JOYCE GIVES PM A STAY OF EXECUTION
BARNABY Joyce has just defused the landmine under Malcolm Turnbull — or, more accurately, just delayed the explosion. Turnbull, now a hollow Prime Minister, could have even been sacked this week had Joyce gone backwards in Saturday’s by- election for his New England seat.
Instead, the Nationals leader got a big 7 per cent swing after preferences towards him, driven in part by sympathy for this iconically Australian politician being booted out of parliament for having New Zealand citizenship.
The news on Saturday got even better for Turnbull when Nationals MP George Christensen chickened out of his threat to quit the government this week if Turnbull were still leader.
Christensen said he changed his mind because Turnbull last week gave in to threats from Nationals MPs and said yes to a royal commission into the banks.
But, ominously, he added he’d been reassured that with Joyce back in parliament, “we will have a more assertive and independently minded National Party with a reinvigorated leader”.
This implies not just that the Nationals know they must distance themselves from the Liberals, but that they see Joyce’s win as a credit more to his party than to the government of which it’s a part.
Yet Turnbull got so excited by Joyce’s win that he yesterday declared he’d never make a deal with Pauline Hanson’s One Nation — which appeals to exactly the kind of rural voters who’d back Joyce and whose preferences the Liberals desperately need to stem their expected losses in Queensland. Has Turnbull fooled even himself? See, despite his gloating over Joyce’s “stunning win”, his government — or, rather, the Liberal Party — remains in diabolical trouble. The latest Newspoll confirms the government is unelectable, having trailed Labor badly for 14 months now.
Much of its base is in open revolt, which is why Nationals NSW leader John Barilaro last week said Turnbull should resign, and why former deputy prime minister John Anderson blamed Turnbull for conservatives “deserting us in droves”.
Anderson is right. I introduced gay libertarian Milo Yiannopoulos to packed halls in Adelaide and Perth at the weekend, and simply said: “Malcolm Turnbull.”
The booing both times was furious and long. That’s 2500 young libertarians and conservatives who despise Turnbull’s government ( but who cheered when I said “Tony
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DESPITE HIS GLOATING OVER JOYCE’S ’ STUNNING WIN’, HIS GOVERNMENT … REMAINS IN DIABOLICAL TROUBLE Abbott”). Around the country, more than 12,000 such fans have bought tickets to hear the US- based Yiannopoulos savage our Left, mock its speech codes and drink the blood of its sacred cows.
Yiannopoulos will tomorrow also speak to more than 100 people at Parliament House as the guest of Senator David Leyonhjelm, despite the Greens’ attempts to have him banned, and he’ll meet Hanson.
Why can’t Turnbull’s Liberals generate this excitement? Why do they instead win the contempt of exactly the young freedom- loving demographic they should recruit?
In Perth, I also spoke at two Liberal events. No one had a good word for Turnbull, and stalwart Liberal members were vitriolic about him in question- and- answer sessions I did with West Australian Liberal leader Mike Nahan.
The most common complaint: The Prime Minister had stolen their party. Their Liberals now stood for nothing.
WA may seem small cheese, but the government looks near certain to lose the election on its losses there alone. On current polling, five seats would go. Even Turnbull’s strongest defenders now sound desperate. Former prime minister John Howard last week denounced talk of replacing Turnbull as “madness”, yet the best he could say of Turnbull was that he “can still be successful” if he made the Coalition a “broad church”. Like an emu could still fly if it flapped harder.
The Liberals’ tragedy is that none of Turnbull’s rivals seem able to save a government in such strife. Julie Bishop is a lightweight, Dutton doesn’t excite, Scott Morrison seems damaged and Tony Abbott would be betrayed again by the Liberal Left.
So Turnbull will limp into next year, yet this week could actually bring not a reprieve but an execution date.
Under Turnbull’s new citizenship disclosure rules, MPs must tomorrow show how they renounced any dual citizenship, and several from both sides are tipped to fail.
That would trigger by- elections early next year, when this unpopular government is already fighting to save John Alexander from Labor’s Kristina Keneally in the Bennelong by- election in two weeks.
Losing just two seats could cost Turnbull power and force a general election.
Liberal MPs aren’t stupid. They know that spells disaster, however much Turnbull crows at the false dawn over New England.