Turnbull a flop, Shorten on a roll: Richo

Bad could well turn deplorable for PM Malcolm Turnbull in 2017

• The Australian
• 12:00AM December 31, 2016
• GRAHAM RICHARDSON
  
  Political columnist
  Sydney

This year was an annus horribilis for Malcolm Turnbull and 2017 is shaping up to be no better.

The year 2016 was marked by indecision, prevarication and a lack of focus on tackling the debt and deficit problems that threaten to condemn our children and their children to paying off debt — the legacy left, it seems, by a series of prime ministers who could not grow into their roles because they just could not cut it as captain/coaches of the first grade team.

The man who was going to be the innovative grand master of communication has turned into a resounding dud. He used Tony Abbott’s rotten Newspoll results to oust him and now looks a right goose when he tells us that the polls don’t count. You can afford to smother criticism that may have a grain of truth in it if you are well thought of by the mob. In Turnbull’s case, it is merely seen as feeding the mushrooms with something that has a nasty odour. The mob will never accept being treated like mugs.

An iron rule of politics is that if you’re going to take on a powerful lobby group, you had better have capital in the bank. On the other hand, you have to be aware of your own weakness. Our Prime Minister casts aside any suggestion that he is weak simply because he could never let himself believe this was the truth. So he will invariably choose to blunder on like the bull in a china shop because, despite all the evidence, he still thinks there is an air of invincibility about him. So from his position of weakness he decides to take on older Australians who are not rich but who are not on the bones of their backsides either.

So, with the connivance of the Greens, he gets a clever scheme passed in the Senate that is about to hit. The thresholds at which the pension starts to taper off will be reduced from $1.08 million to $803,000. Then, to prove his tough economic credentials, he throws in an increase in the taper rate from $1.50 for every $1000 in assets over that threshold to $3, returning to where it was pre-John Howard. Howard was unceremoniously dumped from high office almost a decade ago, and for all of those 10 years pensioners have planned their income and expenditure according to those rules.

The Coalition is screaming out that Labor is starting another scare campaign a la Medicare in the last election, but here there is a huge difference. Labor doesn’t need a scare campaign. There are any number of tragic stories coming from pensioners losing substantial sums from their incomes. These are real people with real hardship stories. Labor will find dozens of them and Pauline Hanson will be able to dig up a few more.

Talking to one of my mates up here in Townsville, the story of his in-laws should ring very loud bells in the Prime Minister’s ear. A hardworking couple all their lives, they had no tax dodges and they played by the rules. The dad worked for the council for almost 50 years and recently retired. The couple have a house worth $400,000, superannuation worth $700,000, a boat worth $10,000 and a caravan worth $15,000. They planned their future on the basis of the pension rules applicable at the time of their retirement.

Now they have been whacked for six. They lose $600 a month from their $2100 pension. A one-off hit of that dimension is bound to be a kick in the guts for a pair of loyal Liberal Party voters. Now they have to determine if they go all the way across the spectrum and vote Labor or use the halfway house of Hanson.

There are tens of thousands in this category so the horror story is real, not a Chris Bowen invention. It is the creation of our Prime Minister and he must reap what he has sown.

In 2017, Turnbull needs a respite from the bad polls, bad headlines and party disunity. As New Year’s Eve approaches, Cory Bernardi has started a conservative movement rather than a new party. This does not mean Bernardi’s ambitions have been buried. He is merely testing the water in the hope bigger things come later on next year.

Abbott has honed his skills as a highly effective sniper. When he takes aim, he rarely misses and Turnbull is clueless about how to deal with him. It is food for thought, but why doesn’t Abbott get a cabinet job? This year Turnbull must douse the fires and stop lighting them like a furtive arsonist darting from one forest to the next.

If 2017 is to be a year of rebuilding for the Coalition, they have made a pathetic start. They have declared war on a class of pensioner that is part of their base vote. They are at war with themselves and Abbott’s injection of “it’s the leader’s job to keep the party together” was as true as it was wounding. The Prime Minister may well now declare the polls to be irrelevant but every Newspoll is eagerly awaited. He will not be able to stop his cabinet or his caucus from dissecting them. If the polls have not improved by the middle of the year, the party that has never warmed to this bloke will take him out. Scott Morrison has rebuilt his stocks after a lacklustre period and would have to be favourite. For Turnbull, the clock is ticking loudly.

