Business as usual? It’s not the business of good leadership

Malcolm Turnbull has declared the “business of government” goes on after the tumultuous dumping of Barnaby Joyce and the calling of a life-and-death by-election in New England, but it’s a far cry from what he said that “business” would be.

Unfortunately for the Prime Minister, losing a seat in the House of Representatives, shuffling ministers, overreaching with his public pronouncements, being vulnerable to a rebel Coalition MP destroying confidence in the government, facing superior Labor tactics, suffering from self-inflicted damage as well as projecting a sense of chaos has become the “business of government”.

This is everything Turnbull promised “business of government” wouldn’t be when he became Liberal leader more than two years ago. Turnbull promised to keep the Coalition in front in Newspoll and deliver stable cabinet processes. There would be no surprises and Liberal values would be “translated into good government, sound policies, economic confidence creating the jobs and the prosperity of the future”.

Instead, the Coalition is trailing badly in Newspoll with worse likely to come, and there has been a revolving door for ministerial swearing in installed at Government House.

The government is reduced to relying on the Speaker’s vote to survive in the House of Representatives and Turnbull is looking like the captain of the good ship chaos. As a result of incompetence the Nationals have lost two ministers — their leader and deputy leader — a ­costly, unwieldy and potentially fatal by-election in regional NSW has to be held and won by Joyce, and the government has to survive by the seat of its pants during the pre-Christmas sittings.

Turnbull has to suffer the ­humiliation of taunting Labor with his superior legal knowledge and calamitous declaration that Joyce would be safe and so the High Court “would find”. Joyce’s ­admission he knew in his gut he wouldn’t survive suggests his ­entrails’ legal judgment is superior to that of Turnbull’s and the Crown Solicitor’s. This an ongoing political problem for Turnbull, who refused to stand Joyce down from the ministry and argued he would survive.

The bright spot in the dual-­citizenship debacle is the survival of Matt Canavan and his restoration to the cabinet as Resources Minister. The rest is debilitating, damaging and dangerous, and all the worse for being avoidable.

Joyce is going into the December 2 by-election as favourite but a poor showing would reflect badly on him and the government; a loss, unthinkable as it may be, would finish Turnbull’s majority and put him into the minority government experience of Julia Gillard.

Of course, that’s the end game. In the meantime Turnbull has to manage a parliament where there can be no absentee Coalition MPs or threats to cross the floor. This comes as he will face a fractious debate on same-sex marriage and religious freedoms if the postal survey votes to change marriage.

Tactically superior Labor will push the Coalition to the edge on every vote, testing the defences and taking every opportunity to entrench the impression of chaos.