and the cost of living.

At the very least, they should look to Abbott’s form.

He didn’t win 25 seats off Labor by agreeing with them or by just echoing the politically correct line of the moment.

He said that illegal boats could, should and would be stopped. He said that the carbon tax was hurting small business and households.

And voters agreed with him. So when he says that outside the Canberra bubble, people are worried that very high migration is something we need to talk about, I reckon it’s worth listening to.

Is anyone listening now to the Turnbull Government; or have they turned off this soap opera that’s become a cross between Game of Thrones and I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here?

When Malcolm Turnbull seized the prime ministership, he cited 30 losing Newspolls as a justification for his coup. But here’s the difference: Abbott lost Newspolls because he was trying to do hard but necessary things like Budget repair all the while being undermined by an orchestrated campaign for his job.

His successor is losing Newspolls because it’s now almost impossible to see the point of the Turnbull Government other than as a vanity project for the Prime Minister. History will record that Abbott brought down two Labor prime ministers.

So far, his successor has claimed the scalps of an Opposition leader, a PM and now a deputy PM but sadly, they’ve all been from his own side.

Originally published as Why this has been the Coalition’s very worst week