Why Malcolm Turnbull should be looking over his shoulder
It's very easy to look at the current position of Malcolm Turnbull - whose talent for legislative inaction, internal disunity, and massive public relations own goals rivals that of his predecessor - and assume his days are numbered, but there have been two things that have largely ensured his safety as leader.
Those are 1. that it's easier for his internal enemies to manipulate an unpopular leader that's there than go to the trouble of staging a coup, and 2. the lack of any plausible alternative.
"Strange, this seems to be counting down to something…"Credit:Andrew Meares
On the first point, from the perspective of the right of the Liberal party and the increasingly smug-looking Coalition partners in the Nationals, why would they roll Malcolm? Everything they demand, no matter how stupid or unnecessary, gets an immediate, terrified nod.
Abandoning any changes to negative gearing, abandoning changes to superannuation, abandoning the backpacker tax, gutting Safe Schools, maintaining the plebiscite; heck, he even tried to spin the South Australia blackout as being caused by the state's embrace of renewable energy rather than the more prosaic "big power poles getting blown over" and had to be gently corrected by the non-renewable energy-loving Josh Frydenberg. That's just embarrassing.
On the second point, the most powerful frontbenchers either destroyed any hope of future leadership by supporting the leadership coup against Tony Abbott (Julie Bishop), doing a hilariously inept job in government (George Brandis) or both (oh, Scott Morrison: how poisoned a chalice did the Treasury turn out to be…).
And, of course, there are the enduring rumours of Tony Abbott launching a comeback bid, and while he clearly still has aspirations in that direction – humble backbenchers seeking only to represent their constituents don't wander around the planet issuing directives on immigration and military strategy, as a rule – but the reality is that there's little chance of the party backing his return. The Kevin Rudd comparisons would be too on the nose, for one thing, and all those reasons he was dumped – unpopularity, captain's calls, onions – are still very much live.
Meanwhile the future king Christian Porter isn't in any position to make a move just yet, even though other young firebrands of the right are busily making silly, deliberately provocative statements about, say, selling off public artworks in a desperate bid for attention, bless 'em.
However, a bigger problem is potentially coming this weekend when disgruntled elements of the NSW Liberals are going to have a little meeting about getting their own wa… sorry, about the urgent need for democratic reform in the party.
Like all political parties, the Liberals are a viper's nest of scheming factions all vying for control. It's what tore Labor apart under Rudd and Julia Gillard and it's what's threatening to rip the NSW Greens to bits at the moment, but the NSW Liberals are threatening to take it to exciting new heights.
Indeed, the fighting within the NSW Liberals has become so poisonous and public in recent years that Turnbull got one of the few sincere laughs of his political career by claiming "we're not run by factions" at their conference last October. And that's not an audience that laughs much at anything, as a rule.
You might recall that Tony Abbott had a lot to say on the issue of factions on Four Corners back in August, which you remember mainly because you went "Abbott's on the ABC? B-but aren't they some sort of a lefty lynch mob? Did he think he was on Sky News and no one had the heart to correct him?"
"I want to empower the membership, make every member count," he innocently declared. "Now, the difficulty at the moment is that because there's a smaller, less representative party, it's easily controlled by factional warlords… The more members we've got the harder it will be for the factional warlords to control."
Stirring words, except that by "factional warlords", the program claimed, he meant "political lobbyists Michael Photios and Nick Campbell", who both helped firm up the numbers for Turnbull's successful challenge for the leadership. That feeling in your skull was the lightbulb suddenly snapping on.
He's not the only person disguising a personal vendetta as a high-minded zeal for democracy.
On Saturday morning ruffled members of the party are holding the Democratic Reform Convention in Lilyfield, a little get together to talk about how to make the party more open and inviting, specifically for the right wingers of the Liberal Party who are getting mighty sick of the Turnbull-affiliated moderates having free run of the place.
The speakers at this event cover a wide range of political positions, from hardline conservatives with deep grudges against ruling elements of the party (Abbott, Senator Concetta Fierravanti-Wells) to those cranky about the party not letting them have the preselections to which they were obviously, evidently entitled.
These include Operation Sovereign Borders special envoy and failed NSW senate hopeful Jim Molan, failed Fairfield mayoral candidate Dai Le (who was given a 10-year suspension from the Liberals for running an independent campaign after failing to get party endorsement), and Victorian Liberal branch president Marcus Bastiaan, who cancelled his preselection bid for the seat of Goldstein earlier this year when it was clear he wasn't remotely in the running.
In other words, anyone with a portable blade-sharpening kit might want to set up near Leichhardt Park this weekend, because there are going to a lot of people there with some serious axes to grind.
So, to summarise: there's a long game a-brewing in the Liberals, and Turnbull needs to be agile and innovative in how he shows that he's a vital, effective leader while prosecuting his clear, popular agenda to… um, whatever it was that he wanted to do by winning power.
What was that again?
Andrew P Street chats about his new book, The Curious Story of Malcolm Turnbull, with Rebecca Huntley at Gleebooks on Tuesday, October 11.
Andrew P Street is a columnist for Fairfax Media.