On the weekend over sixty bush fires were burning across New South Wales. It’s just gone mid-August. Last week saw the earliest total fire bans on record. 2018 is on course to be the fourth-hottest year globally on record — behind 2015, 2016 and 2017. Summer bush fires have killed scores in Europe and the US. Heat waves have killed scores more across the northern hemisphere.
But in Canberra, the argument over an energy policy that would do virtually nothing to curb Australia’s rising carbon emissions has become the ignition point for yet another bitter split that threatens the Liberal Party. The only fire a lot of people in Canberra are focused on this week is the one that threatens to engulf the Prime Minister.
So this morning a panicked Turnbull dumped his policy, jettisoning the emissions reductions targets from the National Energy Guarantee entirely and replacing them with a grab-bag of savage competition measures, including divestment powers, aimed at punishing power companies. The emissions targets remain a kind of vague aspiration, but one that Turnbull says he can’t get through parliament, so they’re on hold. It’s a complete capitulation to denialists in an effort to douse the fire around his leadership — not to mention an embrace of a whole new level of government interventionism from a government we were once promised would be “thoroughly liberal”.
Will it be enough? That seems unlikely now, with reports that the LNP president Gary Spence called on Queensland MPs to dump Turnbull in favour of Dutton to stave off a collapse in the party’s vote in Queensland. Remember, it was the wretched performance of the LNP and its candidate in Longman that sparked this conflagration in July; Spence in effect is demanding that Turnbull pay the price for his own and his party’s failure in a seat that, given One Nation’s preference decision, should have been a gimme.
Moreover, there are of course some in the Coalition who won’t be satisfied with anything Turnbull does because it’s not about policy. Turnbull, after all, was literally implementing Tony Abbott’s climate policy from when he was Prime Minister. Abbott demanded Turnbull change the NEG, and when he did, Abbott attacked the change over the weekend as “policy on the run”. We know that Abbott is the most inconsistent hypocrite in federal politics; if he really was a weathervane, his high-speed gyrations could power much of the energy grid.
Today’s Ipsos Fairfax poll only ups the pressure. Even The Oz, which normally looks askance at other polling, dutifully reported a shocker for the government, 55-45. Turnbull has had truly rotten luck with polls. He is well past due for a narrow Newspoll win, simply based on statistical variability, but hasn’t got one. And today’s poll looks bizarre. The Greens do not have 13% support across the country. And whether One Nation’s support is high enough to push “Other” to a remarkable 19% is also unclear. For all that, though, there’s a core truth in the poll: Labor can comfortably win with a vote in the mid-30s, because it gets back nearly all those Green votes via preferences. But the Coalition can’t win with a vote in the mid-30s because it only gets around two-thirds of One Nation and other right-wing preferences back. On current form, the Coalition is starting a fight with one hand tied behind its back.
But the election is down the track. For now, the dominant question in politics is whether today’s surrender to the denialists and permanent naysayers will be enough to extinguish a push for Peter Dutton. It may stave off that push for now. But the problem with policy surrender is that it prompts the question of what you really stand for — a question most of us have been asking about Turnbull for some time but which will now be universal. He is desperate to avoid a repeat of 2009. Fair enough. But while he lost the leadership then, he emerged from it having regained the respect of the electorate for standing up for his principles. This time, he might end up losing both.
See Bernard, I told you last week that declaring a Coalition recovery was “doing a Kenny”… Parliament sits, Turnbull gets scrutiny, Turnbull collapses. You went too early and got some of that press gallery groupthink all over you.
And declaring he’d won in the party room and that Abbott had lost the power to damage Turnbull’s government… yeah, not your best work.
Even now Katharine Murphy is trying to sell a narrative of poor old Malcolm who nobly tried to craft a real policy solution to climate change but was undermined, rather than a bloke who could have had a real bipartisan energy policy any time he was actually willing to prioritise that ahead of capitulating to the Duttonites, and who has been doing nothing but trying to craft a policy solution that lets him claim to have a climate change policy (satisfying easily pleased barrackers like Murphy) while not aggravating Abbott and co. Joke is on him, there was never such policy available. Abbott is using the same strategy of “trash everything they suggest” as both he and Turnbull use against Labor.
