Venom

by David Crowe

  Confusion spread as night fell and ministers kept visiting Turnbull to negotiate their positions. Michael Keenan, the Minister for Human Services, told Turnbull he did not want to resign, did not expect another challenge and, in those circumstances, could offer a promise that he would not support another spill. Greg Hunt, the Health Minister and aspirant for the deputy’s position, said he would not vote for another spill and believed it was time for the government to unite. Alan Tudge, the Minister for Citizenship, had deep concerns about the government’s policies and direction but also stepped back from resigning.

  Faced with Turnbull’s request that they stay in their positions on the condition they offered him their support, the ministers chose to keep their jobs and protect their careers. A fever took hold as the media reported a minister was prepared to quit and then, moments later, reported the Prime Minister had refused to accept the resignation. The negotiations continued in Turnbull’s office until after 10 p.m. when Taylor called to confirm he would not support another spill or challenge, a conversation heard by some of Turnbull’s staff.

  One resignation fuelled more fury than others. James McGrath had helped elevate Turnbull to the leadership three years earlier. The Queenslander had buoyed the challenge with his talent for persuasion and his shrewd use of a spreadsheet to tally how his colleagues would vote. Now he was gone. News of his offer to resign spread soon after his 5 p.m. meeting with Turnbull and drew comments from the Prime Minister’s Office that the departure was not formal. What mattered was the message to everyone in Parliament House and beyond: McGrath had given up on the man he helped install in The Lodge. This was the culmination of almost two years of friction between McGrath and Turnbull’s office, most of it centred on his concern that the government was not doing enough to look after the conservative base in his home state. McGrath would complain to Cray and David Bold and then complain about them, only to be met by suggestions that he do more to fix the problems that so alarmed him. He thought the government needed to change its ways; they thought his complaints outstripped his useful contribution to the cause. McGrath was part of the executive as an assistant minister but was never given the promotion he might have expected and found instead that he had worn out his welcome in the leader’s office. The bitterness reached its melancholy end when he deserted Turnbull and wrote Dutton’s name on the ballot paper.

  The grievances multiplied in the Prime Minister’s Office as the ministers told Turnbull of their concerns about the government’s direction and progress. Rather than resigning on a point of principle, they named issues like school funding, immigration and energy. A few named the personnel in Turnbull’s office, such as Cray and Bold, for being unfriendly towards them or never returning their calls. When Tudge suggested Cray was briefing against him, Turnbull told him his complaint was rubbish: if she was backgrounding the media, she was resourceful enough to make sure Tudge would read about it on the front page. Even Taylor, who had the greatest concerns about the National Energy Guarantee, held back from resigning over the emissions target or the energy mechanism.

  These were not philosophical arguments about high purpose or fundamental policy. Some of the complaints belonged in a high school playground rather than the ministerial wing of Parliament House. The echoes of 2015 were everywhere in the peevishness about the Prime Minister’s Office, as if the only way to fix a petty internal aggravation was to force an upheaval in the nation’s government.

  A sense of dread settled over some Liberal backbenchers while Turnbull negotiated with his ministers. Jane Hume was struck by the hesitant support for the Prime Minister in some quarters of the party, as if people were not sure which team to join until they saw an update to the score. Hume had entered the Senate in 2016, after a career as an investment banker and superannuation fund adviser, and now faced her first spill in Canberra. She had an invitation to drinks for backbenchers in the Prime Minister’s Office, arranged before the leadership ballot, and arrived at 6 p.m. that Tuesday to find two dozen colleagues trying to make sense of a disaster. There was vocal support for Turnbull from some, like Victorians Julia Banks and Tim Wilson, but others were careful about what they said. Hume thought Turnbull looked miserable. He expressed disbelief at the move against him and spoke bitterly of the ‘wreckers’ causing so much damage to the government. He was showing the strain of his talks with ministers but seemed to lift his spirits when he asked everyone for their thoughts.

  Jason Falinski, the member for Mackellar on Sydney’s northern beaches, heard one voice call out with a blunt assessment of the attack from the conservatives. This is driven by revenge.14 Turnbull assured the group the government could win the election if it stopped the sabotage from within, a message that encouraged Falinski as he left the function, but Hume worried that something was missing. Perhaps there was not enough energy to galvanise the backbench and fight to save the leader.

