Bishop’s 60 Minutes interview ruffles feathers

Julie Bishop’s appearance on 60 Minutes has angered some Liberal MPs who question if it will help or hurt the party.

Just weeks after Malcolm Turnbull was cut down as prime minister in a partyroom coup that has resulted in bruising recriminations, his deputy Julie Bishop took to prime-time television last night, giving an interview seen by some colleagues as embarrassing Scott Morrison’s government.

Appearing on the Nine Network’s 60 Minutes, Ms Bishop offered her view on issues hurting the new government, including gender quotas and why the prime minister was removed.

The former foreign minister said she had received “many calls” from former counterparts around the globe asking why she was no longer in her job and what had happened to Mr Turnbull. “There have been some rather unkind comments about Australia being the Italy of the South Pacific and the coup capital of the world,” she said.

In a broader discussion about trust in politicians, the West Australian MP said question time made parliamentarians look “no better than schoolchildren” and blamed social media for increasing polarisation in politics.

As the bar for knifing leaders is lowered again it fuels the perception that politicians spend all their time on gamesmanship and winning the day in Question Time. #60Mins pic.twitter.com/mFQP0IfDHi

— 60 Minutes Australia (@60Mins) September 23, 2018

The interview has angered some Liberal MPs who have questioned whether Ms Bishop’s foray into political analysis, even if well-intentioned, would help or hurt the party.

Many are convinced Mr Turnbull and his parliamentary allies past and present are making a concerted effort to destabilise the Coalition and the Prime Minister even further.

Ms Bishop, who rejected an offer from Mr Morrison to stay on as foreign minister after she was well beaten in the ballot to replace Mr Turnbull, agreed the latest leadership change had been the most perplexing.

“Malcolm Turnbull was way ahead as preferred prime minister, we were coming back in the polls,” Ms Bishop said last night. “It was quite close and there were no deep policy issues that divided the party because Malcolm Turnbull had given way on a number of … issues.”

In the lead-up to the spill, Mr Turnbull moved to drop the contentious national energy guarantee and ditched the Coalition’s then policy of company tax cuts for businesses with turnover of more than $50 million. “Of course, the new leader, Scott Morrison, was part of the cabinet. Indeed, he was the treasurer of all of these policies,” Ms Bishop said. “So it was a combination of factors, but like past leadership challenges in recent times, many complex underlying motives.”

In the partyroom vote for leader, Ms Bishop received just 11 votes from the 85-member partyroom and, according to leaked WhatsApp messages from her moderate colleagues, had been the target of a co-ordinated push to keep Peter Dutton from becoming leader.

On the impact of social media, Ms Bishop said: “Instead of politics being seen through the lens of experienced political commentators and experts from the press gallery, now everyone with a mobile phone or keyboard is a journalist, a commentator and it is unfiltered.”

“I believe that there are sections of the community who feel that they are missing out … and then politicians develop the art of the grievance so that people feel that they are being sidelined.

“And that makes them frustrated and angry and they take it out on the political class and then the political class use that anger or that frustration for their own purposes. ”

As Mr Morrison battles to explain a perceived culture of bullying in the Liberal Party and limit the damage from the uneasy fact there are so few women in its parliamentary wing, Ms Bishop said the “tenor of the debate is vastly different … when more women are involved”.

“I was much more comfortable when there were more women in the cabinet,” she said, referring to her stint as the only woman in Tony Abbott’s cabinet.

She renewed her call to have gender targets in the Liberal Party. “I believe that targets are an appropriate mechanism. It’s not the only mechanism but I have seen it work elsewhere,” Ms Bishop said.