Turnbull’s win may lift ailing Aussie government

Bloomberg

Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull is seeking to use victory in a weekend special election to kick-start his ailing government and draw a line under a difficult 2017.
His ruling Liberal-National coalition reclaimed its one-seat parliamentary majority, lost during this year’s dual-nationality fiasco, after John Alexander won the Sydney-based seat of Bennelong. While the victory is a relief for Turnbull, his government suffered a 5 percent swing against it that would see it lose power if replicated across the nation at the next federal election. “The message from the people of Bennelong is to get on with the job,” Turnbull said on Sunday. “We hear it with humility.”
The win may put a positive cap on a difficult year for Turnbull, whose limited maneuvering room in parliament has seen parts of his policy agenda stymied. He’s taken action to reduce domestic energy costs, but failed to pass corporate tax cuts for Australia’s largest companies and back-flipped on his stance against a royal commission into the banking industry under pressure from his junior coalition partner.
“In terms of his leadership being in doubt, this helps him quite a lot,” John Warhurst, emeritus professor of political science at the Australian National University, said about the special election victory. “In terms of whether he can win the next election, I don’t think there’s much evidence in the last few weeks” that he can.
Turnbull’s poor performance in opinion polls has worried many of his coalition lawmaker colleagues, with some openly questioning his leadership in recent months. The latest Newspoll published on Monday showed the government trailing the Bill Shorten-led Labor Party by six percentage points.
Under Turnbull, the government has lagged behind in 25 polls in a row since narrowly being returned to office in July 2016. When he ousted unpopular Liberal leader Tony Abbott in September 2015, Turnbull cited his predecessor’s 30 consecutive Newspoll losses as a reason he should go.
Labor leader Bill Shorten said
on Saturday that if the swing agai-nst the government in Bennelong was replicated at the next national election, due by 2019, Turnbull would be ousted. “The Liberals have seen a big swing against them — a brutal verdict on Turnbull and his out-of-touch government,” Shorten said in a statement. “A swing this big across the country would
see the Turnbull government lose more than 20 seats.”