Venom

by David Crowe

  The old criticism of Turnbull emerged again. He doesn’t have a political bone in his body.

  Others thought he was right to bring on this ballot. ‘There was going to be a challenge by Dutton at some point, there was absolutely no question,’ said one of Turnbull’s friends. One MP who had never been close to Turnbull said he had to confront his opponents: ‘They were definitely coming for him. I believe he did the right thing.’ Laundy dismissed the idea that the clash could have been avoided. ‘It was coming one way or another. With the benefit of hindsight I don’t think you can argue it wasn’t coming,’ he said.8

  Dutton felt he had to stand. He regarded Turnbull’s move as a ‘suicide mission’ because there was always a bloc within the party room, including ministers, who would vote against the Prime Minister. ‘I wasn’t going to challenge on the Tuesday or anytime that week,’ he said later. Dutton said he expected a challenge in the subsequent fortnight of Parliament, beginning on 10 September. ‘Why did I stand? I believe that it had been building, my name had been speculated upon and I thought it would have been weak and untenable not to have stood,’ he said.9

  One idea, spread after the ballot to explain the frenzied contest that followed, was that Turnbull had thrown the leadership open in a way that spurred his opponents to organise against him. This was the myth of the ‘standing start’ — that nothing was happening until Turnbull brought it on. It was a myth so outlandish it required its believers to forget that Dutton had been calling MPs the previous weekend to gauge their thoughts, that his supporters had been asking colleagues if they were ready for a spill, that Spence and others had told MPs that Dutton’s time had come and that the Dutton camp had been backgrounding the media to claim they already had a majority in the party room. The Liberals who worked hard to remove Turnbull and elevate Dutton — Michael Sukkar, Zed Seselja, Tony Pasin and Andrew Hastie — were later offended at being called ‘plotters’ because they argued they had only mobilised after Turnbull struck first. It was a fantasy.

  The same people who claimed to journalists on Sunday, on condition of anonymity, that they had the numbers to make Dutton the leader later claimed to be surprised by a ballot that showed they only had 35 votes. This was just the start of the campaign of media misinformation, false claims and outright lies to force the party room to another crisis.

  Liberals dispersed quickly when the meeting ended and the opposing camps weighed up their options in this dangerous new dynamic — the challenge declared, the future unknown.

  The Morrison camp gathered immediately in Hawke’s office. Into the room came Stuart Robert, Ben Morton, Steve Irons, Bert van Manen and others over time, starting their discussion with the assumption that another ballot was inevitable. Others who were close to Morrison included Lucy Wicks, Ann Sudmalis, Karen Andrews and David Fawcett. While Liberal alliances were looser than Labor factions, Morrison enjoyed influence over a significant bloc.

  Hawke suspected at first that Dutton would challenge again in the September sittings two weeks away, but he soon thought again. He began to wargame a second ballot to be held within days. He formalised the preparations with a WhatsApp messaging group, called The Project, with a membership that included Morrison, Hawke, Robert, Irons, Morton and Wicks over time. Scott Briggs, who had arrived in Canberra on Monday, also joined the group. While close to Turnbull in the past, he was now a member of Team Morrison.

  Some of the Morrison group had helped bring on this crisis. Members of the group estimated five of their fifteen had deserted Turnbull and sided with Dutton. One of them, Wicks, had a conservative Liberal branch in her electorate of Robertson on the New South Wales Central Coast. Another, Morton, was a former director of the Western Australian division of the Liberal Party who was disenchanted with Turnbull and worried about the coming election. Others were loyal to Morrison but not to Turnbull, in an echo of the talks before the ‘empty chair’ spill in early 2015, in which some MPs preferred one candidate but could accept the other. The Morrison camp portrayed the votes for Dutton that morning as spontaneous. To others it looked deliberate.

