So Malcolm Turnbull, it turns out, is not a ditherer at all – he was merely biding his time, lurking in ambush. And when he was ready to strike, he did so with a bold and smart blow – he tricked us all.
And so he did, because it was, well, tricky. There is no doubt that section 5 of the constitution allows the Governor-General to prorogue the parliament, and to convene it – that is an essential part of his job.
But there is also no doubt that our founding fathers (the ones the conservatives so revere, when it suits them) did not intend the Prime Minister to advise the viceroy to shut down the existing parliament only to set up a new one in order to consider a bill that, a week earlier, the government refused to debate.
Peter Cosgrove was, as always, punctilious: he acted on the advice of his ministers. But he didn’t have to like it, and he went out of his way to say that it was Turnbull’s idea, not his.
And even in Turnbull’s own terms it was unnecessary; he already had his double dissolution trigger and insisting that the Building and Construction Commission must be added to the list was more about bravado (brinkmanship as Tony Abbott admiringly called it) than policy.
He has been praised for his cunning, for daring; but it comes at the price of openness, even of honesty. And the attempts by his apologists to claim that it was the only possible course are simply ludicrous.
In The Australian Paul Kelly, tried to draw a comparison with the events of 1975: a remorselessly obstructionist opposition, which had to lead to a double dissolution to break the log jam of bills that had been rejected or not passed by an intransigent senate. But in fact that assessment had little to do with the dismissal of the government of Gough Whitlam, and Kelly, the self-appointed custodian of the events of 1975, should certainly know it.
John Kerr’s action was not about trying to unblock legislation; it was about breaking the impasse engineered by Malcolm Fraser to avoid the senate voting about the supply bills. And Kerr did not accept the advice of his prime minister; indeed, he conspired against Whitlam, and, when Whitlam gave him the advice that he should call an election for half the senate to solve the deadlock, Kerr summarily rejected it and handed Whitlam the dismissal he had already prepared.
The only possible analogy is that both the Liberal leaders — Fraser in opposition, Turnbull in government – defied political conventions in order to achieve their ends. They believed the ends justified the means: Fraser prospered, and Turnbull may also, but he has had to deploy some pretty mean and tricky manoeuvring to bend to the rules to his advantage.
Still, he has a good (or perhaps bad) 14 weeks to get over it and immediate imperative to is to put Abbott back in his box and hope that his loyal allies will see it in their interest to sit on the lid until the campaign is well and truly over. Abbott’s vain glorious – almost egomaniac – boast that the entire election would be about endorsing his own achievements immediately put Turnbull on the defensive; apart from the parodic slogan “Continuity and Change,” which has already been taken out to the back paddock and shot, Turnbull found himself having to enumerate his own initiatives, and pretty unexciting they are.
Electoral reform, changes to media laws, a distant program for cities and the feel good waffle about innovation are not the fodder needed for an electorate starved for want of substance – and they are unlikely to be fed for more than another month, when the humiliated Treasurer finally dribbles out what is left of the budget.
Apparently determined to shake off at least some of Abbott’s dishevelled garments, Turnbull produced a thunderous verdict on terrorism in Brussels and indeed on Europe in general: unsuccessful at its attempts of integration, leaking porous borders, failing in intelligence and security. This was rebutted with a rebuke from the Belgian ambassador, but Turnbull’s admirers loved it: their leader had, they claimed, trumped Abbott on national security.
But precisely on cue Abbott responded in an article in Quadrant saying that he was still the enforcer: he would have been tougher on Turnbull in following up American requests to increase Australian troops to Iraq and Lebanon. So Turnbull changed tack: now it was about how he was the one who would break away from the Abbott agenda. So he hastily ramped up and refunded a couple of clean energy ideas, but, as his critics quickly pointed out, these were more about restoring previous cutbacks than any genuine attack on climate change.
The problem, as Turnbull admitted, is that he simply cannot control or predict what Abbott will do. He may help, but he may not. And while his predecessor’s sniping and undermining may lose the former leader support in the party room, which is becoming more concerned with survival than ideology, it appears to be gaining support from the conservatives in the electorate and remains an endless fascination in the media.
And even after the first week, it appears that Abbott, and Morrison, were not the only distractions Turnbull will face in the long campaign. There have already been other irritations: Arthur Sinodinos, whom Turnbull has adopted from John Howard as his principal strategist, has fallen back into the morass engulfing the rorting of political donations. The former Liberal Finance Director insists that he had absolutely nothing to do with the direction of the party’s finances – that was someone else’s job entirely. But apart from the fact that the Electoral Commission apparently remains unconvinced, Sinodinos’s denial is inherently improbable, and the issue still has a long way to go – especially with parliament set to resume.
And beyond the fringe the ultra-rightist Cory Bernardi has registered a new party, the Australian Conservatives – not, he has assured his crusaders, that he really want to start a split, but well, if Turnbull won’t behave…. And just to cap it off, another resignation: Sharon Stone, after 20 years, will call it a day in the electorate of Murray. The seat is safe enough, but it does open the possibility of a brawl between the Libs and the Nats over a three-cornered contest.
To the end of a perfect week, and we still have three more of them before the long-awaited budget, and then almost another seven to poling day. If Turnbull has really seized control, he has plenty of time to show it.
