Morrison moves to firm up leadership
As the Supreme Court is called on to settle preselection fights ahead of the election, Scott Morrison is attempting to hold together the Liberal Party.
Among the vines at Josef Chromy Wines, just south of Launceston, on Monday morning, came a display of Liberal Party unity.
Scott Morrison stood alongside the member for Bass, Bridget Archer, the most persistent intra-party prime ministerial critic of this parliamentary term. Fielding uncomfortable questions about her “speaking out about some things lately”, Morrison embarked on a detailed explanation of how the Liberal Party differs from the Labor Party in dealing with dissenters. The Liberals, he reminded journalists, don’t “throw people out because we don’t always agree on everything”.
As he began a short monologue describing Archer as a “passionate” and “fiery” MP for whom he had great respect, Morrison demonstrated what his unity show was really about.
The prime minister suggested the man standing beside him could reinforce the point about Labor’s intolerance of dissent, using the example of party politics in Victoria.
“My dear Victorian colleague,” Morrison said, as he put his arm around would-be
leadership contender and treasurer, Josh Frydenberg. It was his second effusive reference to Frydenberg that morning, having called him “my dear friend” just minutes earlier.
Reaching around Frydenberg’s shoulders, Morrison turned his gesture into a back-pat, avoiding replaying his most notable previous public sideways hug. That was in 2018 when he declared his loyalty to Malcolm Turnbull, right before he ousted him.
Frydenberg just smiled. He had flown back over the weekend from a G20 meeting in Jakarta and travelled on to Tasmania on Monday morning to be alongside his prime minister at the winery.
On Saturday, this newspaper’s front page had reported that some of the treasurer’s colleagues were urging him to show he was ready for leadership after the coming election or, if necessary, before. The same day, the front page of The Australian newspaper carried a report that Frydenberg had shirtfronted his Russian counterpart at the G20 – a story some colleagues read as a deliberate tough-onnational-security demonstration and just the kind of signal they were seeking.
This week, nobody is talking seriously about a pre-election leadership move.
The mutterings of last week’s febrile postparliamentary atmosphere have subsided.
Talk of changing leaders faded as the more aggressive aspirant, Defence Minister Peter Dutton, stepped back from public view, having joined Morrison in making multiple forays against Labor’s security record, particularly on China, that the head of Australia’s domestic spy agency called “unhelpful”.
Among Liberal MPS, the common refrain on the prospect of a leadership challenge is: “It’s too late.”
But Morrison is going out of his way to present a happy-family portrait nonetheless – and not just through increased references to his wife, Jenny, designed to contrast with his divorced opponent, Anthony Albanese.
Significant numbers of Liberals remain deeply frustrated at the prime minister’s judgement and popularity slump and fearful of the coming election with him at the helm.
The day after his winery visit, Morrison sparked a new political controversy on an issue that has divided his party previously. It is just a fortnight since the political debacle that led to him withdrawing his promised religious discrimination legislation when five Liberal MPS crossed the floor over its treatment of transgender people. On Tuesday, Morrison enthusiastically endorsed a private member’s bill by Tasmanian Liberal senator Claire Chandler that would allow sporting codes to ban transgender athletes.
“I think it’s a terrific bill and I’ve given her great encouragement,” he said when asked for his view. “Claire is a champion for women’s sport and I think she’s been right to raise these issues in the way that she has. Well done, Claire.”
The comments blindsided and alarmed some moderate MPS, including some who had opposed the Religious Discrimination Bill’s provisions on trans people.
A series of informal backbench Zoom meetings ensued. Some remain unhappy at this imprimatur from the top on such a politically sensitive issue. Some wonder why, with a war in Eastern Europe and the world still in the grip of a wretched pandemic, the prime minister is choosing to emphasise this issue.
Moderate MPS see it as a deliberate attempt to win back disillusioned conservative church leaders who were extremely disappointed at the withdrawal of the Religious Discrimination Bill.
The Australian Christian Lobby’s spokeswoman, Wendy Francis, is welcoming both Claire Chandler’s “Save Women’s Sport” bill and Morrison’s stance.
“This is absolutely preposterous,” Francis says of the allowances being made to trans athletes. “We are witnessing the death of women’s sport. How will the Australian public respond if Ash Barty gets beaten by a transgender athlete? It could happen.”
It is unclear whether Morrison will usher Chandler’s bill forward for a vote when parliament resumes in budget week, just days before an election is expected to be called. Private member’s bills are generally a low priority without special dispensation from the top.
Equality Australia’s spokesperson on transgender issues, Jackie Turner, is urging the bill’s opponents to speak up in case.
“For decades, sporting teams across the country have been including trans and gender-diverse players, working hard to ensure that every team member is treated with dignity and respect, and that everyone can play a fair game,” Turner said in a statement to Equality Australia’s supporters.
