Possum has done an admirable job of spelling out the political implications of the stalling of the stimulus package in the Senate [see also Rob's earlier posts]:
The real irony here is it’s the bloke in the middle [Malcolm Turnbull] that’s probably the one completely sh*tting himself, because if this package fails to get through the Senate, the fallout against Turnbull by the public will be enormous. Every piece of bad news will become his fault in the mind of a huge chunk of the public – Labor will make sure of it. That better economic manager series we looked at earlier might become a nostalgic golden age for the Coalition.
It now appears that the legislation will be passed again by the House of Representatives – where no doubt all guns will be trained on the Opposition – and be returned to the Senate tomorrow while negotiations continue. It will probably pass after some more horsetrading, though that’s not certain. Labor will be dramatising the near miss, and putting all the blame on Turnbull rather than Xenophon and Fielding.
This is hardly a fabulous situation for the country, but the politics could hardly get any better for the government. A few points to make:
(1) There are currently no bills which have been rejected twice by the Senate with a three month interval so there is no available trigger for a double dissolution.
(2) In theory, Kevin Rudd could ask the Governor-General for a dissolution of the House of Representatives if the Senate rejects the legislation tomorrow, on the grounds that the situation is urgent and the government wants to seek the endorsement of the people for these measures. The composition of the Senate wouldn’t be changed, obviously, because you can’t hold a half Senate election at will, if my recollection of the constitutional provisions is accurate.
Possum’s measure of the trend of all the polls currently has Labor on 59% 2PP. Let’s go back to the bottom of the range for an assumed election result – 56%. The Liberal seats would still be falling like dominoes.
An election in the very near future isn’t a likely scenario, but contemplation of the likely outcome should be very frightening indeed for the Coalition.
(3) There are some indications, however, that the government is contemplating an election – whether double dissolution or not – later this year.
(4) It’s not necessarily PR that magnifies the influence of Nick Xenophon and Steve Fielding – but rather the election of Senators by state combined with PR.
(5) The Greens have come out of this episode looking good – as a responsible party prepared to allow the government to achieve its objectives with some tweaking. As opposed to Fielding and Xenophon whose calculation of their electoral chances seems to incline them to make as much noise and cause as much drama as possible. I’m inclined to agree that contra-deals and unrelated demands are undesirable – as Joshua Gans says, whatever the merits of Xenophon’s proposals, they really have nothing to do with the objectives of the legislation. I think the government consistently tries to resist this sort of thing, and I think they’re right to do so. No doubt a Senate with the balance of power held by The Greens would actually be both more favourable for Labor and for good governance as well.
(6) In the unlikely event that no stimulus package is passed, I suppose the neo-liberal anti-Keynesian mob would get an answer to the question of whether their default position of the government doing basically nothing is the road to recovery. It’s a little more complex than that, but as has been noted here, that’s the corner Malcolm Turnbull has allowed himself to be painted into, and all the noise from the free market mob is going to be poison for the Coalition.
(7) Malcolm had better hope that there’s no recession, because he’s pretty close to owning it if there is. I’m not the only one to make the point again and again that using Senate numbers to in effect take responsibility for legislation was a disastrous strategy for the Labor opposition, and it is one for the Coalition as well – as indeed some Coalition MPs from both ends of the ideological fence – ie Christopher Pyne and Nick Minchin – argued in their partyroom.
(8) If there’s any future for the Liberal party in the medium term, they need to be ground into the dust electorally first – it seems like there’s nothing else that will actually teach them the lessons of why they lost office. And we’re entering a period where their default message will have less and less resonance – possibly for a very long time.
Update: Courtesy of danny in comments, our attention has been drawn to a comprehensive post by Antony Green on the options for an election. Looks like I was right in thinking at point (2) that an election called now would have to be for the House of Representatives only. As Green notes, there are precedents, though such a call would be the first time an election was used to teach the Senate a lesson.
Update: Possum on why Turnbull was praying that Xenophon would vote for the package today, Sam Clifford assessing the role of the minors in Senate negotiations, and Bernard Keane on Xenophon.
stimulus not passed = end of Malcolm Turnbull. Bring back emo.
