Fighting back at last

There’s a glimmer of hope for the Coalition as the parliamentary year ends.

Scott Morrison has gone on the front foot. Picture: Getty Images

The Coalition entered the final parliamentary sitting week of the year divided, damaged and, to some extent, directionless.

The defection of Victorian Liberal MP Julia Banks to the crossbench shattered morale last week. Disagreements over policy and political strategy looked set to cripple any prospect of Scott Morrison building momentum before the summer recess. A breakout in factional warring looked imminent. However, by yesterday there were early signs that Morrison was asserting his authority on the government.

The Prime Minister also seemed more sure-footed when addressing the media and fronting question time. While the legislative agenda remains in flux, the government is becoming more forthright in arguing its case for everything from encryption laws to the need to assert more control over energy providers.

Morrison was on the front foot attacking Labor on asylum-seekers yesterday, reminding the public he was the minister who “stopped the boats”.

By week’s end there was a sense of momentum, notwithstanding the problems that have dominated recent months for the Coalition.

Let’s not forget, while divisions within the Liberal Party have taken centre stage, before that the Nationals also suffered divisions and the loss of a leader.

To be sure, it is a case of small mercies for Morrison. Since assuming the leadership his government has careered backwards in polls, and early signs of popularity for the Prime Minister have been replaced by surveys suggesting voters are switching off from Morrison’s messaging.

Next week’s Newspoll could snuff out hopes that Morrison finally might be starting to cut through with voters.

The government will be hoping the poll reinforces the sense of momentum. The previous Newspoll had the government down 45 per cent to 55 per cent on the two-party-preferred vote. Morrison needs that margin to tighten next week and again before the return of parliament next year.

Malcolm Turnbull’s criticisms of Morrison’s intervention to protect Craig Kelly’s preselection in the seat of Hughes — by guaranteeing the preselections of all NSW sitting MPs — challenged the Prime Minister’s authority.

The ousted prime minister’s criticisms may have been accurate, but condemning Morrison so publicly and so directly galvanised support for Turnbull’s successor.

Turnbull’s actions are “damaging his legacy”, former allies told The Australian.

While former prime ministers’ actions today shouldn’t have a bearing on what they did or didn’t achieve during their time as leader, Turnbull is increasingly isolated from the Liberal Party. Certainly from the parliamentary Liberal Party. He is no doubt prepared to cop more criticism for public interventions rather than stay silent on accusations or commentary he regards as inaccurate. But the willingness of colleagues to disassociate themselves from Turnbull is growing.

“Malcolm made it impossible,” a senior factional leader of the moderates tells The Australian. “When he did what he did, we had no choice but to support ScoMo.”

With the next election looming large, the government’s backbench finally is beginning to unite behind its leader.

It has little alternative. The move at the beginning of the week to change the party rules for spill motions is seen within the government as a necessary evil. The culture of instability required the rule change — a two-thirds majority to cause a spill — and Morrison needed to argue credibly that if re-elected there was little or no risk he would suffer the same fate Tony Abbott and Turnbull endured after their victories in 2013 and 2016.

The irony of Morrison of all people arguing that reform was necessary to overcome a cultural malaise wasn’t lost on some of his colleagues.

“He was plotting with Malcolm against Tony for ages in order to steal the Treasury off Joe (Hockey),” one government backbencher says. “Then he was at it again, calling around for support while Malcolm’s body was still warm.”

Nevertheless, Morrison now can go to the election claiming the years of leadership instability are a thing of the past.

Whether the electorate forgives what has transpired is another matter, of course. Kevin Rudd managed to change Labor’s rules ahead of the 2013 election but it didn’t mitigate an electoral wipeout courtesy of the previous years of instability.

The Coalition hopes to use the summer recess to take a collective deep breath before returning to the fray in February and March to focus on the economy.

It will target Labor’s plans on negative gearing. “At the next election, Labor is proposing to strangle the economy by whacking households, small business people, retirees and homeowners with more than $200 billion in new taxes,” Josh Frydenberg tells The Australian.

The softening housing markets will only reinforce the government’s attacks on Labor’s plans, according to the Treasurer.

“When the Coalition came to government, it inherited from Labor an economy in which unemployment was rising, investment was falling and debt was growing at over 30 per cent per year,” he argues.

Opposition Treasury spokesman Chris Bowen says Labor is ready for a weak government to use a last-ditch plan to scare voters. “Scott Morrison’s vision for Australia will not move beyond a series of weak scare campaigns on Labor’s economic and tax policies, fuelled by the same vested interests,” he says.

The Coalition hopes a comparative political debate will bring Labor into sharper focus with ­voters.

