Scott Morrison was feeling happy as he walked up to the podium this morning.
He was going to announce that the federal budget would be handed down on April 2, clearly indicating that the nation would be going to an election in May 2019, and that it would be in surplus for the first time since the GFC. What a happy piece of news to announce – and since he was treasurer before somehow becoming PM, what a happy reflection on what a good boy he is!
That happiness lasted, by our reckoning, about eight minutes.
https://twitter.com/juliabanksmp/status/1067227017010003970
For while Scott was telling people his happy news, Liberal MP Julia Banks was issuing a statement which rather sucked all the news-oxygen out of the current affairs-room: she was quitting the government and would sit on the crossbench as an independent MP instead.
Banks had already announced plans not to run for the party again in the Melbourne seat of Chisholm in the aftermath of the leadership spill which removed Malcolm Turnbull as leader.
“Led by members of the reactionary right wing, the coup was aided by many MPs trading their vote for a leadership change in exchange for their individual promotion, preselection endorsements or silence,” she said in her statement. “Their actions were undeniably for themselves, for their position in the party, their power, their personal ambition – not for the Australian people who we represent, not for what people voted for in the 2016 election, not for stability.”
Julia Banks is joined by the crossbenchers after standing in the House of Representatives to resign from the Liberal party because of the treatment of women and disunity over energy and climate change pic.twitter.com/hhdiK72wn8
— Alex Ellinghausen (@ellinghausen) November 27, 2018
“My sensible and centrist values, belief in economic responsibility and always putting the people first and acting in the nation’s interest have not changed. The Liberal Party has changed, largely due to the actions of the reactionary and regressive right wing who talk about and talk to themselves rather than listening to the people.”
Just as a quick reminder of how things have gone since Malcolm Turnbull fell over the line at the 2016 with a majority of 76 seats in the lower house: Kevin Hogan quit the government to sit as an “independent National” on the cross bench when Morrison became PM, then Turnbull’s vacated seat of Wentworth was lost to independent Kerryn Phelps, and now Banks has quit the government.
This leaves the government with 73 seats – which is actually 72 since Liberal MP Tony Smith is the Speaker of the House. And this means that unwanted things which the government would normally be able to easily block suddenly become a lot more possible.
Like, for example, legislation for a federal ICAC, or the referral of Home Affairs minister Peter Dutton to the High Court for possible disqualification.
#neverforget
The questions that remain are whether or not Banks will run as an independent, and also if she will do so while living on $40 a day, which she memorably claimed she totally could do when arguing that Newstart didn’t need to be raised.
In any case, Morrison’s happy day has just got very, very sad instead.
Poor sad Scott.