Plain sailing for the Coalition’s vital partnership

The global outbreak of touchy-feely politics has been slightly disturbing and difficult to ignore.

The hand-holding between powerful hetero males Emmanuel Macron and Donald Trump threatened to descend into unseemliness until Trump gauchely tried to groom the spunky French President in public. It was quickly followed by the jolly Kim Jong-un and Moon Jae-in holding hands and border hopping.

The more restrained exchanges between Macron and Malcolm Turnbull hint at the makings of a beautiful friendship, although Macron’s public calls for both Trump and Turnbull to step up show there is nothing of the wilting fleur-de-lis about him.

Watching it all, the superficial as well as the substantial, and with the budget next week, it seemed timely to look at the state of the most important relationship in Australian politics.

It has been decades since we have seen a bromance between a prime minister and his treasurer. Maybe as long ago as the very early days of Bob Hawke and Paul Keating. Before Keating started calling Hawke “jellyback”. Certainly before Hawke, who had luxuriated in the father-son quality of their relationship, realised patricide was afoot.

Peter Costello regarded John Howard as a friend and mentor until he hit his straps as treasurer, only to see the prime minister go out of his way to build up Peter Reith as a rival, lauding Reith’s achievements while downplaying Costello’s. Or that’s the way it looked to many people, particularly Costello, provoking his wry private observation that one bald guy with glasses gets to be prime minister then suddenly all bald bespectacled guys think they can do it too.

The relationship between Kevin Rudd and Wayne Swan was toxic before, during and after. Enough said.

With their third budget together approaching, Scott Morrison and Turnbull at least appear to have removed the obvious friction from their early days.

Of course it can always be blown away by a few careless words, but Turnbull and Morrison are bosom buddies compared with their predecessors. Anyway, they don’t have to be in love or best mates to work well together and recent history also shows no matter how they begin they usually end disastrously.

Turnbull and Morrison first met in 2000. Former federal Liberal president Shane Stone rang Morrison, who was then NSW director, telling him to hotfoot it to Turnbull’s Sydney office. Turnbull wanted to renew his Liberal Party membership, which had lapsed in the tumult of the republic referendum. They hit it off. After Turnbull signed the form, they spent an hour talking policy.

They have had plenty of ups and downs since then, particularly when they first began as Prime Minister and Treasurer. Morrison seemed to be getting out too far ahead of Turnbull or Turnbull always seemed to be dropping something on Morrison with no warning, or tugging the rug out from under him. The friction was obvious, not helped by awkwardly staged photos showing them walking together, hands firmly gripping briefcases, to try to prove they got along.

Morrison takes time, particularly at big moments, to be with those whose company or advice he values.

For instance on the night Turnbull challenged Tony Abbott, after he had refused to join Abbott in throwing Joe Hockey under the bus, Morrison spent most of the night watching it unfold on television in his office eating leftover curry, which he had made, with one of his best mates, David Gazard.

Last year, the night before the budget, Morrison had dinner with another mate, Tony Smith. They spent a few minutes discussing procedures in the house, then they chowed down on takeaway dim sims, spring rolls and crispy skin chicken, talking cars, talking footy, talking history. Anything but the budget.

This doesn’t mean he took it lightly. If he could, Costello would sneak off to see his beloved Bombers play on the weekend before the budget. The volume of work involved in preparing, then selling, a budget is phenomenal. To avoid the volcano exploding, the bloke doing most of the work, whose task is to get the Goldilocks seal of approval, praying all the while ­neither he nor any of his colleagues blow up months of work, has to have a few hours to clear his head.

Three weeks ago Turnbull and Morrison were at the footy together watching Turnbull’s Roost­ers thrash Morrison’s Sharks 28-10. There were lots of genuinely happy snaps that night at Shark Park — together in the stand, with other spectators and with players in the dressing-room.

Then last weekend they announced together a $50 million memorial to Captain James Cook and indigenous peoples at Botany Bay in Morrison’s electorate. Costello would rather be caught in a speak-easy than appear in a picture opportunity anywhere with Howard days before the budget.

That same day, it was reported Turnbull had dudded Morrison big time. According to a report in Fairfax, Turnbull was so panicked by some bad decisions, so wanting to change the story, he dropped the plan for personal income tax cuts in the budget in a speech to the Business Council of Australia without Morrison knowing anything about it. It was cast as a captain’s call.

Turnbull and Morrison deny it emphatically. Others close to the action describe it variously as untrue and BS. Apart from anything else it was in November last year when Turnbull announced it and if by then he had not canvassed the framework of the next budget with his most senior economic ministers, it would have indeed signalled a deep schism in the government.

It was a “leak” designed to cause internal angst. Like the one the next day in News Corp Australia tabloids clearly designed to clip Peter Dutton’s wings, canvassing new powers for the Australian Signals Directorate. But I digress.

There has to be creative tension between the prime minister and treasurer; however, the testiness that characterised the early days of the Turnbull-Morrison partnership has evaporated, for two reasons: process and politics.

Members of the expenditure review committee who have observed them working on this budget describe the relationship as sound, with both men smart enough to know that whenever they are at cross purposes on policy, differences are best resolved privately. Turnbull also knows Morrison poses no threat to his leadership. Not now, certainly not for a few years if he wins the next election.

Sure, Turnbull is close to Finance Minister Mathias Cormann, for factional, personal and policy reasons. Morrison is likewise close to Cormann, who has the highest profile and biggest influence on government of any finance minister since Peter Walsh.

However the relationship between the prime minister and treasurer is the one that ultim­ately determines the success or otherwise of the government. If that goes down the toilet, so does the government.