Only Turnbull can lose the election now

MALCOLM Turnbull delighted his supporters with his withering attack on Bill Shorten during his second Question Time in his new role as Prime Minister but he exposed a vulnerability that begs ­exploitation by both Labor and conservatives during his prime ministership.

When quizzed on his support for the government’s ­Direct Action plan to deal with carbon reduction, Turnbull said Shorten was “showing today a great example of the triumph of hope over experience,” yet that is exactly what the Liberals who switched their support to the new leader had done less than 24 hours earlier. They hope that he will save their seats and the government at the next election knowing that as Opposition leader from September, 2008, to December, 2009, he would not have been able to do either. Turnbull’s greatest challenge is to prove he is more than the co-host of the Left-aligned ABC’s Q&A program, that he has learnt from his own bitter experience and that he can deliver more than inner-urban hopey-wishy mouth music on homosexual marriage and climate change. He has to demonstrate that he actually understands the views and values of the Liberal stalwarts who have for years handed out how-to-vote cards at polling booths, the Liberals who have run the cake stalls and barbecues, the Liberals who have fought on the ground against Labor and Green activists eager to subscribe to the UN’s international socialist agenda. Perhaps his speedy agreement to the written demands of the Nationals last Tuesday showed he has learnt a lesson and is prepared to work with those whom he would necessarily share ideological goals signals a willingness to genuinely adopt the broad church approach of the Howard-Costello government. If so, today’s release of his new Cabinet line-up will have to validate that style. In tapping Scott Morrison to be Treasurer, he has shown that he knows not only which member of the government is most attuned to the broadest representation of the Centre-Right public mood, but is also acknowledging the best performer of the Abbott ministry. Morrison has, unfairly, become the punching bag for those who have shown incandescent anger at the assassination of a first-term Liberal prime minister, but the now well-known sequence of events on the morning of the coup left Morrison with little option. He voted for Abbott but also did not wish to depose others he regarded as friends — if such things can exist in political life. Friday’s lively exchange with the top-rating 2GB talk show host Ray Hadley made for great ratings but ignores the reality that Morrison has been the most open of ministers to the vast radio audience Hadley, his fellow stand-out broadcaster Alan Jones, and the most popular newspaper mastheads in the country, like The Sunday Telegraph, and has an excellent sense of what the punters, not the poseurs, think. The only thing that should have been surprising about Monday’s takeover was the timing. Last December 14, I wrote in this space: “Leaders are often forced to choose ­between what is best for their organisations and their loyalty to those who they ­believe have served them well but whose skills no longer match changing operational needs. Abbott’s goal must be to win the next election and realise his nation-saving policies.” This was a column about the widely-perceived disquiet his office and in particular, his chief-of-staff Peta Credlin, had caused among Abbott’s ministers. She had become the issue. He was to be serially warned over the next 10 months that his office was still not working to his best ­advantage. Then there was the concern about Treasurer, Joe Hockey. Likeable as a morning breakfast show participant with former Labor leader Kevin Rudd, Hockey was ­always seen as lazy, missing in action when most needed, and somewhat bizarrely, besties with the head of the republican movement, a bandanna-wearing self-publicist who had never publicly ­endorsed a conservative ­policy. Abbott ignored the warnings, missed the opportunity and was felled by the opportunists and pragmatists who placed self-interest (some claimed national interest) ­before their debt to the most successful Opposition leader in Australian history and the man who placed them on the government benches. They have a three-week break to make their argument for the change to their constituents and justify what many salt-of-the-earth Liberal foot soldiers perceive as treachery. Morrison has begun, Turnbull’s explanation to date is thin. For a man who had never won a poll against a Labor leader to use polling as a justification for removal of prime minister lacks substance. He has to show he is not the man he was five years ago. The Turnbull experiment will only work out if he knuckles down and gets the ministry right, the agenda right, and the internal politics right. The Senate cross-benchers are just as erratically dangerous as they were when Abbott was prime minster but government may suit Turnbull better than Opposition. If he thinks back to his ­experience in the Howard-Costello government he may recall that it was not ideological but it was pragmatic. The political capital is his to squander — or not — and the next election is his to lose — or not.