Australia: Change at the Top

Tony Abbott lost his job as Australian prime minister to Malcolm Turnbull in the fourth leadership “knifing” in a decade. Though media in Australia and worldwide reacted with shock, was it always inevitable? Abbott’s confusion and poor planning were responsible but so was his status as a figure of ridicule. It is his ridiculousness that people will remember most and it was that which often helped to drive down his ratings in opinion polls. Turnbull, the urbane millionaire, stands in contrast.

Before memes categorized and explained politics, people still kept track of George W. Bush’s varied and excitingly original aphorisms. Bushims, if you remember. How, so many in America and across the world asked, can this man be in charge of anything? The more cynical wondered whether the missteps and maladroit gargles were intentional: Distract the intelligentsia with a carnival of stupid and maybe they won’t notice what he’s really doing. They noticed both.

Comedian John Oliver’s sketch show Last Week Tonight profiled Tony Abbott with a gag reel of his gaffes and called him “President of the USA of Australia.” Despite his policy flip flops (“rhetorical consistency” according to Oliver), broken promises, a disastrous first budget, and questionable metadata laws that neither Abbott nor his attorney general could ever explain coherently, and despite tightening national security at the expense of freedom whilst repealing sections of the Racial Discrimination Act to promote freedom, it was Abbott’s “captain’s calls,” missteps, and strange behavior that many will remember him for. He even managed to insult the Irish on St Patrick’s Day, in a kind of digital Guinness Diplomacy gone wrong. Abbott went because he was incompetent but in the public mind it was also because he was ridiculous.

You could categorize Tony Abbott’s mistakes into three broad groups: nasty, silly and strange. When health minister he said of Bernie Banton, a man dying of mesothelioma who was campaigning for better access to drugs, “just because someone is sick does not mean they are pure of heart” and suggested the man’s delivery of a petition of 17,000 signatures was a stunt. That was nasty. Silly was knighting Prince Philip on Australia Day, being unable to explain metadata with the phrase “I’m not a techhead,” or threatening to “shirtfront” the Russian president. All showed a basic lack of judgment, but all were also fundamentally silly acts. As for strange, Abbott once ate a raw onion on live television.

Beyond that there was the paucity of vision: An address to the G20 Leaders Summit was a whine on the ungrateful nature of the Australian public, a turn on the world stage reduced to a townhall meeting. The good things that came from his time, like trade deals, are not remembered, yet his strange mistakes and blaming all on the opposition are.

Whenever Abbott was not following something “carefully prepared and scripted,” things could go wrong, and that is what is lodged so firmly in the public mind.

Fait Accompli

The rest of the world got that cartoon version, the shirtfronting, the onions, the endless mistakes. Few outside of Australia ever asked, just when will Turnbull make his move? In Australia it seemed it fait accompli, even as the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd-et al circus had exhausted voters and calcified cynicism regarding whatever seemed left of the political process. It wasn’t cognitive dissonance, just a feeling that the wrong man had ended up in charge. GQ Australia put Turnbull on the cover a few months ago, running a lengthy feature and suggesting he may be the next prime minister. The refrain of the left, still disappointed in Labor, was “I don’t vote Liberal, but... “ Meaning they’d vote for Turnbull. The barrister turned millionaire, who’d taken on the British government in the Spycatcher case at just 32, knew that but had to weigh not just the public’s distrust of endless instability but also his support within his own party. That was the problem and one reason why during the backbencher challenge to Abbott in February Tunbull stayed quiet, as did Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Julie Bishop. Abbott clung on, just, and asked for “six more months.” Good government, he said, started “today.” Many asked why it hadn’t started earlier.

On September 14, Turnbull resigned as communications minister, called for a spill and by later that night had won, 54 - 44 votes. “We need a new style of government,” he said, going on to tear apart Tony Abbott’s sloganeering and “captain’s calls.”

