In making my predictions for 2015, I was tempted to predict that Abbott would last out the year, mainly on the basis of inertia, but decided it was too risky (Commenter Fran B sensibly went the other way). I’m already glad of that: even before Sir Phil, it seemed as if he was on the skids.
Assuming Abbott goes (still not certain, but looking more likely with every hour), Julie Bishop looks like a sure thing to replace him. She has looked pretty good as Foreign Minister (if you’re willing to overlook a massive cut in foreign aid), but that’s relatively easy, largely a matter of not messing up. If she does take over, she’ll need to do more than that.
To demonstrate that there’s a real change, she’ll have to break with Abbott on some major issues. Presumably that will include dumping Hockey and the most unpopular of the 2014 budget measures, but most of those are already dead.
The really big break would be to return to some kind of bipartisanship on climate change. There’s some precedent, given the way she stood up to him over going to the Lima meeting. But it would entail a break with the (numerous) denialists and tribalists in the party room and the broader party apparatus (including the Murdoch Press and bodies like the IPA). Still, if she could carry it off, she would be a force to be reckoned with.
John Quiggin 
I doubt that dumping Hockey would be a fait accompli. The byzantine workings of personality-based LNP “factionalism” could mean that blokes like Hockey would have to be part of the putsch, and thus would be retained. It’s not really Hockey’s fault, to be fair. He’s had to sell a pup to PUP. Who would want the poisoned chalice of the Treasury at the moment anyway, with only pain to come?
Bishop doesn’t seem to have any strong policy background. She’s like Rudd, in that she might get a honeymoon effect as people project their pet policies onto her as you have just done, Prof Q, but (also like Rudd) under the harsh light of leadership there’s not much substance there.
I think you’re underselling Morrison. He may not register much more than an asterisk in polling yet, but he may satisfy internal party needs more than people realise.
The Sydney-centric LNP won’t allow a WA leader.
One reason why there may be no change is that there is no real evidence of change having any point due to a serious lack of credible alternative ‘leaders’.
If Abbott had been so so, like Rudd say, change might have been possible. But the whole coalition front bench has been so complicit in an unending parade of stupidity, uncreative destruction, meanness, bigotry, callousness, pettiness, nastiness, cryptoracism (Morrison), lack of vision etc. etc. that it puts a lie to any previous claims each in the leadership group might have to the high mindedness and vision a new leader would need to project. At the least they would either have to deny the last 18 months was a failure (showing they were still singing the same tune) or say it was a disaster and reap the whirlwind unimaginable.
Its one thing to play the political game, its another lie continually, deny the reality of this government and do it with a smile worthy of a died in the wool tea partier..and then try to change and expect the public to be so stupid as to forget all that has happened in the past year.
The biggest case study of the exercise in two facedness here is Turnbull of course. The higher they once stood the harder they will fall.
As a result none of the alternates has any credibility because of their closeness to Abbots failure or due to their hypocrisy.
Beyond that as you say there is no reason to believe there would be any real change in policy away from Murdoch IPA etc. while latter remain influential and simply will not change either.
So while Julie Bishop may be a bit smarter is she really a credible alternative irrespective of whether she is good or more of the same? To date she seems to have shown no ability to project any image good or bad either way. Has she really done anything beyond choosing between the latest ministerial?
Thus on default:
– either Abbot will stay because TINA …or
– his replacement will be no different except maybe for displaying less foot in mouth disease.
Here is a friend’s theory. Abbot is now so rabid if there is any threat to his leadership he will call a double dissolution simply out of loser’s spite and self delusion and thus remain PM for the remainder of this government though this may be short. I think this is far fetched but nothing else seems to have any ballast much either so who knows.
What about Turnbull? He would suck more Labor votes to the Coalition than Bishop and they all know it. The question is ‘why is he still there’ serving under Abbott? Not the money, not the fame, but the waiting game perhaps to fulfill his lifetime ambition becoming PM. This is his mission. He must be given a chance here. If I am wrong, why is he still there, what is he doing?
Turnbull is dead meat; he’s had his run and as a progressive remains unpopular with conservatives. Despite his obvious intelligence he does talk some rubbish eg debt truck. If he just stood up to something worthwhile and fought for it he could be a winner.
Generalise: what are any of them doing?
