Turnbull’s toxic reign is over. Now dump his policies
NEVER have Turnbull’s true colours been more on display than with his conduct this week, writes Peta Credlin. Nobody in political life is a better hater than him.
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IT was about this time, 10 years ago, that Malcolm Turnbull was first elected leader of the federal parliamentary Liberal Party.
It was 2008 and they had not even managed to stay united for 12 months following Kevin Rudd’s victory; three leaders in 10 months was a portent of the decade of instability and treachery to come. Brendan Nelson had the misfortune to beat Turnbull in the leadership ballot straight after John Howard’s defeat and that sealed his fate because, as the former prime minister showed the country this week, no one in political life is a better hater than Malcolm Turnbull.
This might seem like history to some, but it was not forgotten by Warren Entsch, a likely supporter of Turnbull during his time in office, especially over the issue of same-sex marriage but if you look carefully at the petition of 43 names demanded by Turnbull before he would call a party room meeting, written against Entsch’s signature are the words “for Brendan Nelson”.
For the once proud party of Menzies, the Turnbull years have been toxic. The ultimate carpetbagger who offered himself to Labor before standing as a Liberal, the 29th prime minister of Australia will be remembered as The Hollowman. I’ve said before that he’s the
Liberal Party’s Rudd; an embittered, vengeful, narcissistic, highly intelligent, damaged, charismatic man with a tin-ear for politics, a disdain for the ordinary voter and an inviolable belief that the top job was his birthright. But even I was taken aback at his conduct this week as he tried to stave off his colleagues and hold on to the office of prime minister, because Australia, this has never been about you. It has always been about him.
On air this week I said that I had never been more saddened to be associated with the parliamentary Liberal Party as I was on Thursday when Turnbull up-ended years of precedent by refusing to call a party room meeting without a majority of MPs declaring their hand. It was farcical. His predecessor called a meeting on the back of two members signing a letter in February 2015, yet Turnbull wanted names so he could bully and threaten before the ballot and thus defile the right of MPs to a secret ballot. He said names would be private, but they were leaked to the media almost immediately. Yet this was bettered, on the Turnbull bastardry scale, by referring his challenger to the Solicitor-General over claims of a section 44 breach regarding Peter Dutton’s family ownership of child care centres. It’s the stuff of dictators and puppet regimes to rewrite the rules and use the machinery of the state against opponents, but everything was a weapon for Turnbull. There’s claims the public service cut off phones and computers to ministers that were against him, in order to cripple their ability to canvass support.
Of course, this was nothing compared with reports yesterday that Turnbull tried to drag the Governor-General into his war-games to ensure, even if Dutton was elected, the GG might question his ability to command a majority on the floor of the parliament, and thus risk a constitutional crisis. If only half of what’s alleged is true, and Turnbull admitted to being in regular contact with Yarralumla, it makes a more powerful case against a Turnbull republic than even the best constitutional monarchist could mount because the Crown held firm, a vote was eventually held in the party room, and at 6pm on Friday night, Scott Morrison was sworn in by Sir Peter Cosgrove, as Australia’s 30th Prime Minister.
I don’t subscribe to the simplistic view that “politics is broken” but the sorry circumstance of both Rudd and Turnbull colliding in public life in the same decade can certainly give that impression. It must be remembered however that neither man was a product of their political party’s traditions nor loyal to them. In his own merchant banker parlance, Turnbull’s time as leader amounted to a hostile takeover of a party that, to its detriment, is vulnerable to having its head turned by slick urbane types from inner-city postcodes when its living breathing soul has always been in the suburbs, and regional towns, of Middle Australia. The acolytes that gathered around Turnbull and stroked his ego, as poll after poll showed they were headed to electoral oblivion, don’t much like, much less understand, the base of the Liberal Party.
It’s people that run small businesses in country towns, or in outer suburban shopping strips. It’s families. It’s people that aspire to get ahead far more than those who are ahead now. It’s older Australians who have paid taxes all their life and now expect to live with dignity. Their worries are power prices, too much immigration too quickly, the sort of values we want to protect in Australia and reward for effort when they work so hard. But Turnbull, and those like him, despised their ordinariness and never properly comprehended that these are the people that kept him (and Lucy) in power, not mates along Sydney’s waterfront or the wheeler-dealers in the CBD.
If you ever doubted his audacity, Turnbull’s final media conference where he railed against disloyal insurgents wanting to bring down an elected prime minister was as shameless as it gets from a man who got the top job that way in the first place. Coming out of this torrid time, I hope there’s a fairer assessment of Tony Abbott and his achievements, and an end to mocking supporters of conservatism as deluded, when in fact, they were the ones that saw the emperor had no clothes from the start.
So where to now?
Scott Morrison has a big job ahead of him, but he’s up to it. He’s a proven performer as immigration minister (less so as treasurer) with plenty of political nous and is a proud family man of the suburbs. If he keeps his stubborn streak in check, and realises this is his big opportunity to restart the government, not just continue the old one, he’s got a real chance against Labor.
Critically, there must be policy changes, not merely personnel ones, otherwise it’s the same cliff they’re going over, just with a different driver. But if they can grapple with energy and immigration (and that requires a big backdown from new deputy Josh Frydenberg too), there’s real hope the Liberals can put the Turnbull nightmare behind them.
Of course, the big question nobody has answered is this: can the party unite?
For the country’s sake, it must. I don’t think it’s necessarily in Morrison’s nature to be the great healer and he’s been tainted by his predecessor’s machinations that helped him get there but if he resists eulogising for Turnbull, and demonising against Abbott, people will work with him to move on.
To heal this breach though it will take the broader Liberal Party membership to reassert itself over its parliamentary representatives and remind them that they are there to serve the party, not the other way around. It says everything about the man that in his final press conference, Turnbull never thanked the Liberal Party for the privilege of leading it.
In the interests of its very salvation, the party and the people who support it must, once again, be greater than any leader.