Radio Australia Today Editorial

Australian politics: so some people are paying attention

29 June 2009

I was starting to despair. I interviewed a number of young Australians for our weekend TV program Insiders (see: http://abc.net.au/insiders/) about the OzCar affair and was quite surprised to see that they weren’t all that concerned about the fake emails or the leaking of information that’s been going on. They just thought that this was politics, and they felt that both sides of politicis were behaving badly.

I say I started feeling despair because this case brought up serious questions about the way our politicians behave in the isolated national capital. We political watchers have suspected that these things happen, but when they are brought to light, and proved, we need to react to ensure they don’t happen again. The young people I spoke to seemed to shrug it off, and that, for me, is the worry.

This morning though came the news that maybe people in general are less fatalistic. Three opinion polls today indicate that voters are not impressed with Malcolm Turnbull’s behaviour over this incident. Put briefly, he has taken a huge fall in popularity, one of the polls finding the biggest single fall for an Opposition leader (11%) since it started taking opinions 26 years ago.

The polls put the Opposition in a very unhappy position. Sure, there is still maybe 18 months until the next election, but leader Malcolm Turnbull has taken a big credibility hit. He ran with an allegation without checking his sources, and made a mistake. Normally I would expect Turnbull to tough this one out, but he is the leader of a party that has never persevered with unpopular leaders. There have been rumblings from within his party room, and a number of his MPs voted with the government on Friday over an immigration bill. Turnbull is not holding his party together, and he really does need to have his party with him if he is going to keep going. One poll even had the one credible alternative, Joe Hockey, being preferred as Opposition leader.

Malcolm Turnbull may have gone into this weekend by privately going whoops, I made a mistake. Perhaps his mistake on this Monday morning is not admitting his mistake publicly and letting that side of the story be put to bed. Instead, like an over-tired child, the story is screaming for attention, and the attention is not the kind that the Opposition leader needs. Tomorrow another poll should confirm that Turnbull’s standing has seriously fallen. If that doesn’t convince the Opposition to put the story to bed, with or without Turnbull, then they’re just not paying attention. They should know that Australia is.

– Phil