Victorian Liberals have some explaining to do over their coup against Malcolm Turnbull
FEDERAL Liberals might have gone mad but there must have been reasons why Victorian MPs backed a coup. Tell us what they are, writes James Campbell.
James Campbell
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IF YOU were a Queensland LNP MP spooked by the government’s poor showing last month in that state’s Longman by-election, you can understand, I suppose, why you might have been panicked into voting to get rid of Malcolm Turnbull.
Their thinking was that Dutton, being a Queenslander, would have more appeal to their constituents than a multi-millionaire Sydneysider. You can criticise them for not giving a fig for how he might play out in the rest of Australia but only if they believed the government stands a chance of being re-elected.
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If you are an MP who has reached the fixed conclusion that after 30-whatever Newspolls the Liberal and National Parties are cooked at the next election no matter who leads them, then fair enough, vote for whoever you think is going to best help you survive the coming deluge.
But none of this applies if you are a Victorian. Can anyone point to any evidence that would convince us that Peter Dutton would have played better here than Malcolm Turnbull?
At the last election, Victoria was the only state in Australia where Turnbull managed to win a seat from the Labor Party.
Is there any evidence that since July 2016 the people of Victoria have so soured on him that it was in the self-interest of our Liberal MPs to vote for his removal?
If you listen to state MPs, the answer is no. Indeed, internal Liberal state polling has been showing for months a steady improvement in the voter good will towards Turnbull and his government in Victoria.
The last thing state MPs were agitating for three months out from their election was for their federal colleagues to remove the prime minister.
It’s only my observation, but the word that would constantly — spontaneously — come up when talking about Turnbull was “disappointing”. Not great, I admit.
But — and again this only my observation — that was a damn sight better than the words that, back in the day, used to spring to people’s lips when you mentioned Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott.
What’s more, after almost three years without the removal of a prime minister, it was starting to look as though Australian politics had put behind it the “coup culture” that since 2007 meant no prime minister has lasted a full term of a parliament.
The events of last week shredded that hope and with it any claim the Liberal Party might have to be considered the grown ups in the Australian political system.
The Labor Party in Victoria can’t believe its luck. Until last week they had hopes of picking up four seats here — Corangamite on the outskirts of Geelong, Dunkley on the end of the Frankston line and La Trobe which takes in Croydon, Dandenong, Ferntree Gully and Ringwood, as well as the new seat of Fraser in Melbourne’s northwest which they will win in a canter.
Now, thanks to last week, Labor folk are daring to dream that they might — on a good day — pick up Deakin which is held by Michael Sukkar on a margin of 6.1 per cent.
By any measure 6.1 per cent is a big ask on two-party preferred basis but a ReachTEL poll published by Fairfax and taken in the days after Turnbull fell, had his primary vote dropping a massive 8 per cent.
Single seat polls need to be taken with a giant pinch of salt as we learned after the Super Saturday by-elections — so much so that some political operators have effectively declared them useless — and the sample was not huge — but even so, that’s quite a result.
The decision to poll Deakin was no doubt taken because Sukkar was one of the MPs most publicly associated with the Dutton push — indeed he was only one of three of his supporters chopped from Scott Morrison’s front bench on Sunday
No doubt people are feeling a bit emotional at the moment after the unexpected removal of a bloke without any warning and it might all calm down. But it certainly gives Labor something to work with against Sukkar.
The MP for Chisholm, Julia Banks, who announced yesterday she was quitting at the next election, has also given Labor something to work with against whoever the Liberal Party preselects to replace her.
At the 2016 election Banks was the only Liberal candidate anywhere in Australia to take a seat off the ALP. In her statement announcing she was quitting, Banks took an almighty swipe at people who play “internal political games, factional party figures, self-proclaimed powerbrokers and certain media personalities who bear vindictive, mean-spirited grudges intent on settling their personal scores”, some of whom are in the Liberal Party. It was an ad for the ALP written on a Liberal MP’s letterhead.
Labor may not have been planning on targeting Chisholm before yesterday but they will be now. So instead of fighting to hold on to three seats in Victoria at the next election, the Liberal Party will be fighting to hold five as well as the new seat of Fraser.
What were these people thinking? Surely it can’t just be as one MP said to me yesterday “the Liberal Party has gone mad”. There must be a rational electoral reason why these people did what they did. Mustn’t there?
Over to you Michael Sukkar. Let’s hear what your thinking was, Greg Hunt and Alan Tudge. Please explain how you thought this was going to help the Liberal Party in Victoria, young James Paterson. Why did you sign that petition, Jane Hume?
There are a bunch of Liberal Party members and voters who’d like an answer.
James Campbell is national politics editor.
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