In
the winter of 2008, I went for a curry at an Indian place in a suburb
fringing the parliamentary precinct, and found myself sitting a couple
of tables away from Christopher Pyne and George Brandis.
Pyne was in full flight, laughing about the haplessness of Brendan Nelson’s then leadership of the opposition, and speculating about what position he might hold in the event Malcolm Turnbull took the top job.
The pitiless diagnostics and bon mots could be heard very clearly across the restaurant. Heads were turning around the place. Pyne waved at me and my small party cheerily on the way out.
Assuming, given the volume, the monologue was more performance art than private function, I wrote up the world according to Christopher for the Age the next morning.
Pyne pretended to be affronted but no one was terribly surprised. He’s prone to bursts of enough about you, more about me, exuberance. In 2008, his problem was just a passing journalist, scribbling notes on a napkin after being unable to screen out the noise.
But, in this most recent instance, one
of Pyne’s colleagues has been enterprising enough to record the
contribution and hand it to the broadcaster most capable of turning it
into a full rightwing ruckus.
That’s a quality bit of mischief managed, right there.
Sure as night follows day, with a whiff of moderate triumphalism in his nostrils, Andrew Bolt dusted off his Greek tragedy template, Tony Abbott has made his way, post-haste, to 2GB, Peta Credlin has fired up the flamethrower and Eric Abetz has approached Radio National more in sorrow than in anger.
Full bubble cacophony.
These folks are nothing if not 100% relentless. They never miss an opportunity. Which is not to say they are conjuring something out of nothing.
Let’s be very clear about why this isn’t nothing.
Pyne’s little burst of triumphalism, and the response to it, neatly catalogues a winner-takes-all dynamic inside the government – an atmosphere of permanent war and conquest between conservatives and moderates.
This is a real dynamic, not a confected or invented one, and it has made the practical business of governing for Malcolm Turnbull very difficult.
We can all see it.
It is very hard to project authority as prime minister in an atmosphere of rolling contention.
If voters think contemporary politics is largely dispiriting muck, a bunch of idiots brawling over the spoils of dysfunction, it’s hard to stand above it, to look somehow bigger than it, if your project is very often obscured by conflict, either petty or serious.
Quite apart from small acts of internal stupidity and savagery, we have the underlying conditions to consider.
As Scott Morrison correctly pointed out this past week, Australian voters have switched off from politics-as-usual. They have had a gutful and it’s hard to reach people who don’t want to listen to you.
By Coalition standards, the government threw the kitchen sink at the voters in the recent budget. So far, no response, poll after poll.
The relentless clicking of the poll clock is one mechanism that always sets timid political hearts a flutter.
But MPs concerned about the performance of the government are not so much focused on polls as a concern they have that voters are preoccupied with their low wages growth, and rising cost of living, and the government has no clear answers to give them on either of these points.
This fretful line of thinking has the government involved in dialogues at cross-purposes to the voters, wedged way down the rabbit hole.
The conflagration of the past 48 hours is not so much a thing in itself as a signpost to the government’s ongoing difficulties, a symptom of a lingering condition that is both painful and difficult to manage.
Given Pyne’s little indiscretion, Turnbull has had to abruptly ground the same-sex marriage plane, derailing plans moderates have had in place for months to get the Coalition to a post-plebiscite position.
But even if the immediate pathway to a private member’s bill is cut off, this is only a fight deferred.
There will be plenty of MPs inside the government who will want the Coalition to take a conscience vote position to the next election, rather than being dead weighted by a plebiscite.
Turnbull will have to let that substantive fight play out at some point, and he’ll have to take a definitive stand rather than simply land a short-term calculation.
And then there’s that deferred energy and climate policy fight.
Remember that one?
Pyne was in full flight, laughing about the haplessness of Brendan Nelson’s then leadership of the opposition, and speculating about what position he might hold in the event Malcolm Turnbull took the top job.
The pitiless diagnostics and bon mots could be heard very clearly across the restaurant. Heads were turning around the place. Pyne waved at me and my small party cheerily on the way out.
Assuming, given the volume, the monologue was more performance art than private function, I wrote up the world according to Christopher for the Age the next morning.
Pyne pretended to be affronted but no one was terribly surprised. He’s prone to bursts of enough about you, more about me, exuberance. In 2008, his problem was just a passing journalist, scribbling notes on a napkin after being unable to screen out the noise.
That’s a quality bit of mischief managed, right there.
Sure as night follows day, with a whiff of moderate triumphalism in his nostrils, Andrew Bolt dusted off his Greek tragedy template, Tony Abbott has made his way, post-haste, to 2GB, Peta Credlin has fired up the flamethrower and Eric Abetz has approached Radio National more in sorrow than in anger.
Full bubble cacophony.
These folks are nothing if not 100% relentless. They never miss an opportunity. Which is not to say they are conjuring something out of nothing.
Let’s be very clear about why this isn’t nothing.
Pyne’s little burst of triumphalism, and the response to it, neatly catalogues a winner-takes-all dynamic inside the government – an atmosphere of permanent war and conquest between conservatives and moderates.
This is a real dynamic, not a confected or invented one, and it has made the practical business of governing for Malcolm Turnbull very difficult.
We can all see it.
It is very hard to project authority as prime minister in an atmosphere of rolling contention.
If voters think contemporary politics is largely dispiriting muck, a bunch of idiots brawling over the spoils of dysfunction, it’s hard to stand above it, to look somehow bigger than it, if your project is very often obscured by conflict, either petty or serious.
Quite apart from small acts of internal stupidity and savagery, we have the underlying conditions to consider.
As Scott Morrison correctly pointed out this past week, Australian voters have switched off from politics-as-usual. They have had a gutful and it’s hard to reach people who don’t want to listen to you.
By Coalition standards, the government threw the kitchen sink at the voters in the recent budget. So far, no response, poll after poll.
The relentless clicking of the poll clock is one mechanism that always sets timid political hearts a flutter.
But MPs concerned about the performance of the government are not so much focused on polls as a concern they have that voters are preoccupied with their low wages growth, and rising cost of living, and the government has no clear answers to give them on either of these points.
This fretful line of thinking has the government involved in dialogues at cross-purposes to the voters, wedged way down the rabbit hole.
The conflagration of the past 48 hours is not so much a thing in itself as a signpost to the government’s ongoing difficulties, a symptom of a lingering condition that is both painful and difficult to manage.
Given Pyne’s little indiscretion, Turnbull has had to abruptly ground the same-sex marriage plane, derailing plans moderates have had in place for months to get the Coalition to a post-plebiscite position.
But even if the immediate pathway to a private member’s bill is cut off, this is only a fight deferred.
There will be plenty of MPs inside the government who will want the Coalition to take a conscience vote position to the next election, rather than being dead weighted by a plebiscite.
Turnbull will have to let that substantive fight play out at some point, and he’ll have to take a definitive stand rather than simply land a short-term calculation.
And then there’s that deferred energy and climate policy fight.
Remember that one?
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