Malcolm Turnbull must find courage to avoid a bleak future in face of government's tight margin
Forget about the opposition, George Christensen thinks Malcolm Turnbull's mandate to trim generous superannuation tax concessions is worthless. He's threatening to cross the floor.
That would be unremarkable were Christensen not one of
Turnbull's own MPs and potentially the difference between order and chaos. Clearly, the arch-conservative believes he has his detested leader in a bind.
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Turnbull slams Kevin Rudd for leaking emails
'it says a lot about Mr Rudd that he would seek to release private correspondence,' says Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. Audio courtesy ABC Radio 774.
Stable government had been Malcolm Turnbull's most fundamental promise – a pledge repeated so often in the final weeks of the campaign as to suggest voters were dolts for (a) flirting with a 50-50 result, and (b) not being capable of absorbing a simple argument unless repeated endlessly.
That was before Australians wilfully returned a 50-50 result, prompting Turnbull to complain that the poor schmucks had been hoodwinked by Labor's dishonest (and equally mind-numbing) "Medi-scare".
As previously noted, stability was no more Turnbull's idyll to promise than was the horror of a hung parliament his to de-legitimise. In an election, that right attaches to the people through the ballot box.
Now that the north Queensland seat of Herbert has been ripped from the Coalition's grasp, Turnbull's majority is the barest possible – half plus one, or 76 in the 150 seat House of Representatives. From a 15-seat majority, the government is just one seat off that much reviled hung parliament.
Put another way, absent the speaker's vote, Turnbull does not have a majority in his own right.
Why this occurred remains hotly contested. In the longer run, history will settle for a simple reduction. Probably that in office, Turnbull's modern progressive side atrophied as he governed more for his conservative critics than the nation. Voters were disillusioned.
Yet like previous PMs dealt a near-death experience, his future is not automatically bleak. Bob Hawke and then John Howard learned from their early reversals to bolt several terms together after that.
The first-order question is can Turnbull, whose political judgment so far lingers closer to the string of dud PMs since, somehow deliver stability and purpose with a wafer-thin majority?
There are reasonable doubts. If he was so timid when he had 90 seats, why would he suddenly be lion-hearterd with a paltry 76?
Christensen's antics are an acrimonious sideshow. But Turnbull's response will be critical if such right-wing shenanigans are to keep on arising. He must stare down the recalcitrants, and let it be known who is in charge.