Turnbull's number is up

TWO pyrrhic victories in two days have ensured he will lose the war over his leadership, eventually.

POLITICS is about numbers, counting votes, in the partyroom or the electorate. A political leader must be able to gauge the mood of his backbench as well as the issues that shift votes in marginal seats.

Winning the argument in politics isn't always enough, as it can be in a court of law. Driving an agenda forcefully, even if subordinates don't agree with you, doesn't work in politics as it can in business. It certainly doesn't work for a first-term Opposition Leader with record low approval ratings.

Malcolm Turnbull has had successful careers in the boardroom and the courtroom. He is a self-made millionaire, having invested in a start-up dotcom operation, Ozemail, that became a multimillion-dollar business. As a lawyer Turnbull took on the British government in the Spycatcher case and won, gaining him international fame.

But the talents that make for a good businessman or a good barrister aren't necessarily those required to be a good politician.

A political leader needs to take his parliamentary team with him, especially in opposition. You can't run a party like a chief executive runs a business, employing the "my way or the highway" approach. You can't conduct a partyroom the way a barrister looks to dominate a courtroom, with wit and intellectual precision.

"Politics is the art of the possible, and a first-term opposition leader is in a very restricted space. Whether he likes it or not, if he wants to keep his job, he needs to keep his colleagues happy. If he doesn't they will go searching for someone who does," Wayne Errington, lecturer in politics from the Australian National University, says.

That, in a nutshell, is what Turnbull failed to do this week as he attempted to win partyroom support for his deal with the government on the emissions trading scheme. He didn't read the mood of the backbench and he and his lieutenants didn't count the numbers before the meeting to know what they were up against.

No political leader should find himself walking into a partyroom meeting that had been telegraphed for months to find out that he may not have majority support for his publicly stated position on a policy.

During the past six months Turnbull has treated his frontbench like a boardroom, his backbench like employees, subordinates in a command and control relationship rather than colleagues whose votes he needs to stay leader.

That is why you get two very different responses from Liberals about Turnbull's leadership style. Frontbenchers (with some notable exceptions) overwhelmingly find him easy to work with, while backbenchers find him authoritarian and out of touch.

Turnbull used a press conference on Tuesday evening to tell the assembled journalists he didn't particularly care what maverick backbencher Wilson Tuckey had to say. He might think that, but he shouldn't say it: other backbenchers are left to wonder whether he is going to say the same thing about them at some point in the future.

Liberal MPs were in a state of shock at the way Turnbull managed Tuesday's partyroom meetings. As the temperature rose with dissenting speaker after dissenting speaker Turnbull became increasingly short with his opponents and increasingly desperate to flesh out the positioning of his supporters. One senior Liberal told me: "Malcolm manipulated the speaking list, changing the order and deliberately leaving people off. The room was in uproar when it broke for question time."

At the second 8pm partyroom meeting on Tuesday evening former president of the Senate Alan Ferguson asked to have the floor. According to a number of MPs present Turnbull told him to "get stuffed" before walking out of the meeting. That may be acceptable in the cut and thrust of business (though even then I wonder). But telling a respected 20-year veteran of the parliament to "get stuffed" is no way for a leader to conduct himself.

The issue for the next few months as Turnbull limps into the summer break will be: has he learned from his mistakes this week? On the positive side of the ledger, by all reports he was humbled and contrite after winning a leadership spill against an unlikely challenger (Kevin Andrews) by just seven votes yesterday afternoon before question time. On the negative side, however, Turnbull and his lieutenants then went about spinning that the leadership spill numbers reflected the disputed results from the day before on the ETS vote.

One Liberal dissenter commented: "Turnbull was apologetic and humble during the party room but he and his supporters clearly haven't learned anything. They are now trying to assert that the numbers today (for the leadership spill) are a reflection of numbers yesterday (for the ETS vote). That's just not true."

Comments such as this are a sure sign Turnbull is in for a tough summer, and that's before he even tries to muscle up to the government on policy issues.

Turnbull had enough warnings that the backbench was in revolt and needed to feel listened to. The Australian surveyed the entire backbench, finding that two-thirds opposed negotiating on the ETS ahead of the Copenhagen climate change talks.

Instead of using that information to engage with his backbench in a bid to win them over, Turnbull put his leadership on the line, declaring that he was not prepared to lead a party not as committed to climate change as he is.

It was a dictum. It elevated the ETS negotiations to being a test of his leadership when it didn't have to be. It was a test he almost lost.

John Howard didn't always let his backbench direct his leadership. That would be to let the tail wag the dog. But he did always

listen to their concerns, making the team feel included in his decision making. If Howard chose to take the backbench on, he would never fashion it that way. He'd politely ask for a consensus leap of faith. But it usually wouldn't come to that. He would be across the numbers before any partyroom meeting, having consulted with colleagues earlier. Plus he had the authority of being prime minister.

By the end of the Tuesday meeting, Turnbull admitted to his partyroom that there was not consensus on the ETS, but announced that as leader he would move forward with his plan to pass the ETS anyway. He declared his intentions in this regard while the senators were out of the room at a vote in the chamber.

Given that most senators were opposed to striking a deal with the government on the ETS this might have appeared like a good tactic to a lawyer looking for a technical advantage. But it simply inflamed an already difficult situation.

Howard learned the hard way in opposition that when you shut yourself off from the backbench your leadership becomes insecure. When Howard was rolled by Andrew Peacock in 1989 he didn't see it coming. This week Turnbull was blindsided both by the ferocity of much of the backbench to passing the government's ETS and the decision by Andrew Robb to come out in the partyroom against it.

The latter point is the slow burn out of this week's events. On Monday former Howard chief of staff Graham Morris predicted that someone in the partyroom would make a name for themselves. That was Robb, who may look to use the summer months to tell the story of how he has overcome the depression that forced him to take a leave of absence from the frontbench. After that he may look at mounting a challenge to Turnbull's leadership. That will mark a new phase in leadership tensions, likely to be the end point of Turnbull's reign.

Tony Abbott is the conservative candidate of choice if he decides to contest the leadership. Joe Hockey would win moderate support. Robb combines elements of each, making him a possible compromise candidate in the new year. All three would only need to find seven votes to go with the 35 Andrews uncovered in the spill, something any one of them now knows they are capable of.

Greek historian Dionysius wrote: "If we are victorious in one more battle with the Romans, we shall be utterly ruined." He was talking about the victories of king Pyrrhus of Epirus. While the Romans lost more troops in each of the battles Pyrrhus fought, they had superior numbers and were working their way towards winning the war. It is the origins of the phrase pyrrhic victory.

This week Turnbull had two pyrrhic victories on consecutive days: the first over the ETS, the second over his leadership. But the culmination of the two, and what it took to win them, have damaged him beyond repair and opened up for all to see (colleagues, the government and the public) the weakness of his hold on the leadership. That will see his authority slump even further.

A senior shadow minister tells The Australian: "If a ship's captain can't stop a mutiny he isn't much of a captain. If the mutiny happens he should never be given a command again." Turnbull retains his command, but judging by this week's performance he won't hold on to it for much longer.