Turnbull wins 45-41 margin, Bishop unopposed.
The question is, will Turnbull be the breakthrough leader his supporters think, or just Mark Latham in a Fioravanti suit but sans the temporary suburban mum bounce?
Either way, this is going to be one hell of a Nantucket Sleigh Ride for the hard right of the Coalition.
That margin is small – Peacock/Howard all over again?
Turnbull in QT today should be classic viewing!
Elsewhere: Larvatus Prodeo and Grods and Grods II and Catallaxy and Public Opinion and Public Polity and Larvatus Prodeo II and The Killfile and Pavlov’s Cat and Politically Homeless and Woolly Days and Corporate Engagement
30 Comments
The really astonishing thing is 41 people would be dumb enough to vote for Nelson – that says it all about the Liberals!
Turnball really needed to win by a lot more than 4 votes. He’ll want to take the Liberals back to the centre, but enough of the far right in the party won’t like it.
I’d watch Nick Minchin in the next few months, he’ll be undermining Turnball.
I wouldn’t really consider it stupidity on the part of the members who voted for Nelson. I’m guessing a lot of them disagree with Turnbull’s political positions, and consider losing under Nelson preferable to winning under Turnbull, because in their view he isn’t a true Liberal at all (as I think Peter Costello said). Can’t really criticize mp’s for voting in line with their political beliefs.
It’ll be interesting to see whether Turnbull picks up a post-leadership challenge bounce in the polls…
Another question – what changes (if any) will Turnbull make to existing Liberal party policy?
So the Libs think a Merchant Banker is going to be seen as a man of the people?
But Turnball constantly reminds us he came from humble origins LOL
Turnbull’s seen as arrogant, but will probably improve the Libs position on environmental issues, as his seat is vulnerable to the Greens prefs.
Turnbull’s leadership effect on the Nats cannot be underestimated. Who honestly thinks Turnbull will go down well in, say, Wannon? The Libs have chosen to go with one of their twin support basis, rather than try and straddle both as Howard and Nelson tried to do.
Possum,
With greatest respect, seats like Wannon aren’t the seats that the Libs are looking for with Turnbull.
Rather, they’re going after seats like Deakin, Bennelong and Hasluck.
The big question is whether Turnbull can connect with outer-suburban voters in seats like Lindsay, Longman, Dobell and Wakefield…
Possum, all those commenter’s having the same gravatar is horrible
it’s very confusing
Swing Lowe- seats like Wannon become open to Indies if Turnbull starts chasing the gentrifying seats that they’ve lost, chasing them in cultural terms of the residents that actually live there.
It was seats like Wannon, Grey, Forde, Dawson and other rural and provincial Nat and Lib seats that made it almost impossible for Howard to stem the blood flow. Two different constituents that don’t much like each other but which the Coalition needs both to govern. The Libs have chosen one of those constituencies by electing Turnbull.
So whether Turnbull can chase the outer-metro seats may become a redundant question if, by electing Turnbull, the Coalition can’t hold on to their RARA rump.
oh yeah, almost forgot…the leader thing. Well Turnbull was the right choice and I think he will bring em up out of the doldrums.
But the margin Malcolm!… 4 votes just isn’t a big enough
How’s that Spam Inbox? Non gravatar folks now have they’re own unique little squiggly monster avatars?
much better.. thanks… was really confusing b4
Plus I like the little squiggly guys
He may not be a “true Liberal” (whatever that is), but he’s a lot more of a true liberal than many in the Liberal Party.
Possum: As long as those RARA seats are (re)captured by Nationals or even conservative-minded rural independents, that’s good enough for the Coalition to govern with, isn’t it? Surely that’s the essential reason that the Coalition is two parties rather than one – so that they can each go after one of those two constituencies?
Caf – the trouble with rural independents is that they actually tend to be pretty independent these days. If I had to make a bet which way the trio of Katter/Windsor/Oakeshott would run in a hung Parliament – I wouldn’t be putting large sums on the Coalition.
