Labor’s getting pretty pouty about Malcolm Turnbull’s protracted honeymoon. One senior figure reckons the press gallery thinks the new prime minister “farts rainbows”.



Without getting rude about it, Turnbull is enjoying a protracted honeymoon.

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And it is true his particular style of intelligent reasonableness, professed reluctance to engage in crude partisan politics before doing just that, does appear to overwhelm some listeners’ critical faculties.

Asked about Australia’s future energy sources this week, Turnbull expounded the indisputable proposition that we should be rational and businesslike, rather than irrational and “ideological” about our choices.

He put it like this: “Some people talk about it in an ideological way, as though one type of coal is better or worse than wind which is better or worse than solar which is better or worse than nuclear power.

“These are all things. They don’t have any moral characteristics ... coal, depending on where it is, can be cheap but has higher emissions. Nuclear energy has low emissions but is hugely expensive to construct and has a number of obviously very big environmental problems associated with it ... and so on down the list. The appropriate … way to deal with this is to be, I think, to be thoroughly rational about it and to say the object is to make sure we have access to all of the energy we need at the cheapest possible price.”

This caused some observers to purr the new prime minister had hit a “practical mainstream” sweetspot with climate policy, when it fact it was a masterclass in just how good he is at avoiding the question.

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Because if we just wanted energy at the cheapest possible price we’d just keep burning brown coal. The whole point of the climate debate we’ve been having this past decade or so has been how we reduce the emissions from power generation and how to calculate and factor in the environmental cost of coal generation.

We were going to use a carbon price but that ended badly for the country and for Turnbull. Now the prime minister points out, quite correctly, that a carbon price is just one means to an end, but the Coalition’s current policy is actually helping the dirtiest brown-coal generation – emissions from brown coal generators grew by 6.2% in the year to March 2015, part of the overall increase in emissions from the electricity sector.

The renewable energy target is capped and the extraordinary advances in battery storage technology are going to take a while to be cost competitive with coal-fired grid power if there are no carbon constraints. In fact, as his policy stands, there is nothing to stop emissions from the power sector continuing to rise.

Turnbull gets this and may well be working on a policy answer, but until we hear it his practical mainstream means practically nothing. Oh, and just quietly, there is a pretty big moral dimension to the question of slowing global warming.

That said, it’s reasonable for Turnbull to avoid questions for a little while longer, and when they stop gnashing their teeth for a moment Labor knows it. He can’t be expected to make considered changes and also to announce them straight away.

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Adding to the frustration, Labor has completely ditched its attack on Abbott as an incompetent ideological throwback with no good ideas for Australia’s future. Turnbull’s own qualities and all his talk about a nimble, agile nation springing into new opportunities like the economic equivalent of an Olympic gymnast has sent those lines to the cutting room floor.

Labor’s only option now is the hard grind of policy detail – their own, and forensically analysing the fine print of Turnbull’s when it comes, which isn’t likely to be until the economic update and the innovation review at the end of the year.

Given Turnbull’s obvious problems balancing any changes to his climate policy with the sceptical views on the right of his party that is an obvious early area of attack and Shorten will try to build pressure in the lead up to the December climate conference in Paris, which both he and Turnbull will attend. Next week the Labor leader will tour Pacific Islands, a few weeks after that he has scheduled a major address at the Lowy Institute to outline Labor’s stance on the international talks.

Ruled out by almost all senior Labor figures is the option of changing the leader because of the difficulties of the new grassroots leadership selection rules imposed by Kevin Rudd, because Labor understands it has resorted to leadership assassination a few times too often and because most of the alternative leaders aren’t ready yet and probably calculate their best interests lie in having a shot after the next election, on the assumption Turnbull will win it.

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And that leaves Labor backing in and shoring up a leader who is the preferred prime minister of just 17% of the population and who was already suffering a crisis of confidence even when Labor was leading the polls. Stand by for a lot of talk about the team.

The contrast with the new prime minister, who is so confident, so certain in his grasp on power, could not be greater. Labor has no choice but to concentrate on the policy detail because the more the election is a presidential-style contest of charisma and personality the worse Shorten is likely to fare.

Reading Kerry O’Brien’s biography of Paul Keating this week highlights the whiff of Keating in the new prime minister’s style.

Like Keating, Turnbull worked and waited for power and fully intends to put it to good use.

Like Keating, he has always seemed to see the “game” of politics as a means to an end. And like Keating he is supremely confident that he knows best what that end, that vision for the nation, should be.

They share big ideas about national identity, a bit of what Keating used to call his “dash and elan”.

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When Turnbull was thinking about leaving politics after his party dumped him as leader in 2009, Keating was reportedly one of those who advised him against it because he thought Turnbull was the kind of politician the parliament needed. And Keating said recently if Turnbull is allowed to govern as he wants to, without too much hindrance from the Liberal conservative right, he will present big strategic problems for the Labor Party.

And Twitter reminded me this week of a question I asked Turnbull when he addressed the National Press Club in 1992 on behalf of the Australian Republican Movement. Keating, then prime minister, had backed a republic but not said how he thought Australia should get there. I asked Turnbull whether he thought Keating should have spelled out the detail.

“Frankly, I am awestruck by Keating’s courage. Keating is the first mainstream politician to put his toe in this pool and he should be congratulated for his courage,” Turnbull replied.

In O’Brien’s book, Keating constantly describes political capital as a resource, replenished by popularity and drawn down by real, brave leaders who know the big changes they want to make and are prepared to take risks to get there.

Leadership courage – the quality Turnbull and Keating seem to admire in one another – burns through political capital much more quickly than leaders who stay safe, as Keating discovered.

Keating had already used a lot of his capital before he took the prime minstership. Turnbull is starting with close to a full tank. Labor may be gnashing teeth for a while.