by David Crowe
Shorten later said he was willing to vote for the National Energy Guarantee if it meant legislating some form of energy scheme, despite Abbott’s tactics. The opportunity was there to isolate Abbott.
‘That’s where Malcolm should have gone back to being old Malcolm,’ Shorten recalled.9 ‘We were happy to back a market-based scheme, and in the end we knew we’d have to go with the National Energy Guarantee. But it was more important for him to have Dutton on side than to have energy reform in this country. And in the end it didn’t help him anyway. To turn our back on a working mechanism would have been hugely irresponsible, we would never have been forgiven.’
The threat from Dutton compelled Turnbull to be cautious in the climate change dispute, weakening his authority at a time he needed it most, but he insisted in public he had the support of the Home Affairs Minister. ‘Yes, absolutely,’ Turnbull said on Monday morning. ‘Peter Dutton was at our leadership group meeting this morning and he was at cabinet last night. He’s a member of our team, he’s given me his absolute support.’ Away from the public eye, however, Laundy gathered with ministerial colleagues in Cray’s office that morning to consider the numbers. Those in the meeting included Michaelia Cash, Dan Tehan and Simon Birmingham.
Labor dismissed the assurances about the unity of the government on Monday, 20 August, when the Daily Telegraph’s front-page headline said Turnbull was pleading for support, while Dutton was not ruling out a challenge. The opposition mocked Turnbull during Question Time. ‘My question is to the current Prime Minister,’ began the Labor member for Batman, Ged Kearney, the former president of the Australian Council of Trade Unions.
Cabinet ministers were calculating the chances of a challenge. Tehan could see the party room was still suffering from the hatreds of the leadership spill three years earlier. He was a conservative and a friend to Abbott after he lost the leadership, but he was not joining the effort to remove Turnbull. He had read the newspaper reports over the weekend of a Dutton leadership ticket with Hunt as deputy. He picked up the phone on Monday and called one of his closest colleagues, Frydenberg.
Tehan said he was supporting Turnbull and had promised this to the Prime Minister directly, but he also told Frydenberg he had a decision to make. If it all goes to custard, I want you to think of putting your hand up and running for deputy. Tehan believed Josh would be a far better deputy than Hunt and a more unifying figure for the party after the work he had done to seek peace on energy policy. Frydenberg was one of the most ambitious members of the party and would not have needed a phone call to envision a promotion, but the suggestion was complicated. Frydenberg was best man at Hunt’s wedding and godfather to his daughter, Poppy. Hunt was groomsman at Frydenberg’s wedding. They were friends from university but now looked like rivals. Frydenberg and Tehan would make a formidable team in the quest for votes if a contest began. They parked the idea.
Dutton was considering his tactics when a news report gave his candidacy a sudden thumping. Ten Network senior journalist Hugh Riminton reported a legal cloud over Dutton that could see him disqualified from Parliament because he was a beneficiary of a family trust that owned two childcare centres that might receive money from the federal government. Two professors of constitutional law, Anne Twomey of the University of Sydney and George Williams of the University of New South Wales, said there was an arguable case that Dutton was in breach of Section 44(v) of the Constitution and its prohibition on any ‘direct or indirect pecuniary interest’ with the Commonwealth.10 The report followed a similar investigation into Liberal National Party Senator Barry O’Sullivan.
Dutton raged against Turnbull’s office in the belief the Prime Minister’s team had planted the story to discredit him. The five o’clock bulletin was enough to make any Liberal MP think carefully about voting for Dutton and installing a leader who might be referred to the High Court and removed from Parliament. The suspicions were a sign of the paranoia spreading through the party room. The researcher on the report, Kate Doak, had been investigating the Section 44 questions before the leadership was in play. ‘We’d been working on that story for a couple of months,’ she said later. ‘Neither Mr Turnbull or his staff were involved in this story in any form.’11 Riminton had gone to Dutton’s staff earlier on Monday on the legal claims. ‘This was completely our work,’ he said afterwards. ‘We didn’t have any contact with any political office or any politician before the story went to air — except Dutton’s office to seek his comment.’12
Turnbull’s advisers tried to prevent an eruption over the story. Cray sent a message to Cormann. Just so you know, that had nothing to do with us. Dutton was already in Cormann’s office fuming about the report and accusing Turnbull of launching an early strike against him. Dutton told Cormann he expected the worst: They’re going to fuck me. They’re going to fuck me. Cray assured Cormann again that Turnbull and his office were not behind the report. She had thought earlier on Monday there was a chance to calm the leadership fever. There seemed no hope of that now.