The disunity is death message is so strong from Gillard-Rudd you have to think it will resonate for decades. I wonder if the leadership group can impose a ‘please consult’ restraining order on Abbott on pain of a leadership challenge. My 2c worth the public won’t elect Shorten as he is too wet. While the Lib upheavals are going on the ALP need to elevate a hard head to front up before the next election.
I’m viewing on the ground that some long term damage has been done to the liberal party.
I’m mainly talking about church attending christians who are disproportionately liberal voters. People have generally approached this government in two ways.
Many I know have long had very left view have suddenly realized the liberal party doesn’t represent their views and have suddenly changed the party they support (I remember one christian couple that described themself as socialist and fair enough were left on every policy they supported but voted liberal because…reasons? I guess for some reason the liberal party has always marketed themselves to christians better. Anyway I know some that have been shocked to find out what the labour party and even the greens support and the overlap they have with them)
Others have tried to follow the liberal party to the right over the last year and have gone extreme right even if they used to think such views were unreasonable and tried to claim that these views are Christian (typically vision radio listeners and it seems to be a lot of recycled american theology). Even this might hurt the liberal party as their base might get a reputation for being unreasonable (although I personally have concern the effect this might have on the church)
Yer all nuts. No matter how much the Libs get nervous about the Mad Monk’s judgement (which everyone has always known is crook – hence his nickname), they will only have to cast their minds back to what happened to the last government to make them EXTREMELY reluctant to axe him. Especially as Abbott is not the sort of person to go quietly. Not to mention that most of them are ideologically more sympathetic to Abbott than the likely alternatives anyways.
Nope, they (and us) are stuck with him and they know it.
Bishop as PM? John you seem to forget how disastrous she was a shadow treasurer.
I tend to agree with DD.
Rudd wasn’t gotten rid of because of likely election loss he was gotten rid of because the Factional chiefs saw all of their power going.
By the time the partyroom realise they are dead meat in the next election ( and IMHO this will only occur if nominal GDP is still well below trend) it will be to late to change.
Change to whom is a very good question.
I don’t get this idea that Julie Bishop is a force to be reckoned with. So she manages to follow the brief that DFAT gives her. Big deal. Alexander Downer did it for nearly 12 years, and no one is nominating him for Mensa membership.
When Bishop was shadow Treasurer just a few years ago under Malcolm Turnbull’s leadership she was so bad she was a laughing stock. How quickly people forget.
Of course DD is correct. If the Libs get rid of Abbott he will undermine the next leader infinitely worse than Rudd undermined Gillard, which is saying a lot, because Rudd is the gold standard to this point, and they know it.
Does no one remember how absolutely terrible Bishop was as shadow treasurer? Bishop is good at playing a role, which is mostly all she has been required to do as foreign minister, but has no policy depth whatsoever. I would assume a short honeymoon as PM, but a continuing spiral down on LNP credibility on policy and the economy.
A few thoughts perhaps of relevance to recent weeks’ events:
For some incomprehensible reason, as part of the 1977 Silver Jubilee celebrations, the Duke of Edinburgh visited … my Sydney school (sans Her Maj, who was otherwise engaged elsewhere in NSW). Given the long history of subsequent foot-in-mouth ducal spasms it is only fair for me to record that his speech-day oration 38 years ago was pretty good, delivered with panache, and with a fair few genuine if less-than-side-splitting jokes (gaffes were absent).
Schoolkids sit through most speech-day orations only with the greatest reluctance. We willingly enough listened to his.
Re Bishop, the fact that she’s the most prominent non-Catholic in cabinet will surely tell against her. The extent to which the Liberals are disproportionately Catholic now (if we count as “Catholic” such admittedly heterodox figures as Turnbull and O’Farrell) would have seemed incredible as recently as the 1980s, let alone the 1970s and 1960s.
Back then, Protestants and, in particular, Masons carried out much the same function within the Liberal Party which communists carried out within the Cold-War-era Italian parliament. In other words, they didn’t need to be all-powerful; they just needed to ensure that whatever and whoever they stomped on, stayed stomped on. If memory serves me, and despite the DLP’s impact from the mid-1950s to the early 1970s, the first Australian federal election where the Liberals actually got more Catholic votes than the ALP was not until 1996.
