by David Crowe
Smith had been taken by surprise by Fifield’s announcement with Cormann and Cash the previous morning and thought it was fundamentally wrong to give in to the pressure for a spill. ‘I’m not going to take political advice about lower house seats from Mathias Cormann,’ he was heard to tell colleagues in the hours after that announcement. As someone who had fought and won six elections as the member for Casey in the foothills of the Yarra Ranges, he had no patience with the rumblings of those who sat comfortably on the red leather seats of the upper house, removed from constituents with local concerns. He had worked as an adviser to Costello during the campaign for the GST at the 1998 election and was dismayed to see Dutton argue for electricity bills to be exempt from the tax — the Labor policy under Kim Beazley as Opposition Leader. Smith chose to support Turnbull no matter what.
Smith told his friend it was wrong to assume a foregone conclusion and urged him to think again. The conversation helped convince Fifield to switch his allegiance. He had gone from voting for Turnbull on Tuesday to backing Dutton on Thursday and supporting Morrison on Friday, a head-spinning example of the confusion within the party. Usually unruffled and inclined to dry humour, Fifield had been showing the strain of his public support for the spill. He later admitted his misjudgement in private. ‘I think I made a terrible mistake yesterday,’ he told one colleague.2 He expressed the same regret in other conversations about his decision to stand alongside Cormann — an astonishing acknowledgement that one of the central acts in this upheaval was the result of muddled thinking.
Turnbull resisted the pressure for a meeting in the hope that the Solicitor-General would conclude that Dutton should face the High Court over his financial interest in childcare centres and his eligibility under Section 44 of the Constitution. Turnbull called Christian Porter at 6.45 a.m. to ask when the advice would arrive, but the two were at odds before they had even seen the document. Turnbull believed the Governor-General should not appoint Dutton if he faced questions over his right to sit in Parliament. Porter believed the Governor-General appointed a Prime Minister on two criteria only: first, did he or she have the confidence of the House of Representatives; second, could he or she ensure the passage of budget supply bills. In Porter’s view, the Section 44 questions should be a matter for the party room, a place where political and legal risks could influence a ballot, but not for Sir Peter Cosgrove at Yarralumla.
Dutton blamed Turnbull for a ‘disgraceful’ tactic he believed was a distraction and a dirty trick. He had released advice finding there could be no ‘agreement’ between the Dutton childcare centres and the Commonwealth without an actual contract. Without that link, he argued, there were no grounds for referral to the court.
Porter waited for the legal advice in his office, considering whether he should abstain from the leadership ballot if and when it came. He arranged for one of his staff to write to the Governor-General’s staff to inform them he would be available if needed, but there was no reply. Finally, at nine o’clock, the advice arrived from the Solicitor-General, Stephen Donaghue, and Porter sent two of his staff to take copies to Turnbull and Dutton at once, each of them less than a minute away in the ministerial wing. He sent a covering letter to Turnbull in which he restated his view that the doubts were a question for the party room, not the Governor-General.
Like so much legal advice about Section 44, the opinion from Donaghue offered limited relief without certainty. It said Dutton was ‘not incapable’ of sitting in Parliament but it was ‘impossible to state the position with certainty’ and, more ominously, there was ‘some risk’ the court might conclude there was a conflict. Donaghue had been at the Victorian bar for seventeen years and held a doctorate from Oxford, yet his advice was not infallible. He had told the government one year earlier that Barnaby Joyce could survive a challenge over his citizenship, only for the High Court to declare his election invalid. Donaghue’s conclusion gave Dutton a reprieve but could not end all the doubts over his position.
The last hope for Turnbull was to slow the petition and delay the meeting. As late as 11 a.m. there was still an argument within the Prime Minister’s Office to prevent a ballot and allow MPs to go home for two weeks in the hope they would hear from constituents who would urge them to keep the Prime Minister. Turnbull and his allies were hoping for people power to save him. This was put to the chief whip, Nola Marino, on one of her many visits to the office. Turnbull said the time had come to send the MPs home. Marino would not have it. She said the leadership had to be decided before they went home. Arthur Sinodinos, back in Turnbull’s office, could see the support for Morrison growing among those who might otherwise guard Turnbull.
