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Dutton resigns after Turnbull survives Liberal leadership spill 48-35 – politics live Dutton resigns after Turnbull survives Liberal leadership spill 48-35 – politics live
(35 minutes later)
Labor have also held its party-room meeting – as have the Greens. Labor has made some changes to the shadow ministry:
But not even they are pretending to be interested in anything other than what on earth the Libs are doing right now. Linda Burney MP will become the new Shadow Minister for Families and Social Services. This portfolio is vital to our policy agenda and central to our party’s values. I know Linda will prove a worthy successor to Jenny Macklin.
And just on that - Peter Dutton has legal advice that says he is fine. Ed Husic MP will retain his role as Shadow Minister for the Digital Economy while also taking on the new challenge of Shadow Minister for Human Services. I’m confident that Ed’s eye for detail and his thorough calm will serve job-seekers and vulnerable Australians well.
But Katy Gallagher, Justine Keay and Josh Wilson also had legal advice saying they were fine. In addition to her current responsibilities as Shadow Minister for Young Australians and Youth Affairs, Terri Butler MP will take on the role of Shadow Minister for Employment Services, Workforce Participation and Future of Work. Young Australians have got a raw deal from this government for far too long, and I think it’s important that their dedicated representative in the Shadow Ministry also has a say in shaping the workplaces of the future.
Legal advice is not the high court. Senator Jenny McAllister will serve as the Shadow Assistant Minister for Families and Communities – a promotion that reflects her outstanding work in the Senate.
“If he went to the high court, yes he would be in strife,” constitutional expert George Williams says, on the story broken by Hugh Riminton and researcher Kate Doak yesterday, over the conflict of interest Peter Dutton may have over his family’s child care centre interests. Senator Louise Pratt, who is passionate about fair, affordable and accessible higher education, will take on the job of Shadow Assistant Minister for Universities.
The short version is, when the government changed how the child care subsidy was paid - from parents to the child care centre directly, Dutton’s wife’s child care centres, which are held in trust, may have become a section 44 blurred line. Bill Shorten finishes his statement with “I thank all my team for their hard work and their unity of purpose.”
That’s because that section also says you can’t receive a direct or indirect interest from the Commonwealth. Our Queensland correspondent, Ben Smee, talked a little bit about Peter Dutton’s level of name recognition earlier.
As professor Williams says on Sky, this high court has taken a very strict view of the constitution - black letter, as we like to say - which means Dutton could be in trouble. It’s one of the questions marks hovering over him, should he take a second tilt at the leadership.
BUT - the government would have to refer him, for this to even be tested. Which, at this point, they will not. Is Dutton well-known to the broader public? Guardian Australia has run two profiles of Dutton in recent years. The first explored this very question.
And as for the conspiracy theorists out there, this has not come from Labor or the government - Rimington and Doak have both said they started looking into this weeks ago, as part of an investigation into the business conflicts with section 44 - Riminton was also the journalist who looked into Barry O’Sullivan’s possible conflicts - which Professor Williams has backed. Our reporter travelled to the electorate of Dickson and spoke to his constituents. Dutton was a stranger to most.
But Williams says he doesn’t think that family trusts will protect MPs from the constitutional conflicts, given how the high court has been ruling. One woman, sitting 500m from his office, asked our reporter “who is Peter Dutton?”.
Which brings a whole heap more MPs into the section 44 quagmire. Another was asked who there local member was: “Is it Paul Smith?” he replied.
You guys have not lost your love for a leadership spill in the intervening three years (give or take a month) since the last one. Past Labor polling has found Dickson to be one of the least politically engaged in the country.
Twitter says there was a peak of 575 tweets per minute about #libspill #auspol pic.twitter.com/UooDLVO6mT All in a day’s work.
For those pointing out that given there are 84 Liberals, the room was one vote short – Arthur Sinodinos is still on sick leave. His vote most likely would have gone to Malcolm Turnbull. Parliament officially starts at 12pm.