Liberals on both sides of the leadership gulf went to dinner on heightened alert for a confrontation the next morning at their regular party room meeting, held at nine o’clock every Tuesday morning and followed by a Coalition party room meeting when the Nationals joined the group. Craig Laundy was already checking on support for Turnbull as he prepared to join a ‘class of 2013’ dinner for Coalition colleagues who had entered Parliament with the advent of the Abbott government. Laundy was a natural opponent of the social conservatives. He helped Turnbull get the numbers for the 2015 leadership ballot and was preparing to help him again. He went to dinner at a Canberra restaurant determined to defend the Prime Minister.
Luke Howarth joined the same dinner with a growing belief that Turnbull should be replaced. He argued with Laundy over the implications of the Longman by-election and complained he was ‘gone’ from his seat of Petrie at the next election if Turnbull remained. This was an unmistakable sign of the willingness to bring on a spill, given Howarth was close to Dutton and sounded so certain of the need for a new leader. The Queensland backbencher intended to use the morning meeting to ask Turnbull to resign — an extraordinary move. There was no realistic scenario in which an MP could stand in the formal meeting and request the resignation of the Prime Minister without precipitating a crisis.13
Only a few tables away sat members of Morrison’s inner circle including Hawke, Irons and Robert. They had wondered whether someone would help Dutton by launching a feint. Now they knew to watch Howarth.
Laundy called Turnbull after leaving the restaurant to warn him to be on his guard. He called Cray at about 11 p.m. after she had seen a preview of the front page of the Tuesday edition of The Australian, which reported that Turnbull had lost the confidence of half his Liberal cabinet colleagues and there was a ‘strong chance’ the party room meeting would turn into a leadership ballot.14 Everything indicated that if Dutton did not move on Tuesday he would do so later in the week or early the following month.
The contest was coming. The mystery was whether Turnbull or Dutton would dictate the terms.
10
THE GAMBLE
TUESDAY 21 AUGUST
TURNBULL WAS ALIVE TO the manoeuvres against him and studied the options to corner his opponents. He knew Luke Howarth would try to provoke him in the party room on Tuesday morning and he had no intention of allowing it. Turnbull would not sit meekly while backbenchers turned to Dutton. He was awake before dawn on Tuesday, 21 August, to put his plan to those he could trust. He sent a message to Cray at 5.34 a.m. Are you up? They spoke soon afterwards. He had already consulted Lucy on the idea and now canvassed it with his principal private secretary.
Turnbull decided to call a leadership ballot on his own terms. He would use the Liberal meeting at nine o’clock that morning to tell colleagues the time had come to settle the doubts over his position. This meant declaring the leadership open and allowing a call for candidates. This would not be a repeat of the ‘empty chair’
attempt on Abbott in February 2015 because there would be no vote to spill the position. He would vacate the leadership. Anyone could stand. One option for the entire parliamentary party was to avoid any show of disloyalty and confirm Turnbull in his position. The vote would only be held if an alternative candidate rose. In the conventions of the party room, there would be no speeches. The chief whip, Nola Marino would distribute ballot papers and declare the result.
Turnbull had a few hours before the meeting to call his colleagues and test their views. Telling them of his plan would go too far because the word would reach Dutton and his supporters. The conversations were general but the question was obvious. Would you support me? Turnbull called a subset of the party room, perhaps twenty people, and seemed confident. His phone call to Stuart Robert, one of Morrison’s closest allies, was encouraging because it conveyed the impression he would have the support of the Morrison camp, an important group even though it had only fifteen members. Turnbull told Alex Hawke that he had support in the 50s. Hawke told him this was wrong and his support was only in the high 40s. The Prime Minister and his team were not the only ones calculating the numbers.
