Katharine Murphy Deputy political editor Friday 13 March 2015
The PM has found himself in a classic bind: if he can’t hold the party behind him, he’s finished. But he won’t win the next election by having a closed conversation
Tony Abbott flexes some political muscle in the House of Representatives. The prime minister has been performing contortions to try and seek approval from his party’s backroom backers. Photograph: Lukas Coch/AAP
In this first part of 2015, the Liberal party has slipped down a narrow tunnel. I’m not talking about continuing bad polls or brain explosions or the day to day outrages – what I mean is key figures have entered a closed conversation to which the voters of Australia are cordially not invited.
Since the penny dropped for Tony Abbott that his leadership is not just going through a challenging phase, but is actually in dire trouble, the prime minister has been in earnest dialogue with the Liberal party base.
You might think a conservative candidate like Abbott, who led his party to an almost-victory in 2010 and an actual one in 2013, might be “their man”. He’s actually not. Abbott’s something of an outrider. One of his main problems in my view (apart from not being very competent) is the contortions he’s performed to try and seek approval from the powerbrokers and the backroom backers. This not entirely convincing transaction feeds his authenticity and trust problem.
I wrote at length about this recently, so I won’t seek to repeat that analysis here. But let’s just note now that Abbott’s in full-scale base romancing. The excessive takedown of the Human Rights Commission president is one example. The ramping up of the national security narrative, another. His throwaway line this week about “lifestyle choices” for people in remote communities is another.
The problem with a closed conversation with the Liberal party base (or a powerful element of it, in any case), is it tends to drag you way off the political centre, particularly if you are … how can I put this politely … a bit of a blunt instrument.
Abbott right now is in that classic bind: if he can’t hold the party behind his leadership then he’s finished. And if he spends all his time speaking to the party he will not win the next federal election because elections don’t get won by speaking to just one group in the community. This is a textbook tailspin. Abbott can’t rely on Labor to lose the 2016 election for him because he is now the prime minister, and not even Labor can lose government from opposition.
Let’s park the quips and move on to consider the other pieces currently on the chessboard.
Julie Bishop is in the fortunate position of being viewed internally as a natural base whisperer so she doesn’t have to perform the obvious over compensatory behaviour that the prime minister is now exhibiting. She just has to convince colleagues that she can hold it together in all weathers and all conditions, and absorb the surprises that political leadership inevitably brings – and for an occasional morale-boosting LOL, throw in a leftfield jibe at either Abbott or his office. You can get away with a lot if you never, ever, stop smiling.
Scott Morrison is in a similar position to Bishop. All he has to do now is look a bit more cuddly. Sometimes. Certainly not too cuddly though. Strong means strong, Scott.
And then there’s Malcolm Turnbull. His path is more difficult. Like Abbott he’s got to turn around an element of residual distrust from the base. (Abbott’s is a smallish element. Turnbull’s is a largish element.) Turnbull has got to convince the backers that he’s one of them – not some high-minded and headstrong communist. That really does tell you a lot about the Liberal party, the enduring suspicion they have about Turnbull. Who, on any serious calculation, could regard Malcolm Turnbull as left-wing?
After a couple of false starts, when Turnbull still laboured under the delusion that his day-to-day job as a senior cabinet minister actually required him to pitch to the political centre – he’s found his base mojo this week. The pitch to the Liberal party true believers was all about the looming fiscal task, which is a popular pitch with the right wing of the Liberal party.
The Liberal party right is not a monolith, but the right faction actually do believe in small government and is sanguine about pursuing the ambition of small government at some political cost. The budget debacle for these folks is a major missed policy opportunity, one that might not come around again.
Malcolm told us … sorry, them, the base, the people who need to know … that he, Malcolm, was absolutely up to the fiscal task. Unlike someone who was indulging himself in a witness box at a defamation trial, or someone else getting cranky with a radio announcer in Kalgoorlie before whispering pleasingly to Alan Jones. You could fill in your own dots really.
Unlike some who might wax and wane – or worse, stuff it up completely – Malcolm had the attention span for the detail, and the stomach for the fight. Sorry, conversation. That’s the new word, isn’t it?
But of course base capture is an affliction troubling not only the Liberal party. The Labor leader Bill Shorten is over the next few months going to face similar tests as his party prepares for its national conference in July.
The Labor party base – the industrial base – is going to want all sorts of things from their man Shorten at the conference, and Shorten is going to need the industrial base to achieve things he wants out of the process, things that will include moderating the idealism of the left-wing progressive grassroots wing of the ALP.
By all current accounts Labor’s left faction is going to enter this conference in its strongest position for some years, and that causes managerial and political problems for Shorten at a number of levels.
Up until now, Shorten has enjoyed quite a lot of agency in day-to-day politics – the policy work where the trade-offs inevitably happen is going on largely behind the scenes, out of sight, out of the daily messaging.
But there’s going to be a public dance over the next few months that will require Shorten to make some tough decisions, particularly for a bloke who styles himself as a centrist and a peacenik. He won’t be able to fully contract out breaking heads. He might have to break the odd one himself, and dare various people with the ability to cause him considerable embarrassment to defy his wishes.
The main issues for the conference are still in gestation, but serious definitional fights loom in economics, in foreign policy, in social policy.
Between now and July, Shorten will have to decide whether his task is delivering for old mates and fellow travellers and institutional backers at national conference – or whether it’s delivering Labor the chance of taking government at the next federal election.
