Spill a horror game of survivor
MEMBERS of parliament enjoy a lot of privileges not available to us mere mortals. Comcars, business class flights, taking the family on holiday with the taxpayer footing the bill.
But these perks are nothing compared to the ultimate privilege parliamentarians have reserved to themselves: Deciding who the hell our next prime minister is.
And Tuesday morning the Liberal party came close to doing it again, with Malcolm Turnbull seeing off a leadership challenge from Peter Dutton by a margin of 48-35.
It’s hard to imagine that this will be the last challenge to Turnbull’s leadership.
Should the next spill go against the PM, that will mean that since John Howard left the stage in 2007, Australians have never gone to a federal election and been allowed to pass judgment on the leader who they voted in the last time around.
In 2010, having voted in Kevin Rudd three years earlier, Australians were given a choice not of Rudd or Tony Abbott, but Julia Gillard or Tony Abbott. Gillard, I recall, formed a minority government after weeks of negotiations and a speech by Rob Oakeshott declaring his support that lasted almost as long.
In 2013, voters finally got to pass judgment on Rudd, but only after he’d had his revenge and rolled Gillard who’d won three years early.
Abbott won that election, but of course was rolled by Malcolm Turnbull, who barely held on in 2016 against Bill Shorten.
If Malcolm Turnbull survives in the leadership until a federal poll widely expected to come next May, it will be a miracle.
Having made so many concessions on his energy policy and with fights still brewing over everything from Catholic school funding to company tax, and half the cabinet reportedly against him, it is hard to see how Turnbull makes enough deals to make it through another 10 months.
The question is why Australia’s democracy has become exactly the sort of joke that our Westminster system was designed to avoid.
It was a close-run thing, but we’ve had almost as many prime ministers these last 10 years as Italy.
For political tragics, there is a case to be made that when John Howard’s treasurer, Peter Costello, failed to mount a proper challenge – in the same way Paul Keating challenged Bob Hawke – the model for succession was broken.
And without a credible Liberal successor to take the reins, Australia’s second-longest prime minister succumbed to the “it’s time” factor which gave us the cringe-worthy phenomenon that was Kevin ’07.
Others might suggest this has something to do with the broader dissatisfaction of voters around the world since the 2008 financial crisis.
But, if that were the case, we’d see voters switching parties regularly, or moving to minor parties, neither of which have happened in a big way in Australia. But other things have happened over the last decade as well. And not just Toadfish Rebecchi managing to squeeze in not one but two marriages on Neighbours.
It’s worth noting that at the same time Kevin Rudd was gearing up his 2007 campaign, the first iPhones were rolling off the assembly lines.
That wasn’t long after Facebook’s 2006 announcement that their service – if that’s the right word – would be made available to anyone over age 13 with a valid email address.
(The same year Twitter launched, and took off in 2007 when it was featured at the uber-hip South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas.)
The news cycle has shortened at the same time that an everything-ondemand economy has surged. Psychologists have long suspected social media is rewiring our brains. It may be rewiring our politics as well.
When this newspaper set up an online poll to gauge readers’ sentiment for changing PM, voters overwhelmingly clicked the box for Dutton – either out of weariness over Turnbull or a hope that a more conservative PM could rally the Coalition base and turn things around against Shorten.
Parties get the message and hope for the honeymoon bounce of a new leader to carry them through.
Whoever forms the next government, it’d be great if they did well enough to make it to the following poll to face the judgment of the people. I wouldn’t hold my breath, however.
IT WAS A CLOSE-RUN THING, BUT WE’VE HAD ALMOST AS MANY PRIME MINISTERS THESE LAST 10 YEARS AS ITALY