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It is now a month into the prime ministership of Malcolm Turnbull. Based on previous history, Turnbull is considered to be a ‘left wing’ Liberal, judging on his pronouncements over the years — being in favour of emissions reduction, same sex marriage, Fibre to the Home (FTTH) internet connections and other issues usually attributed to ‘the greenies’ and ‘latte drinkers’ from the ALP. When Turnbull outmanoeuvred Abbott, there was a delay in the necessary trip to the Governor-General to be sworn in as prime minister as the Nationals (the junior partner to the Coalition) wanted some additional conditions added to the agreement between the Liberals and the Nationals in order to retain the Coalition. Most of these conditions were to ensure the conservative policies espoused by the Abbott government were retained.

So far the major difference between Abbott and Turnbull seems to be actions like the release of a policy to inject $100million into programs to eliminate domestic violence and assist the victims. Announced by the newly minted Minister for Women, Michaelia Cash, and flanked by Turnbull and Rosie Batty (current Australian of the Year and domestic violence elimination advocate), Turnbull’s contribution was to correctly state that being disrespectful to women was ‘un-Australian’. It is doubtful the previous holder of both the prime ministerial and minister for women roles would have made the same statement. However to give the previous incumbent some credit, pulling a policy like this together probably started under his tenure.

The political blame games have begun in earnest. Probably the first off the block was Abbott’s chief of staff Peta Credlin. A few days after the elevation of Malcolm Turnbull to the prime ministership, she gave a speech at a ‘Women of the Future’ event in Sydney. In the speech, she argued that she was not responsible for the demise of Abbott, she did not control access or policy in the prime minister’s office and she refused to be defined by ‘insider gossip’. Credlin also claimed:

… she had been unfairly targeted by the media because of her gender and that there were different standards applied to women in powerful jobs. “If I was a guy I wouldn’t be bossy, I’d be strong,” she said. “If I was a guy I wouldn’t be a micromanager, I’d be across my brief, or across the detail.

“If I wasn’t strong, determined, controlling and got them into government from opposition, then I would be weak and not up to it and should have to go and could be replaced. So, it’s very binary when it comes to women.”

Katherine Murphy, writing in The Guardian disagrees, as does Barrie Cassidy from the ABC and Michelle Grattan who writes for The Conversation. Murphy, Gratten and Cassidy paint a picture of a controlling person who isolated her ‘boss’ from reality to such an extent that he didn’t see the writing on the wall. The obvious response to Murphy, Grattan and Cassidy is ‘well they would say that, wouldn’t they’ as each has written critical articles on Abbott and his government in the past. When Janet Albrechtsen writes a similar opinion piece in The Australian (paywalled), maybe there is some truth to the claims. (It is interesting that this type of writing is only done after the demise of the victim such as Rudd or Abbott — but that is a discussion for another day.)

Peter Costello, hardly a friend of Abbott’s, appeared on Four Corners and claimed it was almost certainly the right decision to elevate Malcolm Turnbull. Part of the justification was:

I think probably in the end it was the polls. That a majority of his colleagues felt that they were not going to win the next election and in those circumstances they decided to effect a change.

Clearly the conservative political media identities weren’t happy and they were prepared to let everyone know about it. On Channel 10’s The Project, Andrew Bolt made an appeal that Abbott really was a ‘decent bloke’ and that a number of his positives — such as his community service through Lifesaving — was ridiculed and thrown back at him. Ray Hadley raged against the 53 ‘dunderheads’ that voted against Abbott. Alan Jones wasn’t in a good mood either:

Judas, Judas, people not happy, the way it’s done, I mean the way it was done was beyond belief. The way it was done, unbelievable.

According to The Saturday Paper, the ascension of Malcolm Turnbull has fuelled a war within News Corp Australia. It seems that some within the organisation have decided that Abbott lost and have (perhaps reluctantly) thrown their support behind Turnbull as prime minister. Others haven’t. It must have been galling for some News staff that Turnbull started and finished the day after the demise of Abbott on ABC programs. On his radio program, Bolt declared that:

“We’ve actually won. Me and Alan,” he boasted. “We’ve house-trained Turnbull … we knocked him into shape, Alan and I.”

Then at tortuous length, he went on to enumerate all the ways in which Turnbull now was presenting as a convincing analogue of Tony Abbott, all because of the brilliance and courage of himself and Jones.

“Alan and I will bask in our success,” he concluded. “Behold our neo-Turnbull. Let the Left weep.”

Our good mate Cory Bernardi has a long history of opposing Malcolm Turnbull. It probably started when then opposition leader Turnbull sacked Bernardi from his front bench in 2009. In 2010 Bernardi was at the [US] Heartland Institute’s convention claiming that ‘Malcolm misled us’; in 2013, he was ‘advising’ Turnbull to accept the conservative position on same sex marriage; and as recently as early September complaining that, while his new NBN connection was fantastic, the organisation of NBNCo (part of Turnbull’s then communications minister responsibilities) was less than acceptable. He (along with Andrew Bolt) is openly talking about setting up a new party — one would assume for ‘true’ conservatives.

Apart from the problems involved in running the country, Turnbull seems to have a fundamental problem in policy and governance within his party. The Nationals have an agreement that some of the more contentious Abbott era policies will remain in place. The Bolts and Jones’ of the media seem to think that while they haven’t anointed the current prime minister, they have his measure. Meanwhile the Australian public seem to think that Turnbull will cure all the ills of the Abbott era. Effectively Turnbull can’t win. Turnbull needs the Nationals as he cannot govern in his own right — he needs 76 House of Representatives members to do so. He has 75 MP’s that identify themselves as Liberals. If he doesn’t keep the Abbott era policies he stands to lose the Nationals and the conservative media as well as the ‘right wing’ of the Liberal Party who may decide that the Bernardi party isn’t a bad place to be (with a further reduction in the number of Senators that Turnbull can rely on). If he doesn’t change policy from the Abbott era, while the Nationals and right wing will stick with him, he stands the risk of being seen as trying to sell the same agenda from a better postcode, in a nicer suit.

Either way, Turnbull’s initial bounce in the polls is not a precursor of success. While the ‘preferred PM’ statistic has changed significantly, the ‘two party preferred’ has only moved a few points, and recent history in Queensland and Victoria would suggest that 51-49 in your favour is not an election winning lead. While it all seems calm and serene on the surface, it is probably a reasonable assumption that just under the water, the business of working a way through the policy problem is being worked on night and day.

So Turnbull has to negotiate a Senate that he doesn’t control; a former chief of staff who is out for revenge — claiming the gender card as there is no other basis for the argument; potentially an ex-prime minister who will sit and stew on the backbench becoming a lightning rod for discontent in a similar way to Rudd and Keating; sections of the media that believe and publicly proclaim they have the sole prerogative to pick the prime minister of this country; members of his own party who are talking about leaving; a large section of the public who are expecting change for the better; along with an Opposition that is, according to the opinion polls, knocking on the door of majority popularity. All of these groups will have no problem in finding any number of statements Turnbull made in the past that directly contradict his political party’s current policy settings. While wise people change their mind when presented with additional information, Turnbull is already looking vulnerable on the continuation of the Abbott ‘Direct Action’ climate change policy.

The next few months are probably going to have more twists than the latest action movie. A comfy seat, dimmed lighting and popcorn seems to be appropriate.

• ← Same old same old
• The philosophical myth of neo-liberalism →

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