In the end all the shouting and stomping was for nothing. Momentum lurched one way and then the other only to be stopped dead in its tracks as Julie Bishop got to her feet in the House just after three o’clock yesterday to announce her retirement from politics.
Everyone could take a breather. The quarrels, scandals and policy missteps would take a back seat. Bishop’s announcement led on all news reports with the day to day entrail examination of federal politics either discarded entirely or run somewhere up the back just before the sport, the weather and the amusing cat that does the ironing segment.
A 20-year veteran of federal politics, Bishop was a minister in the Howard government (Education and Science, Women, and Ageing), the first female deputy leader of the federal Liberal Party (erroneously described as Deputy Prime Minister on both the Channel Seven and Nine News services) and Foreign Minister in the Abbott and Turnbull governments since 2013.
Depending on your view, we have just 78 or 85 sleeps before the next election. Of these, just three have been set aside as parliamentary sitting days. Put that in the nice work if you can get it category.
On the final sitting day but three of the 45th Parliament, Bishop not only halted the tawdry to-and-fro politicking, she cast other retiring pollies into the shade.
Euromoney’s MVP in 2009, Wayne Swan’s valedictory speech where he tactfully neglected to mention the 100,000 or so single mothers he, Julia Gillard and Labor dispatched into poverty, was left to nestle deep in oblivion while Labor’s favourite policy nuffy, Jenny Macklin, might wander off into retirement to try her hand at getting by on the Newstart Allowance, as she once boasted she could but now probably won’t.
Bishop took a near marginal seat to the safest confines on the electoral pendulum. She won almost two thirds of the primary vote in the 2016 election. She enjoyed a three per cent swing on primary vote while nationwide the Coalition lost 14 seats with a 3.55 per cent swing against it.
Depending on your vintage, is JBish the Keith Miller or the Shane Warne of Australian politics, e.g. the best captain we never had? Had she emerged triumphant from the scorched earth of the August 2018 spill, where would the Coalition be now? My best guess is she and it would have enjoyed a significant poll bounce at least in the short term, but we are dealing with fantasy politics here. The truth is, she could only find 11 supporters out of 85 in the party room and once that grim news hit home, her decision to retire from politics was only a matter of time.
Given the stunning personal support she enjoyed from voters if not the Liberal Party room, we can safely say there will be a swing against the Liberals in Curtin at the next election. It may be a beaut, if the Liberals get the politics of the preselection wrong. Worse, it could have a knock-on effect in other seats where margins are much tighter (Andrew Hastie in Canning, 6.8 per cent and Stirling where Michael Keenan is retiring, 6.1 per cent).
The Coalition could lose the next federal election in Western Australia alone. On the betting at this moment, Labor would pick up Hasluck (Ken Wyatt), Pearce (Christian Porter) and Swan (Steve Irons).
Those bubble bound necromancers in Canberra have long thought the retirement of Bishop would allow Christian Porter to seamlessly traverse electoral borders and ensconce himself as lord of the manor in Curtin.
Porter is one of the Liberal Party’s brightest charges, the current attorney-general and a potential leader of the parliamentary party.
We can also safely assume there will be no captain’s picks of candidates in Curtin given the arcane nature of Western Australian Liberal Party which has been fussin’ and feudin’ since I was a lad.
Another retiree from parliament, the National MP for Mallee, Andrew Broad, a man who regarded himself as something of a James Bond of Australian politics — whether it was a Craig, Lazenby, Moore, Connery, Dalton, Brosnan or Woody Allen, I cannot say — did offer something of a scientician’s view of gender and politics in a door stop to SkyNews yesterday.
“Politics,” Broad said, “is very gruelling on people who want to have a family and the very nature of biology is that it’s tougher on women.”
I am not entirely sure what that means but it seems to me that upsetting a good chunk of 51 per cent of the voting public is not an especially solid strategy in electoral politics.
