LONGMAN BY-ELECTION REVEALS STATE OF PLAY FOR TURNBULL

THE federal coalition government cannot win reelection under Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.

That is the single biggest message from the only byelection result last Saturday that really mattered – Longman in Queensland. On that basis the coalition could lose up to a dozen seats – and the election – in Queensland alone.

At the same time, as former PM Tony Abbott has been arguing, the election is available to be won on the basis of a partial replay of what proved so successful for the coalition under his leadership in 2013.

Then it was “stop the boats”, “axe the (carbon) tax” and “cut the deficit”.

Now it is – and in the national interest and very definitely in your personal interest, should and indeed must be – “walk away from Paris” and its pointless commitment to ever-higher power prices.

It is also, if this time more figuratively, “stop the planes”. That is say, slash immigration.

Just to state this is to announce the implausibility and indeed utter impossibility of such a political program being embraced far less articulated by Mr Turnbull, sautéed as he is in the mindset of the globalised elites of harbourside Sydney and logjam-free Canberra.

One of the disasters of Julia Gillard’s time as PM was her cringe-worthy “(don’t) meet the people” visit to Western Sydney. Remember that? It’s up there with Mark “crusher” Latham’s handshake in Labor electioneering owngoal selfies.

In truth though, she had useless wind into the power generation network.

Mr Turnbull’s “politics” on both are cringeworthily hopeless, as he tries to have it every which way. On the one hand he says the “big immigration/big Australia” policy is sacrosanct; only to laud the relatively tiny 20,000 drop in last year’s immigration.

Did you know the number of people coming into Australia was not the 262,000 trumpeted – big enough as that was? But some 539,000? The 262,000 figure is after accounting the 277,000 who left.

These are migrants (in and out), including those with supposedly temporary migration visas. The 9 million tourists that are now coming here each year is quite separate.

Yes, it’s the 262,000 net figure which plays out in the long-term. But it’s those 539,000 – most of who go Melbourne and Sydney – which feeds straight into the infrastructure congestion.

The government is pushing the line that governments don’t win byelections. True but irrelevant. These byelections were unique – members getting booted over citizenship; they all got re-elected.

Ministers and backbenchers are also clinging to the belief that a government tracking at 49 per cent in the polls can “win it” in the campaign.

Again, irrelevant; and the reason is Queensland and Pauline Hanson. She got 15 per cent of the vote and she wasn’t even in Australia. The government can only win if it gets her preferences; Mr Turnbull is inherently unable to do so.