I’ve been pondering the possible makeup of Malcolm Turnbull’s new shadow ministry (likely to be announced on Sunday), looking at who is in it at the moment, who could be dropped and who would be good to promote. Although the need to minimise internal unrest probably means there won’t be a huge number of demotions or surprises.

One person who I’d love to see in there – even though I doubt very much it will happen – is Petro Georgiou, the Member for Kooyong since 1996. He’s recently turned 60, which could be seen as undesirable with the Coalition in a rebuilding phase.  But he’s undoubtedly got the political and policy smarts, as well as the experience.  He’s one of a number of high quality people who were left out of the Ministry throughout the Howard era for political and personal reasons, with position instead going to by people with little ability other than world-class obsequiousness.

Given shadow Immigration Minister, Senator Chris Ellison, has announced his retirement, Petro Georgiou would fit neatly into that role. With Labor’s Immigration Minister Chris Evans also performing well so far, we could finally have some high quality debate and critical thinking in this crucial area of public policy.

It won’t happen, but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t.

The recently tabled Senate Committee report into legislation amending the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Act contained a dissenting report from the Coalition Senators. No surprises there – Coalition Senators seem to be very keen of late to express their opposition to many parts of government legislation. There were six Coalition Senators who put their names at the end of this dissenting report, three of them Queenslanders, as befits a Bill dealing with the Reef. But what I did find curious is that of those three, Barnaby Joyce gave his party affiliation as “Nats, Qld”, while long-standing National Ron Boswell gave his party affiliation as “LNP, Qld”, and Queensland Liberal Senator Ian MacDonald (who has long advocated a combining of the Liberals and Nationals, although not necessarily in the manner that has recently occurred) described himself as “LP, Qld”. 

In most respects this is a minor matter, but it does reinforce the lack of clarity about whether the Liberals and Nationals from Queensland are wanting to bond together or be apart.  This is reinforced by Barnaby Joyce adding some separate additional comments under his own name, but “on behalf of the National Party”. No other names were listed on this additional comment, which leaves it unclear whether Ron Boswell, describing himself as an LNP Senator, is among those they were made on behalf of.

The additional comments don’t actually take a substantively different approach on the actual legislation, so it is unlikely to lead to any splits in voting on the Senate floor.  It seems to just be Senator Joyce taking an opportunity to engage in the ‘differentiation’ tactic he has often espoused. There’s nothing out of the ordinary in that – minor party Senators do it quite often.

In this case, Senator Joyce is mainly making an extra appeal to the fishing lobby with some statements that are more hairy-chested than those in the main dissenting report.

As an aside, I was interested to see him quoting the Queensland Game Fishing Association describing themselves as “an organisation committed to the collection, dissemination and analysis of scientific information as the basis of sound marine resource conservation and management”.  Maybe they should call it scientific fishing, rather than game fishing. A bit like scientific whaling.

With Queenslander Barnaby Joyce now elevated to Leader of the (stand alone) National Party in the Senate, he has again talked about the need to differentiate his party from the Liberals. Yet going into next year’s state election in Queensland and crucially also the next federal election (which always has the potential of happening some time next year as well if the government judges that a double dissolution is necessary), the Liberal and National Parties (or should that be Party??) are presenting themselves to the public as a single, seamlessly intertwined entity.

With the latest negotiations on the luxury car tax seeing Steve Fielding potentially getting government agreement on special treatment for farmers and tourist operators, this article reports Joyce as saying the government should at least “quarantine all Australian cars from the tax.”

Joyce recently condemned the government’s tax increase on luxury cars as “left wing, last century socialism”, which is presumably different from the agrarian socialism he has said the Nationals stand for. (I’m not sure whether the National’s see that as 21st century socialism or 19th century socialism)

But given that Joyce is the now National’s Senate Leader, I don’t know if his idea for increasing the tax differential on Australian made cars is an idea supported by the federal Liberal-National Coalition or just the federal National Party, or only the Queensland Liberal National Party, or perhaps just the Queensland Nationals?

No doubt it’s just an attempt by Senator Joyce to pursue his strategy of “more differentiation for the Nationals”.  If I were in the Nationals, I would see a lot of merit in this strategy.  I just can’t see how you can differentiate and merge at the same time.

The only way I can make any logical sense out of this is if those who describe the merged Liberal National Party as just a National Party takeover of the Liberals are correct – in which case there is no Liberal Party for Senator Joyce to need to distinguish himself from. I’m not sure how the federal Liberal Party MPs from Queensland would feel about that interpretation though.

So, apart from one mention on my blog where I asked why people thought Peter Costello was so good, I tried to ignore the endless weeks of stories about Peter Costello’s intentions – all of which amounted to nothing in terms of any impact on the day to day lives of the public.

None the less, an actual ballot on the Liberal Party leadership (as opposed to endless speculation about it) is significant. But in the spirit of downplaying the theatre, I won’t express an opinion about the manoeuvrings around today’s Liberal Party leadership spill, and the contest between Brendan Nelson and Malcolm Turnbull, other than considering what the policy impacts might be and the possible impact in the Senate.

As with any protected drama around leadership, the big policy impact from having the leadership resolved will be that people will actually start focusing on policy, not leadership. It’s bad enough when the media focus on leadership dramas lead them to ignore the impacts of legislation being considered by Parliament.  But it’s even worse when the politicians, who actually make the decisions on whether or not that legislation becomes law, are too distracted by leadership dramas to pay enough attention to it either.

With Peter Costello’s book also pretty much out of the way after today, one outcome of the contest should at least be a shift back towards policy issues for a while – unless Brendan Nelson only has a narrow win, in which case there will probably only be a short interim until it all starts up again. 

From media reports, the only policy issues Nelson hinted at in announcing he was spilling the leadership were climate change – presumably moving to more strongly oppose emissions trading and any other measures that might make a difference – and recognition of same sex couples – presumably finally matching the Liberal’s action with their words (not to mention their party name) and supporting the removal of this long-standing and unjustifiable form of discrimination.

Actually allowing the same-sex changes through the Senate would be a welcome, albeit very overdue move.  It would certainly be sensible for Nelson (or Turnbull) to do this, as I suspect it would be hard to prevent a few Liberals from crossing the floor in the Senate in any case.

Even if Turnbull wins, I doubt there will be major reversals in the Opposition’s positions on any of the Budget Bills they have pledged to oppose in the Senate.

One could speculate about what other sorts of policy changes might occur from a resolution of the leadership uncertainty, but that would only be speculation.  It is tempting to assume there might be more fiscal discipline and less short-term populism under a Turnbull leadership, but it is impossible to do more than make assumptions at this stage. The reality of being a first term Opposition with unresolved internal differences still playing themselves out creates pressures which make policy decisions hard to predict.