An occupational hazard for a political journalist can be looking in the wrong places. We can follow the noise, and miss the nuance.



There has been a bit of that this week with the national energy guarantee. A group of government MPs shaking their tail feathers, signalling their preparedness to cross the floor on the policy, has grabbed the spotlight.

All eyes have been on the scouting party, because it’s vibrant and visible.

But it’s not where this story begins, and ends. Malcolm Turnbull also faces a group marshalling behind them, a group that is ostensibly holding the line on the Neg, but with concerns, particularly about the lack of concrete action on power prices. Dangerously for the prime minister, this group includes some in his ministry.

That’s the penny that has dropped at the highest levels of the government this week – the fact that the concerns are more widespread than the caterwauling caucus of chaos. That’s what’s triggered the flurry of remedial activity over the course of the week – activity that hit overdrive on Friday.

Since the Coalition’s rout in the Longman byelection in late July, the internal psychology of the government has shifted. There has been a loss of collective confidence, reinforced by recent negative polls.

I referenced this shift in last weekend’s column. The practical effect is that three different players are trialling alternative federal election strategies in front of their colleagues – Turnbull, Tony Abbott and Peter Dutton. I also mentioned last Saturday that Dutton’s stocks rise internally if the Coalition begins to fixate on the risks of losing seats in Queensland.

A week on from that observation, with the Australian parliament lurching between Nazi references and the Neg, let me put this more plainly.

There has been an organic drift in Dutton’s direction post-Longman, partly out of concern about political vulnerability in Queensland, and partly because conservative forces inside the government are mulling the government’s direction more broadly, and weighing up their options.

I can’t detect any evidence that Dutton has been actively soliciting any support, but I can see the drift in his direction. I’m aware that MPs have come to him, wanting him to drive a political reset.

I can also see, with the Coalition’s energy debate in full flight, the anxiety that has descended. Anyone inside the government with any corporate memory knows how dangerous this particular conversation gets, so even if nothing is being fomented, contingency planning starts to happen. Everyone is now preparing for a highly combustible situation.

Climate change and energy policy is the Australian Liberal party’s Brexit. I keep hoping that the Liberal party will grow up on this issue for the good of the country. I keep hoping, for the good of the country, that the Liberal party can emerge from its self-created culture of crisis.

But the cycles repeat and this past week in Canberra has felt a lot like the eruption in 2009 when Turnbull lost the party leadership.

Climate change and energy policy is the Australian Liberal party’s Brexit.

Behind the scenes Turnbull, the energy minister, Josh Frydenberg, and the treasurer, Scott Morrison, are frantically cooking up a what is variously described as a “strong” package with a focus on lowering power prices and whacking the big energy retailers with big sticks. The objective is simple: peel back half the rebels, de-escalate the crisis and keep pushing forward.

Turnbull, Morrison and Frydenberg also spent Friday working up an option that would see the Neg’s emissions reduction target set in regulation, not in legislation. This is an attempt to address internal claims from some of the rebels that setting the Paris target in legislation is a breach of Australian sovereignty (don’t laugh, they appear to be serious); and an attempt to lock in Labor’s support for the policy.

The option under consideration is that the target would be set via an executive order, and if a government wanted to increase it, it would first have to seek advice from the Australian Energy Regulator and the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission about the impact of a target increase on electricity prices.

But while this attempted fix is being worked up – a fix that will either stave off an explosion or accelerate one – there’s been a vacuum to play into. One government person characterises Abbott and Turnbull as matter and antimatter – which is a pitch-perfect construction. Out on open terrain, Abbott has been lining up a death match with Turnbull.

Abbott wants Turnbull forced into a position of having to dump the Neg, and is dangling before nervous colleagues the prospect of a short, sharp and satisfying partisan fight with Labor on power prices at the next federal election. It’s not furtive. The manifesto is laid out on page 75 of Friday’s Daily Telegraph.

The former prime minister been assisted by a coterie of media voices loyally amplifying his agenda and creating a caustic feedback loop through Liberal party branches, which manifests either as invective, or worse, expressions of personal disappointment, flowing into the inboxes of nervous MPs.

Alan Jones is thundering. Abbott’s former chief of staff-turned-broadcaster, Peta Credlin, is conducting a round of mini McCarthyism weeknights on her Sky News program, interrogating various thought criminals who don’t want to sink the Neg, and piling lavish praise on MPs who do.

As well as the front-stabbing, some of the Abbott clique have been pushing behind the scenes this week to trigger a frontbench schism. The junior Nationals minister Keith Pitt has been prodded to articulate his longstanding concerns about the Neg publicly, prompting a frontbench resignation, and thereby elevating the sense of impending crisis.

Some in the government also believe that Abbott or his surrogates are attempting to drive a wedge between Turnbull and Dutton to build up more intensity in the Canberra pressure cooker. Dutton found himself berated by Ray Hadley on Abbott’s favourite radio station, 2GB, on Thursday for failing to denounce the Neg.

Dutton loyally held the line but referencing the government’s internal debate – the one you can’t see, the one obscured by the spectacle of George Christensen threatening to cross the floor for what feels like the 83rd time – the home affairs minister did fire a warning flare in the direction of the prime minister.

He publicly articulated the circumstances in which he would be forced to resign from the cabinet. A rough translation of that is: Are you listening Malcolm? Best sort this mate, pronto, or shit might just happen.

It does pay to remember that the government has put itself on the brink over a policy that will drive emissions reduction in the electricity sector – a sector where emissions are already falling – by 2% between 2021 (when we are forecast to hit 24% on 2005 levels) and 2030 (when this policy takes us to 26%).

As well as driving a negligible fall in emissions, the Neg creates a 2% increase in the share of renewables in the national electricity market by 2029-30. Without the Neg the renewables share would be 34%. With it, 36%.

Outside the rarified environment of the Coalition party rooms, characterising this policy as a Green/left, wild-eyed, one-world-government conspiracy, and blowing the show sky high as a consequence of it, looks like an act of madness, because, in the real world, this is an act of madness.

Another act of madness: flirting with the notion that another change of leadership does anything other than create a fresh cycle of destruction for an incumbent government.

Dutton might be helpful for the Coalition’s fortunes in Queensland, he might help in seats where One Nation is on the prowl – but Victoria and parts of New South Wales would be a bloodbath for the Liberals.

Quite apart from the positives and negatives of any particular personnel, there is also the cycle of self-defeat that semi-permanent leadership instability inflicts on Australia’s parties of government.

The political landscape is fragmenting. Disruptors are providing competition and choice for voters. The major parties used to be about offering voters stability. That was the offering. That was the premium.

Not anymore.