Up until now ex-Prime Minister – sorry, that should be the deposed Prime Minis… actually, the most recent deposed Prime Minister – Malcolm Turnbull has kept at plausibly-deniable arms length over his many, many criticisms about the state of the party.
And hoo boy, did that end in spectacular fashion on Monday morning.
“There are a lot of people in NSW, a lot of NSW Liberals, who believe it would be in the party’s interests for the federal government to go to an election before the NSW government’s set election date of March 23 so that Gladys Berejiklian, who is leading an outstanding government of real and considerable achievement, can go to the polls and [be] judged on her record rather than being hit by the brand damage that arose from the very destructive, pointless, shameful leadership change in Canberra in August,” Malcolm rather pointedly said to Fran Kelly on the ABC’s Radio National.
Did he go on? Oh, you better believe he did!
Look, since you asked so nicely…
“I’m a retired member of Parliament and just a member of the Liberal Party [but] my view is that it would be manifestly in the best interests and prospects of the Morrison government to go to the polls as soon as it can after the summer break.”
He went on to announce that he and Morrison had intended to call the federal election for March 2 in order to give the NSW government some clear air – a claim which assumes a) that Turnbull also assumed he was toast, which would go against all his post-dumping rhetoric about still being competitive, and b) that he’d do the honourable thing and walk out into the snow to save the NSW government.
Political slogans 2018.
This open warfare began over the weekend with the news that Morrison – who’d been away at the G20 watching world leaders wonder who the hell he was – was considering asking the NSW Liberal executive to endorse a motion to automatically re-endorse all sitting members ahead of the next election.
This was intended as a way to prevent conservative troublemaker Craig Kelly from being defeated in a preselection battle in Hughes. Kelly has long refused to rule out quitting the party and sitting as a crossbench independent, which would have deepened Morrison’s minority government crisis following Julia Banks’ quitting for the crossbench last week.
Turnbull helpfully described the plan as “the worst and weakest response” to Kelly’s less than assiduous party loyalty. Thanks, Malc!
Here's the section of the NSW Liberal Party constitution that outlines the need for 90 per cent of the state executive to vote in favour of cancelling Craig Kelly's preselection. They still don't have thenumbers but it's very tight and anything could happen today #auspol pic.twitter.com/4WcHppmpsG
— Bevan Shields (@BevanShields) December 3, 2018
A visibly frustrated Trade Minister Simon Birmingham made an attempt to argue that no-one cares, scurrying over to ABC News 24 this morning to blame the media (for reporting things that Kelly and Turnbull had said), and insist “People don’t want to hear about the internals of political parties. That’s why I don’t want to talk about the internals of political parties because it feeds the cycle.”
Mmm hmm. Sounds… let’s go with “hopeful”.