Mathias Cormann meeting with Turnbull turned the tide
The cardinal moment came when Senate leader Mathias Cormann walked into the ground-floor office of Malcolm Turnbull.
The cardinal moment came at 11.45am on Wednesday, when Senate leader Mathias Cormann walked through the corridors of the ministerial wing to the ground-floor office of Malcolm Turnbull.
He was deeply troubled. For him, this was an impossible contest between duty of loyalty to the leader and what he believed was a responsibility to act in the national interest.
Cormann and the Prime Minister are believed to have been the only two in the room. Colleagues have revealed that Cormann told Turnbull he no longer had the support of the partyroom and believed he should step down, and that they should consider an orderly transition of leadership.
Four ministers had come to Cormann in the 24 hours since Tuesday’s leadership spill to say they had voted for Turnbull but on reflection they would now support Peter Dutton.
Cormann suggested another partyroom meeting was needed. Turnbull wanted names. The two agreed to revisit the issue after question time. It was an agonising decision for Cormann, the government’s Senate leader and Finance Minister. His integrity was beyond question and he had been loyal to the leaders he had served.
The previous day’s close count — Turnbull won the ballot by just 48 to 35 votes — crystallised the belief that he was rapidly losing support. An hour later, Cormann was forced to stand next to Turnbull and Scott Morrison to issue a joint statement announcing the shelving of the company tax cuts.
To Cormann’s colleagues, it appeared to be a deliberate attempt by the Prime Minister to telegraph that his Senate leader was still in his camp. Cormann was asked the inevitable question and gave the only answer he could. He would stay loyal to the Prime Minister, now and into the future.
At 4.30pm, Cormann sought a second meeting with Turnbull. This time he walked in with fellow cabinet ministers Michaelia Cash and Mitch Fifield. The three senators repeated what Cormann had told Turnbull earlier; that he had lost the support of the partyroom and should step down in the best interests of the country. Turnbull refused to accept this but then looked them in the eye and asked if they were seriously going to vote for Dutton. All three said yes. All three offered their resignations.
Another cabinet minister, Dan Tehan, later went to see Turnbull alone and is believed to have also told him he should step down, but qualified this advice with the pledge he would never vote against a sitting prime minister.
What followed was 18 hours of pure madness.
The conservative camp was looking to Cormann, regarded as pivotal to the second spill, if and when it came. The Jesuit-educated, Belgian-born West Australian was very close to Dutton. It was always assumed among those in the conservative bloc that Dutton would not put his hand up for the leadership if Cormann was not on board.
Cormann had voted for Turnbull in the first ballot out of duty and because of the serious responsibility he took in the position he held on the executive. As he said yesterday: “I did not know that there was going to be a motion from the Prime Minister to declare the leadership positions vacant on Tuesday. I, like others, was taken by surprise and I guess the reason we are here now is because that crystallised the views of the partyroom at that point.”
In Cormann’s view, if he were to line up against the sitting Prime Minister in a challenge, he would have to resign first. By Wednesday night, Cormann had made the hardest decision of his political life and chose to resign — but not until the following day.
He wanted to give Turnbull the time to consider his position and do the right thing and step down.
Dutton and Cormann decided that the decisive moment would have to wait. But backbenchers were in the dark and getting skittish. A petition for another partyroom meeting had been circulated for signatures but MPs moving to Dutton were demanding to know what Cormann was doing and if and when he was resigning.
“What the f..k is he doing? It’s time to piss or get off the pot,” one MP is reported to have said.
By 9pm Wednesday, two cabinet ministers, Michael Keenan and Steve Ciobo, had also offered their resignations, which Turnbull refused to accept.
By 10pm, not having received a petition, Turnbull took the quick drive down Adelaide Avenue back to the Lodge.
Dutton had spent most of Wednesday night in his office after a day of frenzied phone calls trying to shore up numbers and direct traffic.
Communications had become difficult. All departmental access to emails had been cut off following his resignation as home affairs minister.
Noticing that he hadn’t had a meal all day, a staff member came into his office and forced him to eat something.
The following morning Dutton arrived at his parliamentary office early. Conservative colleagues Michael Sukkar, a Victorian powerbroker, and influential ACT senator Zed Seselja were already in their offices.
At 7am, the tactical game plan was put into play. The two junior ministers walked down to Turnbull’s office and dropped off their letters of resignation. Former Turnbull numbers man James McGrath had resigned the previous night, delivering a scathing assessment of Turnbull’s leadership.
“The people who have for all their lives counted on us to look after them and their families are now questioning our commitment to them. Our people feel forgotten, ignored and spoken down to,” he said in a Facebook post.
“As a Liberal National Party Senator for Queensland, this is an intolerable situation.”
Just before 8am yesterday, Dutton called Turnbull, said he had the numbers and demanded a partyroom meeting. Turnbull said: “Show me the 43 signatures.”
It was then that Turnbull is believed to have warned Dutton that he had a legal cloud over his head and he should back off.
It was clear Turnbull wasn’t going anywhere. Several MPs have confirmed that Turnbull told them he had been in daily contact with Governor-General Peter Cosgrove, as if to hang a cloud over Dutton’s head.
Implicit in Turnbull’s warning was that Cosgrove would not endorse a Dutton-led government, as if to recreate the drama of the 1975 Constitutional crisis.
At 7.59 a media alert was called for the House of Representatives courtyard. Dutton publicly called for Turnbull to hold a partyroom meeting for the second spill.
“I will challenge for the leadership of the Liberal Party,” he said.
When asked whether he had the numbers, he quipped that he wouldn’t have called it if he didn’t.
Dutton then went to see the Leader of the House, Christopher Pyne, and demanded a new partyroom meeting be called before question time. Pyne, self-appointed leader of the “moderates”, went to see the Prime Minister and informed him of the request. Turnbull refused. He told Pyne to tell Dutton that he could cancel parliament for the rest of the week if he wanted.
Dutton agreed to the move but this was later presented by Turnbull as Dutton’s request.
What Dutton’s camp believed would be the fatal blow was delivered at 9.28am when Cormann, Michaelia Cash and Fifield entered the Senate courtyard to announce they had all resigned. Four more ministers — Angus Taylor, Alan Tudge, Keenan and Ciobo, the latter pair members of cabinet — were about to head to Turnbull’s office when a division was called in the House. Labor had put a motion to refer Dutton to the High Court over the alleged breach of section 44 of the Constitution.
At 10.59am, the four ministers went to see Turnbull and resign.
At midday, Pyne succeeded in adjourning parliament until its next scheduled return of September 10. He had saved Turnbull the humiliation of having to turn up to question time with his cabinet having effectively been cut in half.
The pantomime, however, was far from over. Turnbull called his own news conference at 1pm effectively to announce his resignation and back Scott Morrison to take over — but only on condition Dutton could show him 43 MPs’ signatures on paper. If so, he would call the party meeting, resign from parliament and effectively strip the government of its one-seat majority in the House, potentially forcing either Dutton or Morrison to call an immediate election.
