The Turnbull Gamble: van Onselen and Errington look at federal politics

Malcolm Turnbull and Kate Coomb at Glenelg beach in Adelaide. Picture: Kelly Barnes

Whatever happened to Malcolm Turnbull? It’s more than a year since the Prime Minister took office in the most dramatic fashion, but the days of a 68 per cent approval rating are far behind him. Tony Abbott is restless on the backbench, the latte sippers think Turnbull broke their hearts, the Senate is a zoo and the so-called delcon hard conservatives ­despise him. It makes you wonder if the coup in September last year was for anyone. Well, Peter van Onselen, a contributing ­editor to this newspaper, and his regular collaborator Wayne Errington are wondering the same thing. The academic duo has worked ­together on several book-length quickies about our recent political history. The Turnbull Gamble follows Turnbull from the day he dethroned Abbott to the Pyrrhic victory of election night this year. A lot of it may seem like old news but this book provides a handy guide to the past 14 months in federal politics.

At the heart of The Turnbull Gamble is the question of the Liberal Party and the nature of Australian conservatism. Most people would probably divide the nation’s ruling party into a moderate faction led by Turnbull and a conservative one led by Abbott. Van Onselen and Errington show it’s not quite that simple.

Turnbull’s leadership push succeeded because it was led by members of the Liberal Right such as John Howard’s former chief of staff ­Arthur Sinodinos and Victorian right-winger Mitch Fifield (who had helped tumble Turnbull as opposition leader over his support of Kevin Rudd’s emissions trading scheme). The authors think it’s Turnbull’s friends more than his ­enemies who are pushing him to the right.

Yes, Turnbull supports gay marriage and ­believes in climate change. But it was his opposition to Rudd’s refugee policies that would evolve into Abbott’s “stop the boats” mantra and his opposition to the second stimulus package that would form the basis of the Coalition’s “debt and deficit disaster” chant. Van Onselen and Errington provide a convincing portrait of a somewhat traditional Liberal leader, one that may surprise both the lefties still pining for the Mal who used to wear leather jackets on the ABC’s Q&A and the Abbott supporters who think he’s a Trotskyite.

Van Onselen and Errington provide a few flashbacks to Turnbull’s time as opposition leader from 2008 to 2009 where he was ­ultimately pulled down by the combination of his support for tough action on climate change and his monumental misjudgment in the case of Godwin Grech. The opposition nightmare is a brief episode in this shortish book but it offers an understanding of how much Turnbull has changed and how much he has stayed the same.

The Turnbull Gamble goes through those first heady months when Turnbull was the most popular prime minister since the honeymooning Rudd but, even then, we see how things started to go wrong. His decision to act on the advice of ­Finance Minister Mathias Cormann to go to a double-dissolution election in July was probably the crucial error of judgment. But van Onselen and Errington suggest the company Turnbull keeps continues to let him down.

He has been more consultative and less condescending to his colleagues. His political judgment, though, remains flawed, and what advice he is getting doesn’t seem to be improving matters. A double dissolution election with an interminable campaign was a poor decision. Going early would have been fine; going late would have been fine; the long campaign made the middle option the worst option. This is one moment where Turnbull’s instincts for a late election would have served him better than consulting with his team.

It’s one of the paradoxes of the Turnbull ­government that this leader, notorious for his vertiginous self-confidence and nasty temper, has been weakened by his apparent attempts to change, to include people more in his decision- making. The reader finishes this book with a clearer idea of why that lioness of a chief of staff Peta Credlin tried to keep these characters out of Abbott’s ear. Apart from our leading actor, van Onselen and Errington offer an interesting look at Scott Morrison and his position in the Liberal leadership ­pecking order. He was the darling of the Right because of his successful border protection strategy but has lost their love for enabling Turnbull’s victory over Abbott. There’s a special mention of supporters of his predecessor as treasurer, Joe Hockey, such as Immigration Minister Peter Dutton and Trade Minister Steve Ciobo, who are now antagonists of Morrison.

Then the election comes and it’s a mess the whole way through. Turnbull ran out of ­policies to announce in his 12-week campaign and never seemed to like the company of the average voter. Any boost he got halfway through — when Labor announced it would have a bigger budget deficit — was cancelled out by Labor’s “Mediscare” campaign. Van Onselen and Errington are scornful of the ALP’s claims the Coalition would privatise Medicare but concede that Bill Shorten’s line of attack was deadly in its effectiveness and Abbott and Hockey’s GP co-payment debacle and cuts to health funding weakened Turnbull’s ability to fight back.

Opposition Leader Bill Shorten campaigning on Medicare in Townsville. Picture: Getty Images

Opposition Leader Bill Shorten campaigning on Medicare in Townsville. Picture: Getty Images

Turnbull won 76 seats in July, after more than a week of agonised waiting. The night of the election, according to van Onselen and Errington, the Prime Minister was beside himself at the prospect of a parliament as hung and as ­horrible as Julia Gillard’s. Even now the tensions in his party and the terrors in the Senate make his attempts to govern look a bit weak.

So was it worth the gamble? Van Onselen and Errington say yes, just.

Turnbull won a working majority (even if it was by one seat), while Abbott did look like he was heading for a landslide defeat. The authors also say Turnbull has the ability to learn from his mistakes, though they admit he looks ­imperilled.

The Turnbull Gamble is a great first step for anyone who wants to understand Australia’s present political chaos. And it’s a strong study of a Prime Minister who just can’t take a trick.

Richard Ferguson is a Melbourne-based reviewer.

The Turnbull Gamble

By Peter van Onselen and Wayne Errington

MUP, 200pp, $29.99

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