Credible course is key for aspirants

TONY Abbott’s declaration that it is the people who hire and fire prime ministers is an effort to ­recruit legitimacy to his cause and comes a day after ALP leader Bill Shorten said there should be an election if the Liberal Party endorsed a new prime minister.

While there are both similarities and differences with the Rudd-Gillard leadership crisis of 2010, the reality is that Julia Gillard felt obliged to call an early election after she was elected prime minister by the ALP caucus.

Indeed, Gillard declined to move into The Lodge until she won legitimacy at a general election. While Abbott is personally unpopular, it would be folly to think this absolves the Liberal Party of any legitimacy factor in a partyroom political assassination of a Prime Minister and Treasurer.

The mistake made by the ALP caucus in 2010 was its belief that it “owned” the prime ministership because the incumbent was voted by its partyroom. It assumed, disastrously, that the people had no valid role in the party’s self-­interested manipulations of the ­office of prime minister.

One of the first questions asked at the first press conference of any new Liberal PM would be when he or she planned to seek a ­public mandate of the partyroom decision.

If Gillard’s 2010 behaviour did not guarantee this, then Abbott’s declaration yesterday makes it unavoidable. Malcolm Turnbull and Julie Bishop need to have workshopped this answer since, despite Abbott’s speech, the thirst for a leadership change within the ­Liberal Party remains strong and unquenched.

Whether Labor would really want an election this year under a new PM defies prediction, but in the current climate where the new golden rule is deference to public sensitivity and eliminating any signs of leadership arrogance, the issue of the people’s mandate cannot be ducked.

The heart of Abbott’s leadership defence yesterday was that the Liberals must not repeat the governing chaos of the former Labor government. Put another way, he was saying if you become prime minister the wrong way, you don’t recover. It is a strong argument but an argument of last resort. Abbott’s mantra is that the Liberals will import Labor’s disease if they solve a popularity problem by shooting the leader.

As Labor discovered, embracing such a code has many unplanned and nasty consequences down the track.

Pivotal to any successful transition is that Turnbull and Bishop will need a far superior argument to that offered by Gillard to explain the reason for a change of prime minister.

The public will know it is about self-interest and survival.

How is this to be presented without becoming a classic in public relations spin inviting ridicule?

Gillard’s justification was that “a good government was losing its way”. She admitted later it didn’t work. The public’s initial response was to welcome the transition to Gillard.

On reflection, it was far more sceptical.

The task for Turnbull and Bishop, if they prevail, is to devise a credible explanation for the public and a credible pathway to seek the public’s mandate.

As Abbott has warned, it won’t be easy.