Turnbull’s fleeting moment in the sun

A bad year ends well for the PM, but he needs to brace for storms in 2018 — and they’ll be coming from his right

Malcolm Turnbull in Question Time. Picture Kym Smith

While 2017 has in many respects been a forgettable year for the government, and Malcolm Turnbull in particular, it is ending on a relatively positive note.

This week is likely to be the last sitting period for the parliamentary year, and will see same-sex marriage legalised in the wake of a postal plebiscite few thought would run so smoothly. Notwithstanding a backlash over religious protections, and resentment in the gay community over putting the issue to a popular vote, the Prime Minister can chalk it up as a win.

Energy policy, while not finalised, hasn’t torn the government apart, as some predicted, and the economy is showing green shoots that just might make for a smoother budget next May — the last one before an election late next year or in early 2019. Turnbull has already flagged the possibility of income tax cuts, and Treasurer Scott Morrison is looking more sure-footed than at any time this year.

The Leader of the House, Christopher Pyne, is upbeat about the government’s prospects, pointing out that critics haven’t thwarted the PM, despite their best efforts: “The people have deep wellsprings of goodwill towards Malcolm Turnbull,” Pyne claims.

“It seems the more he is maligned by certain commentators the more people ‘circle the wagons’ around him.”

While Turnbull’s personal ratings are a long way from the affection Pyne suggests, it is true that there is no obvious candidate to replace him, and Bill Shorten remains an unpopular alternative.

The Leader of the Opposition in the Senate, Penny Wong, says “this year has been marked by two things — the weakness and insincerity of Malcolm Turnbull; and the decency and generosity of the Australian people”. Certainly Turnbull has been pilloried on both his right and left flanks this year.

To be sure, Turnbull’s reactionary critics in the commentariat won’t let up their campaign to bring him undone in 2018.

But they are starting to be exposed as narrow and unrepresentative of the broader conservative movement. Leading parliamentary figures on the right, Mathias Cormann and Peter Dutton, continue to strongly support Turnbull’s leadership. Dutton does so despite being touted by some conservative commentators as a challenger to Turnbull, not something he is in fact contemplating.

Dutton and Cormann’s challenge will be to hold the conservative base together in 2018, ensuring Turnbull isn’t painted as out of touch with mainstream Liberal thinking. The PM and his inner circle have been careful to strictly follow cabinet decision-making processes, thus ensuring so-called “captain’s picks” don’t catch him out. A leaky cabinet which is included in decision- making is a lesser evil compared with the sidelining of cabinet, as occurred under Tony Abbott, or indeed Kevin Rudd during the previous Labor years.

Senator Cory Bernardi, leader of the Australian Conservatives, isn’t convinced Turnbull’s improved polling is anything more than a dead-cat bounce. He ­believes there is something fundamentally broken within Australia’s political system: “It has been said that politics is show business for ugly people,” Bernardi argues. “Unfortunately this real-life version of a political soap opera has exposed all the character weaknesses of the main players and the only ones to suffer are the Australian people.”

The government’s dilemma is losing votes to right-wing or populist parties such as Bernardi’s or Pauline Hanson’s One Nation. How does Turnbull combat this phenomenon without losing centrist voters? We saw the devastating impact One Nation can have on the LNP vote in the Queensland election. While One Nation only picked up one seat, a primary vote of nearly 14 per cent in the Sunshine State would see preferences leak Labor’s way, costing the conservatives seats.

For all the government’s problems, Labor is ending the year with problems of its own. The citizenship saga is now engulfing Labor, and the return of Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce with a thumping win in New England was just the boost Turnbull needed. As the PM has enjoyed pointing out, Labor’s vote was barely more than the informal votes registered. For the Coalition to survive, much less thrive, Turnbull needs Joyce to rein in mavericks in Nationals ranks. Governing with a slender majority is hard enough without overt internal criticisms.

The strong New England result may turn out to be a false dawn if the Bennelong by-election sees John Alexander defeated by former NSW premier Kristina Keneally on December 16. However, such a result will come too late to bring the PM down this year. It would snuff out the signs of recovery evident this week, lending weight to detractors who claim Turnbull’s leadership is on life support. While critics of the PM have been unable to help themselves, predicting and wishing for his imminent demise, Turnbull was always going to survive into 2018. The question mark has been whether he limps or leaps his way there, meaning that he will either start 2018 damaged or with the ­potential to embark on some sort of political recovery.

Pyne sees a recovery in the offing: “Despite the naysayers, in 2017 the government has passed its legislative agenda, delivered a sound budget, started to see the polls turn around and had the best by-election result for a government since 1911.”