One question nagged at those who wanted to defeat Dutton. Turnbull had declared on Thursday he would step down if the party room voted in favour of a spill, but he had changed his mind before. He had lost a spill motion when Liberal leader in 2009 but refused to bow out, reneging on earlier agreements and placing himself in a ballot against Tony Abbott and Joe Hockey. What if he did the same? If Turnbull ran against Bishop, Dutton and Morrison, he could split the moderate vote again, a gift to Dutton this time just as it was a gift to Abbott nine years earlier. One path towards a smooth transition was for Turnbull to resign at the start of the meeting.
Paul Fletcher and Marise Payne, two of the leaders of the moderate wing, visited Sally Cray to ask her about Turnbull’s intentions. Would he consider resigning? It was a bleak moment. To ask the question was to peer into the political abyss and confirm that all was lost, that the Prime Minister’s own supporters thought he no longer had the numbers. The question infuriated Cray. ‘Interesting,’ she said. ‘But have you met him?’ She told them Turnbull would not cave. He would have to live with his decision for the rest of his life. How could any of them go to him now and suggest he give up? The very question provoked her suspicions.
‘Have you been sent here by Scott?’ she asked.
‘No,’ said Payne.
The leaders of the moderate wing wanted to keep their colleagues together as the party splintered. The routines of Parliament House had broken down on an anxious day when Liberal MPs had none of their usual business to conduct in the chambers. Bill Shorten and most of his Labor colleagues had gone home the previous night to leave the Liberals to their agony in a building with vast areas of empty space, where it was easy for every MP to retreat to his or her office and sit with staff to watch live coverage of their collective implosion on Sky News or the ABC.
Fletcher used his WhatsApp group, once called Sensible Friends and now named Friends for Stability, to gather colleagues in this office for a morning tea to mark the birthday of Jason Falinski, who turned 48 that day. More important than the cake was the unifying idea some of them expressed. This Dutton thing is crazy. Turnbull had gone to the group’s drinks on Wednesday night but was absent now, while Morrison remained with his inner circle in his office. The group of twenty or so MPs included Christopher Pyne, Marise Payne, Kelly O’Dwyer, Craig Laundy and Simon Birmingham, all of them moving in and out of the gathering as they spoke on their phones.
The focus was on blocking Dutton, not saving Turnbull. The absence of a vigorous campaign to defend the Prime Minister was remembered later. ‘Malcolm did not call,’ said one backbencher. Turnbull did not go to MPs to seek their support in these final hours.
The moderates were united on what to do in the second round of the ballot but not the first, when they had to choose between Morrison and Bishop. Entsch told the group he would be backing Bishop; Alexander indicated the same. Others were so worried about the prospect of a Dutton victory they believed they had to put other factors aside, not least their regard for Bishop and her popularity with voters, in order to make sure the choice in the second round was between Morrison and Dutton. Only after they left the morning tea did they get a WhatsApp message from Fletcher, sent at 12.10 p.m., with a warning about the risk of voting for Bishop.3
‘Cormann rumoured to be putting some WA votes behind Julie Bi
shop in round 1,’ wrote Fletcher. ‘Be aware that this is a ruse trying to get her ahead of Morrison so he drops out and his votes go to Dutton. Despite our hearts tugging us to Julie we need to vote with our heads for Scott in round one.’
‘Got it,’ wrote Laundy.
‘Agree,’ said Pyne.
‘Yes,’ wrote Ryan.
‘Someone should tell Julie,’ said Linda Reynolds, the Senator from Bishop’s home state of Western Australia.
‘Agree,’ said Chris Crewther.
‘I have,’ responded Pyne. ‘Very respectfully.’
