Venom

by David Crowe

  This was a breathtaking assertion. Turnbull had spoken to the Governor-General several times during the week to keep him informed of developments and, at one stage, make sure he would remain in Canberra in the event that a new Prime Minister would have to be sworn in to office at Government House in Yarralumla. His comment about Dutton was a very different and dramatic step. If taken to its conclusion, with formal advice to Sir Peter that he could not appoint Dutton as Prime Minister, the dispute would leave the government paralysed. If the party room elected Dutton but Turnbull advised against his appointment, Sir Peter would be placed in the rare and difficult position of adjudicating on one leadership claim or the other. The Governor-General would have to rely on his reserve powers, exercisable without the advice of ministers, to resolve the deadlock, but he would be severely constrained. One course pursued in the past, for the Governor-General to consult the Chief Justice of the High Court, would be perilous here because the High Court might have to rule on the Section 44(v) question at the heart of the dispute.1

  Turnbull did not need to spell this out for Dutton. The logic was inescapable. Turnbull was willing to turn the doubt over Dutton’s eligibility into a question for the Governor-General. One way for Sir Peter to break the deadlock was an early election.

  Turnbull ended the call with Dutton and turned to Lucy and the allies in his office.

  ‘I should just drive to Yarralumla, notify the Governor-General and go to an election,’ he said.2

  He was thinking out loud. The idea was so dangerous it verged on a death wish, so unready was the government for an election campaign. The retreats on energy policy and company tax cuts were only days old and the public polls suggested another slide in support. Everything pointed to a crushing Labor victory, yet Turnbull was giving voice to his exasperation with a divided government. ‘We need to give the Parliament back to the people,’ he said. It took time for those in the room to talk him off the ledge: Laundy, Cray and Bold all argued against such a precipitous move. What was the likely scenario? The prospect of an election might encourage Liberals to speed towards a spill within hours.

  Within minutes of this phone call Dutton was broadcasting his request for a meeting. He made a brief statement to the media and was followed by journalists who asked if he had the numbers. ‘I wouldn’t have contacted the Prime Minister if I didn’t believe that we had the majority of support,’ he said. He said no more because he assumed he would be making further remarks — perhaps a victory speech — later in the day. His public call was only the first step in the manoeuvres to force a ballot. Cormann, Fifield and Cash were planning to hold a press conference to echo the demand for a vote, while Hunt and others were ready to resubmit their resignations to intensify the crisis.

  Turnbull convened the leadership group at the usual time of 8.30 a.m. with Bishop, Morrison and Pyne as well as the Nationals leader and deputy, Michael McCormack and Bridget McKenzie. It was as if the business of government continued. Within fifteen minutes, however, a delegation arrived to shatter this illusion. Cormann and Fifield, two of the ministers who would have joined the leadership group on any other day, arrived with Cash to speak to the Prime Minister. Sally Cray and David Bold stopped them outside Turnbull’s office. Why were they turning up now? They knew the leadership meeting was on? Cray looked at Fifield and Cash.

  ‘Why do you keep coming with Mathias?’ asked Cray. ‘What is wrong with you two? Why can’t you grow a spine and explain to him why you are turning on him?’

  They did not say a word. Cash was shaking. Fifield stood silent. They would not look Bold in the eye. The three visitors waited in a room next to Turnbull’s office until the Prime Minister came out to see them. Morrison was with him.3 ‘You need a witness for this,’ he said.

  Cormann told Turnbull the Liberals could not leave Canberra with the leadership question undecided. There had to be a party room meeting that day to prevent the government being irretrievably damaged and stop Bill Shorten winning the next election. Cormann did all the talking as the three presented their resignations. Cash was sobbing. Fifield was opening his mouth but the words would not come. He seemed to be whispering his agreement with Cormann. The Finance Minister told Turnbull he had lost his majority and would have to step down.