If the stimulus isn’t passed and Rudd seeks a fresh mandate, the Libs will lose a swag of seats because Turnbull has nowhere near the support that Howard had. Australia has changed since 2007 and Turnbull will lead the coalition to an absolute rout. Perhaps then the Libs will get the idea that they need to get rid of Howard’s dead wood, re-establish a coherent philosophy and show that they’re better placed to care for Australian interests than the ALP.
Hockey should’ve been given the leadership post-Howard (hell, even post-Nelson). Hockey is the man for the job because he’s not seen as an ambitious, political opportunist who wants to score cheap points or believes that their rise to the top is inevitable. He’ll never challenge, he’ll never accept a nomination and he’ll never have the numbers because the Libs are in factional warfare mode.
Also, the Nats need to start acting more independently and pushing for concessions. Turnbull’s not their leader.
Don’t know is Hockey is the answer, personable, but pretty soft on details.
Also, since he has been in opposition as a friend noted he’s become a bit of an “angry ant,” contradicting his more affable Sunrise persona.
For typically belts and braces pleased-to-explain re: election timing options in face of DD speculations, see Antony Green’s Blog of today.
Many thanks, danny. I’ll add a link to the post. Looks like I was right in remembering the provisions which mean that an early election at this stage would have to be for the House of Reps only.
Why so confident that all the opprobrium would be dumped on X and the Libs? Lets say that X is prepared to make a deal – say half the bring-forward he originally asked for. And R says no. Couldn’t questions also be asked of R as to why he is prepared to sacrifice the entire package and the jobs that come with it for $2.5b? X wanted to show R that they had to take him seriously. He has done that and will now be prepared to negotiate. An election is not going to occur until the end of this year at the earliest. Could you imagine the instability it would generate? And what is R going to say? We thought an election was necessary because we wouldn’t bring forward money we had already allocated? I completely agree that M doesn’t come out of this well. But under some of the scenarios being discussed, it isn’t clear that R does either. It could easily be plague on both your houses. R and X will do a deal – guaranteed. M and the Ls have major structural problems going forward, don’t get me wrong. But passing this legislation is important enough to R that he will do a deal.
LO in his point 6 Mark said:
So I think we are in furious agreement that a deal will be done.
I think though that Rudd is quite happy to stress the point the the Coalition voted it down, also that contra deals are undesirable (they take us back to the Harradine days).
Turnbull was denying reality tonight by suggesting that the present situation was entirely of Rudd’s making and left his economic strategy in tatters. And Turnbull is supposed to be the most intelligent person in the parliament!
Antony’s post is thorough and lucid as usual, but he ignores one possibility. Since, as he notes, the territory senators have their term tied to the House Labor could go for a house election. If they win in a landslide they not only send a message to the Senate, but they stand a good chance of knocking off the Liberal senator in the ACT, either by electing two Labor or, more likely, a Labor and a Green.
This would mean that the ALP would need the Greens and only one of Fielding and Xenaphon, rather than both, to get things through. A much stronger position since they could play each off against the other.
No I don’t think it is likely – the unpopularity of early elections is substantial. One that would require the next term to be short as well, to bring the House and Senate back into line, would have even more potential hostility. But if the polling shows the Libs are really on the nose over the issue it is an option for Labor. It’d be fascinating – the national outcome would presumably be a foregone conclusion, or Labor wouldn’t go for it, so all eyes would be on the ACT Senate, very much the biggest game in town.
It is about people’s perceptions. Turnbull and the LNP have been blockers from start to end, no secret. The latest Newspoll told us something about what people thought of that and another poll showed 83% worried about the economy/jobs. Not to mention putting Labor equal with the LNP as economic managers.
People saw and were fairly happy with the first effort and appreciate that Australia has so far stayed out of the nasty recession and would like to keep their life as it is. They want their package and of course the hand outs too.
People won’t be putting any blame on Rudd regarding the Stimulus Package failing because some rogue Senator wanted billions of something for the Murray Darling something that was law anyway, thus ruining it for everyone for no good reason.
The rhetoric and message is just to easy for Rudd. Turnbull has given him so much to work on. And who is going to be shadow Treasurer during a campaign? Julie Bishop?
