Mal has no mandate without his mea culpa

MALCOLM Turnbull is going to be smacked in the face by tough reality at tomorrow’s party room meeting.

MALCOLM Turnbull is going to be smacked in the face by tough reality at tomorrow’s party room meeting.

He probably won’t enjoy the encounter given his shameful retreat into denial since the near death electoral experience a fortnight ago. If he still believes that he ran the best possible campaign of all possible campaigns and that it was run by the best possible team of all possible teams, he’s learnt nothing. Not that there’s a shortage of senior Liberal figures who have not made the same point about the woeful campaign. West Australian Premier Colin Barnett, Senator Cory Bern-ardi, Senator Eric Abetz, Senator Chris Back, Peter Dutton, and Victorian party boss Mic-hael Kroger have all voiced similar sentiments. Yet Turnbull insists he has a mandate for his platform when clearly elements — notably the superannuation package — cost the Liberal party votes. His most immediate challenge is to reach an agreement with the Nationals over the formation of the new ­Coalition. As I wrote repeatedly here in the lead-up to the July 2 poll, the Nationals under Barnaby Joyce would be the strong horse and the Liberals under Turnbull would be weak horse in the team after the election and that proved to be so. It cannot be made more plain than by an examination of the numbers — numbers Turnbull referred to obliquely on Wednesday. In the pre-election combined party room, there were 123 MPs and Senators, 21 of them Nationals. Post-election, there will probably be a total 108, with the possibility that 23 will be Nationals. Do the maths, the percentage of Nationals is likely to have risen from around 17 per cent to more than 21 per cent. Politics, as Joyce reminded us after the defection of former Liberals cabinet minister Ian Macfarlane to the Nationals on the last sitting day of 2015, and the former Prime Minister John Howard reminded us in 2006 when Nationals Senator Julian McGauran defected to the Liberals — triggering the demo-tion of the Nationals minister De-Anne Kelly — is all about the numbers. “It’s simple mathematics that if you have another person sitting with you, the numbers are more favourably disposed against you and that’s the way it works,” Joyce said. “It is a game that is generally ruthlessly governed by the numbers ... It wouldn’t be the first time a person has changed position in the Coalition. These things happen … all the time. Hell, we just changed the prime minister not that long ago.” In 2006, announcing, Ms Kelly’s demotion, Howard said politics was “remorselessly governed by the laws of arithmetic. I’m quite certain, and I say this for the benefit of all my Coalition colleagues, that if at some time in the future the proportions between the two parties were to change in favour of the National Party, the Liberal Party would need to surrender a position,” Mr Howard said at the time. Turnbull made reference to the numbers on Wednesday afternoon but he has been acting as if they fell in the Liberals’ favour. He needs to appreciate that he and his principal adviser Martin Parkinson didn’t win the election for the Coalition, the Nationals did. Now they and many Liberals will be asking they explain why the Nats did well in their electorates and the Liberals generally did not. Instead of acting like a teenager doing wheelies on the front lawn, he should soberly appreciate that the Nats were led by a plain-speaking man who connected with the electorate and didn’t talk in theoretical terms of what might happen in the global economy if they were agile and nimble and blah, blah, blah. Building dams and harvesting water are real things, not the wet fantasies of inner-urban idiots more attuned to protesting about true nation building. The Nats will want much the same terms in the Coalition agreement as were set down last September when Turnbull brought Abbott down. No carbon tax, the plebiscite on homosexual marriage — a real non-issue in the electorate — an end to the speculation on the backpackers tax and so on. To give weight to his argument, Joyce can point to such National Party successes as Capricornia’s Michelle Landry, who has now twice won what was traditionally a Labor-held seat, and perhaps (though it would be a tad cruel) he might give a nod to the loss of Longman by the over-promoted pipsqueak Wyatt Roy. Foremost in the thinking of MPs and Senators will be the whole issue of superannuation following the failure of both Turnbull and Scott Morrison to sell the plan. It is obvious that the attack on super hurt the Liberals. Fifty per cent or so of their base are self-funded retirees or people who expected to be as they aged. They know too well that putting the limit of $25,000 annually into their super will not enable them to reach the cap and won’t give them enough to live on. Turnbull must also turn his mind to the next election and nothing indicates he has thought that far ahead. The terms for half the new senate will expire at the end of June, 2019. The federal election would normally follow. However, the fixed term NSW election is due in March, 2019, which would mean that there would be a state election campaign followed immediately by a federal campaign. It’s another real dilemma for Turnbull to address, and it is entirely of his own making. There is a lesson Turnbull could learn from John Howard’s 2006 experience when facing the wrath of the first party room meeting after the McGauran defection. Manning up to the very real tensions ­between the Nationals and Liberals he called for unity and understanding: “I understand a lot of people are angry. In your dark moments, you can direct your comments to me.” Turnbull must show it’s within his character to understand, take responsibility and learn.