  Morrison’s group had the opportunity to encourage the Dutton challenge, weaken Turnbull and clear the way for their preferred leader to emerge. Turnbull had called Marino before 8.30 a.m. to tell the chief whip to prepare for a ballot, a piece of strategic information of immense value that morning. The fact that van Manen was a deputy whip, in an office next door to Marino, only deepened the suspicions that Morrison allies came to the ballot with an intent to force change. This required a level of coordination they all dismissed. They denied any preparation and rejected the theory they had texted each other during the meeting to put votes behind Dutton. Yet there was no question that about five of them — the precise number was conjecture — had helped tip the party room over the edge.

  ‘Votes were split and spread and there was nothing coordinated,’ Robert said later.10 ‘It was more shock than anything. When you spring it on people they don’t have time to think. Nobody had planned anything because nobody thought he would be so stupid as to call a spill.’ Robert was able to send a text message to Morrison during the meeting but he denied trying to add to the numbers for Dutton. His account, months later, was that he had been waiting for Howarth to launch a denunciation of the leader and never expected the leader to call a vote. ‘Malcolm established a crisis,’ he said. ‘Dutton was trying to establish one. Malcolm established it for him. It wasn’t just a mistake. It was a horrendous mistake.’

  Cormann was one of the first to reach Turnbull in the Prime Minister’s Office after the vote. The Finance Minister was incensed at the way his leader had taken him by surprise. The government relied so much on Cormann, not only for his negotiating skill in the Senate but his sound advice on policy, that he was included in every big discussion of strategy. This time he was left out. The frustration with that decision never left him. Dutton remembered later that Cormann called him to let him know he was with Turnbull. ‘Come around.’

  Dutton walked in to find Turnbull and Cormann going over the vote. The Home Affairs Minister had said nothing in public before or after the ballot and was yet to decide his remarks. Turnbull asked Dutton again to stay on in his portfolio, set aside his ambition for higher positions and fight the election. This is crazy. Let’s just get back to working together, putting the pieces back together. Dutton insisted he had to resign.

  One option to reach a settlement was obvious but difficult: for Dutton to replace Bishop as deputy leader of the party. It was an extraordinary idea for the way it drew Turnbull into betraying Bishop and antagonising Morrison. The first would be cast aside and the second would be blocked from advancement. Dutton would be deputy and heir apparent in a formal promotion that could only be seen as a slight to the Treasurer. It was certainly painful and possibly unworkable for Turnbull, but it arose in this meeting as a way to avoid a conflagration. Dutton and Cormann were the senior conservatives in the party and their antipathy towards Bishop was no secret, kindled perhaps by her popularity with the public and her skill at finding allies and donors to help the Liberal cause. She certainly countered Cormann’s influence in the Western Australian division.

  Turnbull and Dutton recalled this meeting in ways that were utterly contradictory and might never be reconciled. Dutton said he rejected the idea of replacing Bishop. Turnbull said his challenger wanted the deputy’s position.

  ‘Malcolm offered it and I didn’t even think it could be entertained,’ said Dutton months later.11 ‘I ruled it out. I said it was untenable. I said I’ve just challenged you in the party room and now I’m going to be your deputy. It just lacked any political credibility. If he’d wanted to turn the temperature down and thought that offering me the deputy position was going to do that [then] he’s got to deliver that, and it’s the gift of the party room and not his, unless he’d spoken to Bishop and she was prepared to stand down, which I’d be surprised at. If there was to be such an offer it should have been before the Tuesday. Mathias
was trying to broker some sort of peace, I think, or a resolution. But I think in the end, when I talked through my position, I think Mathias said, you’re right, it’s not tenable.’

  Turnbull denied making any such offer. ‘Absolutely not,’ he said. ‘And it’s not mine to offer. If people are saying that it’s nonsense.’ Turnbull said he rejected a request from Dutton to clear the way for Bishop to take another appointment and for Dutton to rise to be deputy.

