Venom

by David Crowe

  Some Liberals fled Parliament House after the adjournment to escape the Dutton lieutenants who stalked the corridors with a petition in their hands and a mission on their minds. One sanctuary was a bar in Manuka, just below Capital Hill, where a handful of backbenchers sat and watched their phones light up with calls seeking their signatures or votes. They could see the same people pursuing them, one after another, as they considered whether to answer. One took a call from Cormann, who was so invested in the challenge he was helping to secure the numbers. The Liberal MP refused to sign the petition, but Cormann told him they could not leave Canberra that week without resolving the leadership. The backbencher, a Turnbull supporter, told Cormann he should have thought of that before walking onto the Senate lawn that morning to support a spill. ‘Mathias, this sounds like a Mathias problem,’ he said. There was no sympathy for a cabinet minister accustomed to the regard of his peers. Keenan called the same MP to voice concern they would all look like a ‘laughing stock’ if they did not sign the petition and hold the meeting. The MP turned him down without saying what was on his mind. No, you’ll be the laughing stock. The rest of us will look sane.

  Banks remained in Parliament House in the knowledge that none of the Dutton supporters would demand her signature, such was her loyalty to Turnbull, but she witnessed the pressure on others. Banks walked to the office of Ann Sudmalis, to find her crying at her desk while Jason Wood, one of Dutton’s Victorian supporters, urged her to sign a piece of paper. ‘What are you doing?’ Banks demanded. Wood complained about Turnbull’s lack of attention on his electorate of La Trobe and praised Dutton as a better leader. Banks was incredulous that Wood had deserted a Prime Minister over something as mundane as his visits to a marginal electorate. Is that why you want to bring down the government? The desperation in the Dutton camp was rising: Wood left the office suggesting they only had 35 names. It was about 2 p.m.

  Banks was still sitting with Sudmalis when her phone rang with a call from Morrison on a subject she could easily predict. Before they could talk about the ballot, before Morrison could ask for her vote, Banks told him she was so appalled by what she was seeing she was ready to quit. Morrison urged her to stay, told her she was exactly the person the government needed and put the question he was asking MPs all afternoon. If I run can I have your support? Banks said yes.

  In this call and others, Morrison was direct in his requests to backbenchers. You know me, we work well together. Can I rely on your support? Can I have your vote? When Dutton called MPs, he urged them to change the leader to prevent a repeat of the 2016 election tactics and a guaranteed loss to Labor. Bishop called with proof from the published opinion polls that she could win voters in the middle ground. Some Liberals were surprised to find Turnbull did not call them or look them in the eye and ask them to stand by him. There were no fighting words from the Prime Minister about blocking the petition or defeating the spill motion, while his allies had fallen silent after calculating the numbers were against him. The calls to MPs that afternoon and evening were from competing candidates who assumed Turnbull would be gone within a day.

  Only after returning to her office did Banks learn that Morrison was not the only candidate against Dutton. She spoke to Bishop and offered her vote as soon as possible, then called Morrison to explain she could not vote for him in the first round. Morrison could not suppress a sigh.

  The charge towards a spill began to slow as Hastie, Pasin, Seselja, Sukkar and others struggled to get the names they needed on the petition, but this meant the pressure on backbenchers increased to a point where bruising tactics were used to extract a result. Some called it bullying, some called it politics as usual. Whatever label it was given, the response from one Liberal MP was to lock his office door to stop the endless appeals, friendly or not. The House of Representatives had adjourned but proceedings continued in the Senate, where Birmingham ran the government’s business as the leader in the chamber after the resignations of Cormann and Fifield. Liberal senators dreaded the ringing of the bells to call them to a division so they would have to enter the chamber and sit with their colleagues. All the talk would be about the petition.

  Linda Reynolds was shocked by the pressure applied to bring down a Prime Minister when she believed a government was always more than its leader. Reynolds had entered Parliament in 2014 as a Senator from Western Australia after a lifetime in the army as an officer and reservist, with the rank of brigadier. She did not regard the leadership spill as another day in politics and rose in the Senate at four o’clock to say so.