The LNP team is fairly weak, very little depth and they will also be praying that Costello doesn’t decide to retire.
At the moment the LNP are totally unbalanced and seem to be really struggling. Rudd will never get them in a weaker position. Now if there is the possibility of picking up a Labor/Green ACT Senate seat then it all become worth it.
Depending on its internal polling if it has enough and its confidence the Rudd Govt has no real reason to soften their position that much with Xenophon. His bargaining position might not be as strong as he thinks and he might become just the welcome cause Rudd will be happy to accept. Maybe.
No, there could be a double dissolution this year in theory, and it could take place before the earliest allowable date for a half-senate election; all it needs is for the stimulus bill to be rejected again in the next three months, and voila.
Of course that’s not going to happen. Rudd will buy up the entire Murray Darling basin and gift it to SA before Xenophon rejects the next stimulus bill.
I do think it’s intolerable that the Coalition has 37 out of the 76 senators, but in the normal way of things that will drop a couple at the next one or two elections–no need to get our knickers in a knot and call for unicameralism yet.
Also, I think people slamming Xenophon and ex-senator Harradine should keep in mind that (a.) Harradine desperately wanted to avoid a DD over native title, because he didn’t want One Nation winning any of those 6% senate quotas on the policy coattails of Howard, and (b.) the canny X-man is just playing PR kabuki theatre games, that’s all he’s doing. He doesn’t want any type of early election.
Sam , “angry ant”, was chief cheerleader of the gloating opposition when the stimulus package went down, from what I saw on tele last night. It was a very ugly look when the economy, peoples jobs and welfare, are supposed to be at stake.
Joe Hockey does ‘nah-nah’ like a petulent kid and if he is in any way the great white hope the Libs really are stuffed.
Mark, just on the measures of the poll trends – this page is probably a better one to use:
http://blogs.crikey.com.au/pollytics/polls/
It has multiple aggregates of the polling done in real time – a choose your poison affair.
If I were Rudd and co I would be ignoring the Libs and the independents and just concentrate my efforts on those wobbly National Party members. I’m sure the package can be marginally tweaked to give a bit more to the rural and regional areas amd if it is sweet enough, I would think it would be very tempting for someone like Barnaby Joyce to jump ship – aftera all, one vote is all they will need to get it passed.
That way the package goes ahead, financially and politically very little is lost and a hell of a lot is gained, given that it firmly puts Mr X in his place.
Last night on Lateline Julia Gilliard said “you either care about fixing the economy or you don’t”. Sounds a lot like “you are either with the terrorists or against them”.
The point I’m making is I think this blog’s core constituency would hope that our political leaders see things in more shades of grey than our Deputy PM indicated last night. Me too. I probably think she was embellishing her real thoughts for the cameras.
Sam, I realise you’re not a Lib but you’ve made a diagnosis for their future which contradicts itself, even though you’re right about the short-term.
Mark’s point (8) is spot on. The way you do that is not by having a leader who had little if anything to do with Howard, but instead a leader who was totally, inseparably part of the Howard government – e.g. Costello, Abbott – people who not only drank the Kool-Aid but played a major role in preparing it.
‘Conservative’ policies are cooked up by the Abbotts, Minchins and Abetzes of this world. Those people fear having their real motives examined – the whole history of the Howard government showed that these guys were expert in taking a piece of shit, putting icing on it in the backrooms somewhere and then coming out and selling it as chocolate cake. They got away with this for 11 years, hogging credit for success and blaming “lefties” (real and imagined, inside the party and out) for any failures.
The answer is not to put people like Turnbull and Hockey in at this stage. Turnbull was an unstoppable force, the man who could not wait. The Liberals were not and are not convinced that Howardism had exhausted itself – by contrast, when Fraser was defeated everybody was distancing themselves from his legacy. Howardism has to be shown to be a dead letter, over time and by repeated losses. Those who are now titans must be shown to be turkeys, and only then can the Liberal Party rebuild.
There is no reason for Hockey to jump in now. Hockey can afford to wait until the intellectual exhaustion of neo-conservatism flows through and wipes out the Howard-era leftovers.
