The Near Death Experience of the Liberal Party of Australia

The party of Robert Menzies and John Howard, Australia’s two longest serving Prime Ministers, has just survived a catastrophic rift – barely and for who knows how long? Civil war erupted sparked by the failure of the party, egged on by its junior coalition partner, to implement what critics termed “the fourth best” policy to tackle climate change and energy security. In spite of the almost universal urging of its historic supporters in the business sector, a diehard bunch of self-proclaimed conservatives clustered in the party’s right wing successfully blocked the more moderate majority to kill off the misleadingly named “national energy guarantee”. In doing so it underlined the total loss of authority of the party leader and Prime Minister Malcolm Bligh Turnbull. This effective vote of no confidence in Turnbull emboldened the ‘conservatives’ to expand their ambitions – to put into play their long run intention to destroy the leader that none had wanted in the first place. His inevitable fate might have been implicit in his unfortunate middle name.

Lurking behind the Bolshie bunch, cracking the whip, strode another Liberal Party Prime Minister whom Turnbull had previously pushed from power in a similar coup two years before. Having initially promised to go quietly, Tony Abbott had instead gone ballistic. Seizing every opportunity to undermine his leader, Abbott popped up regular as clockwork on the eve of the two-weekly opinion polls to attack any and every action of the government. The embittered predecessor rained on any glimmer of sunshine. In doing so, Abbott claimed to be fighting to save the soul of the Party. His acolytes likewise professed a deep quasi-religious commitment to soul saving. It was this mock-pious claim that enabled them to call themselves the conservative wing of the Menzies-Howard broad church. Weren’t they just trying to preserve the great traditions of Menzies’s creation from the dangerous, radical modernizing thrusts of the moderate wing?

Well – no. They weren’t. What they were doing was trying to recreate the deviation in party operations that arose under Abbott’s brief administration, a period when the long-established conventions of parliamentary and Cabinet procedures were shredded and supplanted by a US-style presidential modus operandi in which the Prime Minister and his chief of staff concentrated the everyday levers of power in their own hands. As a secondary aim, the just failed coup was an act of revenge carried out by those Abbott supporters who lost their derivative power, privileges and status when their man lost the top job. For this, Abbott and his key henchman needed a sacrificial donkey. Arise Peter Dutton. The idea of pushing forward as a stalking horse (forgive the change of animal) the country’s most unpopular politician outside the state of Queensland, suggested a strain of humour not often observed in the Abbott persona. And yet, a stunned nation was faced with the real prospect of a Dutton government.

Understandably, many government MPs outside Queensland, already facing a very difficult challenge at the next federal election, were dismayed. In the end enough of them voted for a compromise candidate, Treasurer Scott Morrison – of whom, it might be said, is Turnbull without the intellect but with an ability to speak at the speed of sound – backed up by a new deputy leader, with the oil-on-troubled-water voice, Josh Frydenberg. Although this outcome may help the electoral prospects of liberal members in NSW, Victoria and South Australia, aghast at the alternative prospect of Dutton campaigning for them, it does nothing to help the clutch of coalition MPs at risk in Queensland.

All the while the Federal Parliamentary Labor Party looked on gleefully, like a punter who had bet on every horse in the race. How could they lose? This was – to mangle Marx’s words – to witness repeated political events, first as history and second as farce.

Ironically, the insurgents were not conservatives in the true meaning of the term. Conservatives believe in stability, in slow and organic change, in avoiding attempts to disrupt the traditional ways of behaving lest unintended and unwanted consequences arise. Abbott and his supporters were in fact the party’s radical wing, attempting to overthrow the delicate balance of differing views that Menzies had welded together at inception and Howard had so skillfully managed prior to the recent turnstile history of Prime Ministerial appointments. The wild bunch is a disparate group of libertarians, classical liberals, careerists and grudge bearers.

What was also puzzling to outsiders, including journalists who regularly comment on politics, was the fact that the wild bunch was faithfully pursuing the course of action that had proved so disastrous for their opponents barely five years ago. They appear to have ignored the lesson that Australian voters don’t like their Prime Minister torn down by his or her parliamentary colleagues. Philosopher George Santayana’s pithy comment that “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” comes irresistibly to mind.

But the insurgents are unlikely to go gently into the night. To miss out on success by a handful of votes is to invite continuing turmoil and simmering insurrection – as Labor continues to place and collect its bets. The Liberal Party may have dodged the bullet this time but what about next time?

Postscript

In his press conference Malcolm Turnbull alluded obliquely to certain outside forces in the media that had colluded with the parliamentary insurgents to bring on the mayhem – or ‘madness’ in Turnbull’s words. This has generally, perhaps incorrectly, been interpreted as a reference to the remorseless criticisms of political commentators associated with News Corp newspapers and “Sky News after dark”, the latter including Peta Credlin, Abbott’s one-time chief of staff, columnist Andrew Bolt and a host of lesser lights. Also implicated were certain shock-jocks from a Fairfax owned Sydney radio station.

On the morning of, but before the critical meeting, Andrew Bolt fulminated against the selfish narcissistic tactics of Turnbull in forcing those calling for the meeting to ‘out’ themselves before he would convene the Party meeting to consider a leadership challenge. Turnbull, Bolt charged, was “wrecking the party”. Coming from someone who had been a prominent goad to just such an outcome was rich beyond belief. One can only shake one’s head at this simply breathtaking leap into political hypocrisy. But then the past few days have seen a lot of bemused head shaking.