How will the Liberal Party’s spill motion unfold? - Women's Agenda

How will the Liberal Party’s spill motion unfold?

What a difference a week makes. This time last week Prime Minister Tony Abbott was preparing to address the National Press Club.  his morning he is preparing to face his own party room to stave off a spill motion. 

After a weekend of machinations and the meeting being brought forward by a day, the current consensus is that the spill motion will be defeated. Whether that marks the end of the uncertainty for Abbott’s leadership is less clear.

Bernard Keane, political editor of Crikey, Women’s Agenda’s sister site writes:

“What happens from there depends on the nature of the outcome.

A heavy defeat will provide a little breathing room for Tony Abbott, though no one outside his camp believes he’s capable of using it.

A narrow defeat will leave Abbott’s position, as we like to say, untenable: with near half of his own colleagues wanting him out, he hardly has authority to lead the country. At that point, a sensible leader would call a spill and submit him or herself to the judgment of their peers. 

But Abbott has been playing this day by day. Yesterday he made two big calls that both reinforce the negative impressions of his political style: he brought the vote forward a day without discussing it with the backbench, and he made an absurd decision that, in order to secure the vote of South Australian Sean Edwards, suddenly the Adelaide-based Australian Submarine Corporation would be allowed to tender for the new class of RAN subs — something Treasurer Joe Hockey had rejected last year on the basis that there wasn’t enough time (an absurd claim in itself, but Hockey regularly says absurd things).

You can understand why he’s been taking this approach — do whatever you can to win the day, because you never know what might turn up tomorrow — but it has only further damaged whatever faint prospects he might have had of remaining leader beyond the coming months or weeks.”

This is a wrap up of comments made by political commentators over the past few days that Crikey has gathered. 

Paul Kelly in The Weekend Australian:

“The problem for Abbott is that the spill motion now becomes a vote of confidence in his leadership. Even if defeated, a sizable vote will prove he leads a fractured party pointing to more destabilisation down the track. The problem for Turnbull is that many want him for the wrong reason and much of the party fears he may not be able to hold the conservative side of politics together.”

David Marr in The Guardian:

“The failure which may carry Abbott out of public life on Tuesday is his failure to grow. In thoughtful interviews over many years he claimed to be so much more than the savage dog of his party. There were values, deep values waiting to be expressed once he had the chance to lead.”

Phillip Coorey in The Australian Financial Review:

“Any chance he had of rebounding was hampered by Abbott’s stubborn refusal to listen. He refused to dump his paid parental leave scheme – a policy that angered the base and destroyed the budget narrative – until it was way too late. He refused to dilute the enormous power wielded by his chief of staff, Peta Credlin, and even when it was apparent he was in deep trouble, he chose to amend and persist with controversial budget policies on Medicare and higher education, rather than dump them.”

Mark Kenny in The Age/Sydney Morning Herald:

“Abbott’s leadership has entered the killing zone.

It is likely events and numbers will tumble quickly from here. We now know a party room ballot will occur over the leadership. Initially it will deal with the procedural question of a spill.”

Amanda Vanstone in The Age

“You cannot ignore the people, without whom you will never be a minister or prime minister. They are an integral part of you having that opportunity. It is a team effort.

Winning an election as leader is not a ticket to be a dictator for three years.” 

Katherine Murphy in The Guardian

“Abbott has always been a contrary figure, a complex person, and his stock in trade, aggressive simplicity, could only resonate when it was delivered in broad brushstrokes. The devil was always going to be in the detail. The basic contradictions started early. The man who’d elevated trust and competence to moral imperatives in national politics quickly proved himself neither trustworthy nor particularly competent. Small-target politics in opposition was replaced by an agenda the voters didn’t expect, and then Abbott blamed onlookers for failing to read the tea leaves.”

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