It’s probably time to take stock again of the Liberal leadership spill shenanigans.
John Howard has obviously been having a word in a few journos’ ears. Tony Wright penned this piece for The Age yesterday, portraying the Ghost of Wollstonecraft as pulling the strings. It seems Little Johnny couldn’t stand Nick Minchin and the Minchkins getting all the credit for tearing Turnbull down.
I think Hockey’s pilgrimage to Howard on Saturday was staged to suggest that he’s the true heir to the throne, and to imply that Turnbull was an unfortunate interloper. None of those ‘progressive’ hymns in Howard’s broad church! Had they wanted to meet covertly, it wouldn’t have been too hard.
Alex White wrote yesterday on Turnbull’s Cameronisation. If it’s all about following scripts, the Tories’ recent one wouldn’t be a bad one to follow. After all, turning away from the right and talking up green issues has contributed to reviving the UK Conservatives’ electoral chances.
Hockey is obviously keeping his powder dry, so that he can claim he is a unity candidate by not bringing on a spill. That’s the sort of dissimulation for which Howard is famous, but it’s unlikely he’ll be able to bring it off. It’s his second time around as a cuddly frontman for nasty things (think WorkChoices), and he made a hash of it the first time. (See also Peter Martin on his record.) All the talk of some sort of cunning Keating like strategy against the Rudd government’s CPRS forgets that Keating was a superb politician. Hockey is not.
He simply isn’t up to the task, and he probably knows it. He won’t have a lot of credibility as a puppet leader papering over the cracks of a deeply divided party, and it would be risible to think that the events of the last week won’t come back to haunt the Liberals. All talk of Sunrise aside, Rudd’s political machine will eat him for breakfast.
Whether the Liberals would be able to agree on some sort of alternative if the CPRS bills are delayed til February is moot. Certainly all their divisions over climate change will not magically disappear even if Malcolm is whisked off the scene.
It’s not over til it’s over, of course, but speculation has increasingly turned to Turnbull leaving the party and/or parliament. Whatever he decides to do, the ‘dead man walking’ of the press gallery commentary circa early last week (and haven’t some changed their tune?) will come out of all this looking pretty good in many people’s eyes.
Possum’s extremely interesting analysis of the Nielsen poll demonstrates that Turnbull has been appealling to precisely the voters that the Liberals need to be in with any chance of winning the next election – ones currently inclined to vote Labor. I’d have thought that was a lot more meaningful for a serious political party than some sort of ‘protect the furniture and play to the base’ strategy. There’s lots more in Possum’s post which should provide a reality check in terms of how all this has played in the public’s eyes. Liberal MPs and Senators might be well advised to consider that.
Stay tuned for further updates, and you can follow the thing on Twitter as well.
Elsewhere: Some interesting personal reflections on Malcolm Turnbull from Christopher Joye.
Update: New post on firming speculation that Turnbull intends to lead a new party should he lose tomorrow.
Im glad Possum picked up on the spike in talcum’s approval ratings – I noticed that in Nielsen too – though naturally the journos didnt think it worth mentioning. its obvious that was ALP voters, and – most likely – the ones most amenable to swing voting.
But clearly for the Minchiviks its all about the far more important issue of who carries the flag into slaughterhouse 2010.
More interestingly – who’s positioning to take over from Hockey when he gets an almighty walloping next November/ Dec? Or will they sick with a failed leader for a change?
But this won’t be portrayed as Hockey’s treachery, we’ll have endless nauseating stories about how Joe’s reluctantly doing this for the good of the party, lots of Joe the family man type stories, and lots of resurgent Lib type stories, all in an attempt to deny the reality of how he got there, and the real state of the party.
The question is will anyone believe the vast amount of guff which is about to descend on us?
Nick Griener has been on radio saying he has advised Hockney not to stand and basically saying Minchin is crazy and Turnbull is correct in his electoral analysis. He also makes the point that the Libs have managed to get through Howard, Costello, Nelson and Turnbull in two years. And that Hockey would be the next to get slammed. He makes the point they’re running out of talent. (Okay, I know there’s disagreement about the ‘talent’ there, but he has a strong point.)
It astonishes me that the troglodytes don’t actually care about winning the next election. Maybe they’ll just draft Howard back. He seems to be running things anyway.
Joye’s post – whatever his impression of Malcolm (and to be honest, I think he under-rates the ‘charm’ of many politicians. Most that I’ve met, on either side of the fence, have been very alluring, likeable people. That Malky is no exception to the rule doesn’t suprise me) – struck me as politically quite naive. Which is fine, he makes no claim to expertise, but I can’t help but feel his analysis ignores many case studies, not-least-of-which Rudd himself, who kept a very low profile until he could start scoring points off the coalition.
As I commented earlier, I suspect most Australians can’t see any reason for having to lock ourselves in to this immensely complex law until we see what happens in Copenhagen. So I don’t think Hockey will lose a vote if he plays up that line.