  Hume and others headed from Turnbull’s office to the next function of this Tuesday night in the knowledge they could not cancel this event no matter how difficult the circumstances. The Liberal Party’s policy think-tank, the Menzies Research Centre, was hosting dinner at Old Parliament House to commemorate Dame Enid Lyons, the first woman elected to the House of Representatives and a cabinet minister in the Menzies government. The audience came from the senior officials and ministers of the party: Julie Bishop, Kelly O’Dwyer, Michaelia Cash, Linda Reynolds, Simon Birmingham and the Liberal’s federal president, Nick Greiner. The anxiety was palpable as they left their offices at a moment of crisis to hear an actress perform Dame Enid’s first speech to Parliament. The alcohol flowed as they waited until 10 p.m. for dinner to be served and for Bishop to speak. The Foreign Minister could not avoid the obvious event of the day when the time came for her remarks.

  ‘I am the — still — deputy leader of the Liberal Party,’ Bishop said. Her next words resonated with the women in the room afterwards. ‘We need more women in Parliament. We need more women as decision makers. We need more women around the cabinet table. We need more women as a voice for other women and for the community at large.’ The applause was long and loud when Bishop said the party had to do everything it could to support women, but the real test for the Liberals would come within days. How would they vote when a woman stood for the leadership?

  Cormann tried to keep a peace deal alive while ministers talked with Turnbull over how to keep their jobs. He urged Cray to make sure Turnbull refused to accept the resignations and kept the ministry together while a settlement was found to prevent a second challenge. Throughout the night he returned to the idea put to Turnbull shortly before noon: make Dutton the deputy. ‘It’s the only way to bring the show together,’ he told Cray in a text message. He was planning to see Dutton in the evening. He sent a message assuring Cray he would try to save the situation. ‘Genuinely want to get this back on track,’ he said.

  It was an hour to midnight when Cray told Cormann that ministers had pledged their loyalty to Turnbull with assurances they would not vote for another spill or challenge. This was not the moment to surrender. But the early copies of the next day’s newspaper front pages, circulating on email and social media on Tuesday night, showed the leadership convulsions were impossible to control. ‘Dead Mal Walking’, said the Herald Sun. ‘Groundhog Day’, said the Daily Telegraph. Both newspapers reported a second challenge was being prepared.

  The front pages also showed that Cray’s loyalty to Turnbull made her a target. The Australian reported Cray’s visit to Cormann and Dutton the previous Wednesday night as a sign of the ‘sense of panic’ that had been growing inside the Turnbull office for days. Cray had joined the conservatives in Cormann’s office that night — Dutton as well as Sukkar, Seselja and Tasmanian Senator Jonathon Duniam — when they were celebrating their success in defeating the euthanasia bill.15 It was common for her to catch up with Cormann over a drink, but now someone had passed on the story to portray the conversation as paranoia.

  Cormann assured Cray he
had told the reporter the spin on the story was wrong.

  ‘I give up. They are terrorists,’ he said. It was not clear who he meant.

  There was still a way to save the Turnbull government as the night passed and the Canberra air fell close to freezing. Cormann was planning to walk up Red Hill with Dutton at first light on Wednesday. Could he get Dutton to change his mind?

  11

  MALICE AND MAYHEM

  WEDNESDAY 22 AUGUST

  PETER DUTTON ACCELERATED HIS push for power early on Wednesday, 22 August, in a way that terminated any idea of a settlement with Turnbull and any hope the government could avert a second destructive challenge. He made his intentions clear: he would not stop. His talks with Mathias Cormann did not change his mind and his meeting with Turnbull led him to a simple decision. He could not be deputy. He would be leader. It was a brutal assertion of will based on the assumption, embraced with enthusiasm by conservatives in the Liberal Party and the media, but unproven with the Australian public, that Dutton could lead the government to victory. In his phone calls to colleagues, Dutton argued that Turnbull bore responsibility for losing fourteen seats at the last election and would do the same at the next. He told MPs he could do better. I can beat Bill Shorten.

