This week should have been a shocker for Bill Shorten.
Instead, it ended with the Labor leader laughing so hard, he struggled with his final statement to Parliament on Thursday afternoon as he made merry with what had been one of the worst weeks for the government since the 2015 leadership coup.
"Some days are more interesting than others in this place but it is going to take a most interesting day to top the last hour and a half," Shorten began. No-one disagreed.
Backed by two ministers and an email trail,
Malcolm Turnbull effectively branded Tony Abbott a liar for denying that when prime minister, either he or his office had any role in a deal in August 2015 to lift an import ban on the Adler shotgun in return for
David Leyonhjelm's vote on an immigration bill.
http://www.copyright link/content/dam/images/g/s/8/1/g/x/image.imgtype.afrArticleInline.620x0.png/1477036202022.jpg
Great sport David Rowe
After months of unease between Turnbull and Abbott, the whole show was blown open. There is
no turning back from Thursday's events. The schism is absolute and the competing tensions will continue to gnaw at the Coalition's fortunes while both men remain in Parliament. Just as it did inside Labor when Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard remained in the caucus. There will be good days and bad. The bad will gradually become more frequent.
Shorten was buoyed not just because the other side was a rabble, but because the week was meant to be all about him. And not in a good way. The government had set the scene for a full-blown assault on union thuggery as it pushed through the House of Representatives its signature legislation to re-establish the Australian Building and Construction Commission and establish a Registered Organisations Commission.
All the highlights from the Royal Commission into Trade Union Governance and Corruption were to be revisited.
There was also the festering unrest in Shorten's home state of Victoria driven by two separate issues.
The first was Shorten's captain's pick of
former Health Services Union official Kimberley Kitching to replace Stephen Conroy in the Senate. It is almost impossible to find anyone of consequence in Labor who thinks this is a good idea. Kitching emerged from the Royal Commission blowing smoke and the word most commonly associated with her name is "baggage" in terms of what she will bring to Parliament.
http://www.copyright link/content/dam/images/g/s/7/h/s/d/image.imgtype.afrArticleInline.620x0.png/1477044073483.jpg
Tony Abbott during question time: "The whole show was blown open." Andrew Meares
The selection has achieved the rare, if not unprecedented feat, of uniting the half dozen or so various Right and Left factions, their various splinter groups and the Judean People's Front which comprise the impenetrable organisation otherwise known as Victorian Labor.
There was active discussion this week about how to use the candidate vetting process to overturn the Kitching decision without it been seen as rolling the leader. Any move is unlikely. Shorten is better than most at the internal stuff. The risk for him is that should Kitching become a liability, it will be his responsibility.
The other drama this week in Victoria was caused by Senate backbencher Gavin Marshall launching a jihad against the preselections of Left-aligned MPs Jenny Macklin, Catherine King and Andrew Giles. Marshall backed Kim Carr a few months ago when the national Left tried to throw Carr off the frontbench. Aided by Marshall and a few other defectors, Carr formalised his own Industrial Left faction and saved his shadow ministry. But it cost Marshall his cushy gig of deputy Senate President, a job owned by the National Left.
When Shorten was asked this week about threats being made by Marshall, he was diplomatic.
"I try to encourage all of my members of Parliament, including but not limited to Senator Marshall, not to either on the record or indeed off the record disparage colleagues," he said.
"But I have to say on balance, I'm happy with the team that I've got in the Parliament, including some of the people you just mentioned. I expect my MPs...to be focused on fighting with the Liberals, not amongst ourselves."
Labor icon
Some in the Left, however, were miffed, because Shorten did not go harder on Marshall who was, after all, gunning for two members of shadow cabinet including Macklin, a Labor icon.
Maybe Shorten did not want to make more of it than need be, given the focus was on the circus which was the government. Still, people stick these little things in their back pockets for future use. It reminded one of Kim Beazley failing to adequately defend Simon Crean in March 2006 when a bunch of young Turks from Victoria, led by a union official called Bill Shorten, made a play for a clutch of federal Labor seats in that state. That played into Beazley losing his leadership in December that year.
Labor would have to have rocks in its head to be even thinking about leadership.
The party is 6 points ahead in the polls, Shorten continues to do a good job as leader in terms of party unity and pulling down the government, Labor has a solid policy platform and the other mob is in a mess. And the next election is just two years away. None of what happened in Labor this week compared to the gun fight in the Coalition.
It has damaged the government but in an odd way, probably bolstered Turnbull's leadership.
Turnbull made the initial error of letting the guns issue take hold by not quickly and succinctly on Tuesday morning ruling out any deal on the Adler shotgun after this paper reported Leyonhjelm had put the ban on the table as part of negotiations over the IR bills. But Abbott's colleagues were incredulous when the former prime minister sought to exploit Turnbull's discomfort by railing against any such deal and claiming the 2015 arrangement with Leyonhjelm regarding the ban and the immigration bill had nothing to do with is office or him.
No-one believed it and there is an email trail to back that up. His intervention hurt the government and undermined Turnbull. It has hurt Abbott's standing among his conservative colleagues, including Peter Dutton who, along with Michael Keenan, was essentially accused by Abbott of cutting the "guns for votes" deal without the PM's consent.
"Tony isolated himself," said one conservative and Abbott ally.
"Have you found anyone in the Coalition who thinks what Tony did was smart?"
Read more:
http://www.copyright link/news/poli...&promote_channel=social_twitter#ixzz4NlhCIDBq
Follow us:
@FinancialReview on Twitter |
financialreview on Facebook
