Malcolm Turnbull is Mediscared, from Phil Coorey at the AFR:
The federal Coalition accepts it must compromise on its 10-year company tax cut plan and Malcolm Turnbull has raised expectations of a retreat on cuts to Medicare as he took full responsibility for Saturday’s election outcome and vowed to heed the message sent by voters.
…Mr Turnbull said the election result had sent a clear message that “there is a level of disillusionment with politics, with government, and with the major parties, our own included”.
He said the Coalition had to do more to earn the voters’ trust on health after Labor’s “Mediscare” campaign exposed health as a Coalition weak spot, despite the scare campaign being a “grotesque lie”.
“They believed it or at least had anxieties raised with it. It’s very, very clear that Barnaby [Joyce] and I and our colleagues have to work harder to rebuild or strengthen the trust of the Australian people in our side of politics when it comes to health,” he said.
That’s a good start, Malcolm. You’re right. It was you not Labor. Mediscare was a minor tactic within a larger framework that exposed the Coalition as policy-barren, rent seeking parasites. I mean, seriously, what idiot thought that turning the Office of the Prime Minister into a real estate agent was a good strategy? The conservative rump, that’s who.
Paul Kelly suggests Malcolm Turnbull promote them for it:
The Liberal Party is facing a potential crisis — perhaps one of the most dangerous in its history — that will determine whether the Abbott-Turnbull era of government can be salvaged or will collapse in ruin with a litany of destructive consequences.
Provided the Liberals can form a government, the test is simple — whether they have the discipline to give governing another shot or prefer to blow up their party. The omens are mixed.
…There is little support, at present, for Abbott to return to the cabinet. Most senior ministers see that as a mistake. They believe it would risk a fracture in the cabinet. This is not just Turnbull’s view; it is the view of previous Abbott leadership backers. In addition, the Turnbull-Abbott relationship is badly damaged and may be beyond repair. Majority party sentiment is that the Turnbull-Abbott struggle must not be reopened.
…Turnbull’s responsibility is to save his government. This is true despite all his campaign blunders. His job is to methodically deal with the crossbenchers and restart the process of governing.
The conservatives in the Liberal Party and in the country face a critical decision: are they indulgent wreckers or disciplined realists? The issue is whether the conservatives stick with a Turnbull-led government or turn feral, insist Turnbull has no legitimacy and exploit the poor result to destroy Turnbull (as payback for what Turnbull did in 2015).
…But Turnbull has a responsibility here. He must offer conservatives more weight and influence in his government. He must govern like John Howard and see the party as an embodiment of its liberal and conservative traditions. The key to Howard’s success as PM was internal party stability, giving equal weight to both wings.
Hailing from the conservative wing, Howard promoted a long line of progressives — Robert Hill, Joe Hockey, Turnbull, Brendan Nelson, Philip Ruddock, Amanda Vanstone and Michael Wooldridge. Turnbull must follow Howard and mean it.
Good in theory but not in practice. The conservative wing of the Libs is not the same now as it was under Howard. Back then it was a nostalgic and paternal movement of social conservatives. Queen, cricket and country and all of that. Today it is something very different. The right wing of the Libs today is an evangelical cult of conservative revolutionaries. They are not satisfied with protecting a legacy, they want a roll back to a pre-modern utopia of hardened Christian values, quaint patriarchal families and free enterprise that is code for allowing vested interests to run riot. In spirit they have more in common with Karl Marx than they do Robert Menzies and their ideas derive more from Benito Mussolini than they do John Locke. They believe in power not reason.
As such they can’t do deals with progressives. They can’t hold to a perpetual negotiation with their opposites, especially under the intense heat of political struggle. This is even more the case now that they have been slighted and can smell blood. Any promotion of the loon ponders within the Liberal Party’s ranks will only serve to deepen its great divide. They can pretend for a day to hold together but the plots for revolution will mount swiftly and the government degenerate into farce. It may be that Turnbull has no choice but Paul Kelly’s path sure ain’t a plan for Coalition or national success.
Ken Henry chimes in to lay out what is needed, also at The Australian:
Here are a few things most Australians know. They know that the budget is unsustainable and that a government that refuses to address the quality of the tax system is not going to fix the problem.
They know our population is growing at a rate that exceeds the capacity of traditional models of planning, building and pricing access to the nation’s infrastructure and housing. They know that productivity growth will not be boosted significantly without a substantial contribution from economic infrastructure and without further investments in education.
They know that climate change is real and that Australia risks committing itself to a national balance sheet of stranded assets because of its incapacity to sustain rational policy responses.
I would venture that what most Australians want to see emerge in this new parliament is a government that will not take them for granted or ignore them.
They want a government that leads in a genuinely inclusive way. They want a government that engages with them openly and honestly about the challenges and opportunities facing the nation. They want a government that involves them in the development of policy.
And they want a government that sustains a commitment to pathways that will secure Australia’s place in the 21st century.
Exactly. I put it to you that that description is as far from the medieval right of the Liberal Party as night is from day.
And that is where it comes full circle for our Malcolm. He can apologise for his loons all he likes, and backtrack on policy all he wants, but we all know that the Liberal conservative rump are loons so every effort to hide them will only sink Turnbull’s credibility all the more, what I have described previously as Malcolm’s “doom loop”.
The Coalition as currently structured has zero chance of recapturing the polity’s trust.
