Citizenship ruling bitter end to shocking week for Turnbull

PM Malcolm Turnbull in Question Time in the House of Representatives earlier this week. Picture: Kym Smith

This is a bitter end to a shocking week for Malcolm Turnbull and his government.

The Prime Minister is under huge pressure to assure voters he can ensure stable government amid the catastrophic loss of two cabinet ministers.

The government has stared down the Labor attack on Employment Minister Michaelia Cash but must now tough out the loss of Barnaby Joyce and Fiona Nash.

The first step is to head to an immediate by-election to save Joyce, who has been disqualified from parliament because of his father’s New Zealand citizenship. Joyce will need to show he is fighting for every vote rather than taking victory for granted.

The Nationals will not wait a moment to launch their campaign for a December 2 vote in New England. They are in a stronger position than their challengers, especially because former independent MP Tony Windsor will not run and One Nation may not field a candidate, but they face a daunting battle against the unions, GetUp as well as Labor and the Greens.

This is an enormous test of the Nationals’ campaigning power. The party is likely to be sorely outnumbered on the ground but the polls indicate Joyce will win.

Turnbull is taking quick and logical steps to prove that the business of government continues. Julie Bishop is positioned to serve as acting prime minister while Turnbull heads to Israel for the 100th anniversary of Beersheba. The Nationals have their most senior remaining cabinet minister, Nigel Scullion, ready to serve as interim leader.

The problems in the Senate will be harder to solve. Nash, the Nationals deputy leader, has not option of a by-election. She will be replaced by the candidate who was next on the Coalition ticket in NSW, long-serving Liberal Hollie Hughes.

The result will be long-term tension between the Nationals and Liberals over their numbers in the joint party room and therefore their numbers in the ministry and the cabinet. Hughes will not be sitting with the Nationals and will not give up her place to a Nationals candidate. The tension over this will continue to the next election, when the Nationals will push to even the balance.

The shock victory here, the fact that former resources minister Matt Canavan keeps his position, is a silver lining for the government. He can be swiftly reinstated to cabinet.

This cloud has been hanging over the government for too long. “The Deputy Prime Minister is qualified to sit in this House and the High Court will so hold,’’ Turnbull told parliament more than two months ago.

That howler is now the least of the government’s problems. The questions over the three cabinet ministers have undermined the government for weeks but bigger challenges now lie ahead. The immediate objective, to win the by-election in Joyce’s seat of New England, is only part of the problem. The bigger task is to prove to voters that the shocks from the court will not throw the government off balance.

The court decision makes the blunders at the Nationals all the more incredible.

The party must rethink how it works after having three senior cabinet ministers caught out. It failed to do basic checks on its candidates for at least a decade, overlooking the problems for Joyce and Nash when they ran for the Senate in 2004 and making the same mistake with Canavan in 2013.

This is the source of deep frustration within the Coalition because the government does not have the luxury of waving away these sorts of problems. To be blunt, the Nationals have dragged the government down at a time when it has more than enough problems.

There is no doubt the Nationals performed better than the Liberals at the last election but the performance since then is not impressive for either of the Coalition partners. The government’s primary vote has fallen 10 percentage points in electorates outside the five biggest capital cities.

With Pauline Hanson’s One Nation on the rise, the Nationals and the country Liberals are under pressure to perform.

Not that Hanson has any reason to be satisfied. Her Senate colleague Malcolm Roberts emerges from this saga as a fabulist who tried to bluff his way through the citizenship saga until he met a group of judges who could see through his claims. His appearance on Sky News with host Paul Murray — who declared Roberts to be “a million per cent correct” — will be replayed as a comedy skit.

The idea of proroguing parliament to get through this mess is ridiculous.

Nobody should get too excited about the government falling after a Labor no-confidence motion while Joyce is out of parliament.

With a by-election likely on December 2 and Joyce leading in the polls, the government may only be exposed in the House of Representatives during the four sitting days from November 27 to 30.

During this period, Labor would need the support of all five crossbenchers in the lower house to add to its 69 votes in the lower house to come close to winning a no-confidence motion against the government.

The government would have 74 votes on the floor of the lower house if Joyce was absent, which means it could not secure a majority of the 150 seats in the chamber in its own right.

Assuming all crossbenchers voted with Labor, the outcome would be tied at 74 votes each. The Speaker, Liberal MP Tony Smith, has a casting vote in the event of a tie but seems unlikely to use this. He told The Guardian in May this year that he would not use his vote to give the government a majority on legislation or matters of confidence.

“If in the final vote there is not a majority, you don’t vote to give it one,” he said in May.

That suggests the hypothetical no-confidence motion would fail in a tied outcome.