Backbenchers are so fed up with the PM’s backflips, they’re even talking about Malcolm Turnbull as the man who might save the government.
Luck’s been elusive in 2015. Abbott’s first talk-back caller on Neil Mitchell’s top-rating 3AW radio program was from a self-described “through-and-through” Liberal supporter named Andrew.
The danger for Abbott is that it is in the heartland where disillusionment with the government seems at its strongest.
“I’ve got to be honest and truthful with you, Mr Prime Minster, you’re on the nose with Liberal voters and that’s a real concern to me because I don’t want to see you give the keys to Bill Shorten at the Lodge … I have got to tell you, you are the world’s worst salesman, Prime Minister,” he said.
Illustration: Simon Letch
“What is the specific problem, is there a policy thing you don’t agree with?”, Abbott inquired.
“Prime Minister, it’s the way you do things, like the Medicare thing, with the education, you’ve done so many backflips, people don’t know where you are going and business is saying there are roadblocks because there is no direction and no leadership … as a Liberal voter, I don’t particularly like you,” Andrew replied.
Ouch!
Illustration: Simon Letch
“Yes it has been a messy start,” intoned one of Tony Abbott’s ministers wearily amid nascent leadership chatter. The year had barely started when a plan “B” slashing the Medicare payment to GPs by $20 for short consultations, had been summarily abandoned on the eve of its commencement.
And since then, a senior source wanted it known the idea of the cut had been the Prime Minister’s from the start. Health Minister Peter Dutton had argued forcefully against it in Cabinet’s Expenditure Review Committee, and been backed by Joe Hockey, but they were overruled. The leak was telling.
Just like the friendless $7 per-patient co-payment barnacle it had partly replaced, the short-consult penalty was suddenly “off the table”. Once again, the government had sustained serious political damage for zero budgetary gain. Not for the first time, backbenchers were flummoxed.
What was going on? Had Abbott learnt the lessons of a woeful 2014 and replaced his legendary stubbornness with a new fleet-footed pragmatism? Perhaps, but a blunter interpretation saw only a triple defeat – a backflip from what had already been a backflip which had only been necessary in the first place because of a politically toxic broken promise, which was never sold to voters.
Abbott wanted more than anything to begin the game afresh having tied off the least productive fights as unwinnable. Last year had ended in desultory fashion characterised by a series of grudging half-retreats – the kind that left the government carrying both the humiliation of admitting its errors while still being lumbered with elements of the primary problem.
The Prime Minister had assured colleagues his pre-Christmas clean-up would facilitate a repositioning in the new year. Yet 2015 has commenced amid confusion at least as severe. Now, the “judgment” word is being muttered.
The horror for many Liberals, and the danger for Abbott is that it is in the heartland where disillusionment with the government seems at its strongest. MPs say they are picking up genuine anger within their own membership.
Abbott is well aware his leadership has entered its most fraught period, having already been forced to address the question before Christmas. “I think the one fundamental lesson of the last catastrophic government was that you don’t lightly change leaders,” he had told reporters. He was at it again on Thursday when asked on 3AW if he was aware of “increasing speculation” that he would consider stepping down if the problems continued?
“Yeah that’s nonsense, absolute nonsense,” he said. “… you do not change leaders; you rally behind someone and you stick to the plan.”
Yet the very fact that the PM is having to field such questions when he is trying to talk about other matters, speaks to his situation. Colleagues wonder anyway what the plan is given that it keeps changing.
A working assumption in Canberra has held that Abbott’s leadership is more secure than a Labor leader faced with the same problems. First, Liberals are culturally less inclined than Labor to embrace the percussive brutality needed to tear down a prime minister. In addition, the Coalition witnessed up-close in 2010 what voters thought about knifing a sitting PM and would simply not flirt with that. Yet another interpretation of the tumultuous events of 2010 is that they not so much reinforced the rules, as tossed them out. Hence forth, anything is possible in politics.
What is undeniable is that murmurings have started and that cracks are appearing in the government facade. On Tuesday, The Australian splashed with a story beginning “Joe Hockey has ruled out any backdown on government plans to deregulate university fees …”
The very next day, the Oz’s splash read: “The Abbott government is preparing to sacrifice up to $2 billion in budget savings in a bid to regain momentum and kick off the new year with a much-needed political victory on higher education reform”. Same government. Same subject. And yet completely contradictory positions.
For the first time since 2009 when he was bundled out of the leadership, Malcolm Turnbull’s name is being mentioned positively by influential figures on the party’s right – something that was inconceivable not so long ago.
Asked if conservatives really would consider lining up behind the moderate Turnbull now, one right-wing figure said events had already gone beyond left-right divisions.
In reality, Abbott probably has more time than his critics claim and plans to forge ahead using a National Press Club address on February 2 to chart the course for his political year.
But heavy weather externally is no longer his only existential threat. Now he must be alive to the threat of mutiny as well.
source:theage.com.au
STUDIO 3 NEWCASTLE AUSTRALIA 