A very bad week for both Abbott and Turnbull
By Sean Kelly
The email from the office of justice minister Michael Keenan to the office of senator David Leyonhjelm confirming their deal on a sunset clause for the Adler gun ban was sent on 12 August 2015 [paywall].
This is the horse-trading on gun laws that Tony Abbott condemned this week, before realising it had happened on his watch. Then he said he and his office had not done a deal. After it was made clear that his office certainly knew about the deal, he said that he had not “connived at a deal with Senator Leyonhjelm to weaken Australia’s tough, gold-standard gun-control laws”, which clearly implied he hadn’t known about the deal at the time.
Now, back to that email.
The email itself only emerged this week.
But almost immediately after the email was sent, Leyonhjelm was talking publicly about the deal. It was reported in the Australian on 13 August, on page seven. The story seems to have appeared online [paywall] on the afternoon of the 12th.
Also on 13 August, the prime minister at the time, Tony Abbott, gave a press conference in Canberra, at (believe it or not) the Australian Crime Commission.
The ABC’s World Today program covered the story that same day. Not long afterwards, Abbott appeared, as you’d expect, at Question Time.
On 20 August, the Hobart Mercury reported that, “A survivor of the Port Arthur massacre has thrown her support behind a Greens push to permanently ban imports of a new lever-action shotgun.” Pretty emotive stuff.
The prime minister gave a doorstop interview that day, and also appeared at Question Time. The next day, after Leyonhjelm had boasted about “blackmailing” the government over the gun, Abbott gave another doorstop interview.
Anyway, it is of course possible that Abbott was never told about this deal which had been reported in the national media, that he was never briefed on it in preparation for either press appearances or Question Time, and that he did not read the paper himself. It’s also possible that two of his ministers were privy to a deal which had been discussed with his office but which nobody had ever brought to his attention.
In which case the most important question here is not Is Tony Abbott telling the truth? The most important question is What the hell was going on in Tony Abbott’s government?
Which is just another reason this week has been bad for Abbott. It must have seemed so easy to jump on the gun-control-righteousness bandwagon with that tweet. Days later, Abbott has managed to get his supporter Peter Dutton offside, offend the conservatives who don’t think the Adler gun is such a problem, and end up looking either like he’s been lying or like he had no idea what was going on in his own government.
One of the most remarkable things in this whole mess, by the way, is the piece of morally dubious legislation for which the Abbott government was apparently willing to trade away its gun control integrity.
This is how that Australian article describes it:
Senator Leyonhjelm in return agreed to oppose a Labor amendment requiring a guardian or independent witnesses be present when government officials collect biometric samples — such as fingerprints, blood or saliva — from children or people with disabilities at Australia’s borders.
Imagine being so desperate to get that across the line.
Anyway, it’s been a bad few days for Abbott.
It has also been a terrible week for Turnbull.
I do think the prime minister got the best of the exchange with Abbott in the end. Prime ministers facing latent challengers are in a terrible bind. They can’t usually attack their enemy, for fear of being seen to be provocative. They must always be the “bigger person”. This week Turnbull ended up in the best possible situation for a leader in that situation, which is to be backed into a corner, unable to be blamed for fighting back.
And fighting back was crucial. Politicians are like hyenas. They will kill a wounded beast. Turnbull had to show some fight. Perhaps that will be the largest consequence of this week, in which case it will all have been worth it for the PM. Or perhaps this will simply launch an even more brutal war between the Turnbull camp and the (much smaller) Abbott camp, a revenge spiral which will hurt everyone involved.
Either way, there is no gainsaying that Turnbull lost an entire week to political stupidity. If he’d stopped the gun question in its tracks when first asked about it by Fran Kelly, centuries back on Tuesday, he might have been OK this week.
But this is the problem with wresting power from a sitting prime minister. Every political error you make has in inbuilt sequel: the reaction of your predecessor. And while Turnbull came out on top in this week’s Coalition wars, eventually voters stop caring which of the two battling leaders are ahead at any one time, and start to yearn for an end to it all.
Today’s links
- Gun reads: The facts from Phil Coorey. Michelle Grattan. Dennis Shanahan [paywall]. David Crowe [paywall]. Laura Tingle [paywall]. And I recommend catching up on the actual substance of the gun regulation debate here.
- A push for Liberal Party reform threatens to pit Turnbull and Abbott against each other once more.
- Laura Tingle on Turnbull and the crossbench. Strong recommend.
- Best debate read: Trump didn’t destroy Trump. Hillary destroyed Trump.
- Interesting trail of tweets from James Surowiecki on racism and the Republican Party. This is the article he’s taking to task.
