Breaking down the Liberal breakdown

By
Ben Raue
-
31

Malcolm Turnbull looks set to lose his leadership in a push to pass the government’s Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, causing a deeper split in the party than any seen in a long time. The split has been driven deeply through the party in all states, in the city and the country, and a mix of Senators and marginal seat MPs.

It seems fairly certain that Malcolm Turnbull’s leadership will end on Monday after Tony Abbott announced this morning he will challenge if Turnbull doesn’t change his position on the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. While Joe Hockey could be convinced to contest, it seems that Abbott’s CPRS opposition could give him the leadership he would not be able to win in normal circumstances. Hockey is still a strong contender, but it seems bizarre that the party would switch to another pro-CPRS leader. Indeed, considering that the candidate taking the party to the election will face disaster. It may be Hockey’s best option to hold back and take over after the next election. This will be the first time that a major party will change leaders twice without going to an election. In the past, John Latham, Alexander Downer, Simon Crean and Brendan Nelson have all been replaced without facing an election, but it is becoming increasingly common, with Turnbull being the fourth Opposition Leader to be rolled without facing an election in the last fifteen years.

You have to think the chances of the CPRS passing are low, considering the challenge. Abbott made it clear this morning that he plans to change the party’s position on the CPRS if he becomes leader. While the ALP seems to be aiming for a vote this afternoon, it seems extremely unlikely that Minchin and Abetz will allow a guillotine before the Liberals can change leaders. While there are easily seven Liberal senators willing to follow Turnbull’s lead and vote for the CPRS, I doubt there would be seven willing to cross the floor to vote with the government if Abbott is leader.

So it seems likely the Liberals will lurch to the right and go to an election with senior figures openly questioning the science of climate change, with the party deeply divided between moderates and conservatives. It is interesting to consider Turnbull’s recent behaviour from a long-term perspective. Looking at a short-term perspective of Turnbull trying to hold on to his leadership until the election, it seems madness to stake your leadership defending the federal government’s climate policies and refusing to back down under such fierce internal opposition. On the other hand, Turnbull has been continually hampered by conservatives as he has tried to modernise his party. If he is resigned to being defeated for the leadership, there is a certain logic in taking a stand in favour of the party acting on climate change and fighting to the bitter end. Once the Liberals under Abbott go to the next election and are decimated, Turnbull’s warnings and political positioning will be looked on much more favourably.

It’s possible Turnbull could hang around on the backbench to make a comeback later on. He has clearly attempted to model his leadership on David Cameron in the UK. However, the British Conservatives had spent eight years in opposition when Cameron took over, while the Australian Liberals are yet to accept they will need to modernise and change to get ahead. If Turnbull is willing to wait around for the party to turn back to him after a thumping defeat, he could become leader again with a much stronger position. That being said, you’d have to think a man like Malcolm Turnbull wouldn’t have the patience to wait around on the back bench for years in order to get another chance. It seems much more plausible he will leave Parliament either at or before the next election.

It’s fascinating to examine which individual Liberals have come down on the pro-CPRS or anti-CPRS side. Using the list made by Tim Andrews of which Liberals spoke during the long party room meeting on Tuesday, and adding in others who have been clearly identified with one side or the other (such as Turnbull loyalists or shadow ministers who resigned yesterday), you come up with the following numbers:

  • Pro – 41
  • Anti – 35
  • Unknown – 9

When you break it down by state you don’t get massive divisions, with the split running through all states. NSW is dominated by pro-CPRS MPs, while Tasmania is dominated by anti-CPRS Senators and WA has a slim majority against the CPRS. Victoria, Queensland and South Australia are split down the middle. A slim majority of House of Representatives MPs are in favour of the CPRS, while a majority of Senators (but not a large one) oppose the CPRS. While the anti-CPRS forces have equal numbers amongst MPs in safe seats and relatively safe seats, 60% of MPs with a margin of less than 5% supported Turnbull’s position. This does indicate a tendency for those Liberals more at risk of electoral defeat (marginal seat MPs) to support doing a deal and avoiding a double dissolution while Senators with little risk of electoral defeat are more likely to take a stand. If you map out the electorates of pro- and anti-CPRS MPs, you find little geographical correlation. Despite fears of Nationals winning seats off the Liberals on the back of a CPRS vote, many rural Liberal MPs support the CPRS while many urban MPs take an opposing position.

