Malcolm Turnbull is a single Newspoll away from failing the leadership test he himself set. “We have lost 30 Newspolls in a row,” he said on the day of the coup that toppled prime minister Tony Abbott. “It is clear that the people have made up their mind about Mr Abbott’s leadership.”
If losing 30 Newspolls disqualified Abbott, it disqualifies Turnbull too. If the Prime Minister keeps his job, it will be because no one is stalking him in the way that he stalked the man he deposed.
These days Turnbull says …

THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE CANBERRA, ACT.
by ROSS FITZGERALD
Malcolm is fast approaching his own ‘me too’ moment.
Back in 2009, when Malcolm Turnbull lost the federal Liberal leadership, the feisty Bronwyn Bishop said that the members had ‘lent’ Mr Turnbull the party but now they wanted it back. The big question, with Turnbull having lost his 28th Newspoll and with 30 straight losses looming four Mondays hence, is who will call time on this failed prime minister?
To justify his anti-Abbott coup, Turnbull cited his predecessor’s loss of 30 successive Newpolls as clear …

To stay or go?
by ROSS FITZGERALD
Senator Lucy Gichuhi’s decision to sit with the Liberal Party is a small but important step militating against the fragmentation of centre-right politics. She’s obviously decided that she can achieve more as part of a government or potential government than as a lone or isolated voice crying in the wilderness. For Malcolm Turnbull, this is the sort of consolidation he’d like: a new MP that should make it slightly easier for him to get legislation through the Senate. The question, though, is how much unity …

It’s an iron law of politics that disunity is death. If you can’t keep your own team together, you never win elections. The NSW Liberal Party is about to make decisions that should seal its fate at the next state and the next federal election.
On February 10, the Liberal Party’s state council will decide whether its rank-and-file members count or whether it will remain, in John Howard’s words, a “closed shop” where factional insiders make the key decisions. If the party doesn’t change, its members will continue to desert, …

by ROSS FITZGERALD
Australia took some important but long delayed steps in 2017.
We recognised same sex marriage nationally, allowed Voluntary Assisted Dying and approved a trial of a Medically Supervised Injecting Centre in Victoria and approved – in principle – a trial of pill testing at a youth music event in the ACT.
These decisions all involved increasing personal autonomy and were supported by a majority of the community.
Some critics argued correctly that improving national economic policy could potentially benefit more people.
But for some members of …

by ROSS FITZGERALD
As we well know, last November the Australian Bureau of Statistics announced that almost 80 per cent of Australian voters had taken part in a national survey regarding marriage equality, with almost 62 per cent indicating support. This paved the way for federal parliament to pass the historic same-sex marriage bill last month.
Last October, in an important advance for drug reform, Labor Premier Daniel Andrews announced the Victorian government had approved a trial of a medically supervised injecting centre in inner-city Richmond. This follows the successful establishment in …

Chifley, Labor and the Gink’s Revenge
by ROSS FITZGERALD
A young and ardent Labor supporter, Wolfgang Stargardt set out to produce a volume of Ben Chifley’s speeches. He succeeded in that endeavour, but not before coming to understand the luminosity of that “light on the hill” which supposedly inspired the ALP was not all it was cracked up to be.
Mythologising in politics rarely survives intact when confronted with the results of sober historical research. A case in point, with strong political resonance, concerns Australian Labor Party leader Ben Chifley and his …

If one believes the punditry, Malcolm Turnbull had a strong finish to 2017 and goes into this year with the momentum needed to restore his government and even to beat Bill Shorten. The same insiders say Shorten’s missteps are starting to catch up with him and someone more popular could replace him.
To predict that such fundamental changes will occur in 2018 makes a good story, but political punditry is rarely how things turn out. It’s possible Turnbull may finally discover how to unite his party and to keep power …

Bennelong was hardly a normal by-election. In most by-elections, the sitting member has decamped for a cushy job outside the parliament, which is why voters normally punish the incumbent party with a swing in the order of 5 per cent. This time, the sitting member was running again so Bennelong was more along the lines of a general election, only in just one seat.
Still, Malcolm Turnbull will ­believe that, like the earlier New ­England result, this victory is a vindication, and that nothing much needs to change. So there’ll be …

The Australian Republic Movement will today announce establishment of a high-level advisory panel, comprising a diverse group from politics, business, academia, media and the law.
The group of eminent republicans includes former parliamentarians from across the political divide: Labor leader Kim Beazley, Victorian premier Steve Bracks, Nationals leader Tim Fischer and Liberal Senate leader Robert Hill.
The Australian Republic Advisory Panel will act as patrons for the republican cause, provide guidance on legal and constitutional issues and advise on campaign strategy and tactics.
The other appointments are: book publisher Louise …

Ross Fitzgerald
After the euphoria of Saturday night’s big win for Barnaby Joyce comes today’s Newspoll and, with it, once more, Malcolm Turnbull is back to a zombie prime ministership. To succeed, Turnbull needs big policy changes and big personnel changes that, temperamentally, he just can’t deliver.
More fundamentally, he’s doomed by his history. In a democracy, the top job is the gift of the people, not the politicians, and you can’t seize the job from the people’s choice and expect to overcome that dishonour.
Paul Keating just got away with politically …