Labor powerbroker says blocking plebiscite won’t necessarily delay equality for three years as government won’t last that long

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

The Turnbull government will be lucky to last 18 months because Tony Abbott is campaigning to get the top job back, the Labor powerbroker Sam Dastyari has said.

Dastyari, the manager of opposition business in the Senate, made the comments on Sky News on Sunday while discussing Labor’s opposition to the same-sex marriage plebiscite and its tactics in the Senate in the 45th parliament.



Asked if blocking the plebiscite would delay marriage equality for three years, Dastyari replied: “I don’t accept the proposition or premise that this is a three-year government.



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“This is not a government that is going to last three years.

“I would be surprised if this lasts over 18 months the way things headed at the moment.”

Dastyari said that Abbott was “running his own campaign”.

“You don’t go around the country giving speeches about the economy and this and that as a backbencher from Warringah.”

It comes after a speech by Abbott to the Master Builders Association in Victoria on Friday, in which he warned the Coalition not to move closer to Labor.

In an interview on ABC’s Insiders, Turnbull rejected Abbott’s views that the Coalition is in office but not in power on the issue of budget repair and risks abandoning its principles if it tries to govern from the sensible centre.

Asked if it was possible Abbott would be reinstalled as prime minister, Dastyari replied “of course” and “without a doubt”.

He said Labor’s experience in dumping Kevin Rudd for Julia Gillard only to return to Rudd as evidence the party knew how the revolving door of leadership worked.

“This isn’t our first rodeo, we’ve been through this before ... It’s happened in the past,” he said. “We sat here and we’ve had the exact same conversations about Kevin Rudd and we were saying it can’t happen, it can’t happen, and it happened.”

Dastyari said Abbott clearly thinks it’s possible he will return, because he was taking “premeditated” actions like giving speeches, “reminding everyone he’s around and talking about his legacy”.

“This is a guy who is having another tilt at the leadership,” Dastyari said. “Blind Freddie can see it ... There’s a script in how this is done, he’s following the script; he’s very good at it.”

It follows a report that Abbott will spend a week in a remote West Australian Indigenous community.

Abbott, who spends a week every year in Indigenous communities, will go to the East Kimberley and give support to the trial of cashless debit cards for welfare recipients designed to crack down on spending on drugs, alcohol and gambling.

On Sky News Dastyari criticised the government’s proposed marriage equality plebiscite, labelling it a “fix to an internal Liberal party problem”.

He said Malcolm Turnbull was “held hostage by the rightwing” of his party in the same way David Cameron was forced to commit to a referendum for Britain to leave the European Union.

Dastyari said he believed the plebiscite would record a vote for same-sex marriage to be legalised.

The manager of opposition business said the new Senate was tougher for the government because Labor and the Greens only needed the Xenophon team, or One Nation, or three of the other crossbench senators to block legislation.

But he said it would be difficult for Labor to deal with One Nation.

Labor would accept One Nation votes when the party supported Labor’s position, such as on the proposed bank royal commission.

But Dastyari promised not to “compromise our values and our position” by horse-trading to win One Nation’s votes.

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He said a Greens proposal for a parliamentary inquiry into banks if the government refused a royal commission was “not the best option”. He said Labor would still push a motion calling for a royal commission.

“I suspect it will sail through the Senate ... The question would be whether some of these Liberals, conservatives that have spoken out on this issue, are prepared to cross floor in the House of Representatives.

“Senator [John] Williams is of the view that [they are] probably not, I don’t know the answer to that, I don’t have an opinion on it.”

Dastyari suggested it would be extremely difficult for the prime minister to ignore a motion calling for a royal commission if it passed both houses of parliament.