Malcolm Turnbull is feeding the beast

THE Prime Minister has done little to disguise the crunching noise as he slams policy into reverse gear.

Malcolm Turnbull during Question Time in the House of Representatives Chamber, Parliament House in Canberra. Picture: Kym Smith

ANALYSIS

MALCOLM Turnbull appears to be feeding the beast before the beast feeds on him as he lays out policy morsels for his stroppy right wing.

It’s a modest banquet and has to be shared with the broader electorate, but each course has required the Prime Minister to retreat from personal favourites.

He has gone back to the Liberals’ good old days of being tough on asylum seekers, tough on attempts to limit free speech, tough on bids to change the social order through same-sex-marriage.

In the process, Mr Turnbull has consciously diluted personal positions that had set him apart from predecessor Tony Abbott and elevated his standing as the leader the Liberals needed.

The Prime Minister has done little to disguise the crunching noise as he slams policy into reverse gear.

His salvation is the political dividends have been quick to appear.

An Essential poll released late yesterday showed news of the Government’s plan to ban from Australia for life anyone in Manus and Nauru detention sites had been absorbed by voters.

Essential found 56 per cent of voters backed the move, including a thumping 76 per cent of Coalition voters and a significant 52 per cent of Labor supporters.

The base was back, and a few Labor folk had come with them.

Then there was the creation of a parliamentary inquiry into the Racial Discrimination Act and its notorious and often misinterpreted sections 18c and 18d, combined with what some Coalition MPs would see as an opportunity to tame the Human Rights Commission.

It was billed by Attorney-General George Brandis as “an inquiry into

free speech” — which it isn’t. Quite specifically it is about Part 11A of the Racial Discrimination Act , which includes 18c and 18d, and the Human Rights Commission processing of RDA actions.

The sub-topic of whether these elements “impose unreasonable restrictions on freedom of speech” was added for show. And it paid off.

Former Liberal minister and current conservative grump Eric Abetz was most satisfied.

“Very good result,” Senator Abetz, whose stewardship of the Tasmanian Liberal Party saw it lose all House of Representatives seats on July 2, told 2GB yesterday. “I think it’s something that the Australian people want to see.

“One of the precious elements of our democratic fabric is freedom of speech.”

In fact, the RDA had barely rated as a topic outside a clutch of commentators, sources in all parties report.

And the Prime Minister himself as recently as August 31 said the Government had no plans to change 18c, and “we have other more pressing, much more pressing priorities to address”.

But to Mr Turnbull the critical topic is not what he once said, but what a former Labor leader once said.

“Over the last few days, we have heard disturbing echoes of the former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. We’ve obviously heard him on Twitter and on the OpEd pages,” he said, attempting to pummel Bill Shorten with the asylum seeker policies a man who had not been in Parliament since 2013.

The current Opposition is refusing to back the new policy.

What tickled Labor was while Mr Turnbull accused Mr Shorten of “giving in to the left” on the life ban, the Prime Minister was accommodating his right wing at a rate of knots.

The new-look Turnbull wasn’t bothered when his retreat from the old Turnbull brought about the biggest laugh of the parliamentary week so far.

“I’m not interested in gesture politics,” the Prime Minister told Question Time yesterday after making a suite of sudden concessions to conservative critics.

His next comments disappeared in a howl of loud Opposition laughter.