Paul Kelly has been a stalwart supporter of Do-nothing Malcolm. But even he appears to have had enough of the blundering:
The Turnbull government faces a deepening crisis. It has lost control of the political, near-term parliamentary and media agenda. It faces the fear of more MPs being caught in the dual citizenship crisis. The risk is a downward spiral raising the question of whether conservative politics cracks under such relentless pressure.
…The revelation that the Senate president and Liberal, Stephen Parry, now believes he is a dual citizen provokes the inevitable question as to how many other MPs, Coalition or Labor, might be in a similar position.
…The Parry factor re-creates the optics of chaos. Where will it end? Nobody knows. Expect the media to investigate other MPs. Labor knows that if it can expose a marginal-seat Coalition MP then Turnbull’s majority government is in jeopardy. Turnbull’s belief on Friday afternoon after the High Court decision that he could return to business as usual is shattered.
This latest instability accentuates a situation riddled with instabilities. The challenge for Turnbull is obvious — it is about discipline, survival and holding his government together. There must be an emerging doubt over whether Turnbull can achieve his tactical objective of a full-term parliament, thereby deferring the election as long as possible.
The dangers are multiple. They include the risk of Coalition defections in the coming parliament over, for example, the royal commission on banks; a Queensland state election result with the potential to cause havoc in conservative ranks; and growing internal divisions fanned by diminished prime ministerial authority that will compromise management of issues from energy policy negotiations to settling the same-sex marriage legislation.
As if to underline the point, this morning:
Government MP Craig Kelly has backed a “full audit” of MPs’ citizenship, saying it would stop a media-driven audit and describing the ongoing constitutional saga as the “death of a thousand cuts” of the Parliament.
It’s extraordinary that they’re still turning up. Why didn’t the Coalition get to the bottom of it immediately?