On that 1.6% margin – 3,600 votes or so – Peter Dutton has been fundraising since the moment the election ended in 2016, on top of the fundraising he has been doing since 2013. But all the action will be in on the phones and in the halls.
The LNP might not have a lot of funds, but Dutton has been building his own war chest since witnessing how close GetUp came to turfing him out at the last election, and working out how best to spend it. It was only just over two years ago that Malcolm Turnbull tipped in $1.75 million of his own money to get the Coalition over the line at the 2016 election.
See – movable beast Seems like everyone is really, super grateful.
Peter Dutton is understood to be considering the offer from Malcolm Turnbull to stay as Home Affairs Minister and in Cabinet. O-P-T-I-C-S
So, this is a very fast-moving beast today. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and deputy Michael McCormack emerge from joint party room meeting where the PM earlier survived a vote on his leadership against Home affairs minister Peter Dutton 48 -35 @AmyRemeikis @GuardianAus @murpharoo #politicslive pic.twitter.com/zSGhQE6joh
I am being told (and I note that Sky is getting the same intel) that Peter Dutton, in an attempt to “reach across the table” to the moderates (and this has very much been a moderate vs conservative battle within that “broad church”) may keep Tony Abbott out of the cabinet – and keep Australia in Paris. Sean Kelly wrote about what giving Peter Dutton the home affairs portfolio would mean, last year.
It’s being billed as a “we can govern from the centre” push, as a way to get some of those other supporters across the line. I wrote this last year, and, sadly, it has become more relevant today. https://t.co/XSjkz1km9s pic.twitter.com/cXHg6lHgwm
Given that I doubt that Abbott actually cares that much about energy policy – and is more concerned with getting Malcolm Turnbull out – he will probably be OK with that. Maybe. Who actually knows how that man thinks? Annnnnnd it is definitely the backbench:
Labor is election ready – the campaign headquarters will be in Parramatta, I am told, and trial runs have already been completed. The teams have been in place since the beginning of the year, and those teams came together for “training” in the two weeks before parliament returned. Dutton did not accept PM's offer to remain in Cabinet and has resigned to move to the backbench.
Everything is fine. If we look purely at the Essential poll results for preferred prime minister in the last 12 months, the current crisis facing Malcolm Turnbull seems odd. He has consistently been more than 10 points above Bill Shorten in the preferred prime minister stakes. The latest result, from just last week, puts Turnbull at 41% for preferred PM, well above Shorten at 27%.
There are messages and despatches flying all over the place at the moment. The Daily Telegraph reported Malcolm Turnbull offered Peter Dutton the opportunity to stay on the frontbench as home affairs minister, but Dutts turned him down. It was a similar result for Turnbull’s approval rating. Last week, 42% of respondents said they approved of the job Turnbull was doing as PM. That’s about eight points ahead of the Labor leader.
Goodness, I just realised we will no longer be getting our daily Dutton Dixer. Of course, we know it’s not as simple as measuring leader against leader. If we take a look at the two-party-preferred vote, the Coalition has been consistently behind Labor. In fact, the Coalition has not won an Essential poll since mid-2016. The gap had narrowed considerably earlier this year, putting Labor only marginally ahead at 51-49. The results show lots of movement, back and forth, within the margin of error in the past year. The last result put Labor in a winning position at 52-48.
Not only is Peter Dutton on a margin of 1.6% – that’s about 3,600 votes – he also attempted to move to the safe Queensland seat of McPherson in 2010 but lost. We also know the Coalition pays most attention to Newspoll. There is another Newspoll due on Monday. It could deal a huge body blow to Turnbull, particularly if, as expected, the public reacts badly to the current turmoil within his government.
Karen Andrews holds that electorate. @AmyRemeikis fun fact: if Dutton does become PM at some point, he'd be the first immigration minister to do so in over 50 years (Holt 66-67). It's a tough gig to come from.