In the last few days, some pretty ridiculous predictions have been made. The most ridiculous has been the idea that the Liberals could split into separate parties. That sort of thing just does not happen in Australia’s modern party system. Throughout this entire debate, while some Liberals are climate skeptics, the argument for the centre ground of the party has been a conflict between two different pragmatisms. Some are worried about how supporting a CPRS would hurt them amongst Liberal Party members and their base support, who are increasingly skeptical of climate change. Others, such as Turnbull, support a CPRS to avoid the party being painted as climate skeptics and to avoid a double dissolution on climate change which they believe would devastate the party. Indeed, Turnbull has explicitly made such pragmatic arguments in last night’s press conference and his interview this morning on AM.

If that doesn’t convince you that the Liberals will stay together, it’s probably worthwhile to play out how it would work. If the Liberals were to split, with either Turnbull or Abbott leaving a split in one direction or the other, you would have incredible chaos as Liberal MPs picked sides. As I previously mentioned, there is little relationship between the two sides and any sort of clear geographical, demographic or ideological divide in terms of their electorates. Fights would begin over the control of the party’s resources as the two sides would be picking candidates to run against each other. What would happen to state Liberals like Barry O’Farrell? The idea is not going to happen as long as Australia retains a single-member system.

Likewise, the possibility of the Nationals making gains off the Liberals at an election following the passage of the CPRS seems very unlikely. Despite their clear position against the CPRS in recent days, the party is seriously on the decline. The fact that many rural Liberals support Turnbull’s position suggests the threat isn’t particularly serious.

One other issue which the last few days has raised is the possibility of a double dissolution. Assuming Abbott gets his way and the CPRS is blocked, the ALP will have a double dissolution trigger. I previously was convinced that Rudd would not call a DD, partly because his party is not ready and partly because there would not be a huge benefit for him. But after a week when the Liberals have exposed their ugliest side, finishing off by electing a far more right-wing politician as leader, it’s plausible we could see the ALP kick into gear for a March/April election. While they are not ready, they would have four months to speed up preselections and get ready in the field. Considering the state of the Liberal Party, no leader would do well in such an election. In addition, the crisis atmosphere of the previous week would help shield the ALP from accusations of calling an unnecessary early election. It will be easy for them to argue that the state of the Liberal Party has frustrated important CPRS legislation, and necessitated a double dissolution.

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31 COMMENTS

  1. Will the CPRS be referred to committee or will it be blocked altogether? Is there essentially any difference to either outcome?

    I doubt the ALP want to give ground to the Greens in the senate. What is the earliest date an early election can be called to not make future Senate & House elections out of sync?

  2. And of course, how will the Higgins and Bradfield electorates react to this meltdown?? Actually, I don’t think it’ll make a huge difference, certainly not to the extent that the Libs would lose, just make the Lib candidates wish they could hide under a rock for another week.

  3. I think the idea of the Libs losing seats to the Nats is ridiculous. Which seats? At the moment the Coalition agreement (in the eastern states at least) says the Libs and Nats can only run against each other when the seat is either vacant or held by Labor. So, unless the Coalition is to actually end, and the Nats aren’t threatening that at this stage, the only seats the Libs can lose to the Nats are those where a sitting Lib is retiring. The only such seats I can think of where the Nats could run are McEwen and Wannon – there’s no Nats support in McEwen, and I don’t see how they have enough of a base in Wannon to threaten the Libs there either.

  4. If Abbott becomes Liberal leader he’ll be the fifth out of the last six Opposition leaders who have represented electorates whose names start with either a W or a B. Indeed, of the 31 people who have held the position of Opposition leader, 15 have represented electorates with names starting with either a W or a B – including 10 of the last 15, and 5 of the last 7.

  5. If Abbott becomes Liberal leader the Libs will be lucky to win 50 seats. It could also be a v. interesting Wentworth by-election.

    What are they doing to themselves? Surely even the skeptics and rednecks in the Libs know that Abbott is electoral poison.

    ‘I can’t watch but I just can’t look away.’

  9. Looking at my crystal ball, I think the Libs will pass the legislation early next week, but that Turnball will go shortly after having got his legislation through. The party room will then pick a the best compromise candidtate, which will not be Abbot, as I can’t see how he’d have the respect of much of the party room for causing a split, but Hockey – who has shown loyalty throughout, and is, after all, more popular with the voters than Abbott.

  10. The Bradfield by-election. What’s the centre ground between skeptics on the right and believers to the left? Who are we left with – Greens?

  11. Hi Ben, a thoughtful and lucid analysis, but I do want to disagree a bit.

    While a straight “split” is unlikely, it is possible that these events at the top of the party will lead to a split in the activist and voter bases. The CDP or other far-right formations could benefit from a prolonged crisis of mainstream conservative politics, especially if the economic crisis bites harder.

