Bill Shorten is telling colleagues he’s had some clear thinking time over the Christmas holidays. The Labor leader will be glad of the respite, given the brisk opening tempo of the political year, and the agitation that surrounds him at the moment.
After one of the most somnolent Januarys in recent years, the hissing, spitting, cauldron called #auspol has exploded back into life. The opening of the parliamentary year beckons next week, and if the government can ever find the steadiness to stop sabotaging itself, (a very big if, that), then the plan is to apply some pressure to the Labor leader.
Having worn the downside of the dual citizenship imbroglio through the last chaotic six months of 2017, the Coalition is returning to Canberra for the new year feeling it has some cards to play.
The accident-prone David Feeney has already departed, triggering a byelection in the Melbourne seat of Batman. If you ask federal Labor hard-heads at the moment to rate their chances of holding that seat against the Greens, they will say around 5%.
At the state level, some are a bit more optimistic, stressing that “Batman isn’t Northcote”. This mantra means there are other suburbs within the Batman boundaries which make the area more diverse. Some optimists closer to the action say 50/50, but everyone concedes it’s tough.
As well as Feeney falling, the government has made it clear this week it also has eyes firmly on the Labor MP Susan Lamb, who holds the marginal Queensland seat of Longman. The government intends over the coming weeks to build public pressure on Shorten and Labor to convince Lamb to do a Feeney – quit politics before the high court gets a chance to deliberate on whether or not the basic eligibility requirements are met.
If you don’t know the seat of Longman, all you really need to know is Lamb grabbed it by a whisker in the 2016 election. While Labor would prefer a contest with the Liberals in Longman rather than a face-off with the Greens in Batman – given the Turnbull government lost every Guardian Essential poll during 2017 – the reality is no one in Labor wants a byelection anywhere if it can possibly be avoided.
But it’s entirely possible that’s where we will end up before day is done.
As well as wearing the downside of the dual citizenship issue in the opening of 2018, Shorten also has challenges on other fronts.
Once upon a time we wrote a lot in Canberra about factional intrigues. Those stories have largely fallen out of fashion, with news organisations and readers considering them microscopic, and boring.
Some of these stories are boring, and not very important, but the stoush rolling in Victorian Labor at the moment is important, and grimly fascinating.
The Labor leader favoured a change in the longstanding power sharing arrangements in the state – a realignment pursued by some controversial allies in the right and the hard-left – but the proposed shift has triggered full-throated uproar on Shorten’s home turf.
A farcical meeting on Friday in Melbourne which was supposed to put the new arrangements in place, saw key union blocs not turning up, or walking out.
The only thing you need to understand from all of this is the practical consequences: key people in the Victorian Labor party are walking around with daggers drawn at a time when the party needs to field a functional field campaign in Batman.
There are also national consequences. The boil over in Victoria, I suspect, has also emboldened people such as Anthony Albanese and Mark Butler – two key left figures in the national firmament – to indulge in a bit of plain speaking on the odd topic of passing interest, given what’s going on in Victoria potentially upsets the interests of some of their key allies. All a bit delicate.
Since the outcome of the Queensland state election last year, there has been an internal push on to harden federal Labor’s stance against the controversial coal project in Queensland.
That push gathered pace before Christmas and has broken cover this week. Shorten has now made it very clear publicly that Labor is looking at options to stop the project. Shadow ministers are considering a range of legal and other options, including inserting a “climate trigger” in the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, which could allow a retrospective and negative assessment of the project in the event Labor wins the next election.
It is also possible action could be taken under the existing regime using deterioration of the Great Barrier Reef as a trigger for reassessment.
The internal work has been going on for a while. Also going on for a while has been the Greens anti-Adani campaign against Labor. That’s been under way on the ground in Batman for many months, amplified by the civil #StopAdani campaign – so the urgency for Labor of making a concrete decision has heightened.
While there are a number of senior players in the ALP who favour a tough anti-Adani stance on climate change grounds, and have done well before the advent of the Batman byelection, that view is not universally held within the party.
Some will argue that a policy to win in Batman is not a policy to win marginal Queensland seats at the next federal election, which is a prerequisite for victory in a federal poll this year, or next. Others will be concerned about the sovereign risk implications of intervening if a project has already been given approvals.
There is also an administrative complexity. If Labor ends up adopting the hardline stance Shorten is currently telegraphing, that will need to be communicated in a way which doesn’t suggest prejudgment of the Adani case, given the likelihood that the company would contest the process.
A final deliberation and decision on this issue isn’t very far way.
All of this makes for interesting times.
Now what of the prime minister and his interesting times?
Malcolm Turnbull’s form is to take one step forwards followed by several steps backwards. The form of his colleagues is to argue the toss about everything, usually in public. Tony Abbott continues to be indulged by his caucus – 2GB and by his old mate Peta Credlin and the combative little after-dark clique on Sky News, which buzzes like a mosquito in the ear of Australian politics.
Government folks who want to remain in power are hopeful the resolution of same sex marriage, and weathering the worst of the dual citizenship crisis in 2017, strengthens the foundations against the relentless termites.
Turnbull has opened 2018 with a script about a positive turn in the economy, which is clearly underway, and keeps hinting about tax relief to signal to voters that he understands they are worried about wages stagnation.
His opening political address of the year was notable for the tone of positivity, and the absence of rancour about his political opponents.
Somebody has evidently told the prime minister it isn’t a good idea to keep elevating Shorten constantly by talking about him obsessively – that in so doing you look like a crestfallen child who has had his lollies stolen at recess rather than the leader of a country.
The government has also boosted its Senate position ahead of the new parliamentary year by picking up the independent Lucy Gichuhi, who entered the chamber as a Family First representative before the micro-party was absorbed by Cory Bernardi’s Australian Conservatives.
Given 2017 opened with Bernardi’s defection, Gichuhi restoring the lost Senate number at the opening of the new year will be a morale booster.
So I think the prime minister has opened the new political year with his tail up, with a broad plan, and with something to say. I also think he would rather have his own political fortunes than Bill Shorten’s, possibly for the first time since he woke in fright on election night in 2016.
But just because you have turned up to the office with something to say doesn’t mean it actually makes sense, or that deeply irritated voters will buy it, or you – or that your internal opponents will let you deliver the message without constant interference.
Turnbull has enjoyed a summer of respite from the relentless drumbeat of terrible opinion polls, the epic feelpinions of the ranting bobble heads, and the constant disruption of the six-second news cycle.
But that world, the one that closes in on leaders and makes everything feel borderline impossible, returns on Monday.