  Turnbull rejected this message. He thought Cormann was being weak and treacherous and did not have the character to stand up to the insurgents who were trying to destroy the government. This is terrorism. He said it again. He believed it was still possible to fend off the threat from Dutton, despite the obvious damage, but it required Cormann to hold firm. When Turnbull insisted he would not give in, he heard Cormann’s reply as a surrender. You’ve got to give in to the terrorists. Turnbull had gone through the numbers with Laundy that morning and knew the situation was dire but thought he could hold on if these three ministers would stay with him. Yes, 35 had voted against the Prime Minister on Tuesday, but this would not turn into a majority if cabinet members called for stability. Morrison passed a warning to Cormann as the trio left Turnbull’s office. ‘If you do this, you’re making it happen,’ he said.4

  Cormann moved immediately to make a public statement and maximise pressure on Turnbull. His office issued a media alert at 9.26 a.m. for a press conference in the Senate courtyard with Cash and Fifield nine minutes later, sending camera crews scrambling to broadcast the event while Liberal backbenchers and ministers froze in their offices to watch their television screens. Even after all the rumours, some Liberals did not know Cormann had switched camps until they saw him speak alongside Fifield and Cash. His assessment, that Turnbull no longer had a majority of the party room, influenced every MP watching him.

  ‘I did not want to be here in this position,’ said Cormann. ‘I did not know that there was going to be a motion from the Prime Minister to declare the leadership positions vacant on Tuesday. I, like others, was taken by surprise.’ Cormann said five cabinet ministers had come to him since Tuesday and told him they had voted for Turnbull in the spill but now believed he had to go. ‘That is not something that I can ignore,’ he said. Fifield and Cash agreed. ‘What has become apparent is that a majority of party room colleagues believe that there should be a transition,’ said Fifield. Cash said she realised the same on Wednesday. ‘I became aware yesterday that it was very clear that the Prime Minister no longer, in my opinion, had the confidence of the party room,’ she said.

  They spoke as if they were reacting to an earthquake they could feel and could not stop, rather than setting off a detonation themselves. Cormann said he believed Dutton would be the best leader for the government and spoke as if his colleagues agreed, although none of them could explain this shock. How had Turnbull failed? Cormann would not say.

  ‘I believe that Malcolm Turnbull has been, and is, a great Prime Minister,’ he said. Again, he said the majority of the party room wanted a new leader. That was it. His words the previous day still echoed in the Prime Minister’s office. I can’t hold back the tide.

  Julia Banks watched the press conference in anguish at the destruction of a leader she admired. Sitting in her office, with Cormann still on her television screen, she sent a message to Cray to tell her she was going to quit. Banks would not support a Dutton government. As the minutes passed, she decided to put out a public statement making this plain.

  ‘Can I come over or is it chaos?’ she texted Cray at 9.56 a.m.

  ‘Sure, come over,’ Cray replied. ‘It is chaos.’

  Tony Burke was about to add to the tumult. The Labor shadow minister chose this moment to put a motion to the House of Representatives that targeted Dutton and had the potential to deepen the divide within the Liberals. Burke waited for Steve Ciobo to finish speaking on a bill to implement the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement, a speech in which Ciobo praised the ‘strong leadership’ of the Prime Minister he was trying to remove. Burke then put a motion to the House that might force Dutton out of Parliament. Dutton faced open questions over his eligibility under Se
ction 44 of the Constitution: he had commissioned legal advice that cleared him, while Labor had produced legal advice that said the High Court had grounds to declare his election invalid. Burke moved at 10.10 a.m. that Dutton be referred to the High Court.

  There were no speeches as the House divided. Burke had the support of four of those who sat on the crossbench: Adam Bandt of the Greens and three independent MPs, Cathy McGowan, Rebekha Sharkie and Andrew Wilkie. But he could not get the Queensland independent, Bob Katter, to join them. The outcome depended on whether any of the Liberals or Nationals would turn on Dutton when he was most vulnerable. None did. Burke lost the vote by 68 to 69. Dutton was spared by the reluctant support of Banks and the tactical support of Turnbull and his allies. The Prime Minister was still waiting on advice from the Solicitor-General on Dutton’s eligibility and would surely lose support in the party room if he sided with Labor against a Liberal. This did not mean he would give up on this constitutional question.

