In one of the most astonishing and farcical political moments of recent decades, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has taken the unprecedented step of adjourning parliament, at Peter Dutton’s request, to head off the chaos around his leadership.
At 11.35 this morning, the government’s Leader of the House, Christopher Pyne, rose and moved that the house be adjourned, preventing question time later today and the opportunity for the opposition to test the government’s numbers under Turnbull, Dutton, or anyone else — such as Scott Morrison, mooted as a possible leadership contender if the Prime Minister doesn’t stand.
With a majority of just one, and Coalition backbenchers threatening to move to the crossbench if Dutton succeeds, there are real questions over whether the government could avoid defeat on a vote of no confidence today, sending the country to an election. Unsurprisingly, Labor savaged the decision, with Manager of Opposition Business Tony Burke, Bill Shorten and Deputy Tanya Plibersek each hammering the government, whose members sat shattered opposite them.
It’s still unclear how Turnbull will deal with the loss of Mathias Cormann and a slew of ministers this morning — Mitch Fifield, Angus Taylor, Steve Ciobo, Greg Hunt and others — whether he will fight or try to make room for Scott Morrison to build the numbers to stop Dutton — which could mean stringing this chaos out until next week. Either way, the staggering shuttering of the House of Representatives will ensure the Turnbull government ends on unprecedented dysfunction. It’s an extraordinary day in Australian democracy.
Never mind…every single improving economic metric in which this Government claim credit, occurred completely independently of their policies. As was the only single notable social policy they allowed to pass through unhindered, which was of course the plebiscite driven SSM policy.
We’ll do just fine with no actual Coalition Government up until the time that our porcine GG decides to get off his pinstriped arse and do something radical like call the PM in and suspend this miserable rabble of a Government.
The pinstripes were the Kerr outfit, army greens would be appropriate this time..!!
Elasticated?
“the staggering shuttering of the House of Representatives will ensure the Turnbull government ends on unprecedented dysfunction. ”
Those who witness the Conservative’s coup in 1975 will know they shatter conventions and shut down Parliament at their convenience, if they can gain a plotical advantage.
And so Turnbull’s Govt will end in “unprecedented dysfunction” – Fitting really, don’t you think?
Oops – make that “political ” advantage.
Plotical is rather apt, no?! 🙂
For all the good this LNP mob have done since Lab. lost the election, it might as well stay shutdown.
Mal Talkbull loves to spout about all the bills that have been passed since his assent. However about all that was left if the original bill, after all the concessions to every Tom,Dick and Harriet who had to be appeased, about all that remained was the title.
Whoopsy!
Should have been “of the Bill”.
It’s nice to be vindicated in my long term view that literally the only thing Turnbull cares about is maximising the number of days he can call himself Prime Minister. Possibly the number of hours, minutes and seconds too.
What will happen is either PM ScoMo or PM Dutton, the two men who built their reputations on the Liberal Party base’s favourite pastime of competing to see who can be nastiest to asylum seekers. Turnbull is cactus.
ScoMo could conceivably get the whole mess to calm down for 2 or 3 months while they prepare to go to the polls. Maybe Turnbull would even unselifshly stay in Parliament that long in a wrenching break of character, though I doubt it.
With Dutton, between the immediate byelection requirement and his s44 concerns, he’d need to go to the polls to render the s44 issue dead for this term of parliament (and deal with the s44 issue beyond doubt before nominatin).
I would bet ScoMo if I had to put money down, but we’re dealing with irrationals so they might spite me on this.
How will we know when we’ve touched bottom in this abyss that is Turnbull’s arrogance?
“Born to Rule”?
He won’t go gracefully – he will try to stuff the whole crew before he is thrown overboard. To come to think of it he has been stuffing around since he arrived at the job. To be fair by his own metrics he should have gone when his disapproval rate equalled Tony’s
Rule to be borne, by the rest of us.