“Delcons” would rather Australia failed than Turnbull succeeded

ONLY diehard “delcons” want Tony Abbott back. Turnbull is conservative enough and should be given a break to get on with the job, writes Miranda Devine.

Who me? Tony Abbott’s campaign against Malcolm Turnbull can only serve to deliver a Bill Shorten government. (Pic: Daniel Munoz)

CRAIG Laundy is a freckly third-generation western Sydney publican-turned-Liberal MP who won a perpetually Labor seat by the skin of his teeth in 2013 and defied the odds to increase his margin last year.

His diverse, aspirational electorate of Reid stretches from Auburn east to Drummoyne.

Average age 34, it is made up of double-income families paying high mortgages or high rents. Half don’t speak English at home, and two thirds have parents born overseas.

Successive waves of immigration have brought in Italians, Greeks, Chinese, Koreans, Vietnamese, Indians and Tamils. Hardworking and socially conservative, they represent “common sense, middle ground” Australia.

If the Liberal Party is to maintain a broad appeal in an increasingly fractured nation, a seat like Reid is key.

Laundy polls his electorate at his own expense and is always out and about in the community.

This week, one constituent, a former Labor voter who is a regular at the Palace Hotel in Mortlake, sent him a text message.

Craig Laundy has been taking the temperature of his Reid electorate, and the mood on Abbott isn’t good. (Pic: Kym Smith)

“Is Abbott for real? If he keeps going he will destroy the Libs and the rest of us.”

This is the reality on the ground as Liberal MPs spend the winter break taking the pulse of their electorates.

“No one wants Bill Shorten,” says Laundy, “even if they’re soft Labor voters.”

By 2013, the country was fed up with Rudd-Gillard-Rudd circus. It has even less appetite now for Abbott-Turnbull-Abbott, a prospect pushed by a noisy minority of diehard delusional conservatives, aka delcons.

The only result of their campaign is a Labor government.

Even those people who loved Tony Abbott, and were angry at his ousting are ringing and emailing Laundy’s office, saying: “You need to do something about Abbott because handing over to the other bloke (Shorten) will destroy the country.”

A Labor government will mean higher taxes, more debt, higher electricity prices, union control and social engineering which will make Safe Schools look tame. Labor has been captured by identity politics and moved so far left it is about to jettison 40 years of support for Israel to recognise a Palestinian state.

Turnbull-haters with their daily Chicken Little impersonations may as well hand out Labor how-to-vote cards while they’re at it.

As is the case with never-Trumpers in the US, there are those in the Abbott firmament who would rather see Australia fail than Turnbull succeed.

They believe the Coalition needs to be booted into Opposition to reform and rise like a Phoenix from the ashes. But defeat would mean the exit from politics of some of the best future leaders. It would be a profound setback to conservatism.

NSW lived through 16 years of woeful Labor government with a Liberal Opposition that couldn’t get its act together. That’s the model, not some magical conservative renaissance.

Conservatives need to accept that we had a once in a generation opportunity to reset government in 2013. That opportunity was squandered. The electorate has voted in a new Liberal Prime Minister.

So you make do with what you have, and Turnbull circa 2017 is conservative enough.

He has legislated tax cuts for small and medium businesses, cut spending growth, slowed immigration, re-established the Australian Building and Construction Commision, embraced coal and dams, pledged support for a plebiscite on same-sex marriage, strengthened terrorism legislation and citizenship requirements and tried to change the Racial Discrimination Act.

It’s not true to say his government is “Labor Lite”.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull may not be conservative enough for every member of the Liberal Party, but he’s conservative enough, and should be allowed to get on with governing. (Pic: Toby Zerna)

As Finance Minister Mathias Cormann points out: “If the proposition is the government now is supposedly more left-wing than (Abbott) would like, that would have applied equally to his government”.

Conservatives Cormann and Peter Dutton are Turnbull’s closest allies, and he has a good working relationship with Barnaby Joyce.

Turnbull’s address to the Liberal Federal Council last weekend didn’t get publicity but it was vintage John Howard.

He spruiked his small business tax cuts and new Snowy-Hydro scheme, talked of “the war against Islamist terrorism” and “actively hunting down terrorists abroad in the conflict zone”. He harked back to Menzies, stressing “the primacy of the individual and the importance of individual freedoms” and getting people “off welfare and into the work force”.

He boasted of the “largest expansion of the Australian Defence Force’s capabilities in peacetime” and strong border protection: “The Australian public know that their government and their government alone, determines who comes to Australia and on what terms they come here.”

And he took the fight to Labor, “not the Party of Bob Hawke and Paul Keating. This is a Labor Party controlled, owned by thugs. The most militant unions in the whole of the ACTU, they are calling the shots. Labor cannot be trusted on migration. It can’t be trusted on citizenship.”

The speech was hardly Labor-Lite.

Conservatives who actually care about policy and not personalities, should go easy on Turnbull, who is walking a fine line between an electorate full of small l liberals and a party that has to appeal to two Australias.

There is the globalist, world class, optimistic, go forward Australia A, mainly situated in Sydney and Melbourne; and the sullen, resentful, stop-migration, haven’t-had-a-pay-rise-in-ten-years, can’t-afford-to-buy-a-house, don’t trust-bloody-politicians, may-as-well-vote for Hanson Australia B which represents the disaffected base of both major parties.

This is why we see parallel political universes today: one in which a united government is methodically working through the policy disasters it inherited to provide solutions palatable to the Senate, while holding fast to conservative positions on border protection, Islamist terrorism, defence spending, citizenship, and the marriage plebiscite.

Then there is the alternative universe, in which the government is supposedly in chaos, hopelessly divided, Labor lite, anti-Catholic, incompetent, elitist and out of touch where Turnbull-has-to-go and Tony Abbott is the messiah.

How despondent a Coalition MP feels back home during the six week winter break depends entirely on which universe their electorate is in.

But the answer is not Abbott.