Australia and the World Past and Present

Peta Credlin and Malcolm Turnbull are not fans of one another.

Since leaving politics, Turnbull has been a major critic of the Liberal Party.

Former Prime Ministers face an essential question when they are no longer the head honcho – do they maintain a noble silence, or do they continue to give their views on the pressing issues of the day?

If they are constantly urging a different direction than their party is following, current MPs will get their backs up. It will be seen as interfering and meddling and it will not be welcome.

John Howard has mainly kept his head down since stepping down as Prime Minister. He has made a documentary about the Menzies years and conducted some interviews about his time in politics. But he tends not to interfere too much in current issues.

Julia Gillard has kept largely silent.

Kevin Rudd has been very active, but the forums in which he operates have changed. He is now more engaged on the international scene rather than the domestic one. He loves holding court at the Asia Society. For a time he did go back to being a cog in government as Australia’s ambassador to the United States. He is no longer serving in that role.

Credlin and Turnbull represent different sides of the Liberal Party. Credlin is a champion of a more conservative view – Turnbull less so. Turnbull sees himself as a more moderate Liberal.

Turnbull’s frequent interventions has his critics labelling him ‘the ghost’ – the guy that has passed on but refuses to accept his situation.

Credlin and Turnbull have vastly different prescriptions for solving the Liberal Party’s woes.

Credlin sees the Party’s recent downward trajectory as a result of it abandoning its core values. According to this analysis, a return to a more hard-edged conservatism will rally the troops and bring then running back to the banner. A move to the right will improve electoral success and stop the loss of votes to One Nation.

Turnbull agrees that the party has lost its way, but believes that it has abandoned a more Menzian centrism and now lies outside the space that most Australian voters occupy.

His solution is for the party to move further to the left and invade space currently occupied by the Labor Party.

Although I am not a great fan of Turnbull, I think there is something to his argument.

The party currently in power is Labor. They hold a strong majority.

It is possible for the Liberals to move in a more conservative direction and take back votes from One Nation, but this doesn’t guarantee that the Coalition will be able to form government.

Where is the main game?

Labor currently holds 94 seats in the lower house. The Coalition holds 42. Independents hold 10 and One Nation has 2.

Another point to make is that most of these independents sit to the left of the Coalition.

So what we can see is that most Australians currently sit to the left of the Liberal Party. That is where the main game is.

The ghost can be annoying, but on this point he may actually be correct.