  ‘The tragedy of the madness that has taken hold of a number of my colleagues is that this has been a very good government,’ she said. ‘I do not recognise my party at the moment. I do not recognise the values. I do not recognise the bullying and intimidation that has gone on. Whatever happens tomorrow, this is a sad day for my party and for our nation. I just hope that, whatever happens tomorrow, the behaviours we have seen and the bullying and intimidation, which I do not recognise as Liberal in any way, shape or form, are brought to account. We are not here to squabble with each other. We are here to serve the people of Australia. I feel ashamed that we are letting our nation down.’

  No other Liberals spoke out in this way in this week. While Turnbull had spoken of madness and bullying, Reynolds was giving her account of what she witnessed among colleagues and was putting this on the record in Hansard. This was an army officer, no shrinking violet, defining the behaviour as bullying as it happened. Within days the dispute over the events reached a point at which some Liberals, including former politicians who did not witness the spill, denied a culture of bullying and said the ‘rough and tough game’ of politics was not for everyone.12 Liberals would disagree about whether the experience was bullying for the simple reason that each one of them had a different experience.

  Yet the pressure would not ease. There could be no outcome without 43 signatures on the petition. It was not for Turnbull to make Dutton’s challenge any easier.

  The cracks in the Dutton camp were starting to show in the Monkey Pod room of the ministerial wing, wedged between the offices of Dutton and Pyne. ‘There was no campaign management, no campaign leadership,’ said one member of the Dutton group. While Dutton spent his time on the phone, his lieutenants were belatedly putting some science into their calculations by sending an adviser to Officeworks to buy an overhead projector, which was used to display their spreadsheet of names and votes on the wall. As late as four o’clock on Thursday, however, the spreadsheet did not add up. The group realised they had forgotten Jim Molan, the most recent Liberal to enter Parliament.

  Pyne organised one of his staff to watch everyone who arrived in the Monkey Pod room, then passed the list to colleagues. He told other members of the moderate wing that he had staff holding glasses up to the wall to listen to the Dutton lieutenants next door and learn hints about MPs being worked on to join the challenge. ‘These Einsteins next door, this is what they’re saying,’ Pyne said at one point, according to one Liberal who heard Pyne read out an account of some of the Monkey Pod remarks. ‘Surely you know those blokes are as sharp as a bowling ball?’

  The media campaign for Dutton reached a fever just when his support began to cool. That evening commentators stared into the cameras at Sky News with absolute conviction that only one contender could unite the party. Andrew Bolt deplored the way Turnbull was blocking Dutton and helping Morrison, his ‘crony’ and a man the conservatives did not trust. Peta Credlin said the party room would have to vote for Dutton to end the disunity.

  ‘What Dutton will bring is he will be able to unite the base,’ Credlin said. ‘That is the problem, that is why the Newspoll is as it is.’ She said it was nonsense for the Liberals to try to win marginal electorates held by Labor by appealing to the middle ground with Bishop: ‘No way, lady.’ And the problem for Morrison was that he was part of the cabinet decisions under Turnbull. ‘He’s seen as joined to Malcolm at the hip. I think that damages him.’
/>   The slaps for Morrison were no surprise on Sky at night, but the praise for Dutton was starting to wear thin with MPs who had endured days of misinformation in the media which they blamed on Dutton’s helpers inside and outside the Parliament. Whether it was the false claim that Dutton had a majority of the party room, the Hadley rumour of a ‘ticket’ with Morrison or the Jones tweet about a spill on Wednesday night, the challenge had been characterised by the swagger of its lieutenants and the propaganda of its promoters. Morrison’s advocates found MPs were receptive to the idea of a centre-right candidate who could unite the party. They assured their colleagues that Morrison was the cleanskin candidate: he had not encouraged Dutton’s move and played no part in Turnbull’s sudden ballot.

