Anthony Albanese predicts Turnbull government has rocky road ahead
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Version 0 of 1. The government of the newly minted prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, will face the same infighting and instability that plagued the Gillard and Rudd governments, the Labor frontbencher Anthony Albanese said. Speaking from the Western Australian electorate of Canning, where a suddenly less crucial byelection will take place on Saturday, Albanese said: “Having been through these sorts of things in the past … the idea that it’s business as usual today in the Coalition government is just farcical. Related: Confessions of a Canning byelection candidate: 'I'm not that cool,' says Matt Keogh “The fact is, this is a government that is at war with itself. “This is a government where many of the senior members of that government can’t stand the person that has been elected to lead that political party, where it’s very clear that a number of senior members in the government promised both Malcolm Turnbull and Tony Abbott that they would vote for them in last night’s ballot, which is why Tony Abbott was confident going into that ballot. “Now those things don’t just wash through the system. What that leads to is dysfunctional government. They will be a dysfunctional government until the next election, when they will be put out of their misery.” Albanese said he was speaking from the experience of the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd years, when the Labor party dispatched two first-term prime ministers within three years. “There is no doubt, I am not talking in retrospect here,” he said. “In 2010 when we changed government, it caused ongoing issues. It doesn’t just stop.” Turnbull was sworn in by the governor general, Sir Peter Cosgrove, on Tuesday, after winning Monday night’s leadership ballot in the Liberal party room 55 votes to 45 against Abbott. Weeks of mounting speculation leading up to the leadership spill had trained the nation’s eyes on Canning, where the result of the 19 September byelection, triggered by the sudden death of Liberal MP Don Randall, was expected to seal the fate of Abbott’s leadership. Polls at the weekend predicted a 10% swing towards Labor. By calling the spill five days out from the poll, Turnbull has left the campaign a little flat. But Labor, which has been campaigning on, among other things, the promise of Abbott being ditched by his party if the Labor vote was strong enough, has brushed off the significance of the change in prime minister. Speaking at the joint press conference in his home suburb of Kelmscott on Tuesday, the Labor candidate, Matthew Keogh, said the issues voters had raised with him remained unchanged. Keogh, who previously told Guardian Australia he was regularly approached by people asking him to get rid of Abbott, said people he spoke to at Armadale station during the Tuesday morning peak hour rush recognised that their gripe lay with the broader Liberal government. “People weren’t coming up to me and saying, ‘Oh, it’s great that Malcolm Turnbull is now prime minister.’ People were saying, ‘We have just got to get rid of this government,’ ” he said. He dismissed a suggestion that removing Abbott from the leadership would favour his opponent, the Liberal candidate Andrew Hastie. “I think my job is the same today as it was tomorrow,” he said. “I have been talking to voters yesterday and today and their concerns remain the same.” Related: Canning byelection: team Hastie try to keep focus local as federal Liberals implode Hastie, who also played down the significance of the leadership change on Monday night, had not appeared on Tuesday morning. However, his mobile billboard made an appearance, making cameos in the back of shot as Albanese and Keogh addressed the media on a corner near the infamously unsafe Denny Avenue intersection. “Malcolm Turnbull’s supported me on the campaign,” he told ABC news on Monday night. “I said to him I would be a thorn in the flesh, and now that he’s prime minister I look forward to working with him and I’ll continue to be a thorn in the flesh as I advocate hopefully as the elected representative of the people of Canning.” |