Bishop has called for a woman within the party to replace her. The parachute drop of Porter into Curtin, while eminently sensible, will necessarily and obviously cause headlines and very possibly widespread consternation. It will not be an easy preselection. This is a case of politics pointing to one outcome while logic points to another.
In the end it might not matter, especially if the people of Victoria decide to put the Liberal Party’s lights out a good two hours before the votes start rolling in from the west. But if an unlikely victory is to remain possible or even if furniture is to be saved, what happens in Curtin in the next two months will be crucial to the Coalition’s future.
This column was first published in The Australian on 22 February 2019
I am not a Pell fan and the way many right wing scribes have embraced him disgraceful. That said, I doubt he will do serious time. I said a couple of blogs ago the evidence is very flimsy….children often tell lies but they rarely do with regard to ‘interference’. As one youth said, ‘What is the point complaining against one so powerful. Who would believe a kid?” Or words to that effect. Abbott could lose his seat for shedding tears for Pell.
I have not followed the Pell trial all that much but have read with interest many articles since the verdict.
He has been found guilty and an appeal looms.
There is enough questioning of the evidence to ensure that this will not go away and will continue to reverberate through history for quite some time with input from both sides. There are parallels with the Lindy Chamberlain case with accusations of trial by media and faulty technical evidence such as the dingo versus the skirt.
There will re-enactments as to whether he could have lifted his skirt.
Learned tomes will be written about whether justice was done.
What they will all miss, in my opinion, is that he put the institution before the victims, protected other offenders, callously disregarded the victim’s stories and attempted to prevent any enquiry for as long as was possible.
For this he deserves to be put away for ever – but he was not tried for these crimes but for the ones for which the police thought that they had a case.
The legal system will grind away to some conclusion with the victims going through their own private hell with each iteration and the likely result will be that other victims will increasingly be reluctant to come forward.
JTI & others,
I start from the position that a 12 person jury properly directed, should get it right.
The test of ” beyond reasonable doubt” is a tough one.
However the High Court has pretty much ruled that if the appellate court has doubts, the reasonable man should too – so the inability to review a jury verdict other than on a point of law is over.
Now I have little fondness for the Catholic Church (beyond being the patron of some great art and music over the centuries), and I do not much like what I know of George Pell: arrogant, opinionated bigoted and showed himself out of his depth when he chose himself to debate Dawkins.
I am also uneasy about the state of his knowledge of clerics who allegedly offended against children, and his (in)actions in removing them from, inter alia, temptation at teh least.
I have not read the transcript – much less viewed the video evidence. Richter is a sound judge of his clients’ likely appeal to jurors and presumably elected to advise Pell not to give evidence. That may have proven a fatal flaw at trial but the appellate judges are not influenced by the failure to give evidence.
From my reading of the case I am somewhat surprised that the jury found against Pell on the relevant charges given the requisite standard of proof and the single alleged victim’s evidence, the inconsistencies and the difficulty with the relevant robes for starters.
I believe in the appellate process and the unlikelihood of an injustice occurring on full appeal. We have a system of justice which extends the benefit of doubt to the accused, but in some cases people are unable to exercise their reasoning faculties to afford such room when they feel understandable compassion for alleged victims and/or prejudice against an institution or individual who is a figurehead of such an institution.
There are still chips on the table…..
Thank you Voltaire. Appreciate your perspective.
Well reasoned Voltaire. If it wasn’t George Pell I doubt the DPP would have even allowed it to go to trial, particularly as the defence would no doubt have made submissions along those lines after committal.
Dont know how any rape of a child can be described as ‘vanilla’ these people are monsters. Defence lawyers do not have to stoop to this level do they? Really? So goddamn offensive its off the radar. I hope the people eat the disgusting lawyer alive. I know his name is mud.
On anyone’s ‘must invite’ list?
why is paying tax on interest accrued controversial?
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-02-28/black-saturday-bushfire-victims-lose-tax-case/10857620
Good luck to Ita Buttrose. Personally I think she is on a hiding to nothing.
I actually think she’s not a bad choice. We shall see.