As for the idea that there might be some blowback on Rudd – only from Canberra commentators. At this point in the electoral cycle, Rudd will claim that he needs a mandate to get things done, and he’ll get it. In a DD it shouldn’t be hard for Labor to get 7/12 Senators in at least one state. They certainly won’t get less than 5.
Lynda’s right, Labor loses nothing by letting Mr X have a few crumbs off the table. The alternative to him is another SDA jobsworth or a Liberal, and the point is not to put him in a balance-of-power situation. I think Xenophon would get sick of an environment where he wasn’t in a pivotal position.
14 Exactly Lynda. I was wondering myself whether Barnaby might be a target either openly or in stealth. He is National for a start and not too keen on toeing the Liberals line on everything.
And he earlier established a reputation of being ‘independent’ of the official party line. Eventually, of course, that amounted to zilch when the crunch came … but it lingers.
If he did vote for it or abstain, he would have a ready rationalisation that it was ‘for the good of his state’ and he ‘has to think of immediate action for the flood victims in the north’.
I think possibility (2) is highly unlikely, moreover there’s a (Vice-regal) precedent. If the measure passes the Reps twice, and is blocked in the Senate twice, there is no case to put to the GG for a Reps election, because the site of the obstruction is in the Senate, not the Reps.
GG Kerr was asked by the PM on 11 Nov 1975 for a half-Senate election. The GG believed that holding such an election was highly unlikely to
i) break the political impasse
ii) in time
to avert financial chaos across the nation.
GG Kerr refused to accede to the PM’s wishes, in a spectacular fashion. I think his logic would apply to suggestion (2), regardless of what we may think of GG Kerr’s sequence of decisions that day.
I’m only sorry the people of Queensland failed to elect Pauline to the Senate. If we must endure independents letting their half-witted egos and personal interests derail sensible governance, we might at least get some entertainment from the exercise. Fielding tries, but he’s not in the same league as Pauline, and X is just a self-important prat.
I’m sorry and angry that the people of South Australia elected Xenephon to the Senate. After all, they knew what he was like. Why on earth did they have to inflict him on the rest of Australia.
South Australians must have been sick of him – they couldn’t shoot Xenophon so they decided on the next best course of action: send him to Canberra.
I vote we kick them out of the federation.
I am inclined to believe Barnaby is ‘all maverick.. no horse and no hat’.
Not worth wasting the time, in short.
Sky reports a deal has finally been done with X.
Thank god for that I have already spent the money, mentally anyway.
I’m from Melbourne, but I play footy with a bloke from Adelaide, and they love him. “Send Nick to Canberra, to give ‘em hell” was pretty much the quote I got from him. A little reminiscent of Joh for PM.
‘Sky reports a deal has finally been done with X.’
Gosh, now there’s a surprise. Is a home state ticker-tape parade for X part of the deal?
I’m with you Joe2. Barnaby is a boob but not only brainless, gutless too
Islander, if Barnaby is a boob, they haven’t made a bra big enough to contain and support him
Does X get to refloat Popeye?
This is the deal:
$900 million MDB spending, additional $500 million bringing more money forward, $200 million in grants, $200 million for storm water harvesting.
I wonder if Hockey managed to duck in time to avoid the ‘egg on face’ boomerang he let loose in parliament yesterday.
‘Oh, what an embarrassing day for the Opposition!’
Package just passed the Senate with no amendments!
Terrific!
Post 19 doesn’t make sense, Ken. Hanson was not entertaining, and Xenophon has done us all a favour.
I’m from SA and for years Nick X was pushed by the “Advertiser’ as the best thing since sliced bread. No stunt too trivial to publicise.
A nasty rumour put it down to Rupert wanting Nick to be the attack dog against pokies which were eating into Rupert’s profits from one of the lottery things he owned.
I don’t know exactly how valid that is.
That’s why he is or was popular.
The ‘Advertiser’ seemed to change its mind when Nick X went for the Senate so I think you will find his popularity will decrease somewhat in the future.
How much I’m not sure.
On this issue he has probably broken about even.
Maybe.
