Just two days after the Australian parliament resumed for the first time since the July 2 election, the narrowly-returned Turnbull government’s tenuous hold on office suffered another blow last night when it lost a series of votes in the House of Representatives.
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Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull could force voters to the polls another three times in the next two years. Treasurer Scott Morrison certainly got the message, running out of a Sky News TV interview on Thursday night after the bells in Parliament House were rung for a division vote. Extracts released this week from a new book on Turnbull’s ouster of Abbott confirmed that moves were underfoot twice this year to remove Shorten as Labor leader in favour of former deputy prime minister Anthony Albanese, who nearly beat Shorten for the Labor leadership in a ballot after the 2013 election loss.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s conservative coalition holds many of one seat in the parliament.
Mr Turnbull said the move exposed a level of complacency among his coworkers, and that he’d “read the riot act” to the ministers.
“The parliamentary tactic that Labor used is, I would say, best described as an “oldie but a goodie” and it has been around a long time and people that have been in the Parliament a long time, like a number of those who did leave early, should have known that and they should have known not to go”.
“I’ve read the riot act to them”.
Politicians often just run down the clock on Thursday afternoons, filling in time until they can vote for the House of Reps to adjourn for the week.
While the government could reverse the vote in the House, it would be unlikely to have enough votes to succeed in the Senate.
“A number of our members who should not have left the building left the building”.
“It is so predictable that on the first week of Parliament, with so much accent on what Bill Shorten is trying to do, what was going on in the Senate, it was odds-on they were going to try and pull some stunt on the last day”.
While Mr Keenan and Mr Porter accepted fault, and Mr Dutton stayed silent, the blame game continued throughout Friday, with the ministers and MPs shying away from questions on who had given them permission to leave. “They’ve been caught out, they’ve been embarrassed, they’ve been humiliated, they’ve been excoriated. And it won’t happen again”.
Mr Keenan – the Justice Minister – has apologised, taking full responsibility for missing the votes but insisted his absence was related to a “significant operation in the AFP”.
“It’s a decision that I shouldn’t have taken and obviously I’m sorry that I did”.
“There is no doubt what happened late yesterday afternoon was a stuff up”, Mr Pyne told Nine’s Today program.
“It’s a salutary lesson for anyone who went home before the house rose yesterday afternoon”, he said. “I’m absolutely certain that they won’t do that again”, he said.
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In the meantime, there were chaotic scenes as government ministers and others scurried back from Canberra airport, or flew back to the capital, to give Turnbull the numbers to avert a defeat on a Labor motion to establish a royal commission into the banking and financial services industry. They appeared on numerous radio and television stations to explain why the government’s parliamentary “stuff up” on Thursday did not mean it was not in control. “But it’s a good lesson and it won’t happen again”, Mr Turnbull said of his colleagues.
