The Road to Ruin: How Tony Abbott and Peta Credlin Destroyed Their Own Government by Niki Savva

Author:Niki Savva [Savva, Niki]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: POL000000, POL055000, POL025000, BIO010000
ISBN: 9781925322729
Google: YcVDtAEACAAJ
Publisher: Scribe Publications
Published: 2017-08-02T23:22:05.341952+00:00

CHAPTER SEVEN

Same Sex, Same Problem

As the second anniversary of his election approached, Tony Abbott’s prime ministership was once again at a tipping point. Many MPs saw little to celebrate. Abbott’s survival relied on the support of his conservative base; but in his anxiety to secure it, or perhaps motivated by his desire to wedge Malcolm Turnbull, he lost outright the support of moderates such as Christopher Pyne and George Brandis, and MPs on the right such as Scott Ryan. The issue that did it for Abbott was same-sex marriage. He was being pushed by deeply conservative MPs to hold the line against it, and pulled by the moderates, as well as capital-L liberals, to allow a free vote.

In a strange sort of way, this worked against Abbott like climate change had worked against Turnbull in 2009. Both leaders, at different times but on issues that went to their core beliefs, made the mistake of believing that outcomes mattered more than processes, while forgetting that while majorities might rule, the interests of minorities have to be accommodated, too. Outside politics, outcomes might be more important; however, inside, they carry equal weight — how you get there can be as important as what you eventually do when you arrive.

Although he might have ultimately landed in the right place, Abbott’s handling of the same-sex marriage issue was a critical step on his road to ruin. The prime minister’s trickiness, at best, or outright deception, at worst, in order to secure a victory that day, 11 August, cost him most dearly.

Talking amongst themselves later, as they went back over what had happened, and in conversations with me, Liberal MPs regarded this as a pivotal day (one of many pivotal days, it must be said) in Abbott’s leadership. If it wasn’t the reason they shifted, it provided them with the excuse to decamp and to let it be known that they had.

One cabinet minister summed it up by saying: ‘He was not acting as a leader of the whole party, he was the leader of the right. He was not acting like a Liberal — I mean capital-L Liberal — acting in the traditions of the party to deal with the issue.’

Backbenchers thought it was bizarre that Abbott had not once discussed the handling of the same-sex marriage issue with either the full cabinet or the leadership group. Even supporters of marriage equality believe that if there had been a free vote, in all likelihood it would have been defeated in the parliament. This would have dealt with the issue for the time being; and, equally importantly, he would have been seen to have discharged his obligations as leader in an honourable way.

‘I have rarely been as angry and as outraged as I was that night,’ one Liberal MP said. ‘It felt like our first caucus meeting. It was a meeting called and arranged with the intention of delivering a particular result under the veil of consultation.

‘Tony is just an ends-justifies-the-means kind of guy.’

That meeting was critical in shifting Scott Ryan to Turnbull.

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