Not everyone has been so glowing, however. On August 2, Tony Abbott’s former chief of staff, Peta Credlin, predicted: “I don’t think that Malcolm Turnbull will be here at the end of the year.” At the time senior observers, such as this paper’s editor-at-large Paul Kelly, were quick to disagree.

This week’s Newspoll brought an increase in the Coalition’s primary and two-party votes as well as in Turnbull’s net satisfaction rating, and the PM improved his lead over Shorten in the better PM stakes. Granted, the Coalition still trails Labor on the two-party vote, for the 24th consecutive time. Behind 47-53 per cent, the government would be resoundingly defeated were an election held now. But the expectation was that things could have been much worse, given all the internal instability. Turnbull will enjoy whatever respite he can get.

Attorney-General George Brandis, the government leader in the Senate, believes the government is heading into the summer recess “with a spring in its step”.

“The Prime Minister has found successful ways through two ­issues which have in the past been toxic: energy policy and same-sex marriage. In doing so he has reasserted his command of the government and authority over the party room,” Brandis says.

However, the bloody-mindedness of many of Turnbull’s critics, especially in the commentariat, means there will be little let-up in the new year when the national glare again turns to Canberra. This will be the bane of Turnbull’s 2018. That magic number of 30 consecutive Newspoll fails will happen before the May budget, unless a tangible turnaround changes the political dynamic. For all the talk of budget-induced comebacks, the evidence suggests even well-resourced budgets rarely deliver a boost to a government.

Even though a Fairfax poll this week highlighted that seven out of 10 voters don’t want another change of PM before the next election, you can bet Turnbull’s critics will call for exactly that, ignoring the transaction costs they spruiked before Turnbull challenged Abbott.

Perhaps most importantly, the internal destabilising that has been going on for months has been exposed, with George Christensen outed as the source who told ­Andrew Bolt and others that he would quit the government if Turnbull wasn’t removed as leader. The threat turned out to be a hollow one, and the much talked-up internal criticism of Turnbull’s viability as a leader has seemingly been exposed as far more limited than first thought.

Christensen claimed that Turnbull’s backflip on a banking royal commission mitigated the need for him to follow through on his threat to move to the crossbench. It remains to be seen how narrowing such differences with Labor will affect the government. It’s reminiscent of John Howard’s approach before the 2001 budget.

Greens leader Richard Di Natale says the jury is still out on the merits of the bank backflip: “The PM has finally bent to the will of the parliament. But the terms of reference need to be fair dinkum, not just a sop the big banks.”

Labor continues to out­manoeuvre the government in parliament, again ensuring that the Coalition lost votes in the House of Representatives this week — including in respect to the government’s refusal to accept New Zealand’s offer to settle refugees currently housed in offshore processing. Labor’s manager of opposition business, Tony Burke, scoffs at the notion that expected successes on the floor of parliament for the Coalition this week — such as over marriage equality — are to be applauded: “You have to wonder what the place has come to when a vote that was flagged a week ago is viewed as a surprise tactic,” Burke tells The Australian. “It’s not that Labor is adopting ingenious tactics. We turn up and they don’t.”

While Shorten’s opposition remains in the box seat at year’s end, he has faced problems of his own. The controversy surrounding senator Sam Dastyari’s dealings with a Chinese donor has tainted an otherwise good political year for the Opposition Leader. It exposed his light touch when dealing with Dastyari in the first place, likely a symptom of Shorten’s strong desire to maintain internal unity while keeping his foot on Turnbull’s throat.

The NSW Labor right is ­notorious for its political brutality. After what might be called a successful defeat at the 2016 election, it was a breakaway grouping in the NSW right that told David Speers on Sky News that Shorten’s leadership would be challenged. That story went as quickly as it came when senior NSW figures were mugged by the reality that Shorten outperformed expectations. But it was a sure sign that Labor’s internal stability is entirely driven by maintaining a polling advantage.

We are still waiting to find out if there will be a reshuffle of Turnbull’s frontbench, speculated about for months. Equally, the midyear economic and fiscal outlook later this month will give us a better indication of what next year’s budget will look like. Certainly the government’s hope will be that it can focus on the economy rather than sometimes divisive social ­issues. Despite the ever-ballooning debt, polls consistently tell us that the Coalition leads Labor as the preferred economic manager.

For his part, Shorten will look to ensure that government problems continue to overshadow achievements, feeding the narrative of chaos and divisions — just the tonic for voters to change government come election time.

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