Turnbull's prospects as leader look ever bleaker
The Age
Monday October 12, 2009
The Liberals are not listening to those whose votes they need. THE Age/Nielsen poll we report today contains no joy for either embattled Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull or his increasingly rancorous critics within the Liberal Party. According to the poll, two-party preferred support for Labor stands at 57 per cent, compared with 43 for the Coalition, which, if an election were held now, could result in the Government increasing its majority by more than 20 seats. But it is not only the relative strengths of Labor and the Coalition that is likely to erode further Mr Turnbull's grasp of the leadership and increase the clamour raised against him. Nor is it the fact that 33 per cent of respondents to the poll would prefer Joe Hockey as Liberal leader, whereas only 31 per cent want Mr Turnbull. That outcome must be dispiriting for the Opposition Leader, and will very likely increase the number of private conversations colleagues will have with Mr Hockey. Mr Turnbull's deepest cause for anxiety, however, lies in the fact that a clear majority of Coalition voters among respondents to the poll €” 56 per cent €” believe that "the Coalition should not finalise any agreement with the Government until the Copenhagen climate-change conference shows what other countries are doing".A rational response to that fact by Opposition strategists would recognise that if the Liberal and National parties are to return from the wilderness into which the voters cast them in 2007, they must look first to those who do not intend to vote for them, and ask why. As Mr Turnbull has every reason to know, however, rationality is in increasingly short supply among his colleagues. If the conduct of those on the Liberal benches who opposed an emissions trading scheme (ETS), such as Wilson Tuckey and Cory Bernardi, is any indication of how the poll may be interpreted, it is far more likely that it will simply harden attitudes. Climate-change sceptics will see the result as proof that Mr Turnbull is out of step with the party, not as further confirmation that they and their supporters are out of step with the wider community. In consequence, all the effort that Mr Turnbull, Tony Abbott and others have put into persuading their colleagues that to remain out of step with the community is to court electoral disaster will come to nothing, whether or not the party changes its leader.At the weekend, West Australian Liberals sent an emphatic message to Mr Turnbull about their willingness to contemplate losing an election and their indifference to his threat that if the party does not support him in negotiating with the Government on an ETS he would no longer be available to lead it.Despite Mr Turnbull arguing that it would be better to face a double-dissolution election having failed to secure amendments to the Government's scheme than having done nothing at all, only his deputy, Julie Bishop, supported him.The conference carried a motion declaring that the party should not conclude negotiations with the Government until after the Copenhagen conference €” a vote that makes the fissures opening up under Mr Turnbull's leadership plain for the world to see, despite Ms Bishop's assurances to the contrary in an ABC television interview yesterday.It is not even remotely apparent how those intent on undermining Mr Turnbull can seriously maintain that their actions are in the best interests of the party.Mr Tuckey has said that he cannot think of a better issue on which to fight an election than an ETS, which he believes will threaten jobs without reducing carbon emissions. This treats the 2007 federal election result with contempt, for it made clear that most voters want the Government to take action on climate change, and is also contemptuous of the electorate's ability to assess a range of responses to the issue. People are capable of believing both that the Government's ETS is too weak because of its concessions to major polluters and that it is nonetheless preferable to doing nothing at all. Yet Mr Turnbull's Liberal critics blithely ignore debates outside the party, and the rationality deficit grows accordingly.If they do succeed in placing the Opposition Leader in an untenable position and so forcing his resignation, or in encouraging Mr Hockey to mount a challenge, what do they expect will ensue? Mr Hockey, or any other alternative leader, would face the same dilemma Mr Turnbull now faces, and an election fought on climate policy would almost certainly not have the result Mr Tuckey thinks likely. As The Age has argued before, all it would do is demonstrate that the Coalition has yet to begin presenting itself as a credible alternative government.
© 2009 The Age
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