They have two viable choices, in my opinion. Stick fat with Abbott and hope that events break the vicious cycle of mediocrity: a nice local war or massive domestic terror incident would do. Or they go to Morrison. Every other candidate has too much baggage. Morrison is the only one who has looked remotely competent, Bishop included. I don’t know where this Bishop myth has come from, our foreign relations have been a shemozzle really.
My only reservation with Morrison is that his reputation is built on secrecy, and I suspect there are stories on Manus Island that have been suppressed and that would inevitably come out if he were to be made leader. But I suppose that could be a positive for Morrison, as it’s ground he’s comfortable with
With a by-election next weekend in SA and a state election in Qld, if both go Labor (albeit unlikely, but in SA there is an air of panic in the LNP), the pressure will be immense.
Maybe its time to recall Alexander Downer, or call up Pauline Hanson and say all is forgiven, please come and lead us.
Julie Bishop as a credible leader of the Coalition. Oh, please yes, give us Dame Mesothelioma to play with. Class war, a thing of the past? No, Tom Uren only just died. We’ll fight those old fights so long as we are capable. Princess Earring? Bring it on.
monty, it’s like you’ve got some variation of the Stockholm Syndrome from spending too much time reading the comments at Catallaxy.
Morrison (and the government generally) has had an easy run from the media and public on the matter of the secrecy with which they conducted their high seas pushback and achieved “stopping the boats” at the cost of the on going, punishing treatment of those already in off shore detention. But even so, Morrison made repeated mistakes at press conferences, and won through, to the extent he did, on mere aggro bluster.
This approach does not transfer well to other areas of policy or leadership. I think he come across as having a fair bit of the Keating aggro but without the smarts or (somewhat) redeeming wit, so I see no reason to have confidence that on policy settings he would get things right.
I really don’t think the point is that Bishop is highly competent or anything along those lines. I think the point is that Bishop is the most likely leadership contender of the bunch, despite Abbott attempts to nobble her, regardless of her actual levels of competency.
She’s the most likely leadership candidate because everyone else is worse.
@steve from brisbane
Aggro bluster is all they’ve got left, and since Abbott can’t do it Morrison is, as Peter Cook said once, the best of what’s left (IMO). Agreed that there are no good options remaining. I’m all out of popcorn.
My bet re spill: Not going to happen.
At least, rather than “last out the year” I would bet Abbott takes LNP into the next federal election – which could well be a crash/crash-through DD in a doomed attempt at control of both houses, as others have posited.
See Newtonian at #3 (plus others, esp. DD at #9).
Since we no longer believe in the principle of non-refoulement, perhaps the LNP could return the PM to his country of origin? Scott Morrison would see the funny side to that.
Any spill is complicated by needing to knock off the head of the Lib’s organisational wing as well – Brian Loughnane. On the the other hand, Abbott only looks one hands-in-the-trough scandal away from the tap on the shoulder, and the mood shift of the last few months should mean he actually get’s the suffocating treatment of the press gallery in full heat. You’d think he may have a few colleague with a story to tell! So who could engineer a coup in the Libs, replacing the parliamentary and organisational leadership in one hit? If I had to bet, I’d say Turnbull, but the odds aren’t strong.
I just can’t believe that Bishop would be Julie-B to Labor’s Juli-A. Does anyone have enough gravitas and respect in the party room to tap anyone else on the shoulder? Anyone tries that and they get a broken bone, Ruddock included. You can take Abbott’s office from his cold, dead fingers.
Nope, Julie won’t be doing it.. The party’s funding is significantly dependent on marginalising AGW.
“She has looked pretty good as Foreign Minister”
Disagree. In foreign affairs she comes across as a political lightweight out of her depth.
Remember the silly comments questioning any argument that israeli settlements are illegal under international law. As well as being in thrall to the israel lobby, along with virtually all australian politicians and the msm (mainstream media) the current politicians in government are clearly puppets of business elites and their various think tanks. Credit to the msm for doing a pretty good job in pointing this out, mainly in argument about the unfairness of the last budget.
Unfortunately most australian politicians also appear as puppets of US global economic interests and like a good vassal state parrot their near delusional world view. To be fair to the foreign minister no one could match the embarrassing naiveté of the PM over his MH17 and ukraine comments but I cannot agree that she has been anywhere near pretty good.
