By Sam Clench @SamClench News.com.au
MALCOLM Turnbull might be gone, but he is far from
forgotten.
The former prime minister has been conspicuously
quiet in the lead-up to today’s Wentworth by-election, which will determine who
fills his vacated seat in parliament.
He has reportedly refused increasingly desperate pleas for help from
senior members of the government, including Prime Minister Scott Morrison,
arguing his intervention in the campaign would be a distraction that would hurt
Liberal candidate Dave Sharma.
The cruel
truth is, he is a distraction anyway.
The spectre of Mr Turnbull, and what his party did
to get rid of him, is haunting the government endlessly as it struggles to
defend its one-seat majority in parliament.
Should independent Kerryn Phelps beat Mr Sharma, Mr
Morrison will be forced to rely on support from the crossbench to stay in
power.
And as Wentworth votes today, her chances look
good. Internal Liberal Party polling leaked
to the media this week showed Dr Phelps with a commanding 55-45 lead. Yesterday
Liberal sources told Fairfax Media they needed a “miracle” to
hold on to the seat.
There may well be an element of strategy involved.
By creating the impression Mr Sharma is an underdog, they undoubtedly hope to
drive more Liberal voters to the polls.
But a nightmarish week has given Dr Phelps plenty
of very real momentum.
Dave Sharma and Kerryn Phelps
The Coalition backflipped and claimed an
“administrative process failure” had led it to vote in favour of the motion by
mistake, but the damage was already done, as Labor and the Greens accused it of
endorsing “the words used by white supremacists and neo-Nazis”.
Then, later in the week, an ugly email was
circulated to voters in Wentworth falsely claiming Dr Phelps had pulled out of
the race because she had HIV.
“It’s just vile and despicable, and I was shocked
and appalled. Not just for the dishonesty and the smears involved but for the
stigma put around people with HIV,” Mr Sharma said of the email.
There was no suggestion he or the Liberal Party had
been involved in its distribution.
Defeat in Wentworth would represent a disastrous
humiliation for the government, given it is supposed to be the safest of safe
seats. Mr Turnbull held it with a two-party majority of almost 18 per cent.
Dr Phelps has ruthlessly capitalised on voters’
anger over the former PM’s knifing, repeatedly hammering the Liberals on that
point.
“A prime minister in the middle of his term was
removed from office for no rational reason,” has been one of her more frequent
lines.
Meanwhile, the Liberals are trying to run on a
platform of stability, which is ironic at best and a monumental blunder at
worst, given the by-election is only happening because their instability
brought Mr Turnbull down.
“This is a very important by-election. The lead
independent candidate Kerryn Phelps on multiple occasions couldn’t even say
she’d support a confidence motion. That can throw the entire government into a
lot of uncertainty,” Mr Morrison told Channel
7 yesterday.
“I know there has been a lot of instability and
uncertainty but voting for an independent will only make that worse.”
The government is clearly painfully aware of the
harm its own leadership dramas have done to its chances. It is publicly
admitting as much.
“I understand you’re angry. I was there when it was
happening, supporting the then-prime minister when they were seeking to take
him down. What I’m telling you is this candidate for Wentworth will be as good
as the last one. He’s the same calibre,” Mr Morrison said.
Former prime minister John Howard, who was brought
in to campaign alongside Mr Sharma late in the week, struck a similar note.
“I want to say to any normal Liberal voters in
Wentworth who may be a bit grumpy at the present time, who may feel a bit
disillusioned, you cannot risk a protest vote,” Mr Howard said.
“A lot of people here are sad that (Mr Turnbull) is
no longer the member and prime minister, but others will take a view projecting
forward. They’ll say we’re unhappy about that, but we’re a lot more unhappy
about the thought of a Shorten government.”
Nationals MP Darren Chester wasn’t quite so
optimistic.
“I think we’re about to get a real-life opinion
poll on what Australians think of political parties that undermine their
leaders and change leaders midstream,” he told ABC radio.
Mr Turnbull’s near silence — he has sent just one
tweet in support of Mr Sharma, back when he first became the Liberals’
candidate — has not been matched by his son, Alex Turnbull.
Turnbull junior, 36, has been publicly urging
voters in Wentworth to send the Liberal Party a message by voting against it.
Speaking to Triple J radio earlier
this week, Alex launched another scathing attack on the party’s right wing,
saying a big part of his father’s record was “fighting the good fight against
the crazies”.
Asked to whom he was referring, he proceeded to
list the top five “crazy” MPs and senators by name, with Tony Abbott in first
place. He described Mr Abbott as “a singularly destructive human being”.
Alex appeared to have some sympathy for Mr
Morrison, saying he suffered from “the same problem my dad had”.
“He’s got some very, very crazy people to deal with
who are not particularly rational political actors,” he said.
“Being the leader of the Liberal Party and being
sane is like being Bruce Willis in a Die Hard movie.
It’s always crazy and bad but hopefully you come out and get some stuff done.”
He said his intervention in the by-election
campaign had nothing to do with his father, who did not approve of his stance
but was “dealing with it”.
“He’s out of office, I’m a private citizen, we can
both do as we please,” Alex told the ABC on Monday, insisting he was
“absolutely not” doing Mr Turnbull’s dirty work.
Meanwhile, on Thursday, Mr Turnbull himself
mysteriously liked a tweet expressing support for Dr Phelps.
“Back handing out policy info and how-to-vote cards
for Kerryn Phelps at Waverley Oval pre-polling station. No longer wondering
‘Where’s Malcolm?’ Just hoping for a strong independent win on Saturday,” the
tweet from a campaign volunteer said.
A photo of a cardboard cutout of Mr Turnbull,
asking ‘Where’s Malcolm?’, accompanied it.
The like was undone within minutes, and no longer
appears on Mr Turnbull’s feed.
He returns to Australia on Monday, having extended
his trip abroad until after the by-election weekend.
His absence will be noticed.
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