  Banks arrived at Cray’s office to find one of the Prime Minister’s press secretaries, Daniel Meers, sitting at the computer. She began drafting a statement with Meers in which she damned the challengers and said she would quit the government benches if they succeeded. ‘I will not be intimidated by the deliberate and destructive campaign led by the Tony Abbott, Peter Dutton, Michael Sukkar partnership. Nor will I be intimidated or bullied by their tactics,’ she dictated. She said she would stay in Parliament and sit on the crossbench.5 Laundy was considering a similar decision. Another minister, Darren Chester, a Nationals MP, said in public that ‘all options were on the table’ if Dutton became leader. A Nationals MP, Kevin Hogan, issued a statement saying he might move to the crossbench. The government was in real danger of losing its majority in Parliament if it removed Turnbull.

  Ministers and backbenchers gathered in the Prime Minister’s suite in a series of roving meetings that began at Cray’s desk and spread into Turnbull’s personal office, where he sat with his iPad and drank Chinese tea as he listened to Lucy, Julie Bishop, Craig Laundy and others. Bishop’s mobile phone was buzzing with messages while Turnbull ruminated on his options. Banks joined the meeting and said she believed the Prime Minister should hold out against the petition. Turnbull tapped at his iPad, murmuring at each comment. He was yet to announce his decision.

  Laundy missed a call from Trent Zimmerman, a key figure in the moderate wing of the party, and left the room to find an empty office nearby where he could speak quietly on the phone. He called his wife, Suzie. ‘We’re done,’ he said.6 He asked her to drop everything in Sydney and fly to Canberra to support Turnbull and Lucy that night. He returned Zimmerman’s call and was put on speakerphone with a group of moderates including Simon Birmingham, Paul Fletcher and Marise Payne.

  ‘How is he?’ asked Zimmerman.

  ‘Mate, it’s a moving feast.’

  ‘We’re going to need your help. We think that if he stands, Dutton definitely wins.’

  Laundy said the best thing they could do was to come down to see Turnbull themselves. ‘He needs support.’ His suggestion led to another gathering in the Prime Minister’s suite when Birmingham, Fletcher, Payne, Zimmerman and the most senior moderate, Pyne, joined Turnbull and Lucy. The shock of Cormann’s public decision was less than an hour old and Payne was in tears, while Birmingham did most of the talking. As gently as possible, the group canvassed the need for Turnbull to resign so other candidates could emerge to block Dutton. There was no mystery about the leading candidate. Pyne had already spoken to Morrison’s group about their chances.

  Here, in Turnbull’s office, the arrangements for the coming ballot took shape. The Liberals would vote on a spill motion to decide if the leadership should be declared vacant. Turnbull agreed to step down if the motion was successful, clearing the way for others to stand against Dutton.

  Morrison met his lieutenants in his office. Two of his allies, Alex Hawke and Ben Morton, had called Liberals on Wednesday morning to gauge whether Turnbull could hold on, but their calls also helped to test opinions about Morrison’s ability to defeat Dutton. Another close friend, Stuart Robert, had been in Morrison’s office for most of the week to be ready for this contest. Their preparations were no secret within the party room and had already unsettled the Dutton camp to the point of spreading rumours to provoke Morrison into declaring his intentions, but the confirmation was slow to arrive. Only at 10.30 a.m. were journalists briefed with enough certainty to report that Morrison was definitely running for the leadership. As this news spread, the most important message conveyed to Liberals was that Morrison was doing this with Turnbull’s blessing.

  Another wave of resignations struck Turnbull’s office to force a ballot. The ministers who had supported him in Question Time on Tuesday arrived at his office less than 48 hours later to insist he accept their resignations. Greg Hunt issued a public statement at 10.58 a.m. to make sure this news went to the media and colleagues as quickly as possible. Angus Taylor did the same at 10.56 a.m., Alan Tudge at 11 a.m., Michael Keenan at 11.03 a.m. and Steve Ciobo at 11.09 a.m. Several used the passive language of observers watching a crowd, as if they had no influence over these affairs. ‘It has become clear that he’s lost the support of the Liberal Party room,’ said Keenan. Ciobo was the same: ‘Regrettably, it is clear to me the Prime Minister has lost the support of the party room.’ They were too delicate to mention the knives in their hands.

