Turnbull finds himself caught between a croc and a hard place

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull is pictured holding the NTNews depicting him as Crocodile Dundee. Source: INSTAGRAM @sahlan.hayes

When Malcolm Turnbull arrived in Darwin for a lightning visit to home soil during his 10-day dash across half the world, he was greeted with a headline in the famous­ NT News declaring: “PM Malcolm Turnbull says President Barack Obama would benefit from a subscription to the NT News”.

It was an exquisite juxta­pos­ition of the demands on a globetrotting Prime Minister rubbing shoulders with world leaders and ever-present domestic business.

The day before, in Manila at the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation summit, where the Turnbull met Obama for the first time as the new leader and talked for 90 minutes about Asia-Pacific trade, security in the South China Sea, countering terroris­m and bombing raids in Syria, the issue of Australia’s leasing of the port of Darwin to Chin­ese interests was raised by the US President.

Obama, who made his strateg­ic speech on US involvement in the Pacific to the Australian parliament on his previous visit and announced the positioning of 2500 US marines near Darwin, had asked Turnbull if he could be told next time Australia was going to lease a strategic port to their protagonists in the South China Sea and Pacific.

Turnbull was caught between the US President raising a global strategic issue and domestic concerns about the leasing of the port, and responded in a lighthearted way. “All I can say is that when it was first raised with me, not by President Obama but by some other American officials some weeks ago, it was put to me that the first thing they had read about it was in The Wall Street Journal.

“I suggested that they should invest in a subscription to the Northern Territory News because it was not a secret,” he said.

He went further with the folksy approach, knowing he would be in Darwin the next day, and said Obama remembered “with great affection his appearance on the front page of the NT News with crocodile insurance. I did say to him even the US President would struggle to get on the front page of the NT News without a crocodile angle.” (Yesterday’s NT News did have the stories about Obama and a brush two fisherman had with a “saltie”.)

For Turnbull, it wasn’t a case of having alligators up to his armpits. He is still in the first flush of leadership success and recording Rudd-like personal approval ratings, with the Coalition’s electoral support suggesting a 100-seat election victory if there were a poll now. But it was a sign that the business of government, domestic and foreign, will begin to catch up with him and take some of the wind out of his beloved sails through no fault of his own.

Nor does this suggest Turnbull shouldn’t be going overseas — indeed, he has no choice — but his colleagues and the public should prepare for a change of pace, the potential risks and a demand that the Turnbull government start to talk less and walk more.

Apart from ministerial and pro­cess changes, Turnbull has changed little substantial policy from the Abbott years and in the past eight weeks has concen­trated on a change of tone and style. Both have worked well.

But the ability to brush off critic­ism, brush over nitpicking and apply a new coat of paint starts to wane as the public and opposition start to ask what is different with a new government or new leader.

One of Labor’s criticisms of Turnbull has been that he has changed little of substance and that it’s the same old government with a new sales pitch. Turnbull can survive this for a while and, given Bill Shorten’s abysmal standing in the polls, is likely to be able to survive it for a while yet, but there comes a time when results are expected.

The hectic overseas timetable of summit season has meant Turnbull has been overseas for most of the two weeks leading into the final crucial two-week sitting of parliament, and he even will be away for part of that.

Turnbull is in Kuala Lumpur this weekend and is due to leave again next Thursday to attend the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Malta. He is then expected to travel to London and Paris, returning for only the final two days of parliament in the following week.

As Prime Minister, Turnbull has no choice but to attend the G20, the APEC summit and the East Asia Summit, with other regional expectat­ions being to go to the Pacific leaders’ meeting and make bilateral visits to Indonesia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Britain, Japan, China and the US. Apart from an already scheduled trip to Japan next month, Turnbull has accepted Obama’s unavoidable invitation to go to Washington, DC, in January. To balance the Japanese and US trips, it is reasonable to conclude he will also go to Beijing.

For Tony Abbott, heading into his third year as prime minister, this would all have been expected and reasonable. For Turnbull, in his first three months as Prime Minister, it is becoming a challenge­ of time and resources.

Understandably, to build on his stylistic change and clear ability to successfully instil confid­ence in the business community, Turnbull wants to make his own mark on policies.

This is even more the case when a cabal of his supporters is pushing for an early election based on the positive polling and their own belief in the danger of falling polls.

No one expects the polls to turn around but there is a realistic acknowledgment that there must be some decline and levelling off. It is here that the domestic agenda is so important and must be balanced against the attraction of globetrotting; a brush with a salt­water crocodile is more import­a­nt than a brush with the EU.

Abbott’s long-term plan for Coalition re-election was to offer tax cuts and start to deliver a serie­s of policy developments in the last year of the electoral cycle. He has said publicly there was a tax white paper and defence white paper ready to go, the submarine project was destined for a decision before the end of the year and the latest iteration of the federation debate also was ready to go.

We now know the tax white paper will not be released until next year, as Scott Morrison tries to calm the GST debate and build the argument that personal income tax and other taxes, such as stamp duty, are too onerous.

This also means the formal tax debat­e can’t begin until the white paper is released.

Defence Minister Marise Payne confirmed this week that the defence white paper will be put off until next year, presumably while the Turnbull administration looks at the recommend­ations and considers cost savings in a document that not only locks in 2 per cent of gross domestic product funding for defence but goes beyond that, with dollar figures for the next 10 years.

The federation white paper is also off in the never-never.

So, for Turnbull, in the lead-up to the summer holiday season and the new year when some are pressing for an election, the pre-Christmas parliamentary period has the risk of appearing all talk and deferring of decisions.

The one important exception to this list of delays and inaction is Turnbull’s emblematic innovation package, which is still on course to be released next month.

Through the offices of Industry and Innovation Minister Christopher Pyne, Turnbull will be planting a huge footprint of his own kind on Coalition policy and direction.

The innovation package is so strongly supported by Turnbull that it will resist Treasury and Finance pressure to be revenue-neutral and will affect the budget deficit.

Ahead of Christmas, Turnbull will have all his eggs in one innov­ative basket, foreign and domestic. He will want to ensure it’s a positive or he will run the risk of being all talk and no walk.