Pyne was not giving his colleagues all the facts. Bishop knew nothing of this ploy as she called her colleagues that morning. She had spoken to Pyne on Thursday, when he had suggested she run for deputy, and she knew many of the moderates would vote for Morrison, but she was not alerted to this calculated plan to weaken her support in the first round. As the deputy leader of the party and a minister with more popular appeal than her rivals, Bishop was a natural choice for leader but was struggling to overcome the resistance from the right. The barbs aimed at Bishop by Peta Credlin on Sky News were merely a small sample of the hatred for her in the Abbott camp, which blamed her as well as Turnbull and Morrison for the spill three years earlier. The conservatives would never accept her as leader and would respond to her rise, if it came, by resuming the guerrilla campaign they had waged against Turnbull for so long. The moderates had to choose Morrison so they could elevate someone the conservatives would reluctantly accept.
Opinions outside the party room were very different from the deliberations within. Liberal Party surveys found that Australians viewed Bishop far more favourably than Turnbull or Morrison. The most recent party polling showed that 36 per cent of voters had a favourable view of Turnbull while 37 per cent were unfavourable and 27 per cent neutral, producing an overall rating of minus 1 per cent. The equivalent results for Morrison showed that 22 per cent were favourable, 29 per cent unfavourable and 49 per cent neutral, leading to an overall rating of minus 7 per cent. The party did not ask about Dutton. Neither the Prime Minister nor his aspiring successor could claim genuine popularity among the bulk of Australian voters. Only Bishop could claim this. The results showed 45 per cent of respondents regarded her favourably and 29 unfavourably, with 26 per cent neutral. Her overall rating was positive at 16 per cent.
The surveys were guarded so closely by party headquarters and the Prime Minister’s Office that few backbenchers ever saw them. The most sensitive information showed the government was doing better in marginal seats than any of the published polling suggested. The July result from surveys across 40 marginal seats concluded the government was leading by 52 to 48 per cent against Labor on a two-party basis. The next election was not a lost cause on these numbers. Asked to name their preferred Prime Minister, 58 per cent of respondents in these marginal seats chose Turnbull and 29 per cent chose Shorten. The trend illustrated what should have been obvious to all, that perceptions of government unity, or lack of it, were crucial. The Coalition’s primary vote had been 37 per cent in March and the same in April and then improved when the government united behind the personal tax cuts in the budget, rising to 40 per cent in May before peaking at 44 per cent in June and easing to 42 per cent in July.
The published surveys, such as the Ipsos poll conducted for the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age and the Newspoll conducted for The Australian, did not have this focus on the nation’s most marginal seats. Their nationwide results consistently showed the government was trailing Labor in a trend that shaped assumptions about the next election, confidence levels within the Coalition and media coverage of the government’s political performance. Even here, however, the government had improved: it had narrowed the gap with Labor over several months and lagged by 49 to 51 per cent in four consecutive surveys from 1 July to 12 August.4 The Ipsos survey also showed the government had narrowed the gap to 49 to 51 per cent in July before a horror slump revealed on 20 August after the disunity on energy policy and doubts about leadership.5
The question no poll could answer was the one that would always trouble this government. How would it perform without its supreme talent for discord? It could not unite to save itself.
Shorten waited for the Liberal ballot with Tanya Plibersek during a visit to St Vincent’s Hospital in Sydney, where they dismissed the government’s ability to function under any leader. While Labor’s public position was that it did not matter who led a dysfunctional government, the party’s private work suggested its greatest risk was an early election against Bishop. Focus group research suggested she was a significant threat due to her personal popularity, something that might dissipate over time but could boost the government if it went to the polls within weeks.
Again, Turnbull sought to delay the vote. When the Dutton lieutenants claimed 43 signatures on the petition, they took the list to Marino but were told the Prime Minister wanted to see it for himself. Dutton took the document to Turnbull’s office to make sure the meeting would go ahead. Even this was not enough. Turnbull announced at 11.30 a.m. he had seen the petition with 43 signatures but wanted the whips to verify all the names. He asked for a copy of the five pages, the first step towards revealing all those who signed the papers, and waited for Marino and her fellow whips to phone the 43 MPs. This check was a final show of derision for the Dutton camp, a sign that Turnbull would not trust any assurance from Dutton and his helpers after four days of bragging and misinformation about the challenger’s supposed majority. The meeting, meant for midday, was scheduled for 12.20 p.m. instead.
