ANALYSIS

SCOTT Morrison today recruited Forrest Gump as he continued to warn voters in next Saturday’s Wentworth by-election that government stability was at stake.

It’s a bold pitch from the Liberals who have rotated three prime ministers in roughly three years, hardly a model of stable progression.

However, that’s the nub of Mr Morrison’s message to the Wentworth voters today, and why he invoked the wisdom on Forrest Gump.

“With the Liberal Party, you know what you are going to get. With the Labor Party, you never know what you are going to get,” Mr Morrison told reporters.

But it wasn’t ALP candidate Tim Murray he was particularly worried about.

The Prime Minister continued: “With independents you certainly don’t know what you are ever going to get.

“It’s like the good old box of chocolates — you never know what you are going to get when it comes to voting independent.”

Which of course was a famous line from the 1994 movie in which Forrest Gump quotes his mother, “Life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.”

The Morrison warning was that if you opened the box and found prominent independent candidate Dr Kerryn Phelps among the political soft centres and tooth-busting nougat, you will be inviting disarray.

The Government doesn’t fear a Labor victory in Wentworth, one of the wealthiest electorates in the country.

But it is anxious about Dr Phelps.

Should she come second on the primary vote to fancied Liberal candidate David Sharma, the preferences of Labor’s Tim Murray might make her the victor.

That would mean the Coalition government would lose its one-seat majority in the House of Representatives and would have to rely on the casting vote of Speaker Tony Smith and agreement with the cross bench.

That’s the instability Scott Morrison is worried about.

The jitters have been magnified by the presence of three former and current Liberal prime ministers in the campaign — Malcolm Turnbull, the previous incumbent; Tony Abbott, a frequent commentator, and Mr Morrison.

(Another former Wentworth MP and Liberal Leader, John Hewson, also has been visible but best to stick to recent history.)

That evidence of leadership turnover doesn’t point to a particularly firm stability being at risk. Instead, it is evidence of rampant uncertainty caused by the Liberals themselves and which they want the voters to fix.

“Save us from ourselves,” might be a more accurate appeal.

To underline the rapid turnover - and not doing any favours for Scott Morrison — Tony Abbott goaded his successor Malcolm Turnbull.

Mr Abbott said it was fine for him to be having some R&R in New York with wife Lucy Turnbull, but he wanted a sign from him.

Mr Abbott wanted to see “tweets from New York endorsing Dave Sharma, that’s what I’d like to see,” he told 2GB.

He knew Mr Turnbull didn’t “want to get too involved in Australian politics, I understand that”.

But, he continued, “I reckon he owes it to the party and to the people of Wentworth to give Dave Sharma a solid, clear personal endorsement this week in particular.”

It was an obvious attempt by Mr Abbott to reheat his war with Mr Turnbull, who had already backed Mr Sharma’s preselection.

And that’s a glimpse of the “stability” Scott Morrison wants to preserve.

That instability would be magnified should Barnaby Joyce upsurp Michael McCormack to get his National party leadership back.

That would mean two Deputy Prime Ministers in about a year. Such stability.