    The crisis is not just about the CPRS. Rudd’s election was reflective of a longer-term shift to the left in the Australian electorate—sped up by the anti-WorkChoices movement— which the Liberals couldn’t respond to. Furthermore, the Liberals have taken an ideologically neoliberal view of the GFC and Rudd’s response to it, thereby further marginalising themselves on the relevance barometer.

    The Liberals’ “core” base is two main groupings: the majority of the Australian business elite and a socially conservative “grassroots”. They have also always traditionally managed to hold a large sector of “deference voters”—working class voters who plump for the party of their ruling class rather than the party of the trade unions. It would be impossible to win elections without at least a section of the working class vote, after all. But they lost many of these to Rudd in 2007 and since.

    This, then, is the rub: their “core” supporters are tied by interest and/or ideology to a politics that cuts them off from a wider base they need to win elections. So the current crisis, while seeming irrational, is amenable to rational interpretation. On the one hand, Turnbull wants to save them from self-immolation at the polls, which could fatally damage the party. But the Right are prepared to risk self-immolation at the polls because bending to Rudd on climate change could fragment their core base and so cause self-immolation anyway. I actually think the Right are more likely to “save” the party structures than Turnbull, even if at terrible electoral cost, so they are not as lunatic as they appear.

    Despite decades of commentary about the “stability” of Australian politics, the rise of the Greens on the left and the rise of PHON and now this crisis on the right indicate that there is much more intense polarisation and fragmentation than seemed immediately obvious in the period after 2001.

    PS It is hard to see how it is in Rudd’s interest to have the CPRS passed now. A DD now will not only potentially give him a near absolute majority in the Senate (not a mad idea if the Libs collapse) but even if it doesn’t the moral pressure on the Greens to pass a crap CPRS with one or two Green-friendly changes will be humungous.

  12. Kevin Rudd will not call a double dissolution in March/April, as he will be most unwilling to go to an early election that will deliver him a term of only around two years. In this scenario, a Senate election would have to be held by June 2012, and Rudd would not be foolish enough, to put his party’s Senate numbers under threat through a separate Senate election. Therefore, despite all the media hype, there will not be an election before August. The possibility remains of a August or September double dissolution, but Labor will make this decision based on how they expect to perform in the Senate. If they expect to be polling in the high 40’s, then a DD will be the way to go. If however they expect a result in the low 40’s, they will most likely opt for a regular half-Senate election. Labor’s chances of getting close to a majority in a DD will be confounded by a strong minor party position, due to a combination of low quota’s (7.7%) and the consequent potential effectiveness of preference harvesting.

    Alluding to the belligerent and unsubtle remarks of a former Labor prime minister, I think that Kevin Rudd is quite happy to – do the Liberals slowly – this time around.

  15. Should have added, will Turnbull stay on in Wentworth? I think he might until the next election (no point in doing unnecessary damage) and if there is a DD he can say he argued for a climate change approach for the Libs. That could possibly save the seat in what might otherwise be a bloodbath – and post-DD when the Libs are beaten and battered, he can have another go (ala Howard). Rating? 20% chance…

  16. Though perhaps in relation to my comment Labor may be better off waiting to go to the polls to give Abbott more time to self-destruct.

  17. So apparently there was one informal vote in the Liberal party room, someone writing ‘No’ instead of Abbott or Turnbull.

  18. Were it not for the Tampa / 9/11 confluence transforming the electoral dynamics in 2001 Abbott may have lost his seat to the former state independent MP Peter McDonald.

  20. What chance now the ALP will negotiate with the Greens on the ETS? My crystal ball (which is obviously broken – see above) says there is very little chance. I suspect they will just blacken the the ETS further to satisfy Abbott.

    This result can only help the Greens in Bradfield and Higgins too.

  23. Sue Boyce to as well. Gary Humphries said that he wont. Doesn’t look like Birmingham will either. Don’t think they’ll get the numbers.

    Also Hockey accepts Shadow Treasurer role.

  25. ETS voted down. Penny Wong looks angry. You can tell that she wants a DD.

    “If 70 people invaded the Prime Ministers office, no matter how great their cause is, they would have been removed” – Abbott on asylum seekers. What a fool.

  27. Seems Labor’s approach is to do whatever it takes to avoid having to do a deal with the Greens. Consequently, a DD over this issue, where the Greens will make significant gains on the back of a protest vote from progressive Labor voters annoyed at their failure to take a serious stand on the issue, would presumably be something they may not like, as it would put far more pressure on them to deal with the Greens.

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