Turnbull and Trump sue for peace but PM unable to control the home front

Extract from The Guardian

Katharine Murphy

No sooner was Malcolm Turnbull out of the country than Tony Abbott bobbed up with the Gospel according to Tony

Donald Trump meets Malcolm Turnbull in New York

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Friday 5 May 2017 17.43 AEST 

The Donald was late for his meeting with the Australian prime minister but made good by laying it on with a trowel in New York.
At a brief press event, with the two leaders in monkey suits, which lent a slightly rakish, Noël Coward quality to the proceedings, Trump just loved Australia. Wonderful country.
Later, the president loved Rupert Murdoch, even though the mogul kept bugging him for money every year for some obscure little outfit called the American Australian Association. The Donald now realised, with Malcolm Turnbull in New York, and everyone so damn friendly, that this was money well spent.

Trump loved Greg Norman too, because the golfer had saved him time by showing him up on the course. When he played with Norman, the human franchise learned professional golfer was not a viable career option. Guess he’d just have to be president instead.
Good one Donald. Backslaps and belly laughs all round on the USS Intrepid.

The meeting, in terms of the “optics” that bobble heads go on about incessantly on rolling news channels, can be summarised simply. A lot of teeth. A bit of eye contact. At one point, a man hug.
No weird Angela Merkel presidential mulishness. The official handshake dragged Turnbull slightly assertively into The Donald’s domain but the tug wasn’t off the richter scale, Turnbull’s smile never faltered. There was no Shinzō Abe eye roll detected.

The 19 second handshake, followed by an eye roll.

Turnbull will be happy enough with the fruits of flying around the world in the hectic week before the budget to grab 30 minutes of alone time with the US president.
The best thing about the first meeting with Trump is it’s now done.
With the government in a near permanent state of insurgency, with the Abbott clique waiting for opportunities to take pot shots and disdain anything that could be could be notched up as progress, no one can now justly accuse Turnbull of Failing To Secure A Meeting with the new president after That Phone Call.
Incidentally, Trump had a few different accounts of the infamous February conversation about the refugee resettlement deal during Friday’s soiree with Turnbull. It was a great call. A bit later, it was nice call. A bit after that, it was a little bit testy. But whatever it was it didn’t matter now, because the relationship was great, and two grown men weren’t babies.

The suppleness of facts in Trump’s telling is always a disorienting experience for people who prefer their facts fixed, and verifiable; and we who live trepidatiously in America’s shadow are all still adjusting to the new world order.
But Trump’s truthiness and irrationality, if Turnbull’s recent personal experience with the president is any reliable guide, can be dealt with. The president at least wants to sue for peace.
At home, things remain much more complicated.
No sooner was Turnbull out of the country than Tony Abbott bobbed up with the Gospel according to Tony.
Then the government’s efforts to, at last, pony up to the Gonski education reforms, became snared by aggrieved Catholics, a cause dear to the former prime minister’s heart. The ink was barely dry on Gonski 2.0 before Abbott was back on his personal dissemination service, 2GB, and it was heading for a rumble in the jungle – a party room showdown on budget day.
The education minister, Simon Birmingham, is prepared to extinguish spot fires with his new package by delving into a small bucket of money he has to smooth over the transition. But that’s as far as he wants to go.
Having worked the package exhaustively through the government’s internal systems – department, office, cabinet, backbench committee – Birmingham is hanging on to 2.0 for dear life.
There are two broad objectives with the policy: try and get past the culture of special deals in education funding and allow the government to have something positive to say about Gonski.
Not to put too fine a point on it, Labor and the education union has killed the Coalition with a slick ground campaign on school education and government MPs know it. Being better on schools than the Coalition is the spine of Labor’s political offering.

I strongly suspect transitional arrangements for Gonski 2.0 will be nutted out with lightning speed and backbenchers will be armed between now and Tuesday with specific information about what 2.0 means for their schools in an effort to turn rumble in the jungle into a squeak by the usual suspects.
Birmingham is doubtless calculating that a majority of government MPs will resist base tribal impulses and be sufficiently relieved that the running political sore of school funding has finally been disinfected and dressed – albeit not as generously as the Labor model and at a cost of a $2.8bn cut to higher education.
I suspect he’s probably right but we’ll have to wait and see whether his broad calculation about colleagues is correct, and whether stakeholders who have grown fond of their special deals can be persuaded to give them up.
Tough business, that.
In the meantime, next week is budget week.
The Turnbull government goes into that process with community expectations at rock bottom. According to our Guardian Essential poll, only 10% of voters think the budget will be good for them.
The disaster of the Abbott government’s 2014 budget has rapid set negative community perceptions about the government. In our poll, a sizeable hunk predict the budget will be good for big business, and wealthy folks, and not great for ordinary working people.

The government is consistently behind in the opinion polls. It will be a huge task to begin to turn that around, particularly when insurgents are determined to continue their efforts to disrupt and inflict damage.
Is Scott Morrison up to it?
Will his second budget be more compelling than his first one – the budget that formed the basis for the Coalition’s jobs and growth election pitch, which saw the government reduced to a majority of one in the House?
Tuesday is looming as a big day in Australian politics. Questions abound. We’ll all be tuning in to find the answers.