And then, maybe something will happen in Copenhagen that changes the perspective – or can be made to look like it has changed the issue of how to deal with climate change. If the big players at Copenhagen come up with something, it changes the whole game, including, potentially, a shift of supoort inside the Liberal Party.
Plus Hockey has a new baby – that’s got to be worth a percentage vote or two!
Great piece by Bernard Keane on the disaster-in-waiting that is Hockey: http://blogs.crikey.com.au/thestump/2009/11/29/reflections-on-turnbull-and-his-party/
No amount of spin will save Joe Hockey from being savaged as the human beanbag that tried to inflict WorkChoices on Australia.
Anywhere the wind blows is where’ll you find big Joe. Rudd and Gillard will make (rather a lot of) mincemeat out of him.
I like this one best:
‘Backbencher Dennis Jensen, says he made a mistake in voting for Mr Turnbull to become leader and says he is behaving worse than former Labor leader Mark Latham.
“I think that Malcolm is in scorched earth policy right at the moment,” he said.
“If he’s not going to get the leadership he will do as much damage on the way out as he can. I was warned about this by some members who knew him, and unfortunately it’s transpiring.”‘
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/11/30/2757280.htm?section=justin
Christopher Joye: “…Perhaps following this fracas the big fella will throw caution to the wind and found his own political party…I am thinking of the Australian Republican Party with an unconditional commitment to combating climate change and reinvigorating the dormant republican movement. Now that would be sure to split the Liberal Party vote.”
Turnbull leading an Australian Republican Party has been an idea kicking around for nearly a decade now, since Howard broke the nation’s heart back in 1999. That was the first time that Minchin, as Howard’s Special Minister of State for gutting republicanism, head-butted Turnbull out of the ring, and it looks like he is about to do it again..
But teh ARP remains a good idea. Too many people value Turnbull’s talents, from both sides of the political fence, for him to be put out to pasture. Let’s hope after tomorrow, if all goes according to media predictions, Turnbull steps up as either Rudd’s Special Envoy to Copenhagen, or Leader of the Australian Republican Party.
And the latter has the potential to split not only the Liberal Party vote, but the ALP’s as well.
Agree with all of that, grace:
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2009/11/30/turnbull-to-found-a-new-party/
“Or will they sick (sic!)with a failed leader for a change?”
Freudian slip Lefty E?
Anyway could they get much sicker?
I probably didn’t express it well, but Turnbull’s Cameronisation is about reframing climate change to be a “right wing” issue.
The Libs’ big problem is that they don’t have 12 years in opposition to make them recognise that their existing reactionary core of conservative MPs are unelectable, and that they need to move to the centre (Howard knew this, which is why he said “we’ll jump, but only when everyone else has. His acolytes didn’t learn from it of course).
If Turnbull loses tomorrow, and decides to hang around, he will likely be welcomed back as leader sometime around Labor’s third term. Then he can start the Cameronisation of the Liberal Party again – probably with the added benefit of having a Cameron UK Government.
Cheers
Alex
Ps. Thanks for the link.
Andos, clearly Dennis Jensen is unaware of the irony …
“The Libs’ big problem is that they don’t have 12 years in opposition to make them recognise that their existing reactionary core of conservative MPs are unelectable”
Give it time.
Do these stupid Liberals totally insane? Not sure which oneis Lear, puppet-master Howard, our unelected alternative Prime Minister, or N. Minchin, who clearly is bonkers. I don’t care really. The thought of the electoral oblivion waiting them delights the cockles of me heart.
I don’t think the Australian electorate is stupid. If the ALP with Latham was unelectable, which clearly was, how much more unelectable will a Minchin led Liberal Party with Hockey as his Punch/Judy/Polly be. Heaps more I’d say.
Here comes the Hangman.
Malcolm Turnball is talented, so many say. Where is the evidence of political or even leadership talent?
I disagree, Grace Pettigrew @9, Turnbull has zero political smarts. I table Utegate and the Grech affair as my evidence. I feel confident that given the same circumstances, he’d go down the same track.
People seem to have forgotten his condescending bully-boy tacitcs, his complete lack of leadership abilities, political nous and judgement, colossal ego and arrogance. He may indeed have a head crammed with brains, but he doesn’t live up to the promise he appears to have and I see no good reason to vote for him.
One off-the-cuff speech does not a political leader or potential PM make; under all the recently acquired glamour it’s still Malcolm Turnbull.
Anyway, he won’t stick around waiting his turn again; not enough limelight in that. He’ll be off looking for the next set of stage lights.
Brisbanistan
No amount of leadership “talent” is enough to herd startled cats. Even the prospect of electoral annihilation and irrelevance for possibly a decade has counted for nothing amongst the Minchin-Bernardi crowd. If one takes them at their word, they think they are fighting a battle to hold back the red tide and see Turnbull as a sandbagger.
Hockey won’t help them at all, because sooner or later, they will have to vote for this, or there will be a DD or maybe a regular election after August at which their numbers in both houses will be reduced them to utter irrelevance. In no variation from here is it conceivable that they won’t be fighting amongst themselves for at least the next two parliamentary terms and find themselves without a credible figure to lead them much before 2017.