What was noticeable in Turnbull’s speech was the issue of consensus, useful after so many of those Abbott captain’s calls. But his many mentions of cabinet, of government, and of the Liberal party, and its values, make for an interesting subtext: Government by cabinet style is part of the party’s values and Turnbull was there to represent that. It seems like it could have served a clever double purpose: suggesting his style represented his party better than Abbott’s while allaying worries that the suave humanist wouldn’t morph back into the imperious barrister once in power. The thing is, centrist Turnbull doesn’t represent the values of the conservative wing of his party at all. They don’t like him. Right-wing leader Cory Bernardi has even hinted at a party split. Admittedly, Bernardi is not a bellwether for much: He thinks gay marriage might lead to legal polygamy or humans marrying animals.

Shaun Carney, political columnist at the Herald Sun, told The Diplomat, “He (Turnbull) represents a party that does not share his view of the world.” In fact, a good deal of what Turnbull represents Labor leader Bill Shorten also believes in, but Shorten, a union man by background and currently opposed to sections of the China-Australia Free Trade Agreement as a result, is not hugely liked or known by the electorate or media.

However Turnbull’s cabinet reshuffle has meant that he may more easily be able to govern by cabinet as there is a good number who share his general views, such as the new (and first female) Defence Minister Marise Payne, who said in her maiden speech, “A future Australia should be a nation free from discrimination against any individual. Discrimination against people based on their gender, their race, their sexuality, their religion, their HIV status or their education does not belong in our democracy.” Ken Wyatt, the first Indigenous member of Federal parliament and deputy to Health Minister Sussan Ley is another moderate who broke with Abbott’s ranks to suggest he would vote against overturning section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act. Others, such as Immigration Minister Andrew Robb and Christopher Pyne remain. The larger cabinet now has five women.

Turnbull is known for being pro-marriage equality, worried about climate change, and more suspicious of faultless enthusiasm for ANZUS, Australia’s security treaty with the U.S. However, he has for now pointed to continuity on the government’s climate change and marriage equality policy.

There have been comparisons to another Malcolm of the Liberals, Malcolm Fraser, who died earlier this year. We wrote at the time that Fraser “resigned from the Party in 2009 after Tony Abbott took leadership, saying then it was ‘no longer a liberal party but a conservative party.’ One could debate whether Fraser really moved left, or whether his party simply moved more to the right.” Fraser endorsed Green Sarah Hansen-Young and was remembered as a reformer, but he was also a wrecker who brought down Gough Whitlam in an act far more vicious than anything the past eight years of “coups” and bitter scrambles have seen. Fraser, like Turnbull, was not fond of unions and strongly pro-market.

At the time of his death Fraser was forming his own party, Renew Australia. In many ways its manifesto mirrors the stances of both Turnbull and Labor whilst managing to sound like something fresh and new, but very sensible.  The Republican stance (Turnbull funded the movement for a Republic in the 1990s, which failed at Referendum in 1999), commitment to gender equality, and interest in environmental issues are all shared broadly. Then again, they are shared by Labor too, though Bill Shorten is strongly for the U.S. alliance whilst Fraser has argued against for Renew Australia and a 2014 book.

Policies

So, what does Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull believe? Foreign affairs we cover elsewhere in this issue. As for defense there is a white paper to put out (and this one’s important) as well as the ever-present submarine question. Turnbull won’t be drawn as yet. As for the offshore processing of refugees, Turnbull has noted concern but said nothing concrete on what, if anything, will change. Stopping the boats retains bipartisan support, and is widely backed by the public.

The new prime minister has remained quiet on national security. In March, when communications minister, rather than cogently explain the new laws that required ISPs to retain users’ metadata for two years he explained on Sky News how to get around having metadata collected (for instance, use instant messaging). Turnbull has kept quiet on his government’s problems with its own version of the National Broadband Network, which he oversaw in his cabinet position. He and Julie Bishop were two cabinet members opposed to Tony Abbott’s arbitrary decision to strip single nationals suspected of terrorism of their citizenship. As we note elsewhere this month, Turnbull has warned of giving too much importance to ISIS, though he and Bishop remain committed to fighting terrorism. Returning jihadis have not been mentioned as an issue yet, though they were previously used to justify varied security measures. However, as Professor Clive Williams of the Australian National University pointed out in a recent interview, Australia hasn’t seen any of those for “a couple of years.”