  ‘Of course, the deputy leadership is in the gift of the party room,’ Turnbull said later of this meeting.12 ‘Dutton said he could not successfully run against Julie because she was a woman. That was his comment. It was as unreal a request as asking me to make someone leader of the National Party. And I might say, the fact of the matter is Julie Bishop was then one of the most popular politicians in Australia, if not the most popular, and one of the biggest electoral assets of the Coalition. So I couldn’t imagine there being much enthusiasm in any quarter for replacing Julie Bishop as deputy leader and, in fact, no one stood against her when the position was spilled. Anyone who wanted to be deputy leader of the Liberal Party had to basically persuade the party room to make them deputy leader.’

  The public record showed there was no handshake on the leadership or deputy leadership. The meeting in the Prime Minister’s Office ended with an impasse: Turnbull urged Dutton to stay but he would not do so. The path to the deputy’s position was blocked. Dutton could not remain in cabinet after challenging for the leadership.

  Turnbull held a press conference alongside Bishop within the hour to claim unity. Bishop lauded the ‘overwhelming’ and ‘resounding’ support for the Prime Minister at the morning meeting but the first questions from journalists were about a second challenge. The first questions to Dutton were the same when he appeared soon afterwards in a Parliament House courtyard.

  ‘It’s good to be in front of the cameras where I can smile and maybe show a different side to what I show when I talk about border protection,’ Dutton told the media at the start of a short speech that quickly lost any hint of a smile. He seemed painfully aware that Australians knew nothing of him other than his role as the nation’s border policeman. He denied any animosity towards Turnbull and said he supported the Prime Minister. He ignored a question about whether Abbott would have a place in his cabinet. His priority, he said, was to stop Shorten taking power. And a second challenge? He dodged the question so thoroughly he left no doubt about his intention. It was only a matter of time.

  Julia Banks encountered Irons as she walked to her office in the hours after the vote. The Morrison ally did not look unhappy at the day’s events. ‘You know this is just the start. It’s not over,’ he said.13

  The television screens, meanwhile, were crowded with talk about a second challenge. A torrent of speculation poured through social media and on to mobile phone screens throughout Parliament House, generating more posts and creating a flood of theories and conjecture that pushed the party to another crisis. One idea dominated: a close vote always meant a second spill. ‘Very thin numbers for the PM,’ posted Barrie Cassidy of the ABC, a witness to Paul Keating’s two challenges against Bob Hawke. ‘History tells us when it’s that close then it’s all over very quickly. Especially with ministers shifting.’ At the Australian Financial Review, political editor Phil Coorey reported the start of preparations for another ballot. ‘Dutton people enthused by close result. Already discussing another tilt,’ he wrote on Twitter within an hour of the ballot.

  Other posts confirmed the expectation, based on the reality of Australian politics and the lessons of history, that the vote that morning settled nothing. The question was simply one of timing. On Sky News, Andrew Bolt said it was ‘all over’ for Turnbull, but he advised caution for Dutton. There was no sense in rushing to a second challenge when the best time to strike would be when Parliament resumed on 10 September. ‘Why would he risk a narrow win or loss now when he could have a more decisive win in two and a half weeks’ time?’ Bolt asked.

  The Coalition government convened for Question Time with a ruler who was winged and wounded like never before, yet was still expected to fend off a jubilant opposition which would eagerly assist in his destruction. Morrison walked with Turnbull into the House of Representatives and pointed at the Prime Minister to send a message to the cameras. He is the leader. Dutton took a seat on the backbench, his first time in such lowly status in fourteen years, and smiled as the eyes in the chamber turned towards him. He looked comfortable and confident. There was no apology from the Liberals for this disruption to their government, no sense of public contrition. They had to pretend they were governing as they tore themselves apart.

  Turnbull praised Dutton in Question Time: ‘He did an excellent job as minister.’ He made no attempt to exploit the Ten Network report the previous night on Dutton’s possible problems under the Constitution from his ownership of two childcare centres. The priority was to keep a compromise alive even if there seemed little chance of getting Dutton to return to the ministry. Question Time had barely gone for ten minutes when Shorten moved a motion of no confidence in the Prime Minister. Shorten branded the government narcissistic and selfish. ‘This government has lost the will to live,’ Shorten said.

