Sharri Markson: Policy victories no help in winning back government’s poll position as Joyce makes an offer to Credlin

THE passing of Gonski 2.0 is a major victory for Malcolm Turnbull, but once again has come at the expense of his core base says Sharri Markson.

Artwork: John Tiedemann

NOW that Gonski 2.0 has passed, the Prime Minister will be on a high when he fronts the Liberal Party’s Federal Council tonight, alongside decorated retired General David Petraeus.

Turnbull’s move to reclaim Gonski 2.0 was a political masterstroke. He outmanoeuvred the Greens and Labor and solved the sore point of education that Labor had been lording over the government.

The Prime Minister has proven himself to have had several such wins, negotiating legislation successfully through a recalcitrant Senate.

Turnbull has also outflanked Shorten on populist politics, introducing a new citizenship test, a bank levy and scrapping 457 visas to support Australian workers.

Yet each time The Australian publishes its dreaded Newspoll, there’s confusion in the media and political class about why the government’s message is not cutting through with the electorate.

The question that keeps being asked is a simple one: can Malcolm Turnbull recover in the polls?

This is the issue swirling in the minds of Liberal MPs as they, exhausted, leave the misty Canberra mornings for their families, warmer electorates and peace from the unrelenting media cycle.

Australian Minister for Education and Training Simon Birmingham with Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.

Over the next six weeks there will be ample time for MPs’ thoughts to percolate.

They will come to realise there is disconnect between their political wins against Labor and the perception in their electorate.

Voters don’t watch Parliament minute by minute. They’re busy with work and kids and bills and elderly parents and traffic and cooking and that cold that’s going around.

And Newspoll is proof of this gulf of difference between parliamentary wins and public perception.

Clearly, there’s a growing sense among the Liberals’ core supporters — once Howard battlers wedded to the Coalition — that they have been taken for granted too many times.

A key recommendation of Andrew Robb’s review of the 2016 ­federal election was to stop ignoring the Liberal base. The report delved into significant detail about how the base was alienated, focusing on superannuation.

How do we know this?

Because I was leaked its ­recommendations.

­But not one minister has been given a copy of the full report, ­despite the fact that its authors only agreed to undertake the review on the basis it would be a public document.

Artwork: John Tiedemann

How can the Turnbull government avoid repeating its mistakes if their most senior members cannot even read the review that delved into its problem areas?

It’s clear at least this key recommendation about alienating your core base from the Robb Review has not been digested — or is disputed.

Turnbull has undercut Labor by almost replicating their policies in a pragmatic fashion. This has succeeded politically in that it’s left Shorten nowhere to go but to move further to the left.

However, it’s in contradiction to the policy position that saw Tony Abbott’s landslide 2013 election win.

Back then the differences between Abbott and Julia Gillard could not have been starker, with clear policy demarcations.

The government would stop the boats, scrap the carbon tax and wouldn’t repeat the utter chaos of the bloody Rudd-Gillard-Rudd leadership battle.

Conservative Liberal voters are reeling from multiple face-slaps, starting with the government’s superannuation policy ahead of the last election, followed by a high-spending, high-taxing Budget, pragmatic though it was. Climate change is also back on the agenda in the form of a Clean Energy Target.

A first-term PM was knifed and a messy leadership struggle still ensues.

Gonski 2.0 is a major victory for Turnbull, but has once again come at the expense of his core base, angering as it did the Catholic sector.

Yet the Rudd-Howard competition for fiscal conservatism ahead of the 2007 seems so long ago.

2007 ... Outgoing PM John Howard with wife Janette officially hands over The Lodge to incoming PM Kevin Rudd and wife Therese Rein. Picture: Strange

Now, the debt ceiling has been lifted to $600 billion, with budget repair a forgotten dream.

Thus here we are scratching our heads over why Newspoll isn’t lifting.

And numerous are the MPs confronting their demise at the next election. Twelve MPs won with margins under 2 per cent.

Think of Michelle Landry in Capricornia on 0.6 per cent, Forde MP Bert van Manen on 0.6 per cent, Gilmore MP Ann Sudmalis on 0.7 per cent, and Flynn MP Ken O’Dowd on 1 per cent, to name a few.

These politicians are also grappling with professional activists like Get Up, who run grassroots campaigns — a demon that will be discussed at this weekend’s federal council in a closed session on Saturday.

In Barnaby Joyce’s seat at the last election, there was in excess of $1 million spent against him by the likes of Get Up, the Teachers Federation, MUA and CFMEU. He was under siege. His larrikin personal style is popular with his electorate and he won with a healthy margin.

But the battle the government faces more broadly could explain why Joyce recently approached Peta Credlin to join his office as chief of staff when his existing COS went back into the public service.

Former government staffer Peta Credlin.

Credlin declined the offer.

By the way, Joyce confirmed his offer to Credlin when I bailed him up about it yesterday, saying he thinks she shouldn’t be lost to politics.

“I did say, look I think you’re a real talent and don’t make yourself a stranger to politics,” he said, recalling his offer.

“She smiled and said, ‘You have got to be joking’.”

Anyway, I digress!

New federal director Andrew Hirst will have his work cut out for him, modernising the party, developing new micro-targeting and data systems and appealing to mums and dads.

Fundraising will continue to be a challenge: the banks are out, obviously, business is already crawling to Labor and big corporates are increasingly cautious.

It’s said politicians confronting their demise go through four phases: hope that fortunes will improve, denial the situation is as bad as it is, despair about what their career holds when they lose their jobs and then, lastly, unadulterated panic.

That’s why the lengthy break away from the Canberra bubble is dangerous. MPs could fall into the “panic” zone when they spend more time speaking with ordinary people.

Gonski 2.0 and Finkel has already seen temperatures rise in the party room. It has strained their goodwill and tested their patience. This could fester.

There is every chance the party room that returns after the sitting break will be bolshie and difficult to deal with.

And that’s before the debates over same-sex marriage and the clean energy target come to fruition. Both of these issues are a potential trainwreck in the making.