Poor old Malcolm Turnbull. He fought like hell to win a seat in parliament. Now it seems as if he’ll end up a oncer. That’s not much of a return on his investment.

Turnbull’s had a win of sorts on the pulp mill. It’s only going ahead subject to a strict set of conditions. Still, it seems set to cost him his seat. It’s a Pyrrhic victory. The conditions are strict, but they are also narrow. They do nothing to recover the ground that was lost in the PR war long ago.

Labor certainly can’t claim a moral triumph with its stance on the issue, but if anyone has come out on top of this, it’s the ALP. Their stance demonstrates their discipline. It shows just how much they want to win.

Dennis Shanahan’s analysis in The Australian today is spot on:

All the time [through the pulp mill debate] Howard was challenging Labor to come out and make a definitive statement he was surely thinking of Mark Latham and the 2004 election campaign decision on logging Tasmanian forests.

All through that campaign Howard played cat-and-mouse politics … with the Labor leader, and was rewarded with a bright green policy from Latham that locked up forests and allowed the Prime Minister to emerge as the workers’ friend in northern Tasmania.

This time, the Government has had to get its policy out first. It will probably cost one of their sharpest politicians his seat. Peter Garret’s been able to say: “A Rudd Labor government would not seek to overturn or amend the decision by Mr Turnbull.”

Note that “Mr Turnbull”? Labor will probably take his seat – while following in his policy slipstream.

And Labor can just laugh at Bob Brown’s ridiculous preference puffing.

Yes, the Greens’ economic policies have many points of similarity with One Nation’s – but somehow it’s hard to see their supporters directing their preferences in that direction. They’ll end up adding to the Labor tally.