Another sad chapter of leadership instability for the country

“Tony Abbott: Rudd redux”. That was the title of the Abbott chapter of my book released last October.

“Tony Abbott: Rudd redux.” That was the title of the Abbott chapter of my book released last October.

It is a pity those words have proven more prophetic than I could have imagined. The title referred only to Abbott’s fate in being rolled as PM rather than his more recent behaviour as a backbencher, which is eerily like Rudd’s.

Before the September 2015 spill against him, no one dreamt the Liberal Party would be stupid enough to knife a first-term prime minister who had two years earlier won a thumping election victory. Especially after seeing what happened to Labor when Julia Gillard did the same to Kevin Rudd in June 2010.

But the Libs seem destined to emulate every Labor debacle of the Rudd and Gillard years. The transaction costs of deposing Abbott — a friend for 30 years who used to work as a journalist on this paper — proved much greater than those who voted against him anticipated.

Despite pledging there would be no sniping and no undermining — and there wasn’t at the time I wrote the chapter cited — Abbott has now begun using similar media tactics to those Rudd adopted to undermine the hapless Turnbull. Just as Rudd styled himself as the man who could fix Labor’s asylum seeker problem (the one he caused when he flipped John Howard’s Pacific solution in 2008), Abbott now poses as an opponent of the Renewable Energy Target (the one this newspaper alone argued for years would boost power prices dramatically) even though Abbott himself introduced this exact target as PM.

Rudd maintained a constant dialogue during the Gillard years with this paper, but it was to his friends in the progressive media, and particularly to Peter Hartcher of The Sydney Morning Herald and Channel Nine’s Laurie Oaks, that he turned for his most damaging leaks against Gillard. Similarly, Abbott has relied on conservative radio presenters Alan Jones and Ray Hadley, of Sydney AM station 2GB, and Sky News night-time television hosts Andrew Bolt and Paul Murray to carry the load of tearing down his Prime Minister.

Abbott has also been in the happy position — for him at least — of having his former chief of staff Peta Credlin prosecute the campaign against Turnbull with both her own Sky News show, in partnership with former NSW premier Kristina Keneally, and regular appearances on all the other nightly Sky News slots. Credlin also writes columns for the New Corp Australia Sunday papers and occasionally for The Australian.

Imagine the reaction of Gillard and her then minister for communications, now Sky News regular, Stephen Conroy, had Rudd’s chief of staff Alister Jordan or media adviser Lachlan Harris been given such high-profile positions from which to attack Gillard.

Abbott supporters would argue he is not campaigning for himself in the way Rudd most certainly did. He is trying to campaign for conservative values he has stood for throughout his political life.

This column has argued Rudd had far more support in the community than Gillard and in the 2013 election probably saved more than 20 seats for his party, not that any of them yet seem prepared to acknowledge that.

Abbott’s public support is more limited and always has been. Despite very strong appeal to older, conservative Australians, he would most likely drag his party’s vote down, and only damage his own reputation and the country by helping to elect a wildly populist Bill Shorten Labor government.

Some conservatives have suggested Queensland-based Immigration Minister Peter Dutton to topple Turnbull but he has very low recognition in the polling and would seem unlikely to win a majority in his party room. A strong media performer with views on immigration that have proven popular with voters, the Dutton I have known since my time as editor in chief of Queensland Newspapers seems to me an unlikely candidate to volunteer for electoral suicide.

Then there is perennial No 2 Julie Bishop who is suited to foreign affairs but was a disaster in opposition as spokeswoman on Treasury matters. Bishop is a wily media operator but hard heads in the party, and especially on the conservative wing, are often more hostile to her than to Turnbull.

All this is sad for the country and for the Coalition. For the media, it is seminal. The latest Abbott destabilisation campaign marks an entirely new level of political involvement by people ostensibly employed as journalists. Many of the Turnbull critics listed above have been viciously contemptuous of the Member for Wentworth in a way once reserved for little-read blogs or Twitter rather than the mainstream media.

BuzzFeed political editor Mark Di Stefano wrote a strong piece last week on the “Foxification” of Sky News, pointing out the network’s nightly commentary programming has adopted the style of Fox News since it was taken over in full by News Corp Australia.

For news junkies the schedule of Andrew Bolt at 7pm, Paul Murray for two hours at 9pm and Chris Kenny at 11pm is compelling.

Yet even the hosts would admit this is partisan television in a way unmatched in Australian media history. There is no pretence of journalistic even-handedness and Credlin, particularly, is proud to talk about “we” and “us” when discussing the Coalition. Conservatives who have long complained of the left leanings of the national broadcaster are fed a diet of right-wing raw meat each night that even many long-term Coalition voters find hard-edged.

Yet just as 2GB Sydney broadcasters Jones and Hadley are masters of their craft — at least for their particular audiences — there is no doubting Sky News is appealing to cultural conservatives bored with the soft left underpinnings of ABC 1 and ABC 24.

Credlin is a powerful intellectual and political force, and as a supporter of Abbott’s 2014 budget measures it is hard to disagree with her on policy. She often railroads hosts such as Bolt and Murray, as well as co-host Keneally, who defer to her in a way they would not to any other political or media figure I can think of. It is not hard to see how she alienated so many in the Abbott government.

Yet all the Sky News team are capable of balance at times. Bolt came out in part on Wednesday night to defend Turnbull over his values speech in London, pointing out reporters were briefed about the speech by staffers who neglected to mention the speech did indeed say the Liberal Party was an amalgam of liberal and conservative traditions. Good on him. But as Bolt and this paper’s Paul Kelly pointed out, the speech was foolish in claiming the mantle of Menzies for a modern progressive Liberal leader.

While Turnbull’s leadership may well be terminal, in my view he should take a leaf out of Anthony Albanese’s book. No matter how tough Bolt was in his old Channel 10 Sunday program, Albo was always willing to front up.

Turnbull is wrong to confine so many of his night-time media appearances to ABC 7.30, where there is obviously a relationship with host Leigh Sales. While Credlin, a former staffer and adviser to Turnbull, is a vehement critic, I would advise him to appear on television with both Credlin and Bolt and do so on a regular basis.

And he should have included Abbott in his cabinet: when your strategies are failing, try new ones.

A couple of final observations. Rudd and Turnbull are similar personalities and have at times been close (despite Turnbull’s overreach in the Godwin Grech affair). Turnbull even wore a beautiful jacket given to him by Rudd to the 2014 Midwinter Ball.

My book details the frisson between Abbott and Gillard in the Howard years when they were managers of their sides’ business in the parliament. The venom between Rudd and Gillard is only matched by the 30-year spite between Abbott and Turnbull that traces back to their respective roles in the republic debate of the 1990s.