Turnbull confided in Bishop shortly before the inner circle of cabinet ministers arrived at the Prime Minister’s Office for their usual leadership group meeting at 8.30 a.m. The group comprised Turnbull, Bishop, Morrison, Dutton, Pyne, Cormann and Fifield as well as the Nationals leader, Michael McCormack, and the deputy leader, Bridget McKenzie. Turnbull made sure to speak to Bishop before the others arrived so he could tell her he would call for a vote on the leadership within the hour. He sounded determined. Bishop absorbed the news during the meeting while the cabinet ministers debated the day’s tactics on energy and company tax.
Only when the meeting ended, and Turnbull and Bishop spoke privately, did she state her own intentions: ‘If you’re going to declare your position, we better clear the air and declare mine as well.’ She said this with just minutes to go. Laundy heard of the plan when he arrived at Turnbull’s office shortly after the leadership meeting.
‘I’m going to call it on. I’d rather live on my feet than die on my knees,’ Turnbull told him.
‘Mate, go for it,’ said Laundy.
Turnbull, Bishop and Laundy walked together through the Members’ Hall to the government party room.
Dutton knew none of this as he spoke to Liberals on his way to the meeting. He fell in with Warren Entsch, his fellow Queenslander and a man whose frustration with Turnbull had grown during the marriage equality debate and the backdown on energy. Entsch had been in Turnbull’s office that morning telling the Prime Minister’s chief of staff, Clive Mathieson, it was time the leader showed leadership after giving so much ground to his critics. This resumed a conversation he had begun with Mathieson the previous day.
‘The problem with Malcolm is he’s the Prime Minister of Australia, he’s the elected leader but he’s got no authority,’ Entsch told Mathieson. ‘He doesn’t have the fucking balls to stand up to the few squeaky wheels.’ He said he felt like voting for ‘anyone but Malcolm’ at that moment, more a sign of frustration than intent.
Entsch could see the problem but did not want a spill. He said so that morning to Howarth, his office neighbour in Parliament House, when he learnt of the MP’s wild talk the previous night and his plan to call for Turnbull’s resignation. His message to Howarth was simple: You’re fucking stupid.
Now Entsch had a chance to ask Dutton what he might do.
‘I hope you’re not going to pull it on today, Dutto,’ he said on the way to the meeting.
‘No, Entschy, I will not,’ Dutton replied. ‘Believe me I’m not going to pull it on.’
‘Thanks, mate.’ Entsch believed him then and later.1 He went into the room with one thought on his mind. At last, some common sense.
At nine o’clock, Turnbull stood at the front of the party room in his position as leader and chair of the meeting. He spoke briefly — so briefly, in fact, that MPs had trouble remembering his words. Then came the thunderbolt: he wanted a vote on the leadership to stop the speculation. ‘This has to end,’ he said, and looked at Abbott.
Howarth began to stand to make the speech he had been preparing all night. ‘Prime Minister, can I say something?’ He was too late: Turnbull had started the formal process for a ballot. Nola Marino took control of the meeting and prevented Howarth from saying anything further, leaving him to remonstrate with the deputy whip, Bert van Manen, about his desire to ask Turnbull to resign. There were no speeches at a time like this: party tradition dictated a vote with few words. In a symbolic demonstration that the leadership was vacant, Turnbull left his place at the front of the room, where he usually faced the assembled MPs, and walked to a seat in the front row. Cormann was visibly shocked and looked around at his Western Australian colleagues, including Christian Porter and Andrew Hastie. He looked angry. Abbott, sitting as usual next to Dutton in the leather armchairs at the side of the room, asked if he would ‘have a go’ at the leadership. Dutton said he would.2
Marino asked for nominations. Turnbull stood. There was a pause. Dutton rose from his chair. There was a groan from some in the room. This moment shattered the fragile concord that kept the government together. Watching this without a word, some cabinet ministers were utterly shocked despite the long period of speculation and positioning towards exactly this decision. There were few sounds as Marino handed out the ballot papers. There was not much time for anyone to coordinate their votes, although communication was not impossible. Robert was sitting next to another of Morrison’s allies, Steve Irons. Hawke was on the other side of the room. Some could see MPs texting each other. Hawke and Robert denied they did this. It was over within fifteen minutes.
