It’s an ephemeral thing to build a campaign on – the assurance of stability and the accusation that your rival will cause inevitable chaos – hard to prove and easily rocked by unpredictable circumstance.
And Malcolm Turnbull’s central campaign pitch was buffeted in every direction on Friday.
Coalition strategists are sure that Britain’s shock Brexit vote will lure disillusioned and distracted voters back to the party usually seen as more capable economic managers. Turnbull was quick to link it to his message. But Labor strategists see an opening too, urging voters to question who the Coalition would look after in a time of economic crisis.
But even before the Brexit vote other factors were pressuring Turnbull’s stability v chaos message.
Questions about the marriage equality plebiscite saw the differences between Turnbull and the Coalition conservatives, which were supposed to remain out of sight until after the election, edge into the political daylight.
The camps reached a temporary truce after the leadership change last September, when Turnbull accepted (among other things) the marriage equality plebiscite he had so persuasively bagged and a deferral of any discussion about how to make the climate policy fit for purpose, and the conservatives retreated as his popularity initially soared and the government regrouped for re-election.
It suited both sides to put off a more definitive reconciliation: Turnbull because he hoped a decisive victory and a more workable Senate would further boost his authority and the conservatives because open dissent in the lead-up to an election would diminish theirs.
But now two things are putting that standoff under strain, exposing glimpses of the internal reckoning to come. A big, decisive Coalition victory is not assured, and a more workable Senate is highly unlikely. And as the policy cracks become visible, the voters are demanding answers.
Throughout the campaign, Turnbull had swerved around the marriage equality question by claiming a plebiscite wasn’t his idea but rather one he inherited, promising he would push hard for a yes vote and extolling his belief in the Australian people to conduct the debate in a civilised manner.
But increasingly, the public isn’t buying that answer. Margaret Parkhill questioned the prime minister on Q&A, making the quite reasonable point that he was prime minister and should be able to decide to change a wasteful and potentially harmful process that he disagreed with. Penny Wong, in a powerful lecture, smashed the notion that the debate could avoid harm.
“Not one straight politician advocating a plebiscite on marriage equality knows what that’s like. What it’s like to live with the casual and deliberate prejudice that some still harbour,” she said.
And the public is absolutely right to be sceptical. Not of Turnbull’s desire to do all he can to ensure marriage equality happens – that’s entirely genuine. But of the tactics being planned, including within his own party, to try to stymie that outcome.
The conservatives have always seen a plebiscite as a means of avoiding or deferring marriage equality rather than enabling it. Turnbull simply asserts that the “yes” vote will prevail in the plebiscite, and that the parliament would then definitely vote for the change. “The consequence of a ‘yes’ vote in the plebiscite will be that same-sex marriage will be legal in Australia”, he told parliament, as if saying it with conviction would actually make it happen.
But he can’t guarantee that. He conceded on Friday that Coalition MPs would have a free vote in the parliament after a national plebiscite had succeeded.
And crucial details, with a real bearing on that vote, have been so hotly disputed that the attorney general, George Brandis, shelved a final cabinet decision on the conduct of the plebiscite until after the election.
One of the most contentious issues was whether the Australian Electoral Commission would report the results of the national vote on an electorate-by -electorate basis – something that would allow MPs to vote against a national “yes” vote if their own constituency had voted “no”.
And several have said this is exactly their intention. Andrew Hastie said so during the Canning byelection. Andrew Nikolic reportedly announced a similar intention at an election forum last week in Bass. Eric Abetz left open the possibility earlier in the year in an interview with Guardian Australia. Craig Kelly has also reserved the right to oppose same-sex marriage if his electorate voted against it. Cory Bernardi has said he won’t be voting yes under any circumstances.
It seems logical that a national yes vote would encourage many MPs to back marriage equality in the parliament. They’d be enacting the will of the people. But think what pressure anti-marriage equality campaigners could bring to bear on MPs who support the idea but turn out to have electorates that aren’t certain.
And then imagine what would happen to the authority of the prime minister, who has assured the nation that a civilised debate will lead to a yes vote, if in fact a bitter debate ends with a different outcome.
And there’s a similar crunch coming on climate policy. The Climate Institute asserted in its policy “report card” this week that it was feeling encouraged because “the Coalition, Labor, Greens and Nick Xenophon Team (NXT) now all support emissions trading”. It says this is a fact because it is what all those with deep interest in the policy are being assured will occur.
But again, imagine if the prime minister who promised he would never lead a party that was not as committed to action on climate change as he was failed to deliver, if the conservatives were unwilling to allow the ramping up of the baseline and credit scheme that has always been embedded within Direct Action.
Exactly these imaginings are rippling through the ranks of the Liberal conservatives as they grind their teeth listening to their leader agree that the settlement of Australia was an “invasion”, and openly admitting he never wanted a plebiscite.
Last week the immigration minister, Peter Dutton, popped up to insert into the final weeks of an election campaign the helpful idea that Turnbull would come under pressure to reinstate Tony Abbott to his ministry. Turnbull slapped that notion down, saying his cabinet wouldn’t change.
So then Abbott did an interview with his friend Andrew Bolt (who recently editorialised about the “awful choice” facing conservatives as they contemplated voting for the “leftwing” Turnbull). The former prime minister deftly walked the line between overt destabilisation and making his point.
He was perfectly happy to serve as the member for Warringah, he insisted, but – when asked whether he would like to be defence minister, as has been widely reported, he replied “all sorts of things might happen in the future, but right now you’ve got to be content with serving your electorate”.
“I didn’t hear a ‘no’ in there Tony,” Bolt noted, and they both laughed knowingly.
Precisely because the polls are close, the truce will almost certainly hold until election day.
And until then Turnbull will run the line that the greatest threat to political and economic stability and certainty is a Labor government dependent on the votes of the Greens.
But, unless the published polls are wildly inaccurate, a re-elected Turnbull government would be dependent on the Senate votes from the Nick Xenophon Team as well as a number of a difficult-to-predict bunch of Senate independents, possibly including Pauline Hanson, Jacqui Lambie, Derryn Hinch and Bob Day, which doesn’t exactly look like smooth sailing.
And, simultaneously, it will have to wrangle its own internal reconciliation with conservatives, emboldened by the likelihood that, while Turnbull might have delivered a victory that looked impossible under Abbott, he hadn’t turned out to be all that popular after all.
Perhaps the uncertainty of the Brexit vote will convince voters that Turnbull really does offer predictability and stability.
But the truth is, whatever his own intentions, they can’t really be sure that’s what he’ll deliver.
