Last week’s hullabaloo about Malcolm Turnbull trying to superglue himself to the prime minister’s job shouldn’t obscure the real reason why he had to go.
Yes, as Senator James Paterson observed, Turnbull’s behaviour since leaving the leadership was what his colleagues had always had to endure.
And yes, as Attorney-General Christian Porter revealed, in his attempts to save his job, Turnbull had tried to use the Governor-General as a kind of human shield. RELATED: Turnbull fires back over Dutton plot
But as everyone who’s ever known him has concluded: “Malcolm’s for Malcolm.”
For him, the prime ministership was always his due, on account of self-assessed personal brilliance, rather than a form of service to the country.
At one level, Turnbull had to go because he was leading the Coalition to an inevitable defeat. No one who’d clocked-off in his first campaign at 2pm and who thought election campaigns should be a coronation rather than a contest was going to win from a minority situation — particularly when his last effort was a 14-seat loss.
Take Longman (Queensland) and Braddon (Tasmania) as examples; having thrown them away in 2016 and lost them again in the Super Saturday by-elections, there was just no way his colleagues believed he could do what Scott Morrison did in winning these seats back. MORE FROM PETA CREDLIN: Left-wing activists fail to see the light on Adani
Morrison didn’t win just because he was a daggy dad from the suburbs who loved his rugby league, as opposed to ‘‘Mr Harbourside Mansion’’ who spoke the language of ‘‘progressives’’. Morrison won because, unlike Turnbull, he was a tribal Liberal who appreciated that you only win by being different from your opponent.
Attorney-General Christian Porter and former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull. Picture: Kym Smith
Keeping in mind John Howard’s observation that the Liberal Party is the custodian of both the liberal and the conservative political traditions, essentially, there are two types of Liberal-National Party government: there’s reforming Coalition government; big “C” conservative government, if you like, that gets budgets under control and implements free-market reforms; and there’s the ‘‘mind-the-shop’’ sort, or conservative government with a small “c”, that mostly just makes incremental changes in response to the pressure of events. MORE FROM PETA CREDLIN: When will Leftie protestors get a grip?
While circumstances sometimes demand more of one type or more of the other, both are credible centre-right positions; and both are quite different from Labor, which invariably wants more taxes, more spending and social upheaval, too.
Howard’s government was a capital “C” conservative government when it sold-off Telstra, introduced a GST and made welfare recipients work for their dole. And so was Tony Abbott’s when it scrapped the mining and carbon taxes, cut red tape and spending, tried (and failed) to introduce a Medicare co-payment and made school leavers learn or earn.
But mostly, so far, Scott Morrison’s government has been more small “c”.
Yes, there have been tax cuts, but so far he’s resisted pressure to cut immigration in order to take the pressure off our cities, and he’s failed to stare down the green-zealots by building new coal-fired power stations to keep prices low and to stop blackouts. MORE FROM PETA CREDLIN: Keneally’s plum position comes down to one thing
While Turnbull kept Abbott’s border-protection policy, on nearly every other issue he was Labor-lite, going in the same direction as Labor, only not so far.
Indeed, in a red rag to the Liberal base, in 2017, Turnbull even declared that the Liberals were a party of the centre, not the centre-right. He threw $20 billion extra at “Gonski” when higher educational standards are needed rather than more money.
His 2016 budget superannuation changes penalised so-called “rich” retirees, who were anything but wealthy. His energy policy, that was more about cutting emissions than cutting price, was specifically designed to win over state Labor governments (that in itself was a red flag). And even for a time, until warned off by the Coalition party room, Turnbull had contemplated adopting Labor’s changes to negative gearing.
That’s why he could never have emulated Morrison’s successful campaign against Labor, particularly its 50 per cent renewable energy target. Deep down, these were things that Turnbull himself supported.
As the 46th Commonwealth Parliament is sworn in this week, and the reality of Morrison’s unwinnable win sinks in, it’s now his chance, as his own man, to do something with the office of Prime Minister, something meaningful that sets Australia up for a better and safer future. But at least you know, unlike his predecessor, that it really will be a Liberal government.