Dutton and Cormann walked together from the ministerial wing of Parliament House a few minutes before the party room meeting was due to start. Turnbull followed soon afterwards, flanked by Laundy and Sinodinos, two friends from the vote three years before. Morrison walked to the room alone. The 85 members of the parliamentary Liberal Party prepared for a different procedure to the sudden ballot on Tuesday: this time, the Prime Minister would not be relinquishing the leadership to allow others to stand. The first vote was whether to declare the leadership vacant — the proper meaning of a spill. Turnbull stood at the front of the room, said he had received the petition and deferred to Marino to oversee the vote. It did not take long for the whips to count the ballot papers. Marino told the room the motion had been carried but did not say more.
A voice called out for the numbers. It was Victorian backbencher Russell Broadbent.
‘I want the numbers, please,’ said Broadbent.
‘No,’ said Marino.
‘I would like to know the numbers.’
Marino told him she would only release the count if the room wanted it done, a comment that prompted so many replies from others that Broadbent convinced her it was the will of the party room. Only then did Marino read out the tally. The motion had been carried by 45 to 40 votes. Turnbull had lost by a margin so narrow it shocked many of those in the room. Three votes were enough to make the difference. The big lie of the week, that Turnbull had lost his majority days earlier, was exposed. He would have kept his majority if Cormann, Cash and Fifield had changed their minds in his office the previous morning. It would have been a narrow majority, not enough to prevent another battering from Dutton, but it might have given Turnbull time. There was a case, on these numbers, that he could have influenced backbenchers to stand by him if more cabinet ministers had done the same. Cormann had not responded to a stampede. He had been part of one.
‘This is a farce,’ said Turnbull in a low voice, heard only by those around him. He looked stricken. He sat at the table at the front of the room, with Bishop next to him, and his friends could see the anger and frustration on his face.
The votes for Turnbull were ‘soft’ in the sense that some of those who voted for him had already given up on him. Some Liberals would never vote against a sitting Prime Minister as a point of principle. Others wanted to be able to say they had stayed with Turnbull, even as they watched him sink to the ocean floor. This was the dec
eption that shrouded every analysis of the tally: the party room included some MPs, their exact number unknown, who did little or nothing to protect the Prime Minister but wanted to go home to their electorates and tell constituents they had voted for him.
The Prime Minister had seen thirteen members of his ministry turn against him: Peter Dutton, Steve Ciobo, Greg Hunt, Michael Keenan, Concetta Fierravanti-Wells, Angus Taylor, Alan Tudge, James McGrath, Zed Seselja and Michael Sukkar, followed by Mathias Cormann, Michaelia Cash and Mitch Fifield. Another two ministers, Karen Andrews and John McVeigh, had signed the petition. This group made up almost half the 33 Liberals in the ministry. How could a Prime Minister survive such a vote of no confidence? The greatest damage to Turnbull came not from the spontaneous combustion of the backbench but the desertion of his ministers, which meant the fall of the Turnbull government came primarily from a rupture within its own executive. Stable government. Liberal ministers revealed the emptiness of their slogan with their votes.
The election of the new leader came next. In the usual convention, without speeches, Marino called for candidates to stand in their places. There were some murmurs of surprise when Bishop rose, a sign that some believed she would withdraw after seeing she did not have the numbers. The assembled MPs wrote the names of their preferred leaders on their ballot papers and waited quietly as the whips collected the papers. After a short wait the result was declared: Bishop gained 11 votes, Morrison 36 and Dutton 38. The most popular Liberal leadership contender with Australian voters was eliminated in the first round. Her supporters in that vote included Turnbull, Julia Banks, Warren Entsch and Andrew Laming.
The second round was over within minutes. There were 40 votes for Dutton and 45 for Morrison. The first round had shown everyone that Dutton lacked an absolute majority, a dangerous weakness when many assumed that Bishop’s votes were more likely to go to Morrison, but the final tally proved beyond doubt that the boasts about Dutton’s numbers had been hollow.