For Bill Shorten, 2017 will also be a make-or-break year. This year he surprised everyone. Back in January and February the knives were out for him. The backrooms were clogged with would-be kingmakers plotting his demise. He was saved by two things: his own performance began lifting dramatically and the mob woke up to Turnbull. The polls began to improve and the backrooms began to empty.

The July election gave Shorten a tremendous boost. The ridiculously long campaign conceived by the Prime Minister was a true debacle. For the best part of two months he floundered while searching in vain for a policy, any policy, to make an election centrepiece. Meanwhile our Bill ran a brilliant scare campaign. He could not prove that the Coalition would tear the guts out of Medicare but he didn’t need to. There was enough suspicion about the depth of the Coalition’s commitment to Medicare and Turnbull’s commitment to anything for the campaign to work a treat.

The result startled everyone and none more so than Shorten. Blessed by the full-time assistance of Peter Barron, the best political adviser in the country, the gaffes disappeared and the lines got crisper. Since the election the polls have remained healthy for Labor, so as I write this there is absolutely no internal pressure on Shorten.

He has infuriated the Right by forcing Kimberley Kitching on them as Stephen Conroy’s Senate replacement. The Left were alienated when he kept Kim Carr in the cabinet after he was vanquished by the Left’s federal caucus.

While Shorten shows a steely determination to get his own way with personalities, he has shown no such inclination to take on the factions — that means the Left — in creating the kinds of policies Labor will need to win in 2019. The thugs in the Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union still have his protection. He will not move against it in any event, using the number of good people still working in the union as an excuse. This gives the Coalition way too much ammunition to fire at him.

Australians still refuse to believe that Labor can be trusted to mind the till. Yet Labor refuses to properly acknowledge its economic failures during the Rudd-Gillard years. Shorten has a chance to break the mould of dud prime ministers who have siphoned hope from too many of us. I want him to be real, successful and to truly lead. He has not convinced me that he is up to that description.

The Senate could upset many an apple cart in 2017 and the role Pauline Hanson plays will be crucial. She has a great capacity to jump on people’s fears and ride the wave for a long time. We should not forget, however, how the Hanson phenomenon began. When she was elected to the lower house about two decades ago, it was the Asians who were the threat to our civilisation. It was Chinese migration that had to be halted. Today there is nary a whisper about Asians. Today she voices the fears many Australians have of Muslims and calls for no more of them to be allowed in. Pauline knows how to scare people but I am not sure if that is sufficient to have a real say in running our country.

The last time she won a swag of seats in the Queensland parliament, it all ended in tears and the end came quickly. Hanson is no leader. She has always found it hard to keep teams together because it soon becomes apparent too many of those under her are much brighter than she. Already she has lost 25 per cent of her Senate representation and we can only wonder how long the others will stay with her.

It seems that I am throwing the phrase “make-or-break year” around with gay abandon but it is legitimate in this case. This time around, One Nation is better funded and has a recognisable structure — both of these factors have been missing in the past. If she can hold herself together through dozens of tough interviews and keep the rest of her Senate team together, then 2017 may turn out to be a good year for her. To sum up, she is an OK person, but for all those considering a vote for One Nation she is a false god.

Another key player on the Senate crossbench is Nick Xenophon. When you watch him in a television interview or listen to him on radio he is instantly recognisable as a class act. In my view he is the best retail politician in the country. He won three seats in the Senate from South Australia and is an extremely powerful force there. Here is the classic case of the bloke who loves being the big fish in the small pond. Here is someone who could make a real splash across the country yet outside his home state he has little profile. It’s a mystery.

The year ahead will test us all economically. Wages will remain relatively stagnant and that can only increase the number of disgruntled voters. If a big Italian bank falls over, then a world financial crisis will hit us all. Fear not, dear reader, no matter what trouble is brewing, our Malcolm is here to save us and, if he is not, there is always Abbott, who said a few days ago that keeping the party united was the job of the leader. Now he comes out, acts like the leader, and calls for party unity. For our Prime Minister, Abbott is a minor problem, so the major problems must be major indeed.


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