Turnbull dislikes China’s actions in the South China Sea, something he’s mentioned previously, and believes that it is, in Vietnam’s case, hastening closer ties to the United States. At the same time, we know of his suspicion of blind allegiance to Australia’s ANZUS alliance and the worth of China in more general terms.

It will be economically that Labor may go after him. Turnbull is pro-big business, though stays away from Abbott’s power-of-markets-bootstrap philosophy, also talking of generous safety nets.

“It is a free market government,” he said Monday during his first interview on nightly current affairs show the 7.30 Report. ”We believe that government’s job is to enable you to do your best. Labor, which has more faith in government, believes that government’s job is to tell you what is best.”

When talking about the economy the new prime minister reiterated confidence, confidence, confidence, just as when reshuffling his cabinet it had been renew, renew, renew. Turnbull needs the confidence of the public to see that he can manage the economy, but he needs the confidence of business and investors as well. Scott Morrison has replaced Joe Hockey as treasurer, in one of the more important cabinet shuffles. Morrison has already told the media that Australia has a “spending problem.”

China and the slowing of the resources boom remain larger problems for Australia, something Turnbull acknowledges with a focus on a need for innovation and industry in the coming years. Christopher Pyne, moved from Education, is Minister for Industry, Innovation and Science, with a 25-year-old “whizz kid” deputy in Wyatt Roy. No mention of more funding for one of Australia’s best known innovation hubs, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, which was gutted in the 2014 budget. Funding was slashed by A$111 million ($78 million) over four years. The CSIRO invented Wi-Fi and plastic banknotes. Tony Abbott cut the position of Science Minister, the first time Australia had not had one since 1931, adding it into a wider Education and Industry portfolio. So it is still sharing space with three bedfellows under Turnbull.

Turnbull has not, at the time of writing, made too many promises in any direction. He is hampered in a way in some areas as his coalition with the Nationals always means a harder line on climate change. He has not ruled out, or in, cutting Sunday penalty rates for workers’ wages. If he does so this could be a useful issue for Labor and one that Unions will force. Some have already suggested it could turn into WorkChoices 2.0, the labor reform scheme that ultimately helped to bring down John Howard after 11 years. The free trade agreement with China may stay a problem.

However one difference between Abbott and Turnbull might be their views on poverty and the experience of ordinary, or even far less fortunate, Australians.

While employment minister, Tony Abbott told the ABC in 2001: “We can’t abolish poverty because poverty, in part, is a function of individual behavior. We can’t stop people drinking, we can’t stop people gambling, we can’t stop people having substance problems, we can’t stop people from making mistakes that cause them to be less well off than they might otherwise be.”

You can draw a line, if you like, from that comment to 2014, when Abbott and Treasurer Joe Hockey handed down their first budget, an austere document full of cuts to welfare, science and education and the memorable (especially in the wake of Parliamentary expenses scandals): “The age of entitlement is over.”

Though Malcolm Turnbull may have once been abrasive or intimidating to those who knew him in his law or business days he has always cultivated the compassionate conservative persona. During his first ABC 7.30 Report interview as prime minister he said, “The fact is we’ve all got to recognize that much of our good fortune is actually good fortune. Of course you work hard... So, the truth is, we don’t really deserve our good fortune... And in terms of understanding the situation of others – all of us are different, right? So the truth is nobody can have experienced exactly the same experience of any other Australian.” Fine words, but will humanism win out the way the left hope it will?

“Our policies will change; all policies change. But when we do make changes we will do so in a considered way and they will be made by the minister, myself (and) the cabinet,” he has said. Whether this is simply honest and a wish not to rush in head first like his predecessor or whether this may wind up being policy for a while, a kind of treading water whilst making the right noises, remains, as so many things do in politics, to be seen. We may not have long to wait. In Australian politics, it should now be clear, a lot can happen rather quickly.