Liberals waited for the result with a sense of dread. Marino announced the numbers: 48 votes for Turnbull, 35 for Dutton. There were 85 in the party room but one member had abstained and another was away.
A murmur seemed to go around the room, as if a collective thought was given voice. Only eight votes in it. Only eight to go. Everyone knew it. Another challenge was almost certain now that Dutton had made his fateful decision to stand and the numbers were so close. Bishop was endorsed as deputy without a contest. Her enemies still harboured the ambition to replace her with Dutton but thought now was not the time to strike, while those who wanted the deputy’s position held back to see how the leadership rivals responded to this outcome. Then, in a jarring return to business as usual, the meeting continued and Turnbull walked back to the leader’s chair.
Abbott hounded Turnbull in the debate that followed. He demanded a review of the Longman campaign and spoke directly to Turnbull to ask him why he had elevated the by-election to a leadership test.3 When Turnbull dismissed this, Abbott produced Turnbull’s own words and read them to the room. By-elections are a test of policies, they’re a test of leaders, they’re a test of candidates. The Prime Minister’s remark in Devonport in July, a statement of the obvious in any other circumstances, was now used to belittle him. Abbott’s response to his victory over Turnbull on the National Energy Guarantee, and now this shockingly narrow leadership ballot, was to attack even harder. He would not stop.
Abbott punctured the calls for harmony after the vote. It was all very well to exhort members to stick together but this was up to the leadership. ‘Unity has to be created and loyalty has to be earned. They can’t just be demanded,’ he said.4 Entsch could not let that pass. He rebuked the hypocrites who lectured the party about unity after doing so much to cause division. He did not need to name Abbott for the room to know his target. Some MPs clapped him as he sat down.
Dutton approached Turnbull at the back of the party room as MPs left the room. He went to him to offer his resignation as Minister for Home Affairs.
‘I want you to rethink,’ said Turnbull. ‘I want you to stay in the ministry.’
‘It’s untenable,’ said Dutton. ‘I can’t serve in your ministry when I’ve just challenged you.’
Turnbull had been too confident. He had dared his colleagues to admit he was their only hope, but they had responded with a rupture so great there could be no pretence of unity. This was not a spill: the leader had declared the leadership vacant without asking anyone to move a spill motion to force him out of his job. Yet at the very moment Turnbull needed to cement his authority, his colleagues weakened it instead — and found themselves repeating Liberal Party history. Decades earlier, John Gorton had entered the party room at a time of immense pressure on his position, with strong voices in the media against him and William McMahon seeking to replace him. Two of Gorton’s allies called a vote of confidence in his leadership rather than waiting for the challenger to move. The secret ballot was tied at 33 in favour and 33 against. Gorton, seeing his leadership at an end, used his position as chairman to cast the final vote against himself. His tactics were debated long afterwards.
‘It is a golden rule of politics that a parliamentary leader does not seek a vote of confidence from his party,’ wrote political journalist Alan Reid of Gorton’s ballot in the autumn of 1971.5 ‘The very seeking suggests that he needs a vote of confidence. The attitude he takes is that he has the confidence of the party. He takes it for granted. It is for others to prove the opposite.’
John Howard was surprised at Turnbull’s move. ‘It’s not something I would ever have done,’ he said later. His attitude towards leadership ballots was to wait for others to force the issue. In May 1989 his rival Andrew Peacock had done exactly that by launching a sudden spill. As Opposition Leader at the time, Howard had told colleagues his attitude was simple: ‘If somebody wants to get rid of me they can blast me out.’6
The Turnbull gamble had paid a paltry return. He won, but so narrowly he invited danger. What if he had waited for Howarth to make his speech and demand his resignation? What if that speech had provoked a spill motion from the floor? Liberals aware of their own conventions and history believed this would have set a higher bar for a protest vote. Instead of 48, the Turnbull vote would have been in the 50s. One of those who voted for Dutton did so in part because he was appalled at Turnbull’s judgement. ‘We weren’t being asked to sack the Prime Minister — he had just done that in front of us,’ he said later.7 ‘No one removed Malcolm from his position that day other than himself. He did not ask any of us. Malcolm made it a free choice, a free decision. Malcolm and Dutts were standing as equals.’