Marathon fight will be Turnbull’s to lose
THE torture is over. And yet it has also just started. We know the date of the election and we’re now set for an excruciating 74-day campaign.
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THE torture is over. And yet it has also just started.
We now know the date of the election. And that means an excruciating 74-day campaign. Only Julia Gillard has inflicted a greater abomination on voters.
But what we don’t know still is the answer to the more important question — what is the election actually going to be about. In vague terms, the rules of combat are self-evident. It is a contest over who can be trusted to better manage the economy.
Malcolm Turnbull is already ahead on this measure.
This is despite his failure so far to articulate what his plan to manage the economy actually is.
And Bill Shorten has a Labor legacy of fiscal mismanagement to carry with him, which will be difficult to overcome.
But then it is not Shorten’s election to win.
It is Turnbull’s to lose.
And his July 2 gambit comes with great risk.
He finds himself in unexpected territory.
He has called an election as the political underdog. While he is the more popular leader, the Coalition now finds itself trailing Labor again on a two party preferred basis.
And, in this context, he has now put the fate of the government in the hands of Treasurer Scott Morrison.
His first budget will determine who wins.
The Budget has become the government’s election manifesto. This scenario is almost unprecedented. If it fails, so does Turnbull.
Many Coalition MPs, including perhaps Turnbull himself, have been living in cloud cuckoo land since Tony Abbott was rolled. They believed that Bill Shorten was unelectable.
This is the arrogance that got Daniel Andrews elected in Victoria and Annastacia Palaszczuk become the Premier of Queensland.
Who knew?
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