“In fact, the existing Sex Discrimination Act already allows for discrimination on the grounds of sex, gender identity or intersex status by excluding people from competing in sports where strength, stamina and physique is relevant. Instead of considering how these exemptions could be narrowed, the [proposed] bill would go further, and for the first time allow discrimination against children under the age of 12 years. The bill is not just unnecessary, it’s cruel and divisive.”
The Liberal Party’s divisions do not end there. In New South Wales, the standoff between its state executive and the prime minister’s representative, Immigration Minister Alex Hawke, over the party’s failure to conduct proper preselections for election candidates took a dramatic step on Monday when the dispute was taken to the NSW Supreme Court.
As this newspaper went to press, the chief judge in the court’s equity division, Justice Julie Ward, was deliberating on an application by NSW Liberal Party executive and hardright faction member Matthew Camenzuli designed to enable the party to proceed with plebiscites to choose Liberal candidates for seats still without them. The court expedited the hearings at Camenzuli’s request.
Backed by Morrison, Alex Hawke has refused to attend the meetings required under the party’s constitution for the preselections to be completed. He is being accused of stalling in the hope of forcing the federal executive to make an eleventh-hour intervention and install hand-picked candidates from the prime minister’s centre-right faction without branch members being able to vote. Increasing the number of candidates who are members of, or sympathetic to, Morrison’s faction would help insulate him from any future leadership threat.
A federal intervention would also see incumbent MPS automatically re-endorsed, protecting Hawke himself, fellow centreright minister Sussan Ley, and moderate backbencher Trent Zimmerman. All face preselection challenges from hard-right candidates.
At a robust meeting last Thursday night, key members of the federal executive told Morrison for a second time that they remained reluctant to intervene because the intervention provisions were not designed to install particular candidates. They have instructed the state executive to sort it out.
The NSW Liberal Party has obtained legal advice that, under its constitution, the terms of state executive members will expire on February 28 – this Monday – without an annual general meeting to renew them. This would force a federal intervention.
Camenzuli has taken court action against Hawke, NSW Liberal president and former minister Philip Ruddock, and federal Liberal president and former South Australian premier John Olsen, challenging the legal interpretation.
Camenzuli argues Alex Hawke has deliberately obstructed the party’s ability to hold democratic preselections by failing to show up to required meetings.
When the case began this week, Hawke failed to acknowledge the legal summons and simply did not appear. The NSW Liberal Party’s lawyer, who provided the termination advice, Robert Newlinds, SC, detailed how he had tried repeatedly to contact Hawke by email, phone call and text message but received no response.
“It would be farcical to suggest Mr Hawke would not be aware of these proceedings,” Newlinds told the judge.
In another bizarre twist, Newlinds revealed that his own client, Philip Ruddock, a co-respondent to Camenzuli’s action, had advised him he did not personally accept Newlinds’ advice and hoped Camenzuli won.
The combination of Ruddock’s concession and Hawke’s absence left the court without anyone making opposing arguments, prompting it to appoint barrister Nicholas Bender as a contradictor, known as an “amicus curiae” or friend of the court.
Camenzuli has asked the court to reject Newlinds’ argument that the state executive members’ terms expire on February 28 and confirm that they may continue to serve – so they can then resolve
As the legal and political arguments raged, Morrison was focused on the crisis in Ukraine, which the Coalition hopes will overshadow more politically troublesome issues and prompt voters to stick with a government they know.
the preselection issue without federal intervention.
During two hours of legal argument on Thursday, Camenzuli’s barrister, Scott Robertson, told Justice Ward that to reach Newlinds’ legal conclusions would require doing “considerable violence” to sections of the party’s constitution “and indeed, so much violence that it would be inconsistent with the text”.
Bender argued the wording of sections of the constitution suggested its drafter intended AGMS to be held at particular times, approximately biennially, and that members of the party’s state council – separate from but related to the state executive – have fixed terms.
Justice Ward was expected to make a finding within days.
As the legal and political arguments raged, Morrison was focused on the crisis in Ukraine, which the Coalition hopes will overshadow more politically troublesome issues and prompt voters to stick with a government they know.
The prime minister foreshadowed a series of targeted sanctions against Russian interests in Australia, designed to put pressure on its president, Vladimir Putin. Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese was quick to back them in. “What we need to do is to make sure that we’re united in putting forward our view that Russia’s behaviour is contrary to international law,” he said.
Assigning Immigration Minister Hawke to liaise with the Ukrainian community, Morrison said the sanctions were “now possible because of the stronger laws my government has passed to enable us to do just that”.
Domestically, Morrison is pinning his political hopes on using the deteriorating security situation in Eastern Europe and ongoing brawl with China to claim better national security credentials than Labor. The Coalition hopes national security – and not the handling of the Covid-19 pandemic – will dominate voters’ sentiment as they cast their ballots.
In the face of plunging poll ratings, Morrison is also relying on the fact there is next to no time left before the election to make any kind of leadership change – something even his most strident Liberal critics concede.
And then there’s the point he made in the vineyard: that the Liberal Party doesn’t readily throw people out over internal disagreements.
Except, as he also knows all too well, they still can. And every now and then, they do.