Even muddled PM is better than bungle Bill

THE notion that a slew of ­disgruntled conservative ­voters will strap on suicide vests and blow up the Liberal Party is a fantasy.

While it is true that some Liberal voters still harbour deep resentment toward Malcolm Turnbull for the manner in which he deposed Tony Abbott, the importance of keeping Labor out of office must be the imperative in this election. Opposition leader Bill Shorten is a populist extraordinaire as his smooth appearance on The Daily Telegraph’s debate on Friday night demonstra-ted, but he has no solutions to the economic malaise he and his Labor colleagues created when they were members of the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd governments. Like a television faith ­healer, the newly remodelled Labor leader responded with emotive gestures, his spaniel eyes showing he shared the vibe, even if his remedies were totally fanciful if not outright nonsensical. Slugging those who have struggled to save, buy homes, educate their kids and provide for their futures is not the way to go but Shorten has shown he is opposed to those who are aspirational. In his book, they are the rich. That’s why his class-warfare attacks on Turnbull will probably fail. Like it or not, and Labor clearly doesn’t like it, Turnbull grew up in a sole-parent household. His father, a pub broker, was on the road, and as a boy, Turnbull was for some years what we might call a latch-key kid. One of the really weird things about the Left in Australia is its loathing of successful people, particularly if they come from disadvantaged backgrounds. The Left views such people as traitors to their cause — a cause which is really devoted to staying enslaved to welfare and public handouts. That’s the Labor/Green ideal today. It’s a long way from the reforming idealism that Labor giants like former PMs Hawke and Keating proposed and enabled with the full support of the Coalition parties. Those bitter Liberals who say they can’t bring themselves to vote for Turnbull should take comfort in the fact that the Nationals are the other wing of the Coalition and it is not in their interest to betray their core constituency. They demonstrated their strong sense of independence when they presented Turnbull with their 10-point charter ­before agreeing to support his prime ministership last ­September. The disenchanted Liberals should consider whether they wish to hand government over to Labor, given that the double dissolution election is already likely to see more fruitcakes inhabit the cross-benches in the Lower and Upper Houses. Because it is a “DD” election, the quota necessary to win a senate seat is reduced from 14.3 per cent of the vote to just 7.7 per cent. This would guarantee ­bizarre Tasmanian Senator Jacqui Lambie another term and possibly enable her to win a second seat for someone with equally weird views. South Australian Senator Nick Xenophon is ­already assured of being returned but he could drag a second senator in with him, and win some seats in the House of Representatives. In Queensland, Glenn Lazarus also looks a good bet, given the nature of those who live in the north of the state. When the disgruntled Liberals ponder punishing Turnbull they should think of the likely problems the new senate is already going to impose on a future government. Xenophon, who plays the same heartstrings tugging game as Shorten, is no genial moderate as his campaign strategy would make him. The parliamentary library reveals that he supported the government in just 23 per cent of the votes and sided with Labor in 38 per cent of the votes while giving the economically lethal Greens support in 40 per cent of the votes. Lambie’s record was even worse. She supported the government in just 18 per cent of the votes, Labor in 49 per cent of the votes and the Greens in 45 per cent of the votes. To be brutal, a Coalition government, should it be re-elected, would be forced to deal with such known populists and with an ever regressive Labor Party, as with whatever new imbeciles are able to make the lowered electoral threshold. Few have forgotten the ­pictures of Julia Gillard, Windsor and Oakeshott grinning like clowns as the support of the two embittered independents gave Labor government and launched the worst performing administration Australia has ever experienced. Liberals who vote against Liberal candidates on the sole grounds of their deep personal dislike of Turnbull could well be ensuring that that scenario will be repeated, with Shorten standing ­between equally moronic cross-benchers after the July 2 election. This is not an outcome that sensible Australians would want and certainly not one that Abbott, who has suffered far more personally than anyone else in the country, would welcome. Blowing up the joint like junior jihadists is the sort of thing undergraduates contemplate but those with more ­respect for the future of the nation could never countenance. Now is not the time to dwell on personal vendettas. Consideration of policies would lead sensible Australians to support the Coalition plans to restore the economy, to do otherwise would condemn our children and their children to the bleakest prospects.