By Mark Kenny
Imagine this. You challenge your opponent to a marathon but come race day, you phone ahead to say "look, I'm caught up with some things, why don't you get going and I'll start my race when I'm done here?".
That's effectively what Malcolm Turnbull told Bill Shorten on Tuesday at the start of a marathon election race. Having given the Senate the choice between passing his government's bill to re-establish the Australian Building and Construction Commission, or face a July 2 double dissolution, Turnbull was the one caught out when it unhesitatingly chose the latter.
Illustration: Simon Letch
Immediately, Shorten was out of the blocks spruiking policies and communicating Labor's values during an orthodox first-day-of-the-campaign press conference flanked by his leadership team: deputy leader Tanya Plibersek and shadow treasurer Chris Bowen.
Not the government. One of the key advantages of incumbency, first dibs on announcing the election date and then framing the terms of the contest, was simply squandered. In its place, confusion reigned as senior ministers hosed down the supposedly automatic implications of the Senate's rejection of the ABCC bill, questioning the already named date and equivocating on what kind of poll it would be.
Yep, still about 70-odd days of this thing, Mal.Credit: Nick Moir
There was timorousness when clarity, authority, and purpose were called for. It reeked of inexperience. Even when Turnbull finally fronted an ad hoc doorstop press conference at a building site in suburban Canberra, he attracted criticism for confirming the election date in only qualified terms, saying he "expected" the double dissolution to take place on July 2.
Speaking as a lawyer rather than a leader, Turnbull had noted (correctly but unnecessarily) that it is the Governor General who must officially dissolve both houses. Turnbull's colleagues were dismayed. What should have been the triumphant climax of an ambush strategy brilliantly set in train by Turnbull on March 21st, had wound up ambushing them.
There is no question Turnbull is intelligent, and that he can be a most persuasive advocate. But in purely political terms, he remains a newbie – a rookie prime minister who (i) has never fought an election as a party leader, (ii) has never contested one as a government leader, nor even presided over a budget for that matter, and (iii) is relatively inexperienced in parliamentary terms, for a prime minister.
Glancing back to his "maiden" parliamentary speech to check what emphasis he had placed on his newly acquired raison d'etre of curbing union lawlessness (answer: none) it was noteworthy that the speech was only delivered on November 29, 2004 – a reminder that he has little more than a decade in Canberra.
That he rose from first-term backbencher to cabinet minister and then leader of his party (in opposition 2008-09) in just four years is testament to his ambition and his quality. But his fall from that post in 2009 was also a function of this haste, when roiling ambition had overwhelmed cooler judgment and the requirement to consult that might have been gained from longer parliamentary experience.
Australia has had a succession of these inexperienced prime ministers and they have generally failed. Bob Hawke is merely the exception that proves the rule. The question is, could Turnbull fail as well? That was unthinkable in October last year as polls showed the switch from Tony Abbott to Turnbull was welcomed enthusiastically by voters.
But now, things are less clear. Shorten, who came close to being removed himself in January, as Labor hardheads figured he could not match Turnbull, has brought his A-game to the contest since. The opposition has dictated the political game all year.
That pressure has shown. In a Gillard-like attempt at the forward projection of authority, Turnbull has erred, committing his government to a longer than necessary election campaign, and one which begins with an uncomfortable pseudo-campaign period during which he hopes to be seen as governing rather than campaigning, culminating in a budget.
And, he has organised all of this just as his government's front-running public support disappears and his own personal popularity tumbles.
Among the more telling falls in Turnbull's leadership characteristics identified in the Fairfax-Ipsos survey was a 25 per cent fall in voters' confidence in his ability to make things happen – rather than merely talk about it – and a 20 per cent fall in his perceived strength as a leader. Turnbull remains popular but it is not hard to see why these falls have occurred, especially given the dithering over tax policy and his almost Rudd-like abandonment of causes with which he was strongly associated in the public mind.
Issue by issue, it's Labor setting the pace and reading the politics. While Shorten continues to campaign for a royal commission into rapacious banks, backed by this week's Fairfax-Ipsos poll that showed 65 per cent of Australians agree (and even 53 per cent of Coalition voters), a Sky News-Omnipoll released on Thursday showed 44 per cent of voters were unclear and therefore undecided on the ABCC bill.
This ABCC thing is the central theme around which Turnbull plans to campaign, and the actual justification for the early election. But as Labor's rising star Jim Chalmers quipped, this feels more like an Abbott-era obsession than a Turnbull policy and will likely leave voters "scratching their heads".
"If the Liberal Party thinks that this is a higher priority than making our schools better, or saving Medicare, or making the tax system fairer, they are even more out of touch than people feared," he said.
The government has history, and a massive 21-seat buffer on its side. But Liberals are anything but buoyed by their start to this race. And they're already bracing for other problems, such as a looming decision on Sunday penalty rates – due before polling day and likely to revive the WorkChoices bogey.
Marathons by definition are long and arduous. They can't be won in the early stages, but they certainly can be lost – especially if you don't show up.
Mark Kenny is Fairfax Media's chief political correspondent.