It seems to me the only australian politician who currently has anything sensible to say about foreign affairs is malcolm fraser.
Lest we forget, just a reminder; two vassal state leaders singing from the same song sheet in 2003
http://globalelite.tv/2014/07/09/canadian-australian-prime-ministers-deliver-exact-same-speech-urging-their-nations-to-join-war-against-iraq/
Why should Ms Julie Bishop expose herself to the unending misogynist abuse directed at Gillard? Does she even want to try to heard this tribe of snakes?
Julie Bishop’s support base is in WA, the mining state. If she pushes too far away from the emu head in the sand approach to AGW, her support base will metaphorically put two in the head, and then find someone else more aligned with their interests. Given the parlous state of mining in the new economic environment, I don’t think she’ll be wanting to marginalise anyone in WA over this issue, so she’ll just follow the party line, more or less. She can correct me on this if I’m mistaken.
Peta Credlin must be tearing her hair out with anguish over Abbott’s endless foibles, but there is a lot of hair there so it could take some time to show.
I agree with DD at #9 -its not likely ,and with Monty at #14 that they must be praying for some kind of massive national security incident -it would need to be big. As for Morrison (isnt he non-Catholic ? -Hillsong?) , I agreee with Steve from Bris that he would need a new personality to have any chance of success in the top job- sneering at journalists wont help .Regarding Bishop, as some have pointed out she is not Catholic and may not be denialist or competent enough, also there’s the vaginal issue- Gillard was a popular deputy and things turned on her fast . In the longer term, if something does give, I think at #23 P Evans’ Turnbull speculation is worth a thought. The overall feeling of politics in Aust now is very odd ,like we are in a twilight zone where anything could happen. It all seems very widely discredited and disconnected from community sentiment ,not just so in the smaller community I inhabit. It’s easy to be wrong because of too readily extrapolating ones community sentiment .
If it were to happen and Bishop got up and the possibility that she would revisit AGW then the seemingly endless wildfires in WA could be viewed as a plus in that bipartisan quest. Recent predicted continuing dryness in Australia’s south west from the CSIRO makes it even more imperative. But I don’t get the impression that WA voters are seeing AGW as any particular concern. Anyone know different?
The fundamental problem the Coalition has is the fracture line that divides it on climate change. By following the (mainly) American Right’s retreat from evidence and science, and interpreting it all as a culture war, they are preventing the party from making sense not only on that issue, but on long term economics as well. It prevents them from choosing Turnbull for a nonsense reason; makes those who believe in climate change have to come up with nonsense alternative policies like direct action; and indicates that many are also inclined to follow the virulent anti-Keynesian line that is so closely aligned with climate change denialism.
Until the party can rid itself of the influence of that very large faction of out of date dills, it is going to be aught in a paralysing internal fight over nonsense.
DO #28: Bishop is from WA, but her electorate is an inner-city one with probably looser connections to the mining industry than many others.
And she’s exceedingly safe in that electorate – in 2013 Bishop received 62% of first preferences, while the Labor candidate (18%) only narrowly beat the Greens candidate (15%). So things would have to go badly indeed for Bishop to struggle with her own constituents.
I should say that in the end the Labor candidate, Daryl Tan, received 32% of votes after preferences had been distributed.
The modern day Libs are a long way from the economic rationalist dries of the 80’s. Their hatred of all things Labor has made them reject a rational market based mechanism to climate change, a mechanism that had been favoured by Lib predecessors.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2007-07-17/howard-announces-emissions-trading-system/2505080
It seems that future policy stuffups will be inevitable as they have no guiding principles.
Derrida Derider @9:
I agree that somebody as convinced of his own destiny and as bloody-minded in pursuit of it as Abbott will not make things easy for those that wish to see the back of him. There is also the non-trivial fact that the Gallipoli Centenary is just three months away and he would have his heart and soul set on being there as PM.
As for the Liberal Right/QuadRANT/Catallaxy/Murdoch press crowd, I think there are clear signs that they are withdrawing their support from Abbott, but it is also clear that they will die in a ditch before acquiescing in an alternative leader who would preside over the kind of change in direction canvassed in the OP.
@Paul Norton
“there are clear signs that they are withdrawing their support from Abbott”
Which began when he threw Brandis under the bus over s.18C of the RDA. Abbott is only useful to them if he can deliver their agenda. If he can’t or won’t, they’ll get another boy.
