Turnbull crisis finally at breaking point
SOMEHOW, somewhere, the ordinary Australian family has been forgotten by our federal politicians, writes Peta Credlin.
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EARLY on Friday morning two political leaders each sat down for a radio interview — Malcolm Turnbull in Melbourne with 3AW’s Neil Mitchell, and the NSW National Party leader, John Barilaro, with Alan Jones on Sydney’s 2GB.
As politicians, these men couldn’t be more different. The Prime Minister as we know, is a man that uses ten words when four would do and is famously more familiar with Cristal (a pricey champagne) than Carlton (draught beer, that is). A son of migrant parents, and known for his plain-speaking country style, Mr Barilaro is Deputy Premier of NSW after a rapid rise to the top since stepping down from his family business to run for parliament six years ago.
“My view is Turnbull should give Australians a Christmas gift and go before Christmas” was the sound bite that took off and dominated the airways but Barilaro’s other comments were equally telling. “I’ve just spent four days on the road travelling through the Riverina and the south of this state talking with ordinary people in small regional towns and regardless of the message we’re trying to sell … I was often confronted by individuals from all sides … that kept talking about the lack of leadership federally and there is no question there is a lack of leadership.”
When his colleague’s comments were put to him moments later on air, Malcolm Turnbull said he was disappointed Barilaro hadn’t chosen to raise his concerns with him privately. When Mitchell said that surely the PM was aware of criticisms regarding his performance, Turnbull shot back that no-one had raised these issues with him.
And of course that’s likely to be true.
For all their bravado, most politicians lack courage and would rather snipe behind closed doors than take an issue head on. And I agree with Turnbull here, Barilaro should have picked up the phone and delivered his salvo man-to-man but that doesn’t diminish the veracity of what he had to say. If the Member for Wentworth was able to park his ego, he might have taken Barilaro’s assessments on board and considered some sort of reset ‘mea culpa’ but his strategists instead chose to shoot the messenger, sending out Christopher Pyne to pour scorn on the Deputy Premier.
The problem for the Turnbull Government is that John Barilaro only said what the people know and feel in their gut, that, as he continued in the interview: “Turnbull is the problem. The prime minister is the problem. He should step down. Allow for a clean-out of what the leadership looks like federally, get on with governing the country, and whoever takes the reins going forward needs to make sure that they put the country and its people first, and this isn’t an endorsement of Bill Shorten; it’s actually the opposite.”
John Barilaro said publicly what so many of the Prime Minister’s colleagues have been saying for months — to the media, to business, to party members, and among themselves — only he had the courage to say it on the record. In the era of machine men politicians, honesty should be prized. As far as I can tell, it’s something that ordinary Australians lament is missing from public life.
As we now head into the final parliamentary sitting week (one week, maybe two depending how much Bill Shorten wants to taunt the PM heading into the Bennelong poll), the Turnbull Government is in a world of pain. The impending passage of same-sex marriage laws that the PM thought would be his crowning personal achievement, an issue that would see a return of lost popularity, won’t deliver any lasting boost. Instead the week ahead will be dominated by tensions within the Coalition with increasingly frustrated Nationals determined to exercise their clout. Without a vote in any Liberal leadership contest, they’re dealing with their impotency by extracting a blood price on policy. Having opposed a banking royal commission for months on end, being forced to concede ground last Thursday — at the behest of the actual banks no less — the government will not see any reward for their backflip, despite the inherently populist decision.
While not immediately imminent, the demise of Malcolm Turnbull has an air of inevitability and the problem for the majority of frontbenchers, desperate to survive, is that they know it too. It’s evident in how they try valiantly to prosecute the achievements of their portfolios, that despite being worthy of praise, go unremarked; Christian Porter’s welfare reforms that are starting to turn around Labor’s legacy mess are a case in point.
Unfortunately for the haters, not even Tony Abbott can be blamed as he continues to keep a low profile while grieving the loss of his father. The government’s current malaise is a problem of their own making and even when the political gods shine on them with the gift of Sam Dastyari, they’re so devoid of political management that it’s left to the media class to prosecute his national security sellout, rather than the government’s senior leadership who themselves all use encrypted communications to get around FOI and other scrutiny as they plot and unseat leaders. Of all the recent transgressions committed by Canberra’s political class, even Kristina Keneally’s moribund Obeid ICAC era too, it’s Dastyari’s sale of
Australia’s national interest that’s hit a new low. This issue is not finished, but the government’s struggle to get out of its own way to land a punch on Dastyari tells the story of their (lack of) political skill.
As one longstanding Liberal stalwart told me during the week: “The rot’s set in. We need to lose big, so we hit rock bottom and acknowledge the self-inflicted harm we’ve wrought on ourselves and our country. And then we must rebuild but by God, a clean out is required. When it is all over, we must swear on Menzies’ grave we will never go down this path again.”
Somehow, somewhere, the ordinary family who is juggling bills and trying to work out how much they’ve got set aside to pay for Christmas, and perhaps a week down the coast sometime in January, just longs for a time when Canberra was focused on them, and the issues that impact their lives, or at least that’s how it seemed. After months of citizenship and same-sex marriage, these are today’s Forgotten People, and every day they’re forgotten just amplifies how out of touch today’s political class is.
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