Mr Turnbull has vowed to use a second rejection of the bills as a trigger for a July 2 election, insisting the construction industry needs a cop on the beat to stamp out misconduct following last year’s damning royal commission report into union corruption. So the smell of an early election is in the air.
Advertisement
As neither major party seemed willing to concede to compromise about the ABCC, the deciding vote fell to the Senate crossbenchers.
If Turnbull loses on July 2, Labor opposition leader Bill Shorten will be the country’s sixth leader since 2010 – and the sixth to be introduced to U.S. President Barack Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron.
Election rules would require Mr Turnbull to hold the election well before 2 July should he dissolve parliament immediately.
Mr Turnbull is selling the Coalition as the side for small business, too, in the debate over road safety and minimum rates for independent truckies.
Mr Shorten seized on a budget leak as proof the government was divided, 74 days out from an election.
The Liberal-National coalition will seek a vote on the legislation in the upper house as it has planned, George Brandis, Australia’s attorney-general and leader of the government in the Senate, said in a separate AM Agenda interview.
Turnbull must now overcome voter perceptions that the coalition lacks direction, and he has little in the coffers to offer as pre-election sweeteners when the government announces its budget plans on May 3.
“I certainly won’t vote for it in its current form”, Senator Glenn Lazarus, the former professional footballer who quit the Palmer United Party in March 2015 and is among the eight independents, said in an interview on the Australian Broadcasting Corp’s Insiders program.
“This double dissolution is about Malcolm Turnbull’s job, not jobs here on the Sunshine Coast”.
“What we saw is a blight on our democracy today”, he said.
“The government will get what it has been really secretly or not so secretly wishing for and that is for a double dissolution trigger”, he told reporters. Whether or not these bills being passed into law is vital to Australia’s economic wellbeing-much like whether you think the Governor-General deliberately snubbed Plibersek-largely depends on which side of politics you fall on.
Australians may be hoping for bigger things from Mr Turnbull.
For electoral purposes, Labor, which began the slashing of health, education and welfare under the 2007-13 governments of Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard, is attempting to capitalise on the popular discontent by making an anti-austerity pitch.
Advertisement
“The governor-general has one of the most important roles in our democracy and that should be respected by everyone”, Shorten said.
