Scott Morrison’s own goals keep coming as Coalition divide deepens

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has endured a wretched summer. Picture: Picture Gary Ramage

Bridget McKenzie’s removal as deputy Nationals leader and cabin­et minister, which brought a world of grief for Scott Morrison’s Coalition government, came ­courtesy of a $30 gift.

The “free” membership that the Wangaratta Clay Target Club bestowed­ on McKenzie little more than a year ago was worth $170 all up. Of that, $140 went to the club’s peak organisation, leaving McKenzie with a benefit worth $30.

She did not ever take advant­age of it but failed to declare it in a timely fashion when she awarded the club a $36,000 grant from the sports infrastructure fund that became­ the giant pork barrel design­ed to help vulnerable Coali­tion MPs win in May last year.

After his summer of slips, slops and slaps, the Prime Minister could not sack McKenzie over the $100m sports rorts saga triggered by the scathing report of the independent Auditor-General because so many others were in it up to their eyeballs, including his staff, the office­ of the Deputy Prime Minister — for the time being at least — Mich­ael McCormack, and federal Liberal headquarters.

Given neither McKenzie nor her then staff could ensure her basic paperwork was in order, it is inconceivable they could produce on their own such a spectacular document as the colour-coded list of targeted seats that directed the distribution of money and helped seal McKenzie’s fate.

Nor is it possible to believe that under normal circumstances, and left to her own devices, she would have given $500,000 to the Mosman Rowing Club in Tony Abbott’s old seat of Warringah.

Seeking to justify the spending of taxpayers’ money where his need was greatest, not theirs, and guided by the belief that if they won the election it wouldn’t matter, or even if they were defeated it wouldn’t matter, Morrison lost even more skin as he waited for something, anything, to hang on McKenzie — or rather to hang her with — despite knowing the forces it would unleash inside the Coalition.

That came with the conflict of interest exposed by her failure to declare her membership of the club. Bridget should change her name to ­Patsy.

The fact Barnaby Joyce fell short in his opportunistic strike against McCormack, whether by one vote or a half-dozen, in important­ respects is immaterial. While he lives and breathes and remains in the parliament, Joyce will forever be a leader­ship aspiran­t, the focus of rebellion and resistance.

Bridget McKenzie in the Senate this week. Picture: AAP

Despite what he said with utmos­t sincerity in the immedia­te aftermath, pledging undying loyalty­ to the leader and never to do it again — we have heard the same lines so often from other challengers as they made their strategic withdrawals — Joyce will never accept that his time has passed and that at each point he has been the architect of his own failures, including by disrupting a day meant for sombre reflection on the fires and their victims.

Proof of the flashpoints came at party meetings soon after where Morrison, no doubt keen to head off any grumbles, began with a softly, softly mea culpa to MPs for his behaviour over the black summer, saying if he had his time over again he would do things differently, and declaring there was “no harsher critic of myself than me”.

The Coalition’s 15-year-long civil war on climate change erupted in the Liberal Party meeting when Queensland Liberal Andrew Laming urged colleagues to stop their “solo flights”, accept the scienc­e and get behind the government’s emissions reductions policy. He did not name Jim Molan or Craig Kelly. However, everyone ­assumed they were who he meant.

Joyce and David Gillespie made clear in the joint party meeting how it’s going to be from now on by declaring that climate change was not an issue in their electorates and urging colleagues not to succumb to the greenies.

This would come as news to former Joyce protege and new deputy leader David Littleproud (McCormack’s least preferred can­didate, who beat fellow Queenslander Keith Pitt), who has said he believes in it, just like his constituents in his mostly rural seat of Queensland believe in it ­because they can see the effects of it all around them. But he stayed out of it.

Inner-urban progressive Liberals returned fire, and while the war was described as largely civil on Tuesday, there is little confidence it will stay that way.

Trent Zimmerman, politely acknowl­edging the diversity of opinion in the partyroom, warned that seats such as Warringah would not return to the Liberals without change. Katie Allen in Higgins urged support for the government’s policies, congratulating Morrison for advocating technological solutions. Fiona Martin reported that, since October, climate change had become a major issue in her Sydney electorate of Reid.

Queensland Nat and perpetual malcontent George Christensen was having none of it. Not so ­subtly lumping Liberal MPs with perceived enemies, he warned the room not to listen to inner-city greenies and Labor.

Morrison later echoed his sentiments, saying he would not just be listening to those in the inner city, vowing not to be “bullied” into higher taxes and electricity prices.

The Prime Minister’s problem is that he will be grappling with an issue that has claimed so many Australian leaders from a position of weakness and vulnerability, thanks to his wretched performance over the long, hot summer.

He will be plagued by that for a while yet, as shown by Labor’s lines of attack on Wednesday, as well as by the now deeply embedded instability inside the Nationals. Unless he needs them himself, he has to allow McCormack a few big wins if he wants him to survive, otherwise there will be another leadership eruption. Next time it still won’t be Joyce who succeeds, nor will it be McCormack. In all likelihood it will be a combination of Littleproud and Darren Chester, who will be much less pliable.

The six months the government spent coasting and boasting after the election was squandered time on every front, including the economy. Morrison should have used his authority then to forge a new energy policy rather than simply waiting and expecting Labor would blow up over it.

That may still happen, but the chances are just as great that the explosion will be on his own side.