  Michael Sukkar and Zed Seselja were working without rest for Dutton after submitting their resignations earlier in the day. They were joined by Andrew Hastie, Tony Pasin, James Paterson and Jason Wood. They had five sheets of paper with signatures to demand a meeting but did not have a majority despite days of claiming to the media that Dutton had the numbers. Their desperation increased as Morrison moved into the open as a candidate in the event that Turnbull resigned or lost a vote to declare the leadership vacant. The men had been putting constant requests to their colleagues to sign the paperwork. The urgency of the petition began to consume the Dutton lieutenants to the point where their nagging turned into pestering and badgering. For some, it turned into bullying.

  The media campaign for Dutton was just as relentless and was fed by confident talk that the challenger had already secured a majority of the party room and was being denied a fair ballot by an unscrupulous Prime Minister. On 2GB that morning, Alan Jones complained on air about those who were mobilising to block Dutton. Ray Hadley’s preference for Dutton and disdain for Morrison was transparent. On Sky News, Andrew Bolt and Peta Credlin told listeners that the next leader had to be Dutton. At the Herald Sun, Bolt used his blog to welcome the change before it arrived. ‘Prime Minister Peter Dutton’, said the headline at 9.47 a.m. on Wednesday. ‘Peter Dutton will be Prime Minister today. The Turnbull era is over.’ Only later did he add a question mark to the headline and lay the blame for his mistake: ‘Oops. I underestimated Turnbull’s bastardry. This drags out to tomorrow.’

  The media was making itself part of the story. The Nine Network’s political editor, Chris Uhlmann, called out the media commentators who were turning into players.

  ‘Everyone from the Prime Minister on down has pointed out to me that they believe that there is a campaign being waged against them,’ Uhlmann said in a morning broadcast. ‘This is reporting news, right, this is what people are telling me about what’s going on — that News Corporation, so we’re talking about The Australian, the Daily Telegraph and all of those tabloid newspapers around the country, 2GB in Sydney, led by Alan Jones and Ray Hadley, and Sky News in particular, with its evening line-up, are waging a war against the Prime Minister of Australia. Now that’s what they think. That’s just reporting the news. Apparently if you say that to them, now, they get their knickers in a huge twist. So all I’m saying is if they want to dish it out they should be prepared to take it, and they’re among the biggest bullies in the land. And it’s about time that people called them out for what they are.’

  This was an accurate account of the v
iew within the government but it inflamed media rivalries and infuriated News Corp Australia. The defence was that neither the Daily Telegraph nor The Australian newspaper had advocated for any change and had merely reported the news. Within Turnbull’s office, however, nobody believed the claim that the coverage was fair because the editorial pages held back from demanding a spill. That was an old trick, said one adviser. ‘The damage you do on the front page is not outweighed by what you bury on page thirteen.’

  The leadership rivals circled each other while the media debate raged. The idea of a combined ticket, with Dutton and Morrison joining forces, came up briefly on Thursday morning when Dutton tried to talk to Pyne to discuss the plans for Parliament. Unable to reach him on the phone, Dutton walked to Pyne’s office to speak directly. Morrison entered the office soon after they began speaking. It seemed too convenient to be a coincidence. The time had come to decide if one of the leadership contenders would agree to accept the deputy’s position. Together they could overthrow Turnbull with a handshake.

  Dutton put the question: ‘Is there an agreement to be struck here or not?’ The numbers gave Dutton an advantage, given his conservative bloc was at least twice the size of Morrison’s personal following of about 15, but neither man was interested in serving as the other’s deputy. United, they could claim a majority that would easily defeat Bishop. As rivals, they could not be sure of their chances. Dutton had to find more supporters while preventing anyone shifting to the alternative. Morrison could only succeed if he had Pyne and the party moderates by his side. Pyne could be kingmaker.

  Three years of bitterness was flooding through Parliament House. The poison in the Liberal Party was pumping through the party room and infecting every limb until the government staggered, slumped and collapsed. The shocking admission of this paralysis came at 11.33 a.m. when Pyne stood in the House of Representatives and said: ‘I move that the House do now adjourn.’ The business of the Parliament was cut short to give the Liberals time to wage their civil war.