Australian conservatives just showed their prime minister all the mercy that a pack of hungry hyenas reserves for zebra prey on National Geographic. In a dramatic Liberal party-room leadership vote late this evening - morning in Britain - the former leader Malcolm Turnbull toppled the first-term prime minister in a 54-44 vote. It was done with a speed no one could have guessed 24 hours ago. Even more remarkably, Turnbull – a former merchant banker who was famous in Britain in the 1980s for the Spycatcher case -- has become party leader (again). When Abbott himself knifed Turnbull in late 2009, no seasoned observer of Canberra politics had predicted a comeback. Now Turnbull is Australia's 29 th
How did it come to this? Start with widespread discontent with Abbott’s performance at all levels in the party. From his broken election promises on health and education reforms to his selection of Prince Philip as a new Antipodeon knight to his tendency to undermine cabinet government, Abbott upset the sensitivities of not just the metropolitan sophisticates (who have always loathed him) and mainstream Australians (who voted for him in droves two years ago), but many of his parliamentary colleagues (who feared they’d lose their seats in next year’s election).
In fairness, he is a profoundly decent bloke, as those who know him (myself included) can attest. His government repealed the widely unpopular carbon tax. He was courageous and right to advance his belief in tough border protection. He spoke for millions of people in doing so -- including many members of the ethnic minorities who fear a breakdown in borders would dampen public confidence in large-scale immigration. Implicit in his advocacy of border protection was a truly conservative belief in the integrity of the nation and its institutions.
Ultimately, alas, he was simply too ineffectual, too weak on television, too devoid of charisma, to make a fist of prime minister. As Turnbull pointed out today, the conservative Liberal-National coalition under Abbott’s leadership had been trailing Labor in every respectable opinion poll for the past 18 months.
As for Turnbull, it seems extraordinary for those of us who wrote him off as yesterday’s man. Wasn’t Turnbull the climate enthusiast, the one whose support for the Rudd Labor government’s emissions trading legislation on the eve of the Copenhagen fiasco in 2009 nearly destroyed his party? Didn’t he naively call on then-prime minister Kevin Rudd and his treasurer Wayne Swan to resign over some dodgy deal based on what turned out to be a forged email produced by an eccentric bureaucrat?
But Liberals are not rallying to Turnbull because he doles out the ideological red meat to the conservative base. Rather he ticks several important boxes. He has senior cabinet experience. He is sound on the economy. He is not gaffe prone. And he is a clever, aggressive performer in the parliament.
This will be good enough to equip him for the job ahead. For few Liberals actually believe they are about to choose a future John Howard or Robert Menzies. Rather they want someone who can impose some discipline and make the Government something other than a national joke.
They may look like a party with a death wish, but Liberal MPs believe tonight is an act of self-preservation, not self-destruction. For the Liberal party room that has sacked Abbott, the moment feels cathartic, the relief of having ended a spate of bad polls and bad news stories. A shot of adrenalin has coursed through the Liberal body politic, the pumped-up hope that the Government’s luck may be about to change. With the failed Abbott gone, government optimists believe their new leader will lead them to a new tomorrow.
But the immediate future hardly looks bright. The Liberal party may manage to avoid yet another round of internal bloodletting, but the government still faces a hostile senate (upper house), a poll-driven political culture and a relentless 24-7 media and internet environment that makes it exceedingly difficult for governments to enact sound long-term economic reforms. So it will be an uneasy inheritance.
Tom Switzer, a former editor of Spectator Australia (2009-14), is host of Between the Lines on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Radio National.