“The next election will be fought on the economy — a surplus budget versus unfunded spending promises,” Leader of the House Christopher Pyne tells The Australian.

“A growing economy versus a certain Labor recession should they win; record low unemployment versus the CFMEU’s job-destroying agenda.”

But the government will first need to respond to the findings of the royal commission into the fin­ancial services sector, due at the beginning of February.

The banks are on the nose and Labor may choose to turn up the heat, calling for an extension of the royal commission, perhaps arguing that the terms of reference were too narrow to delve deep enough into untoward conduct. Senior Labor strategists say doing so would be a “big call”, however.

Nationals senator John “Wacka” Williams says the banking royal commission “could have looked into more issues, such as valuers and receivers”.

He’s not necessarily calling for it to be extended, although he tells The Australian he is open to the idea.

Williams does argue that “if it was extended it could go into other details that haven’t been adequately looked at”.

Frydenberg and Morrison will need to be mindful of such sentiments in government ranks, and indeed in the community, when planning their response.

As much as the government would like to keep the focus on the economy and Labor’s courageous policies on negative gearing and franking credits, the opposition keeps coming back to the divisions within the government, certain that such problems are on voters’ minds.

Scrutiny of Labor is at its lowest courtesy of the focus on government chaos.

Manager of opposition business Tony Burke, referring to the removal of Turnbull, points out: “It’s the first time I’ve ever seen a party go through a leadership change for the purpose of making themselves less popular.

“The leadership battle dominated the whole year. First they wouldn’t let Malcolm Turnbull have his way on any issue. Then they directly challenged him. And now they say it’s all his fault.”

Pyne tries to step around the leadership saga by highlighting the Opposition Leader’s low personal support in polls.

“While we might have changed leaders, the problem for Labor is they didn’t — they still have Bill Shorten,” he says.

But Abbott was unpopular when he won the 2013 election in a landslide against a divided Labor government.

One of the keys to Abbott’s success was his longevity and relative stability in the job when contrasted with Labor at the time.

Bowen sees parallels today, only in reverse. Citing government changes of leadership, he argues: “The contrast with Labor couldn’t be more extreme. We’ve had the same leader, deputy leader, leader in the Senate and shadow treasurer for five years.”

Which is exactly why Morrison convened the partyroom meeting on Monday night to change the rules for a spill.

Government strategists were concerned that this week would see Labor try to blow up the parliament, forcing an early election.

“I kept getting asked whether we had chaos planned for parliament,” Burke says. “The truth is they deliver the chaos. Their own members are much better at undermining this government than I’ll ever be.”

In the end, this week was more about policy debates and positioning than political manoeuvring and posturing.

Bowen says the energy sector legislation speaks to a Liberal Party philosophically adrift. “There is no greater reminder of how much the Liberal Party has lost its way than it ended the year prioritising a crazy plan to break up private companies,” he says.

“That’s from the party of free enterprise.”

New Energy Minister Angus Taylor was one of the key plotters against Turnbull. Morrison has given him the difficult task of holding the Coalition together on energy policy — something the newly promoted Frydenberg was unable to do when Turnbull was prime minister.

Conservative senator Cory Bernardi claims the biggest problem facing the government is its lack of policy spine. “It would help everyone if they could hold on to a supposedly core belief for more than a month,” he says. “As the adage goes, if you don’t stand for something you’ll fall for anything.”

Sitting weeks for next year are limited now the budget has been brought forward to April, almost certainly locking the election in for May 11 or, likelier, May 18.

Before the year concludes, however, Frydenberg will hand down the mid-year economic and fiscal outlook, slated for December 17. It is expected to emphasise the delivery of a surplus in next year’s budget. Labor’s federal conference still will be under way when Frydenberg hands down his first mini-budget.

Bowen rejects Coalition claims of strong economic management.

“Next year we’ll see a Liberal Party running away from the parliament,” he says. “And having long ago stopped talking about ‘debt and deficit’ and racked up half a trillion in debt, it will try to con Australians with talk of a ­surplus.”

While Morrison may have ended the final parliamentary week more confidently than he started it, he’ll need to use the summer to sell himself to an electorate still struggling to understand why Turnbull is no longer the prime minister.

“The next year will see a Shorten Labor government elected in a landslide,” Greens leader Richard Di Natale claims.

Bernardi agrees: “Australians are now preparing for a Shorten government, which fills many with dread, but they feel they have no real choice.”

Whether it’s the polls, the betting agencies or the political pundits, the consensus is that Morrison is unlikely to win the next election.

Managing expectations isn’t his problem.

The challenge is to avoid his party turning on itself and panicking before polling day, making a bad situation even worse.

Peter van Onselen is a professor of politics at the University of Western Australia and Griffith University.