From Domainfax:
An inner-city cocktail bar named after one of the poncier fruits – the cherry – is exactly the kind of place you would expect left-wing government schemers to hatch a plot to legislate gay marriage.
And indeed, it was at the Cherry Bar in Sydney’s Star Casino that government minister Christopher Pyne was secretly taped boasting to fellow Liberal Party moderates that same-sex marriage would happen “sooner than everyone thinks”.
It’s safe to assume the leak of the Cherry Bar tape to News Corp columnist Andrew Bolt was not executed by a member of Pyne’s own faction, which is called The Black Hand – a moniker which would be excitingly revolutionary, if revolutionaries ever gathered in Pyrmont.
Combined with today’s Newspoll this has been enough to trigger a loon frenzy in the Murdoch press. Chris Kenny:
The jig is up. The Liberal “Moderate” faction is triumphalist, the Coalition is hopelessly divided and the unfolding crisis is not so much about losing government but preserving the Liberal party.
The tape obtained by News Corp columnist Andrew Bolt reveals leading Moderate, Defence Industry Minister, Leader of the House and right-hand-man to the Prime Minister, Christopher Pyne, in a gloating mood. “We are in the winner’s circle,” he boasted, referring to how the Moderates now controlled the government, before going on to say how they were working to deliver same sex marriage.
If Malcolm Turnbull and his team do legislate for same sex marriage it will be a clear broken promise, a breach of their Coalition agreement with The Nationals and an incendiary swipe at the conservative wing of the party. Yet the gay marriage revelation from this tape is the least of the worries.
What Pyne has confirmed for all to see is that the overthrow of Tony Abbott and installation of Turnbull is seen by the Moderates as a factional takeover of the party. This is poison to the party membership and another turn-off to mainstream voters.
As this column has argued from the day Turnbull won the leadership, the only way for him to succeed was to repudiate this view. Turnbull needed to adopt the mainstream and conservative positions of the Abbott government and concentrate on presenting them under new leadership. A shift to the left was always going to be a mistake.
Rubbish. Abbott’s loons were polling at 46-54. Turnbull’s tossers are at 48-52. The shift to the centre was vital to reboot Coalition prospects and has worked despite Malcolm being a useless leader.
Greg Sheridan is also at it:
The Liberal Party today is in the grips of a terrible crisis of faith that could well destroy the Turnbull government.
The financial membership and activist base of the party is substantially alienated from the Coalition government. The backbench is substantially alienated from the cabinet.
The situation within the party is much closer to tinder-dry scrubland before an oppressive summer than anything else. All that is needed is a spark.
If Malcolm Turnbull misjudges action on the Finkel review on energy this could well occasion a party crisis. The biggest disaster for the government in the Newspolls is not just losing 14 in a row, but the steady rise of the vote for Pauline Hanson, now 11 per cent nationwide.
Senator Cory Bernardi and his Australian Conservatives are rampaging around the country, scooping up the non-Hanson conservative forces. He scooped up Family First activists, who did not return to the Liberals. He is in the process of scooping up others.
…If Bernardi gets any profile at all, he represents a deadly threat to the Liberals. Hanson provides an alternative to them on the populist right, Bernardi on the respectable right.
As one long-serving Liberal put it to me: “There is no Coalition voter base we won’t attack. We started with the superannuants. Then came the Catholics. What next? Do we impose a special levy on the benefits of all returned servicemen and donate it to the ABC?” Another said: “It’s hard to see what reason people would have for voting for us.”
This is a crisis unfolding.
Sheridan is a high profile Catholic so I’m not sure how you separate out his motives. Gonski and Finkel are both popular with the centre so neither is the problem.
It appears Andrew Bolt has won the Newscorp civil war. That means we can expect a lot more destabilising drivel from the loons as they seek to sink Coalition polls and take over.
