Wake in fright
THE Wentworth by-election is coming up faster than a road train in the rear view mirror.
It’s the election that the Federal Government didn’t need to have.
It’s hard to see the Liberals losing, but any drift away from their massive majority in the seat must be recognised as a self-inflicted wound.
Wentworth is happening because the Liberal Party sacked their PM.
It cannot be dismissed as being fought on “local issues”.
It has a massive federal focus and has become a temporary bellweather seat for what may happen in 2019.
So, you would think the latest PM would be wandering the hustings, promising big money and keeping a low profile. Nope.
Instead, we have witnessed a government in chaos. Yes, folks,
The Muppet Show is back and they have made it almost impossible to believe that sticking with the Liberal Party in Wentworth is the only way to “stable government”.
Despite the facts, PM Scott Morrison is positing this position and last Saturday he went full Forrest Gump. He declared a vote for anybody but his candidate was like opening a box of chocolates. A terrible, terrible risk.
“With the Liberal Party, you know what you are going to get. With the Labor Party, you never know what you are going to get,” and then he doubled down on the independents and the unaligned. He said: “With independents you certainly don’t know what you are ever going to get.”
Well … unfortunately for Morrison, his advice doesn’t appear to be holding water. It’s been a week of leaks and backflippers.
The Ruddock report has been sitting around for months, but this week the details quietly emerged. Morrison was on the front foot defending the rights of schools to discriminate and potentially refuse to enrol students based on their sexuality.
“It’s existing law” he smirked and repeated when first confronted.
Within 24 hours he had pole vaulted to the opposite view, no doubt after canvassing proved that Wentworth would not be voting for old fashioned bigotry.
Despite this admission of a sense of “empathy”, on the first day of the new sitting week of Parliament, the Coalition senators demonstrated their true allegiance and voted on mass to support the Pauline Hanson One Nation motion stating: “It’s okay to be white”.
They lost the vote to the ALP and the Greens, but the conservatives were so happy with themselves that they took to Twitter to explain why they were not racists.
Morrison must have been ropeable. He said it was “regrettable”. Then the Coalition said they had been “confused” and they wanted to have the vote again. It was farcical.
Inexplicable and totally not what Wentworth would want.
So … Morrison decided it was the perfect time to declare his government’s new position on Israel. He wants Australia to copy Donald Trump and move our embassy to Jerusalem.
This idea is in total opposition to the position that the Turnbull/ Morrison government posited in June 2018.
That’s like ancient history for the new generation of Liberal leaders.
Back then? Treasurer Morrison and Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop were in furious agreement that our embassy would not be moving.
“Jerusalem is a final status issue …” Bishop said. Australia had “main- tained that position for decades”.
Tel Aviv was a bilateral Australian decision. “While I understand the sentiment behind this resolution, the Australian Government will not be moving our embassy to Jerusalem.”
Fast forward to Wentworth and Ms Bishop is a backbencher, Morrison is the new Turnbull and somehow candidate David Sharma is directing the Liberal Party policy.
He hasn’t even been elected yet, but the current PM is crediting the former diplomat as the reason for our national change of heart.
It’s a radical suggestion with local ramifications, global repercussions and very little reasoning beyond the “whole vibe of the idea”.
This is not stability, this is schizophrenic desperation.
At the last federal election, the people of Wentworth voted Liberal and they thought they were getting Malcolm Turnbull for a whole term of the Parliament.
He was going to be their local MP and their prime minister. He was promising stable government.
Now, the same voters are returning to the polls early because their man was the victim of a political assassination and we still don’t know why.
Nobody in Wentworth voted for Morrison in the last election. It will be interesting to see if they do this time.
When Australia wakes up on Sunday, what are we going to get?