The venerable Australian political commentator Paul Kelly wrote this week that conservatism was devouring itself, consumed, he said, by personal aggrandisement, ideological delusion and populist fervour.
This “upheaval”, as Kelly termed it, was likely to “deliver power to the Labor party and generate a structural split among conservatives that will weaken their cause for years to come”.
It was quite the cri de coeur.
The challenges for centre-right politics in Australia were certainly on full display this week. First there was that Newspoll, showing a dive in the Coalition’s primary vote and a positive bump for One Nation and “others”.
Pauline Hanson arrived back in Canberra for the new parliamentary year, minus the Rod Culleton irritant, looking enormously pleased with herself. Cory Bernardi finally defected, and George Christensen kept wandering around like an untethered bull, musing about crossing the floor, not leaving the LNP, then, possibly, leaving, no, staying. Tony Abbott fired the odd Facebook missile, Kevin Andrews boned up on Trumpism in full view of colleagues in the House of Representatives, yellow highlighter aloft.
Mikearoo (@mpbowers)
Kevin Andrews gets some quality Trump time during #QT @gabriellechan @murpharoo @GuardianAus #politicslive pic.twitter.com/uCmPI5RIHR
February 8, 2017
You can see why Kelly, the omniscient narrator of orderly arcs of Australian political history, is concerned about the trajectory of establishment centre-right politics.
But the chaos of the week also yielded some insights. If we step back far enough to look through the static, these things can be observed.
Malcolm Turnbull has come back from the Christmas break wanting, as one of his colleagues put it to me this week, to “give comfort” to the conservative element in the Coalition, which makes up the vast bulk of the grassroots membership.
Obviously it’s not new for Turnbull to genuflect to the right. The prime minister, as everyone can observe, has been at pains to keep the peace with conservatives since taking the leadership in 2015, attempting to lead in collegiate fashion, at considerable personal cost.
But this is a different sort of calculation.
Right now, the right of Australian politics is fracturing, just as the left fractured when the ALP lost a chunk of its people to the Greens, and found itself left with a depressed primary vote, which makes it harder to win government at the federal level in its own right.
Just before Christmas, I spent time with people in Adelaide, formerly rusted-on Coalition types, who had drifted over to the Nick Xenophon Team because Xenophon is seen to validate their concerns, and he attempts to get results.
Time on the ground is illuminating. It tells you there’s a big structural shift going on.
A chunk of the Coalition’s base is jack of Canberra incrementalism, and some voters are energised by reactionary responses to contemporary problems. That’s where One Nation sounds appealing. “We are going through a cathartic experience,” a member of the government said to me this week.
So the post-Christmas fine-tuning isn’t an exercise in maintaining crude factional balance, or the “whatever it takes” calculations a leader makes to hold on to power. The effort right now is centred on trying to keep disaffected voters in-house, rather than drifting off to splinter groups.
Government people know Hanson is a more accomplished politician than she was during her first stint in Canberra, and if the Bernardi movement somehow manages to catch fire, splinter groups on the right will not be a transient phenomenon.
So that’s the government’s problem. What’s been the response?
We’ve seen an outbreak from the government of coal devotion, in one case, a farcical outbreak, driven in part by the competition from “others” and surly voter sentiment in regional Queensland’s coal central, and in South Australia. (The coal pivot is considerably more complicated than courtship politics, but let’s just bank that element of the story for now.)
We’ve seen the government rip the gold pass off those nasty establishment politicians – which is all about hitting the front bar nod test down at Disaffection Pub. The government also dumped plans to compulsorily acquire prime farmland in Queensland, which was to be used for joint training exercises with Singapore’s military. Hanson had arrived with her surfboard to jump on that issue, with Ray Hadley in tow, and the problem disappeared in five minutes flat.
The opening of the parliamentary year has been an exercise in mass signalling to the base. And it’s not over yet. More is coming. Just a heads up. Peter Dutton is tanned, has a new buzz cut, and is raring to go.
But having watched Abbott as prime minister speak more or less exclusively to the base, and no one else, perhaps the Coalition has learned the odd thing.
Turnbull is also trying to be base plus. He’s trying to send a signal that the government cares about bread and butter issues – cost of living, affordable childcare, high power prices.
The exciting times are gone. Clean-cut young T-shirted tech heads in start-ups, the masters of the ultra competitive and unforgiving global labour market, are on the back burner. Mums ’n bubs are in. The daily seminar about the virtues of trickle-down economics has been nixed. Turnbull is presenting himself as the man who will keep the lights on (never mind the fine print about lacking the policies to keep the lights on at the least cost to households.)
It’s also been interesting this week to watch the prime minister make peace with himself, and in Trump style, try to make his biography a political virtue.
While Turnbull’s wealth has been the subject of blue-on-blue attacks (most famously with Peta Credlin and that ferocious put-down, Mr Harbourside Mansion), and constant Labor negative messaging (Turnbull is out of touch, that’s why he cuts benefits he’s never needed to access) – the prime minister squared his shoulders this week and declared his privilege a virtue.
Privilege meant he could not be bought. Privilege meant accomplishment, which translates to being prime ministerial. If he was Trump, he might have observed he wasn’t a creature of the swamp. As he is Malcolm Turnbull, he’s declared he is not a political “hack”.
This too is a nod message for the base, where making something of yourself resonates.
Barnaby Joyce translated the message into base speak best this week. “As I’ve said before, look, if I’m going to have a choice between someone running the country with the arse out of their pants, who’s never made a buck, or someone who’s actually made a dollar, got ahead … remember, Mr Turnbull owns a nice stack on the harbour because he’s worked very hard and been successful. And that’s what we want in this nation. We should celebrate success.”
Outside the base, many people heard a nasty, reflexive classism in the Turnbull put-down of Bill Shorten this week – a very clear suggestion from the prime minister that Shorten should know his place, rather than hobnobbing with Melbourne billionaires – social climbing.
The Labor MP Tim Watts summarised the unimpressed responses to Shorten being called a parasite and a sycophant by Turnbull. “I’m a public school boy and we know exactly what it means when toffs and snobs say someone is a social climber. It means know your place. It means don’t rise above your station.”
A lot of people did hear Turnbull’s message in precisely those terms, and won’t forget it quickly. If there’s a pitched political battle on around the world for white working-class votes, it’s probably best to be a teensy bit careful about declaring global domination from Point Piper.
But again if we look through the noise of the week to the prime ministerial calculation, it’s interesting.
I’ve said consistently this year that Turnbull is in all sorts of trouble. I said his speech this week was a nothing-left-to-lose expression of personal frustration, as well as a punt from a position of political weakness.
But the Shorten sortie is also a statement of intent.
The government knows Labor has been winning the head-to-head battle, and is cutting through with voters.
Sensible people in the government respect Shorten’s ability to shape a political message, and his dexterity on his feet, and the government also fears Labor’s massive field campaign machine with an existential kind of terror.
But while admiring his backroom craft and his institutional heft, people also believe Shorten, as a public figurehead, is a drag on the Labor brand, a human hesitation factor for swinging voters.
Rationally, that would be an argument to leave him well alone – but politics is often not very rational. Combat freaks are wired to go after weakness. Politicians are hunters, always on the lookout for prey.
As the new political year opens, I’d much rather be Bill Shorten than Malcolm Turnbull.
But we all need to bear in mind that combat freaks are singular characters, not inclined to forfeit – always backing themselves to belt their way off the ropes.
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