That’s a reminder from a moderate, which suggests the fight is still very much on. Peter Dutton is heading a different way, and is being chased by half of the media pack.
All eyes are now on who is going to shift to the backbench with Peter Dutton. This is never a very graceful process.
The election speculation has started in earnest. Malcolm Turnbull ignored the cameras as he walked past. He was walking with Michael McCormack, because - optics.
Yarralumla is just down the road. The Liberals are filing down the hallway in groups of two, doing their best to look like EVERYTHING IS FINE.
You would think that the prime minister would try and get his cabinet in order first, but the main point to take from this, is that it is not over. Stuart Robert is having a joke with Josh Frydenberg and Scott Morrison. Jane Hume, walking with Julie Bishop, looked to give a wave. John McVeigh though (who sits in the regional Queensland seat of Groom but is counted as a Lib) looks pretty down. Steve Ciobo also looks like he has had better days, as does Linda Reynolds.
The leader of the Liberal party has lost the support of almost half his own party room. That’s not counting the Nationals who were already openly challenging his decisions. Basically, this is a good way of working out who in the Liberal party you want to play poker with.
And the moderates who supported Malcolm Turnbull have watched him roll over to that core group of conservatives time and time and time again, most critically, this week, on the energy policy he had said the government was absolutely committed to. The room has broken – they are all out.
On the Queensland front – where most of Peter Dutton’s core support comes from – the speculation is that Dutton’s camp would include Amanda Stoker, Scott Buchholz, Ian Macdonald, Stuart Robert, Luke Howarth, Ted O’Brien, Bert van Manen and Ross Vasta. This is not surprising:
That’s Queensland speculation, from conversations over the last couple of days. Warren Entsch is apparently getting stuck into Tony Abbott right now in the party room, met with some claps #auspol
Andrew Laming is an unknown. Jane Prentice, Steve Ciobo, Warren Entsch, Trevor Evans, James McGrath and Karen Andrews are thought to be in the Malcolm Turnbull camp. This isn’t the first time Entsch has got stuck into Tony Abbott over his “no wrecking, no sniping” promise – and has repeated it back to him.
This was just the Liberal party room. The Nationals sit separately. Entsch is also not that into backgrounding – he’ll say it publicly, if he feels like it. It looks like that list I posted a little bit ago, on where the Queensland contingent probably fell, is pretty spot on.
If you add in the Nats who don’t support Malcolm Turnbull – and we know who at least a few of those are – and you have an absolute mess. Eric Abetz and James McGrath have wandered out.
And then there is this number: Meanwhile, talk in speculation land is firming that another challenge is looming on Thursday.
'Humbled' Malcolm Turnbull beats Kevin Andrews 48-35 in leadership spill https://t.co/ddVqtveOzy pic.twitter.com/ZM9kxdKuZa The Liberal party-room meeting has ended- and MPs are starting to trickle out.
To put those numbers in context: 48 to 35. Back in Queensland – and Peter Dutton’s seat of Dickson – Ben Smee tells us there is not a lot of awareness their local member has challenged for the leadership:
Julia Gillard won her first challenge from Kevin Rudd 71–31 (69.6%) – was defeated in the second. Dutton will, of course, now have more time to campaign in his marginal electorate of Dickson, also considered to be one of the least engaged in the country.
Bob Hawke won his first ballot 66-44 (60.0%) – was defeated in the second. What do the Stamford locals think about Dutton’s leadership challenge and resignation from cabinet?
Malcolm Fraser won his challenge from Andrew Peacock 54-27 (66.7%) – lost the election the following year “I don’t even have a radio, mate,” says one.
“Oh, is he the member here? That’s probably really bad of me, I didn’t know,” says Susan, while picking up her morning coffee from a shop playing Land Down Under (and not the news) quite loudly. “I know a lot of people don’t like him, so that’s probably a good thing he’s not prime minister then.”