The problem with the Liberals is that they have never been popular. Since the war, people have voted for them out of fear and loathing, or because of their anxieties over the economy and the hope that they could restore financial stability but nowhere near enough people like them on any issue of substance. On every issue except the economy and national security the ALP has been seen as more in tune with what most people want. When these two issues became lead in the saddle bags in 2007 and a whole swag of new younger voters entered the pool, they were in a lot of trouble.
When Kevin Rudd and Wayne Swan successfully averted local economic chaos in the midst of the GFC the principal percieved ALP weakness was added to their percieved strengths, and doubly so as the remedy turned out to be a policy traditionally connected with the ALP — increased government spending — and the Liberals had little option but to put themselves at odds with a policy perceived as both successful and in keeping with the direction of policy worldwide. Inevitably, the Liberal posturing — “Labor’s Debt” — could only redound on them, and one suspects that a new wave of eligible voters in 2010 will make national securioty and border protection even less saleable as issues.
Little of that is really Malcolm Turnbull’s failing, and where it is, it is a failing of the whole party in its post-war development. He’d have had to articulate a vision explictly at odds with those favoured by the Howard-era members, and there was no way that they’d have let him do that, given the revolt we’ve seen over his (and Hockey’s) attempt to help implement a Howard-like ETS.
I’ve heard it argued that Howard’s ETS was irrelveant because had he won, it would have become a “non-core” promise. I can well believe it, but if I do, it merely underlines how utterly bankrupt and implausible attempts to fashion a coherent and substantial group of right-wing anti-ALP activists are likely to be.
Joe Hockey duking it out with whatever it kaes Richardson on Q&A back on November 5 2009
I guess we will see soon enough …
“The guff”… @ Adrian @ 2, has already descended! How many bolded type rallying calls will the daily rags around the country give to the opposition supporters: it is truly appalling! *** Go faux-democracy! ***
But seriously, ‘the guff’ sells newspapers and so it descended like a greater heap during ‘grech-gate’ and accelerated as Copenhagen got closer… if this was not ‘guff’ then I shudder: truly, it can’t get worse can it?!!?
HAHAHAH!!!! THE DENIALISTS ARE SCREWED!!! Hockey’s insisting on a free vote on ETS, so the Mad Monk’s running against him.
Hockey may still get up, but the Minchinites have been chucked in the bin where they belong.
Awesome, I’ve been praying to every discarded deity in human history and some I made up myself for this. Abbott, you magnificent bastard maker, I read your book!
But Lefty E, if Hockey wins without in a fight with the Minchies, and he also knocks over Turnbull and his ever shrinking support base…..who stands with Hockey after the dust settles?
How can Nick Minchin stand up and say well thats cleared the air, when if anything, its made it worse for him and what he wants.
If Turnbull or Hockey win, Minchin has only one option: leave the party and start up an even more right wing party dedicated to uncovering left wing conspiracies and the return of the cat o`-nine-tails back into labour relations.
At least we now know that Minchin has never,ever worked for anyone but the liberal party.Just makes us taxpayers who have been paying his wages for a very long time fume.
One would reasonably expect the liberal party to pay the wages of the likes of minchin given his denial of the fact that he is a public servant.
Let us hope that his electorate now take a closer look at their representative. They may well decide that perhaps they would prefer someone who was prepared to look after them,rather than use his tax-payer funded job in the total and whole employ of the liberal party.
robbo,
Senators are selected by State party branches.
Sadly, he doesn’t have an electorate (not like Reps members such as Messrs Turnbull, Abbott, Rudd, Swan, Tuckey, Hockey or Ms Gillard, Bishop….)
Or, more accurately his electorate is a whole State. If there’s a double dissolution, he’d need pre-selection, etc. to run again as a Liberal. I doubt that Mr Hockey could have him dumped, tempting though it may be.
I doubt that the Minchiniks will break away from the Bolshie Libs, Brendon. Too much at stake. They’ll stay in and fight…. an unedifying spectacle will ensue, IMO.
Two more truckloads of popcorn to Armidale, please.
Minchin’s electorate would be South Australia, since he’s a Senator. Although his current term is up at the next half-Senate election, his seniority means it is likely that he will be in the first position on the Liberal Party’s Senate ticket… so it’s pretty much guaranteed that he’ll be re-elected.
Unless Malcolm wins on Tuesday and brings out the long knives, somehow managing to get Minchin disendorsed before next August… please, God, let it be that.
robbo, I don’t vote for the fucker. He gets the biggest number possible on the
bedsheetSenate ballot.I’ve been aware of the prick for nearly 40 years, from back when he was a Liberal apparatchik. He’s always been a nasty piece of work.
I think Hockey is a disaster on legs in any capacity, but now that he’s rattled Minchin with talk of a free vote on the ETS/CPRS I now hope he wins and gives Minchin apoplexy.
Michael Johnson on why he’s backing Tony Abbott:
I smell a Labor win in the leafy Brisbane electorate of Ryan. From what I’ve seen of this electorate, it is not remotely Abbottesque.
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