Extract from ABC The Drum
Opinion
Updated 15 minutes ago
Photo:
The electorate seems to be glad that it's Turnbull, not Abbott, now
calling the shots. (AAP: Alan Porritt, Dan Himbrechts)
Malcolm Turnbull still faces many tests,
including questions about his promotion of under-fire minister Mal
Brough. But so far, the Prime Minister has vindicated the idea that
leadership coups can actually help improve our politics, writes
Barrie Cassidy.
It's time to write in support of leadership coups
- and not just those practised by opposition parties, but the real
deal: those that dump prime ministers mid-term.The general consensus
seems to be that it's the revolving door of leadership that has
caused the electorate to become disillusioned with politics.
But I would argue it's not the sackings of
leaders, but rather the root causes of those sackings, that up until
now has been the problem. The coups happened because of a breakdown
in governance and deep disappointment with the quality of leadership
in the first place.
Certainly, it is becoming increasingly clear that
the latest coup - Malcolm Turnbull knocking off Tony Abbott - is more
a solution to political malaise than an ongoing episode in a broken
system.
Look at how the public has reacted to Abbott's
demise, as evidenced by the major opinion polls.
Pollster Andrew Catsaras has crunched the numbers
and found that since the change of leadership, 1,100,000
voters have switched from Labor to the Coalition.
In two-party-preferred terms the Coalition has
achieved a 7.4 per cent swing towards it to now stand at 53.7 per
cent. As Catsaras points out, in a neat twist, the Coalition now
stands exactly where Labor was before Abbott's sacking.
There is a long way to go before history can
ultimately judge the Coalition's move against Abbott. Turnbull is yet
to be tested by a budget. He may have exercised poor judgment by
bringing the Special Minister of State, Mal Brough, back into the
ministry when the jury was still out over his involvement in the
James Ashby affair. And there could be serious questions down the
track on Turnbull's handling of the NBN.
But nevertheless the evidence suggests the
electorate is mightily relieved to this point that it is him - and
not Abbott - who now calls the shots.
Harder to justify was the sacking in 2010 of Kevin
Rudd for Julia Gillard. Certainly that shocked the electorate in a
way that the Abbott defeat did not.
Having said that, it can be explained.
Rudd was not cut down because of poor opinion
polls. He was sacked because he ran a dysfunctional government; he
gave power to staff ahead of elected MPs; and he treated too many
people with disdain and contempt.
As one senator told me at the time, had he simply
ignored his backbench he might have survived. But he chose to abuse
them as well.
None of this is exaggerated. Never before, with
just the whiff of a challenge, have the numbers tumbled so quickly.
It was a testament to his style - and a measure of
the resentment towards him - that Gillard backers confidently
predicted on the night that if Rudd allowed it to go to a party room
vote, Gillard would have captured perhaps 80 of the 112 eligible
votes.
Some will always argue that the people decide the
prime ministership and only they can take it away. But they don't
choose the leader, and under the Australian system, they never will.
The electorate votes for local candidates. That decision is heavily
influenced by who leads the major parties, but that's all. It is the
purview of the party room to decide the leadership.
Rudd was replaced because the system had broken
down. He tried to govern in a way that threatened time-honoured
processes.
Whether or not he could have gone on and won an
election is almost beside the point. But I would argue his situation
was rapidly deteriorating and was likely to get worse.
Rudd was going to win easily when his opponent was
- ironically - Malcolm Turnbull. At the time Turnbull's personal
approval rating was similar to that Shorten is now experiencing.
When Abbott took over, he immediately exploited
Rudd's agony over climate change in a way that Turnbull could not.
Suddenly, Abbott had Rudd covered.
It is often said that Gillard didn't really win
anyway, being forced to stitch together a fragile minority
government. But Gillard, without question, would have achieved
majority government had her internal opponents not leaked against her
during the election campaign. With the benefit of a majority, her
fate could have been very different.
It is hard to imagine a lower act in politics than
to leak against your own leader in a campaign. It is one thing to
leak mid-term in an effort to destabilise the leader and mount a
challenge. It is another thing altogether to leak with the sole
purpose of causing your own party to lose an election. Yet that's
what happened in 2010.
Now, history is repeating itself.
We are seeing internal opponents of Turnbull using
national security and the aftermath of terrorist attacks to try to
portray him as weak and indecisive. Not as bad as 2010, but very poor
form just the same.
The other recent sacking of a prime minister that
allowed Rudd to return to fight the 2013 election can be spun in all
directions.
Gillard had fought so hard against the odds. But
on the evidence she was headed for a disastrous defeat.
The most pragmatic in Labor ranks wanted to do two
things: save some furniture, which they did, and put to rest any
notion that had Rudd resumed the leadership he would have won the
election. He got his chance, he didn't win, and he was gone for good.
The leadership merry-go-round started because the
process had been corrupted. Abbott - in opposition - thrived on that.
In government, he didn't measure up. The system took care of that.
Barrie
Cassidy is the presenter of the ABC program Insiders. He writes a
weekly column for The Drum.
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