Turnbull is finished. The only question is whether the media keep trying to prop him up a few weeks long until Dutton gives him a coup de grace, or whether they accept it’s over and start considering the possibility of PM Shorten?
Up here in Q Limited News is trying to sell us “Down Boy” Dutton :-
Last week it was his “smile and personality”, “He doesn’t have to win everyone over, just 50 percent plus one at the ballot box” (2pp anyway : good luck getting “50 percent plus one” of the primary, “Dorothy Dickson”);
Toady it’s “Many do not see the bloke who has as big heart, a great sense of humour … dribble, dribble, dribble … Dutton’s story is impressive and surprising drool, drool, drool ….. If he does take the leadership, Dutton needs to show Australia who he is and let his guard down”????
Journalism “research”?
klewso, The Courier-Mail is right, Dutton can actually smile. I recall seeing this phenomenon when he was joking about low lying Pacific nations having ‘water lapping at their door’. Personality plus.
It is interesting that you don’t know who Dutton is? Peter Dutton does not engage the people of Australia. He puts a gap between himself and the people. No more to say, as that trait will not make him prime minister.
Que?
For “Dorothy Dickson” read Renee Viellaris “The Coal Miner’s Porter” :– “(Adani) Coal will lift India out of poverty”? Forget about climate change, drought, floods and Bangladesh?
Just one of the “puff adders” at the Curry or Maul’s Limited News Party PR Bubble Blower Factory.
Today’s PR bubbles :-
Paul Williams’ (“Senior lecturer at Griffith University” no less) on “POOP”. The short-term benefit (long term loss) of making Dutton PM? Trying to convince The Party why Dutton shouldn’t be made “Grand Wizard of Oz”. It might save Dutton in Dickson (…. like Howard’s ‘Bennelong PM’ incumbency?) and it might be good for some votes across the state (… like the last state election? Like Longman?) – a snap election – but eventually “Dutton’s sugar-high” honeymoon will wear off? To wit ‘Eventually Queenslanders will twig – after the rest of the country’?
….. Since when has the Queensland state floral emblem been the Lipstick Palm?
Then Matthew Killoran x Swan :- “…… He (Dutton) has barley set foot in regional Queensland since the last election.” Mr Swan said”?
The Curry or Maul? What “An ear for politics”?
Turnbull is afraid of a bipartisan approach to the issue. If Labor supports the policy in the parliament then some of his backbenchers will cross the floor and (cough cough) “weaken” his leadership. It is more important to him to avoid a party split and preserve his PMship than to get his policy through. It seems he is after all prepared to lead a party that does not take climate change seriously – in fact he is prepared to play Political Ninja Warrior to do so.
Shorten is wise not to take the field when the goalposts keep getting shifted.
There is no depth to which Malcolm will not sink in order to hold onto his position as the worst PM since the last one.
Bring on Dutton though…because if they thought Longman was a route, then hold onto your hats because this is going to get ugly.
Arky, Murphy is a joke…has been for years now.
“Worst PM since the last one” Very droll TRH. I may just use that, without attribution of course. 🙂
“He is well past due for a narrow Newspoll win, simply based on statistical variability, but hasn’t got one. ”
Why exactly?
That statistical variability would only give Malcolm a win if he was close. He isn’t.
If anything, the statistical variability explains the polls where the LNP is 2-3 points behind in the polls.
You need to give up on Turnbull. He is done.
Was going to post the same Wayne, even pointing out to Bernard that there is no way he can say that Turnbull hasn’t already been gifted a few outliers (any of the 51/49 results could have been, and should have been read as probably outliers.)
Although this poll is probably also an outlier, it takes the trend back. And this one must have been conducted before the shenanigans of the last 2 days, so there may be much worse in store for the LNP.
how do YOU know what level of support Greens have better than a polling outfit? what secret “journalist voodoo” you got?
You can compare Ipsos polling to the elections they are polling to see they systematically overstate the primary for the Greens and others. It’s known.
But it all comes out in the wash of 2PP figures.
“Let Labor be the people who rabbit on about emissions and renewable power and saving the planet,” said the now unshackled sage of the LNP and serial non sniper as he let rip on what the current thinking is inside the party.. This must be killing Bill..