But the other possible problem is that it might actually make the Nats decide to go independent rather than merge as a solution to their slow disappearing act – then the Liberal party would be held hostage to more agrarian socialism than they are now if they needed to rely on an independent National Party to form government. That wont play well in the leafy streets of Brisbane,Melbourne, Sydney and Adelaide – and you could be sure that the ALP would exploit it, especially with Rudd and Swan already having experience of doing that very thing with success in QLD
Any bounce for Turnbull might be drowned out by the economic melt down happening in the US and its knock on effects.
Ok, time for the bounce predictions. What say you?
Four votes is hardly a ringing endorsement. This will not be the end of the leadership issue.
Can a conservative rural independent, or a newly-independent National party, really support a Labor government without pissing off enough of their own supporters to threaten their political survival? If not, how credible are their ransom demands?
(Should Barnett have stared down the Nationals out west?)
I think the strength of ideology in the bush is a vastly overstated thing. In a toss up between making a deal with either major party – if the independent didn’t side with the team offering the best deal for their constituents, they wouldn’t take too kindly to it (which is now the danger to the Nats in WA in one respect). Bush politics has always been more noise than action – the vocal noisy rump that supposedly represents the political views of RARA land is almost always made up of local real estate agents, News agents and farmers that are up to their eyeballs in National Party politics and not particularly representative of the wider community around them.
Most people wouldn’t give a toss if their Independent backed Labor in a hung parliament, as long as they got something valuable out of the deal. RARA seats might be conservative by nature and age profile – but not to the point of irrationality. Windsor before the election basically said he’d back Labor in a hung Parliament situation.
If Aquaman only manages a dead-cat bounce that disappears, or no bounce at all… what do the minions do then?
Also noted that on the day Aquaman gets the top job, Alan Jones goes back on air. AJ said that the cancer had gone, when he should have said the cancer was back.
Well I just finished watching Question Time, and in my humble opinion it wasn’t classic viewing. Turnball asked only 2 questions at the beginning as I recall, both about the recent bank collapse in the US, which I thought rather gave the impression he was interested on behalf of his stocks and those of his good chums.
I think Nelson, probably inadvertally, didn’t give Mr T enough time last night to prepare some really good knockers.
Fair enough, I’ve never had the on-the-ground experience in a country electorate.
Well, Poss, seems like QT was a bit of a fizzer. ‘Spose you’ve got to give the bloke a bit of time to fire up, what with probably being a bit jet lagged and getting the gig and all, just a day later.
Yeeehaaa!
Trubbell’s arrived in the Possum Box! I’ve wriggled through the Crikey registration wormhole…
and found myself in some parrallell universe where teh Libs are now led by a Republican who gave a doorstop today about how Liberals have always been terrifically concerned about ‘fairness’ and ‘helping the unfortunate’ and ‘giving a hand up to those who miss out on economic advancement’…
I guess it won’t take long for Robb and Co to point out that this isn’t what ‘the base’ wants to hear.
Well, the only two things I know about Turnbull are that he allowed himself to be out-manoeuvered by Howard over the Republic Referendum, and then served under Howard. Doesn’t say much for his political skills or his principles.
Having also wriggled through the wormhole…agree mainly with Poss’s summation of RARA politics with the added bit about getting lots of local projects funded by whoever will come to the party, no matter which party. These are by nature small projects that don’t have an impact beyond the farm gate (or estate agent’s front door). I think Turnbull will be more interesting to watch than Nelson: for all of Nelson’s supposed Labor leanings and mod-squad hipness, he seemed pretty much a colour-by-numbers pollie. Turnbull brings a genuine commercial,as distinct from textbook or what-Treasury-told-me economic, perspective that Parliament hasn’t seen for while. He’d be silly to be seen to be catering to business wants and I suspect he won’t. Well at least initially.
I agree with others that rural voters would be OK with their independent supporting Labor in return for a bucketload of pork.
But to suggest that Nats voters would be OK with the Nats doing the same thing is too much of a stretch. The disdain that Nats voters have for Labor is visceral and lifelong. All talk of agrarian socialism, or policy similarities, is beside the point. These people vote from the gut, and they hate Labor – end of story.
It might be different in Queensland or WA, but if the Nats left the Coalition, and gave even the slightest hint of supporting Labor, I’d back pretty much every NSW Nat seat to go to the Libs.
I won I won, Oh God I won, Let me introduce my solution to Climate Change,
a $10,000,000 rainmaking machine, it works, honest