Coalition, wounded and down on its hands and knees, should go to the polls for good of the nation

PM Scott Morrison during Question Time yesterday. Picture: Kym Smith

The Coalition government, wounded and down on its hands and knees, will crawl to the end of the parliament year which concludes next week. Desperate in the hope that Christmas and the summer recess provides some respite.

It’s an incredibly unedifying spectacle, but what did the 35 geese who delivered the death knell to Malcolm Turnbull’s prime ministership think was going to happen? While the less than a dozen reactionaries within that cohort got what they wanted — the political death of Turnbull — what did the other 20-25 strategic geniuses think was going to happen?

What this lame excuse for a government should do for the good of the nation is go to the polls immediately, so the general public at least has some respite over the summer period — a break from the chaos and dysfunction this mob has inflicted on us.

Not that I’m convinced a Bill Shorten Labor government is going to deliver stellar outcomes.

An election before the new year won’t happen of course. It’s too late and it’s unpalatable to the Coalition anyway. Scott Morrison doesn’t want to be one of the shortest prime ministers in history. He doesn’t want the current polls to translate into electoral catastrophe. He will cling onto the hope that time heals at least some of the deep wounds, minimising the size of the defeat. Perhaps by enough that he can extend his political career as opposition leader after the short stint as PM.

That’s why the election won’t be until May.

But the summer months won’t help this mob turn things around. Enduring factional disagreements and personality clashes will persist. If anything the relative lack of other news will put some of the tensions even more up in lights. And as a result of there still being an election just around the corner the Liberals won’t start what they surely must: a period of introspection to work out what the modern party actually stands for.

Having watched how badly the federal impacted on the Victorian divisions chances recently, it’s hard not to feel sorry for state Liberals in NSW.

Like it or not there are so many questions the modern Liberal Party needs to ask itself before it and be taken seriously ideologically or as a political force.

How it can address its women problem? What are the issues it considers worth fighting for? Who needs to be cleaned out so a new generation can start fresh? Is organisational reform necessary? Why does Labor out campaign the Liberals so often?

While the above questions continue to be put in the too hard basket, the extent of the simmering divisions and the lost majority in the parliament means that policy making is now nigh impossible for Morrison and his team. So gridlock is the new black between now and the budget, which will be early and somewhat irrelevant because measures within it could be quickly overturned by a new government elected just a month later.

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