  Into this maelstrom stepped the most senior officials of the Liberal Party nationwide, led by federal president Nick Greiner, the former Premier of New South Wales, a man chosen by Turnbull the previous year to try to bring the party together. The federal executive gathered for dinner in Canberra on Thursday night to prepare for a formal meeting the next morning, scheduled long before any signs of a spill. Around the table sat three of the state division presidents most determined to see Turnbull removed: Gary Spence of Queensland, Michael Kroger of Victoria and Norman Moore of Western Australia. As the meal progressed, without a vote being taken, it seemed that nine of about twenty members were backing a spill. Spence had called MPs to say so. Kroger had not only called MPs to urge a vote for Dutton but to back Hunt as the deputy. Some Liberals took a dim view of these interventions, as if their party was becoming more like Labor, with its faction leaders.

  Greiner sent a text to Turnbull at around nine o’clock to pass on the view from members that the party room meeting should be held that week.

  ‘For what it’s worth, we’re having dinner and three-quarters of the executive are here and there’s a strong view the issue should be resolved tomorrow,’ he said.

  ‘Well that is no surprise,’ Turnbull replied. ‘Some of them are the ones who caused the problem.’

  Banks sat in her office that night with the shocks of the week still shuddering through her veins and the dread of a Dutton government making it impossible for her to sleep. She shared a pizza with her office manager while some of her neighbours along the Parliament House corridor, Jane Prentice and Steve Irons, came in for drinks. The two Liberals were equally opposed to Dutton becoming leader, while Irons was one of the tight group surrounding Morrison and was impatient with arguments in favour of voting for Bishop. He seemed confident Turnbull would resign the next day. I’ve got it from the best authority. Turnbull’s gone. Turnbull’s gone. After midnight, with the anxiety growing as the ballot approached, he was even more adamant Banks should vote for Morrison in the first round rather than cling to the idea of Bishop as a contender. As they stood in a doorway, he brought his face up close to hers. You have to vote for Scott. His face was ten centimetres away. He didn’t need to raise his voice. Don’t be an idiot. Turnbull’s gone. Irons said later he was not confrontational.13 None of this swayed Banks. She was sure Bishop was the best alternative.

  The misleading media claims never stopped. The Dutton camp was so confident of success it spread stories for the morning newspapers claiming to have 48 votes. The group broke off from counting numbers to relax over dinner. Dutton and Cormann ate at Portia’s Place, a favourite with politicians and staffers, while Ciobo and Keenan enjoyed dinner at the upmarket Ottoman restaurant closer to Parliament House. Sukkar, Taylor, Hastie, Pasin and Seselja gathered over a Japanese meal.

  Hawke and Robert, meanwhile, stayed with Morrison in the ministerial wing of Parliament House with a growing sense they were gaining ground while their rivals stalled. Hours had passed since Turnbull had laid out the public condition for 43 signatures and yet the Dutton challengers had been unable to gather the numbers and, in a humiliating concession, had to talk to the Morrison camp to admit they needed help. Robert was incredulous at this failure. Are you kidding me? It was after nine o’clock by the time he took a call from Paterson telling him the petition had 38 names, although he would not hand over the list. The Dutton camp’s claim to a majority had been put to the test and shown to be false. The truth was laughingly obvious. They were all lying.

  The Morrison strategy drew on the successes and failures of recent Liberal history. The last three-way contest for the leadership had been at the end of 2009 when Turnbull, the incumbent, faced a spill motion that allowed Abbott and Joe Hockey to stand against him. Turnbull made an agreement with Hockey to bow out of the race if the party room voted for a motion to declare the leadership vacant, only to renege on this in a spectacular rift when the spill motion prevailed and he decided he must try his hand in the ballot. The moderates were split between Turnbull and Hockey while the conservatives were glued to Abbott. Hockey’s chance to become Opposition Leader died when he was excluded in the first round, losing by 23 to 26 votes against Turnbull, while Abbott secured 35 votes. Turnbull went on to face Abbott and lost by one vote. Robert had helped Abbott secure this narrow victory, 42 to 41 votes, and had seen the difficulty for Hockey in standing as the compromise candidate between two others. Nine years later he wanted to make sure Morrison did not fail in the same way. The message to wavering Liberals was that Morrison was a social conservative who belonged on the right of the party, even as he relied on support from the left.