  Turnbull listed the results he believed should form a shield around his government: 400,000 jobs created over the previous year, stronger economic growth than the world’s biggest developed economies, unemployment at its lowest level in six years, and more. Yet a question clouded the chamber. If these achievements were so great and the government’s progress so grand, why did so many of Turnbull’s own colleagues want him gone?

  Turnbull’s allies assembled in the Prime Minister’s Office after Question Time to prepare for a second spill with two objectives in mind: first, to prevent supporters drifting to Dutton; second, to win back those who had already wavered. Ministers including Simon Birmingham, Michaelia Cash and Mitch Fifield gathered with Cray to go through the list of names and try to turn the 48 votes into more than 50. Christopher Pyne joined them with a simple question. ‘Are we all on the same team?’ The answer from Cray was a definite yes, but the need for the question was telling.

  The inner circle of Turnbull loyalists was smaller than it had been three years earlier when ministers had driven to Peter Hendy’s house outside Queanbeyan to prepare for their coup. That group had disbanded. Hendy, Mal Brough and Wyatt Roy had lost their seats. Arthur Sinodinos was on extended leave. Scott Ryan was distant after leaving the ministry to become president of the Senate. James McGrath had switched to Dutton. That left only three of the originals still working for Turnbull in this new emergency: Birmingham, Fifield and Laundy. And one of those three could not be relied upon at all.

  Turnbull reasoned with ministers to prevent Dutton’s resignation triggering aftershocks across the government as other ministers followed their preferred leader. One of those who had voted for Dutton, Concetta Fierravanti-Wells, was so determined to depart that she delivered a formal resignation letter to the Prime Minister to tell of her dismay at the government’s direction. The party was moving too far to the left and losing its conservative foundations, she wrote: ‘The same sex marriage debate eroded further the support of our base.’ No friend of Bishop and a vigorous enemy of the moderate wing of the party, Fierravanti-Wells also reminded Turnbull of her earlier comments to him about making Dutton the deputy. Other ministers hesitated, however, to be so severe in their judgements and so public in their remarks.

  One by one, ministers visited Turnbull in his office to discuss why they had voted for Dutton and whether they should resign. Steve Ciobo offered his resignation after Question Time but discovered the Prime Minister had an alternative: he could keep his cabinet position as Trade Minister if he offered an undertaking to Turnbull to reject any future spill. He would be showing fealty to the executive under the Westminster system and could keep his job. Ciobo wavered. Only later, after dusk turned into evening, did he agree to the conditions.

/>   Angus Taylor also needed time. Taylor visited Turnbull to air his concerns at the government’s direction on immigration and align himself with Dutton on the question of reducing the intake. He offered his resignation, listed his problems with the energy policy and held out on giving any assurance of loyalty. He pondered for hours before telling Turnbull he would not support another challenge.

  Michael Sukkar was reluctant to retreat after voting for Dutton. There was no guarantee of support from this assistant minister, who was one of the most powerful conservatives in the Victorian division and a man who would never feel easy with Turnbull’s opinions on social questions like same sex marriage. Sukkar, the member for Deakin, had welcomed Dutton to Melbourne earlier in the year to introduce him to Chinese donors and supporters over lunch near Box Hill. The unannounced visit had triggered friction with Julia Banks, the local member, and suspicions grew that Sukkar was trying to lift Dutton’s appeal in a state that had never warmed to his Queensland conservatism.

  Another assistant minister, Zed Seselja of the Australian Capital Territory, seemed just as intent on leadership change. Seselja and Sukkar were angry at the government’s inability to end a funding dispute with Catholic schools and urged more spending to stop protests from church leaders and principals. Turnbull was overseeing a settlement with the Catholic sector, at a cost to taxpayers of about $4 billion over a decade, but it was coming too late.