  Dutton made his plans on the assumption that Turnbull would call an election if he was not driven from office. He argued later that Turnbull had brought on the first ballot to confirm his leadership and prepare for an early election, an option that might be revived if he could survive to the end of the week. ‘I thought he would go to an election off the back of that week,’ Dutton said.1 ‘I’d formed a judgement that that would have been a disaster for us, to go to an early election, it would have been Malcolm’s exit strategy out of the Parliament. He would have blamed everyone else but himself for a catastrophic loss.’

  This was Dutton’s explanation for his relentless drive towards another ballot. He abandoned the idea of waiting two weeks and chose instead to seek a resolution within days, a timetable that took the party room towards breaking point. There was no sign that his walk up Red Hill with Cormann had changed his thinking at all.

  One day after the first ballot, Dutton wanted to tell Australians what he could offer. His first step was to try to put some warmth into his cold public image by telling two Melbourne radio stations there was more to Peter Dutton than immigration policy and asylum seekers. His second was to try to broaden his appeal to Australians by proposing a cut to energy costs for ten million households by removing GST from their electricity bills, a change he said could be made ‘straight away’ in the next billing cycle. He promised a downpayment to voters on a change of leadership: immediate help with household budgets, to be followed by ideas like scaling back the migrant intake. But the interviewer on 3AW, Neil Mitchell, concentrated on one of the mysteries of the Dutton campaign.

  ‘Will Tony Abbott be part of your team?’ Mitchell asked.

  ‘I’ve heard it said, and I’ve read it somewhere about me being a puppet of Tony’s,’ Dutton replied.

  ‘That he’s pulling the strings,’ said Mitchell. He still wanted an answer.

  ‘It’s just garbage. I’m my own person. I don’t take direction from Tony or others.’

  Dutton changed the subject but many of his colleagues already suspected he would return Abbott to federal cabinet. A cabinet appointment would be a practical reward for Abbott’s long campaign against Turnbull and a symbolic restoration of conservative power in Canberra, but Dutton’s refusal to declare his intention was revealing. Signalling a promotion for Abbott would antagonise moderates while ruling it out would alienate conservatives. Dutton already had the conservative vote. Whatever Abbott’s media friends said about his wide appeal, to hint at his return to cabinet would only lose Dutton votes inside the party room. It had to be secret. The dance around this question became the ultimate indicator of Abbott’s value to any new leader who wanted to lift the government’s stocks with the Australian public. Years after his leadership, Abbott remained so divisive inside his party and so unpopular outside that no announcement of his cabinet ministry ever came.

  Ministers defended Turnbull but could not stop Dutton from building pressure for a new ballot. Bishop, Laundy and Fifield were among those who arranged interviews on Wednesday morning to try to avert another clash, although Fifield was tepid in his public praise for Turnbull as leader. The Prime Minister’s Office had helped coordinate the interviews in the belief Fifield could be trusted. Outside the television and radio studios, however, he was already faltering. It would take more than this to stop an assertive and determined challenger who was forthright on 3AW about doing the numbers for another strike.

  ‘Are you working the phones?’ asked Mitchell.

  ‘Of course I am,’ Dutton said. ‘I’m speaking to colleagues and, again, I’m not going to beat around the bush with that, mate. I’m happy to be honest and say yes, I’m talking to colleagues, colleagues are talking to me.’

  Mitchell followed the interview with a verdict for listeners. ‘Malcolm Turnbull I don’t think will survive,’ he said. ‘I think there’ll be another challenge and Peter Dutton will get up.’ This expectation was everywhere. It became almost overpowering as the day went on.

  Turnbull knew parts of the media were against him and took his concern to the most powerful media proprietor in Australia. The Prime Minister’s Office put in a call to Rupert Murdoch soon after 9.30 a.m. so Turnbull could make his concern plain to the News Corp chairman. Turnbull held two of the company’s newspapers, The Australian and the Daily Telegraph, most responsible for negative stories about his administration, and he regarded the Sky News evening line-up, especially Peta Credlin, as a deranged cheer squad for the idea that the Liberal Party should be reborn with leaders like Abbott and Dutton even if that meant an election defeat. Now he had a message for Murdoch that the media campaigns would destroy the government.