  Another lesson was more recent and more sensitive. Abbott had been overthrown in 2015 in a ballot where Turnbull’s handiwork was obvious while Morrison’s fingerprints were more difficult to find. Morrison was one of the 44 who voted for Abbott and yet his stated loyalty to the leader was hollow from the start, given that his small group of followers had joined the 54 who sided with Turnbull. The promise of a new Liberal team at the top of the government — Turnbull as leader, Bishop as deputy, Morrison as the new Treasurer — was fundamental to the challenge and deadly to Abbott.

  One week after the 2015 spill, Abbott emerged from the surf at Manly beach in Sydney to give a waiting reporter his unvarnished thoughts on Morrison’s part in the coup. ‘I’m afraid Scott badly misled people. He badly misled people,’ he said.14 The numbers showed that Morrison had played the former leader. In the 2GB studio, Hadley demanded Morrison swear on a bible to explain his part in bringing Abbott down, only for Morrison to claim he could find no bible to swear upon.15

  The experience of the last spill shaped the way everyone considered the next. Morrison had deserted Abbott while pretending to support him.16 As midnight passed, Liberals believed he was doing the same to Turnbull.

  13

  DOUBLE DEALING

  FRIDAY 24 AUGUST

  THE FINAL STEPS TOWARDS a ballot were taken on the pathways leading to the doors of Parliament House on the morning of Friday, 24 August, when some of Morrison’s supporters revealed they would sign the petition to force a party room meeting. Ben Morton, the Western Australian who had been advocating a leadership change for days, endorsed Morrison without hesitation at 7.30 a.m. and told waiting journalists he would put his signature to the paperwork. It was a sign of the open support for the Treasurer and the growing assumption the spill motion would be passed. Scott Buchholz, a Queenslander, said he was being ‘pressured beyond any comprehension’ to put his name to the petition and believed Turnbull should hold the meeting without waiting for the names.1 He signed soon afterwards but said he would not support the spill motion.

  Warren Entsch revealed he was willing to provide the last signature on the paperwork if another name was needed to gain a majority. He added a lesson from history. Entsch remembered Turnbull’s ascent to the Liberal Party leadership ten years earlier when he defeated Brendan Nelson by 45 to 42 votes after ten months of undermining the elected party leader. When Entsch scrawled his signature under Morton’s name, he added a note: ‘For Brendan Nelson.’

  The Liberals were about to pitch their government into the unknown. This was a bigger gamble than Turnbull’s move on Tuesday because it w
as a collective leap to the next election with a new and untested leader. Turnbull had put his leadership on the line. The parliamentary Liberal Party now put their credibility as a government on the line. They invited a verdict from Australian voters on their shared breakdown.

  Only when it suited Morrison and his supporters were the final names added to the list. The second challenge to Turnbull only arrived because the wind was in Morrison’s sails when Dutton was becalmed. South Australian Senator David Fawcett, who believed the damage from the week had to be cut short, had signed on Thursday night. Karen Andrews, a minister and Morrison supporter, also added her name. Jane Hume had signed the previous afternoon after telling Turnbull’s allies that she believed the meeting had to go ahead. Then came John McVeigh, a cabinet minister who had assured Turnbull’s allies he would not vote against the Prime Minister.

  One who would not sign was John Alexander. A former tennis professional who believed any intelligent team would learn from its mistakes, Alexander thought the Liberal Party should have changed its party room rules to make leadership spills more difficult after the removal of Abbott three years earlier. He stopped at the doors of the Parliament on Friday morning to tell reporters the rule change was even more necessary: ‘We are now committing another act of self-harm, greater than the last.’

  Mitch Fifield met one of his oldest political friends before eight o’clock to explain his decision the previous day. The Speaker, Tony Smith, found a quiet moment to ask his friend to reconsider his support for Dutton. The two had known each other as allies in the Victorian division of the Liberal Party over decades and as fellow advisers in the office of Peter Costello as Treasurer. Another alumnus from that office, Kelly O’Dwyer, had spoken to Fifield on Thursday night to urge him to abandon Dutton because of the risk of a backlash from voters in Victoria.