I don’t know, I kinda like the new emo Fielding. From the blurry images during the division over the stimulus bill today it looked like Joyce and Fielding were trading insults across the floor, which was fun.
“I wonder if Hockey managed to duck in time to avoid the ‘egg on face’ boomerang he let loose in parliament yesterday.”
I would be worrying more for the shadow front bench who have to put up with what he lets loose after he had eaten the eggs.
It was funny to hear Fielding call the Lib’s alternative package ‘frankly, a dog’s breakfast’.
In fact, Fielding, Brown and Xenephon all got stuck into the Coalition. The Lib senators (those that bothered to turn up today) responded by outright insulting the Greens, Fielding and Xenephon for their stupidity and for ’selling out’. Nice move, guys.
“Turnbull was denying reality tonight by suggesting that the present situation was entirely of Rudd’s making and left his economic strategy in tatters. And Turnbull is supposed to be the most intelligent person in the parliament!”
Turnbull may be smart. Problem is that he sees us as stupid.
That bugger Xenephon owes me $50.
Well, I don’t think we should be too hard on X. Sure, he held out a day, and later he didn’t get exactly what he wanted anyway. But in a small way he has helped accelerate Murray-Darling action and intervention. And the sooner that is speeded up the better.
Mind you, it’s not clear how effective any of it may be until the pollies gather enough guts to take on the upstream irrigators. Although it may not be good news for the locals, the plug may have to be pulled on cotton and rice.
It’s the coalition that have come out of this really badly. The decision to oppose the measures outright did more than just annoy businesses and community groups. It closed off their options for negotiating a deal as the others have done.
The silver lining for the government is that they could now move against the upstream powers without fearing their opponents using populist tactics against them. Oppostion credibility (and support ratings) is so low that they would get nothing from beating the drum against seizing leases.
I would absolutely love to see Rudd suddenly discover a backbone. The cotton and rice farmers would be as good a place to start as any, but there’s also a bunch of frankly stupid laws about what can be built in bushfire areas (alternatively: the greenies won’t let people buy bush-clad hills then subdivide and clearfell them to build houses. One of those has to change… I know which I prefer), we subsidise some really dumb things and refuse to subsidise sensible ones (coal and wind power respectively, for instance). If he thinks that’s all a bit soft he could have another go at an emissions reduction scheme (not a trading scheme, a reduction scheme).
Update: Possum on why Turnbull was praying that Xenophon would vote for the package today, Sam Clifford assessing the role of the minors in Senate negotiations, and Bernard Keane on Xenophon.
David @ 38 – Isn’t the Greens who negotiated away that $50? But you will have extra bike paths around the place to compensate!
Yep, that’s right, Chris.
Since a bike path around this place could quite conceivably save my life, I’m very happy for youse all to join me in kicking in $50.
This is kinda OT, but just read the Bernard Keane article, and I can’t help myself.
He linked to Glenn Milne in Monday’s Australian, who somewhat cryptically (‘Xenophon was much taken with it behind the scenes’?) chose to reference a James Surowiecki article in the The New Yorker:
The sting in the tail for Rudd in the Surowiecki piece is his references: “One explanation for why rebates don’t have a bigger impact is they don’t affect what Milton Friedman called people’s permanent income,” he writes.
“Friedman argued that people’s spending is determined by what they think their incomes will be over time; they change their spending habits only if they think they’re going to be permanently wealthier or poorer.”
Some one should tell Xenophon, before he gets down to serious negotiations with Rudd this week ahead of Thursday’s Senate vote, that’s the same Friedman a certain prominent essayist in the latest edition of The Monthly would willingly identify as one of the bete noirs of neo-liberalism.
Someone should tell Glenn Milne that Surowiecki immediately proceeded to dismiss Friedman’s permanent-income hypothesis as outmoded and faulty. Talk about selective comprehension.
It should be noted that if Xenophon had not run his seat would have gone to a Liberal (probable outcome in SA 3 Libs, 3 Lab, possible 3 libs, 2 Lab, 1 Green, rather than the 2 Libs, 2 Lab, 1 X, 1 Green we got)
So without Xenophon Turnball would have been able to block this and anything else he wanted as long as he could hold the Nationals in line.