  ‘The only beneficiary will be Bill Shorten,’ Turnbull told Murdoch. ‘There is a campaign to bring me down. Your papers and Sky are directing it and driving it.’ He told Murdoch the campaign was personal and did not have any rationale on policy grounds, given he was leading a government that cut taxes while Shorten promised to increase them. He mentioned the positive coverage of Abbott and the role played by Credlin as proof the News outlets were helping to destroy a Liberal government, and he added a colourful description of their strategy: ‘We have to burn the village to save the village.’

  Murdoch played down any part in causing trouble and said his son Lachlan was in charge of the Australian operation and its coverage. He did not concede he was helping Shorten and he suggested Turnbull speak to Lachlan.2 It was a curious response for anyone aware of Murdoch’s long career. This was a man who supported Gough Whitlam as Prime Minister in 1972 and turned on him within a term, prompting a strike by journalists at The Australian over the negative coverage in 1975. Murdoch’s own newspaper claimed credit for making Tony Blair the British Prime Minister in 1992 — ‘It’s The Sun wot won it’, said the tabloid’s page one headline — and then abandoned Labour to back the Conservative Party leader, David Cameron, in 2010.3 No politician would ever doubt Murdoch’s power; no politician could ever bank on his support. One Liberal minister recalled a private meeting during the Abbott government when Murdoch had praised Abbott and scorned Turnbull. The suspicions in the Prime Minister’s Office about the Murdoch campaign had only grown after learning of Lachlan’s words in Bellevue Hill the previous week. Who could believe the founder of the company had no sway over his son?

  There was only one way to interpret the elder Murdoch’s response on the phone. He was fobbing off the Prime Minister.

  Turnbull spoke to another media proprietor, Kerry Stokes, several times through the week and in the days that followed. Stokes, the chairman of Seven West Media, did not agitate for leadership change and counselled against making Dutton the Prime Minister. He was appalled at the events in Canberra and told Turnbull of a conversatio
n he had held with Murdoch in which one comment stood out: ‘Malcolm has got to go.’ This was proof for Turnbull that News Corp wanted him driven from power. Later, Stokes would not confirm the remark to journalists, saying he did not enter into ‘speculative gossip’, and News Corp general manager, Liz Deegan, dismissed reports of the comment as ‘speculation and conspiracy’, while Lachlan Murdoch said he had not heard his father utter those words in a meeting with Stokes.4 Yet the private conversations were fundamental to Turnbull’s view of the campaign against him. Malcolm has got to go. Turnbull would not forget those words.

  ‘Yes, I did speak to Kerry, and that’s what he’d said Rupert had said to him,’ Turnbull recalled later. ‘He said to Rupert: “That’s crazy. You know, Malcolm’s doing well in the polls, he’s way ahead of Bill Shorten. Why would you want Bill Shorten to be Prime Minister?” To which, according to Kerry, Rupert said: “Oh, well, three years of Labor wouldn’t be so bad.” So, I can’t work that out. I can’t explain that.’

  News Corp was not the clone army its critics made out. Whatever Murdoch thought and said, the company’s best commentators wrote as they saw fit. But the company’s influence was felt everywhere and its Sky News evening hosts rejoiced in the Dutton campaign. The conservative voices in the media were getting the spill they wanted, if not the Prime Minister they preferred.

  Morrison watched Dutton mobilise and was not going to stand idle. Two of his closest advisers, Alex Hawke and Ben Morton, began calling Liberal colleagues on Wednesday morning to gauge their thoughts and prepare for a second ballot. They did not have to ask MPs to vote for Morrison as leader for MPs to know he was positioning for exactly that outcome if a confrontation came.

  Ray Hadley sneered at Morrison as a leadership contender. He told listeners the Treasurer was ‘dishonest’ even though he had admired him in the past. ‘If he told me it was raining outside, based on his recent performance, I’d go outside and check,’ he said. Now he claimed Morrison was trying to run for the leadership with Dutton as his deputy. He based this on a text message he had received the previous day from a ‘Liberal Party MP’ and he relayed this message on air, but he slipped over his words in a way that suggested to some listeners he was reading a message from Dutton himself.