Julie Bishop did the right thing by stepping down as foreign minister but vowing to stay in parliament
IN the end, Julie Bishop did the right thing by the party she has served for 20 years by stepping down as foreign affairs minister, writes Rita Panahi
Rita Panahi
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IN the end, Julie Bishop did the right thing by the party she has served for 20 years.
By stepping down as foreign affairs minister but vowing to stay in parliament, at least until the next federal election, she has saved new Prime Minister Scott Morrison the embarrassment and disruption of a double by-election. For that, she should have the universal and eternal admiration of the Liberal Party.
Bishop is a highly visible and likeable politician, and her energy, wit and enthusiasm will be missed.
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But to suggest that she was a viable candidate to lead the party, and the country, is fanciful. She would have enjoyed the briefest of honeymoon periods before her policy failings were exposed.
She was blessed with a portfolio in which there is considerable bipartisanship, but her enormous personal popularity rarely translated to effectiveness either in selling policies or holding Labor to account. She seldom laid a glove on Labor, and faltered when asked about issues outside her portfolio.
A deputy leader can’t claim that uncomfortable questions about one of her party’s key policies are “a gotcha moment”, or simply say “it’s not my portfolio”.
That’s precisely what Bishop did during the 2016 campaign when 3AW’s Neil Mitchell asked her about the Coalition’s contentious superannuation policies.
It was painfully clear to anyone listening that she didn’t fully understand the policy she was advocating.
There’s good reason for her receiving only 11 votes in Friday’s leadership ballot and it is only partly due to the fact that the so-called “moderates” knew that in a two-horse race she would lose to Peter Dutton.
Bishop’s departure from Cabinet created a coveted Cabinet vacancy that Morrison used to rebuild burnt bridges and help unify a party that appeared a week ago hopelessly fractured.
Morrison is not Turnbull 2.0, and as a genuine conservative he can bring back the disillusioned base who have abandoned the Coalition in astonishing numbers, causing its primary vote to plummet to disastrous levels.
The Coalition got 42 per cent of the primary vote in 2016’s federal election, managing to scrape home with just a one-seat majority, after Malcolm Turnbull ran the most inept campaign imaginable.
In the last Newspoll of Turnbull’s prime ministership the Coalition’s primary vote was down to 37 per cent; in last week’s Fairfax-Ipsos poll, it was at 33 per cent.
A primary vote anywhere in the mid-30s translates to an almighty shellacking come election day.
Under Turnbull’s Labor-lite leadership the party lost its way and a sizeable portion of its supporters.
The change should have happened at least 12 months ago to give the new leader a fighting chance at the next election.
As it stands, Morrison has been handed a near-impossible task.
The major problem with Turnbull wasn’t just his tin ear, lack of principles, history of treachery and inability to communicate with voters. He was always in the wrong party.
Turnbull was never a conservative, and what happened on Friday was inevitable.
The man who begged Labor powerbroker Graham Richardson for a spot on the Labor Senate ticket in the 1990s has caused enormous damage and left the Liberal Party a weakened shadow of its former self.
Turnbull will demonstrate his utter disdain for the party that made him prime minister by forcing a by-election that could jeopardise the Coalition’s one-seat majority in the House of Representatives.
It’s a final act of self-absorbed bastardry and comes despite his promise, given only a week ago, to remain the Member for Wentworth even if he lost the leadership.
The Liberals have only themselves to blame for knifing a first-term prime minister and allowing an impostor, who relentlessly white-anted two leaders, to take over the party of Menzies and Howard. Dutton’s disappointed supporters should remember Morrison’s strong conservative credentials: he is the immigration minister who stopped the boats and who copped unhinged vitriol from activists and much of the media for his tough approach to border protection.
Morrison’s world view is a lot closer to Dutton’s than it is to Turnbull’s.
He may have been Turnbull’s preferred candidate at last Friday’s final ballot, but he is no small “l” Liberal.
In a smart move that will begin the party’s healing, Morrison will keep coup leaders Dutton and Mathias Cormann in their portfolios and will promote Dutton backer Angus Taylor to the Cabinet and the key Energy portfolio.
However, it was disappointing to see capable former junior minister Michael Sukkar pay a heavy price for his role in removing Turnbull. But what matters above all else is policy.
The Morrison government must formulate policies that are sufficiently different to justify the change in leadership.
Voters deserve stability.
But they also deserve a clear choice at the polling booth, rather than two versions of Labor on a unity ticket on critical matters such as population and climate change.
Of course, there is a transactional cost in changing leaders, but the Coalition were headed for defeat under Turnbull.
If they are going to lose, it might as well be with a leader who reflects the values of its members and supporters and who will hang around to repair the mess Turnbull has created.
Rita Panahi is a Herald Sun columnist
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