Meltdown

Extra context: the sitting Labor govt requires the vote of the Liberal-National coaliton in the Senate to pass a pretty darn weak cap and trade scheme. The Coalition, out of power for two years is still largely dominated by the hard-right warlords of yesteryear, almost all of whom are active denialists.

The leader of the Liberal party, the larger of the two Coalition parties is a much more liberal fellow and has spent the last four months trying to get his party to pass the scheme in order to get the it out of the headline (population broadly supportive of govts efforts) and his autocratic style has alienated many – who now at the culmination of the parliamentary season are now seeking to roll him before he can guide his supporters to pass the bill.

Turnbull is an autocrat and a man in a hurry, neither or those are revisionism, and his antics at the meeting (one he was confident he had the numbers on) – closing it down at 7pm on a razor thin margin and declaring himself the winner before the count was complete and offering his head on the chopping block three times didn’t do anything to win over his critics within the party – not all of them denialists by any means.

He turned the ETS into a leadership issue back in October with his ‘back me or sack me’ approach and since then has repeatedly upped the stakes and been less than civil to his opponents – these are hallmark Turnbull characteristics and they put him offside with large parts of the Liberal party to whom he is a very recent arrival. It’s difficult to say, given the intransigence of the Minchinite wing wether any other approach would have got him what he wanted policy-wise but his managerial style is right up among the reasons he’s facing being dynamited out of his positon over the weekend.