Politics

The Turnbull government’s overdraft with the Australian electorate is well and truly spent. And the prime minister’s desperate attempts to keep his creditors at bay have only served to worsen his precarious position. His decision to cancel next week’s sitting of the house of representatives is akin to shutting the doors to stop a run on the bank. It cannot work and it won’t.

The dangerous, retrograde bigotry pushed by many on the “No” side was rejected overwhelmingly in the survey. Fellow travellers on the right saw voters disprove their claims that they were speaking for most of them. Their mistake is to equate their electorates with the members of their local branches. Religious extremists have begun infiltrating Liberal branches around the country. Their potency comes at preselection time, when they determine the fate of an MP.

With only occasional exceptions – someone like Clive Palmer – the working hypothesis of the gallery is that every political actor is rationally self-interested and transparent to themselves in their motives and desires. They could get away with this approach in the Hawke–Keating period, and, at a stretch, up to the end of the Howard period, when personality remained constrained by political forms, to a degree. But now we have a politics whose dominant figures have slipped their ideological moorings, and the interpretive gap shows keenly.

It’s likely Malcolm Turnbull doesn’t want to cross Immigration Minister Peter Dutton. The creation of the new Home Affairs ministry, against the objections of erstwhile allies in cabinet such as Julie Bishop and George Brandis, is as good an indication as any of Dutton’s clout and Turnbull’s craven need to appease him.

Like the story of the Daintree, the Adani campaign is about people standing up for what they believe in – taking courageous action to protect our future and the natural environment upon which it depends. As Adani promises to start work on the mine, we should remember that this is an issue that affects us all and step forward to offer our support.

Turnbull’s message: “It’s business as usual.” That’s meant to assure the nation that the government will keep governing smoothly. The fixed smile can’t mask the reality. Business as usual means more of the same dithering and internecine strife that makes a big issue of a simple decision such as who will mind the shop while the prime minister is away.

The government’s decision, although discourteous and bitter, has triggered what’s been missing for 10 years, an authentic people’s movement, a coalition of Australians from all walks of life who found the government’s rejection of the ‘Indigenous Voice to Parliament’, and the silencing of public debate, as the most powerful and persuasive reason for the reform.

While Xenophon would dearly love to run 30 candidates in SA, finding the right ones takes more than wishful thinking. The infrastructure has to be constructed from scratch and the money has to be found to fund it. Other minor parties, such as Pauline Hanson’s One Nation, are testament to the car crash it can become.

There is an irony in all of this. Turnbull moved away from the CET because Abbott and many in the party room thought it was too close to Labor’s policy. Ditching it was to emphasise product differentiation and, according to government insiders, their best chance of getting back in the game. What happens if Labor accepts the worked-up version of the national energy guarantee?

Milo’s year-ending whistlestop is called the Troll Academy Tour, and the baffled reaction of the Sunrise hosts recalled a more innocent time, when alt-right figures weren’t the warm-up act for the Cash Cow. You can chart the change in mood just through the nastier tabloids.