I also think that the current government and its travails are showing what the Liberap Party has lost with the departure of John Howard from Federal politics. Howard had a very strong sense of what the mainstream Australian electorate would bear, and he was able to restrain his own ideological proclivities and calibrate his policy stances in the light of it. Abbott and his ilk have all of Howard’s ideological proclivities, only more so, and none of the restraining political antennae.
Uncle Milton @37, I think that’s right.
As a Queenslander, I’ve never bought the “disunity is death” story. Anna Bligh had the entire Parliamentary Party and most of the machine solidly behind her, she was well liked personally, and she took Labor from 50 odd seats to 7, far worse than the disaster in NSW.
@John Quiggin
You are confusing necessary and sufficient conditions. Disunity is sufficient for death, but Bligh showed it isn’t necessary.
@Paul Norton
Abbott once described himself as the political love child of John Howard and Bronwyn Bishop. As often happens, his mother’s genes were dominant.
But it’s not like rolling the PM will get uni fee deregulation through the senate, is it? It’s blocked on its own merits, not ’cause of phil-the-greek’s knighthood.
As a pawn in all of this, I feel decidedly rooked.
@John Quiggin
John’s and Steve from Brisbane’s comments open an interesting discussion track here. To some extent/in some circumstances disunity is death. But hegemony can be also be death as well if it makes change/adaptation to new circumstances like chaotic economics and climate, and escape from the vice of ideology near impossible to achieve.
What you seem to have now is an hegemony of the Liberal lunar right which has either purged or suppressed their more thoughtful colleagues or sequestered, or compromised them as exemplified by Turnbull and possibly also Bishop to the point the latter have no credibility. They have won but have no rational path to follow which seems to be where they are now.
I agree with others their problem is they took the ‘winners are grinners’ idea as being their absolute and forever goal and achieved a temporary victory through a negative campaign which was brilliant in the short term but destructive to them in the long term just as it is being for the US Republicans. And now they seem to have nowhere to go.
That said in some circumstances an ideology/hegemony/lunacy can be maintained e.g. through the use of force and fear. Mao’s initiation and continuation after, the lunacy of the Great Leap Forward, and North Korea generally, illustrate that madness can endure depending on circumstances like despotism.
Now hopefully we dont have that to look forward to as we dont have such a society despite some left wing hyperbole. But since the election I have worried that this government might evolve into something like Jo Bjelke Petersen’s who was just as mad but proved also smart enough to endure for ?16 years by knowing how to feed the chooks and pressing fear buttons like reds under the bed.
Happily so far the Federal coalition does not seem to have had Jo’s cunning, smarts or luck. But this could change if they slowed their pace to say something like that of “Honest John Howard”. If this happens heaven help us.
@Collin Street
Fee deregulation is a special case because of Christopher Pyne, who is in a league of his own for un-likeability. A new PM and a new education minister possibly could get fee deregulation through the Senate if the enough goodies were thrown in to the deal, like lots more money for regional unis.
@Uncle Milton
That was the problem with them.. a monoculture.
One good dissenting voice might have brought a reality check re privatisations made on the wake of a cast in stone promise made at a previous election and despite the gruesome lesson of NSW.
But would the likes of a good example, say a John Quiggin, of the missing ingredient, still find a home there?
Forgive my scepticism..
Perhaps you could tell me the things that aren’t special cases.
Meanwhile, leaving aside the Coalition for a moment – and examining those other dear charmers – it looks as if the federal parliament’s most prominent Israeli lobbyist might be looking for alternative employment sooner rather than later:
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/victorian-labor-candidates-look-to-2016-elections-with-optimism-20141226-12dvv5.html
From this report, I quote: “One group within Labor’s Right faction expects an orderly handover from Mr Danby to Mr Suss; another insists a challenge is on, noting that Mr Suss now has the numbers in local branches to defeat Mr Danby. When asked to comment on Mr Suss, Mr Danby said: ‘I understand sitting members are to be re-endorsed’.”
When a parliamentarian of Danby’s fame and political endurance starts a sentence with “I understand”, most people will surely interpret those two words as a euphemism for “I am scared witless.”
@paul walter
Your sure a knight hasn’t forked you?