Amazing. Most military coups take longer than that.
This had to have been in the works behind the scenes for quite a while.
There were rumblings, and almost everyone in the public was hoping for it to happen, but Turnbull was careful to let Abbott hang himself rather than be seen to be a wrecker. So it was always on the cards.
It never really went away after February. Every own-goal, someone would trot out either ‘captain’s call’ or ‘good government starts when exactly?’ It wasn’t front-burner, but it was there.
And it may not go away entirely now. If Turnbull doesn’t perform out of the gate, some people will look at that 10-vote margin - not a huge one in a 102-member party room - and start making plans. Scott Morrison’s ambitious and he’s done a lot of work lately to try and soften his image (AWW interviews about him taking up cooking for the family, his faith and Tina Arena, god help me) back from his impressions of an Easter Island moai that he had as immigration minister. He’s called himself a patient man, and he’s only 47, so he’s got time.
Yes, but less so for the well planned & executed (i.e. successful) ones.
It has been brewing for some time. However, it only came to a head because Abbott, an extremely effective opposition leader, couldn’t switch into government mode.
To what extent Turnbull has been destabilising is a subject of debate. I thought that the appearance of a loyal front bencher working his portfolio (Communications) and well, communicating was pretty solid. What was going on behind the scenes might have been different. There seem to be a lot of political insiders claiming they saw it coming from inside the tent than were in the know when it was actually happening.
The best indication of this was that they had convinced themselves that nothing was going to happen unless the result of this coming Saturday’s by-election in Canning (WA) was worse than expected. Turnbull’s new Cabinet might be sworn in by then (though I expect he won’t do anything dramatic until Parliament sits again in a couple of weeks time).
It’s a pretty big margin considering that the Liberals wanted to believe they were better than Labor and weren’t going to start replacing the PM every year. Now that Turnbull’s the incumbent, he’s no longer working uphill in any future leadership spill.
When’s the next election? Any predictions?
Malcolm will hang on as long as he can to get as many differentiating runs to his credit as possible.
Next election must be held on or before 14 January 2017, so I’d say early Dec-16 because nobody is going to accept a campaign over Christmas.
New PM?
Must be time to change the batteries in the smoke alarms.
Don’t see it.
If Turnbull starts performing “out of the gate” i.e. moves faster on gay marriage or any other liberal policies he’d personally favour and the trogs of the Cory Bernardi ilk will do their chewie. He’s only got 15 months so lots of small sure steps is the strategy IMHO.
His margin is more than workable. For those ditherers & fence sitters in the party room the smart vote was to run with the incumbent.
Referencing the noise Chewbacca makes to register extreme displeasure and annoyance?
If Turnbull is smart, he’ll be slow-and-steady in terms of nudging the party closer to the centre. That means no sudden radical policy shifts. If he’s articulate, conciliatory and unifying, he’ll do very well, and hopefully get some progressive policy movement happening long-term.
I’m really interested to see if a) this short-circuits the dysfunction in both major parties that characterised the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd-Abbott years and b) the discourse shifts back to the centre now that Abbott has left the conversation.
No Yoda, not such a modern cultural reference.
Archaic term from eras past
So pissed off you’d spit your chewing tobacco (or maybe chewing gum).
I’m hoping so. I’m hoping that the oxygen that people like Bernardi have been given by Abbott in recent years gets cut off because the new PM treats them like the marginal crazies they are, and they wither on the vine.
Just the thought of that makes me happy.
‘Perform’ doesn’t mean anything radical. All he has to do to perform in the sense I intended is not scare the right wing horses too much (so no sudden moves on ETS, marriage equality or anything like that), manage a modest rise in the polls, not award any knighthoods to Prince Philip, not be photographed eating any onions and not tell Leigh Sales that the ABC should be an uncritical cheerleader. As lobot said, articulate, conciliatory and unifying.
My goodness: The Guardian reports a snap poll which puts Turnbull ahead of Shorten amongst Labor voters!
Faaark.
Hence why Shorten is visibly panicked.
That said, Turnbull hasn’t been put to the test yet.
Perhaps they were asked, “Who would you prefer as leader of the Labor Party?”
Maybe it’s because I’m a Brit but also because I am completely unacquainted with Australian politics, but why was conferring a knighthood on the Duke of Edinburgh so objectionable? It’s not that I think the Duke ‘deserves’ it, but I can’t see why it’s so objectionable…
Malden Capell that’s exactly what Tony Abbott said!