Annika Smethurst: ‘The Coalition is in crisis and is now irreparable’

THIS week’s open warfare between the country’s two leaders, PM Malcolm Turnbull and Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce, has morphed into a political crisis for the Coalition. It is now irreparable, Annika Smethurst writes.

WHEN Tony Abbott stared down a leadership spill in February 2015, he asked his colleagues for more time to turn things around, but it was already too late.

Liberal MPs agree that two of their main bugbears — the management of the prime minister’s office and a lack of consultation with the backbench — improved after the empty chair spill when no challenger emerged.

But seven months later, Abbott was ousted by Malcolm Turnbull.

This week when Barnaby Joyce’s leadership was under attack he also begged his colleagues for more time, which he has been granted. But just like Tony Abbott, it is too late.

PM Malcolm Turnbull and Deputy PM Barnaby Joyce are currently at odds. Picture: Kym Smith

Nationals MPs thought they might be past the worst of it. On Thursday, after a horror eight-days of bad headlines about Joyce’s affair with his young staffer, the mood started to shift.

Joyce had warded off a push by a small number of Nationals to oust him. The tone of the messages in the WhatsApp group they’d been using to air their grievances was shifting as colleagues got behind their embattled leader.

As one colleague said: “We’d survived. If that’s the best they could throw at us, we all thought, we’ve got this.”

But it was short-lived.

The first Barnaby Joyce knew of Malcolm Turnbull’s damning press conference to personally attack him was when he saw it on Sky news. Joyce watched stony-faced from his office alongside a colleague and a close adviser, as the Prime Minister dubbed his behaviour appalling. Joyce was rightly furious and insisted on firing back.

Barnaby Joyce reads the Daily Telegraph in a service station on Saturday morning. Picture: Supplied

Buoyed by support from Nationals colleagues who don’t respond well to Liberal interference, Joyce accused Turnbull of being “inept” and of attempting to undermine him.

What Turnbull failed to anticipate was that the National Party do not like being told what to do. The Prime Minister’s comments may have resonated in the living rooms of Australia, but his intervention has escalated tensions within the Coalition.

Both Turnbull and Joyce fuelled the political fire which is now threatening to incinerate the government.

Just 11 weeks ago the two leaders appeared alongside one another to celebrate Joyce’s victory in the New England by-election. Turnbull said Joyce’s win would bring much-needed discipline to the Coalition. Now the relationship is being compared to other great political fallouts such as Gillard and Rudd or Hawke and Keating. As one Nationals MP warned, “disunity is political death”.

While most Nationals agree that the Joyce era is all but over, loyalists won’t go down without a fight. Turnbull’s comments have prompted an outpouring of sympathy from colleagues who claim the Prime Minister went too far.

“Barnaby has made f***king mess of things, but you have to make your mind up. Are you going to cut him some slack or are you going to cut his head off?” one Nationals MP said.

“It’s very poor form for those that claim him as a friend when things are flying, but f**k him the second it gets tough.”

Turnbull is likely to emerge victorious in this political stoush, but he has also opened himself up to criticism from within his own party. Pro-Tony Abbott forces are already using the fight to expose existing strains between Malcolm Turnbull and the National Party.

Unlike Tony Abbott, the junior Coalition partner has always been suspicious of Malcolm Turnbull and extracted a written agreement from him on various policy issues when he became leader.

This week’s open warfare between the country’s two leaders has morphed into a political crisis for the Coalition. It is now irreparable.