A perfect political storm

The past 48 hours have been probably the most divisive in the history of the modern Liberal Party.

But there needn't be lasting damage.  Malcolm Turnbull has to reunify his team by finding common ground among Liberal and National parliamentarians.

The membership of the Liberal Party is diverse and attitudes to social and environmental issues divide entire state divisions, let alone individual MPs and party members.  But the party always unites on its commitment to real economic conservatism, and there are two issues that the Opposition can campaign on immediately.

The first is to refocus on its pre-emissions trading campaign against the Rudd Government's profligate stimulus spending.  There are stories about the blatant waste of taxpayers' dollars, with interest rate rises apparently the only outcome.

In fact, Turnbull should focus on his ambitious policy to cut the size of government by 12.5 per cent -- a plan that went all but unnoticed due to the seemingly never-ending leadership speculation.

The second is the tax reform ball that Turnbull should never have dropped.  By the end of the year, the Henry review of the tax system will deliver its final report.

The review's outcome is unknown, but the Opposition should be outlining a set of core principles for a decentralised, low-tax Australia to promote entrepreneurship, wealth creation and cut red tape.  By doing so, Turnbull will have laid the foundations for the Opposition's response and be ready to take the Government to task in the new year.

But to win back government, Turnbull also needs to learn from Kevin Rudd and develop a demarcating narrative that unites his party, focuses public attention on the common ground between the public and the Opposition against the Government, and that brings in new constituencies.

Rudd developed a narrative capturing the public's support against the Howard government on climate change by stating he would ratify the Kyoto Protocol.

Now Turnbull should do the same by establishing a long-term campaign against the Rudd Government's nanny-state agenda that will encroach on individual liberties.

Rudd's National Preventative Health Agency to implement the Preventative Health Taskforce bible is one of the largest threats to individual freedom as regulators seek to fiddle with what every Australian eats and drinks, and then how they have to exercise it off.

It won't take long before average Australians get tired of being told by health tsars that they've had one too many beers and exceeded their recommended daily salt intake.

The Opposition should also commit to scrapping the Government's internet blacklist and rededicate the funding to policing those who abuse the internet.  Such a campaign gives the Opposition what it sorely needs -- a policy bridge with young Australians, contrasting with Labor's statist sympathies.

The Opposition also needs to move on from recent events and realise it isn't fundamentally broken.  It's a healthy sign of Opposition when members can still get together in one room and shout it out.

The debate wasn't a breakdown within the Liberal Party between "conservatives" who opposed Labor's ETS and "liberals" who supported it.  Victorian senators Mitch Fifield and Scott Ryan, and Queensland senator Brett Mason are small-government "liberals" who spoke against Labor's ETS.

And liberals such as Fifield, Ryan and Mason had good philosophical reasons to do so.  Labor's ETS will introduce one of the largest non-revenue neutral taxes in Australian history and commit the transfer of billions of dollars from taxpayers to big business.

The divide was also not about the party's commitment to the environment.  Many Liberal climate change believers want to reduce carbon emissions, but opposed Labor's ETS because it would not actually achieve that.  Few outside Rudd's office seriously believe this ETS will substantially reduce our carbon footprint.

From the outside, the Opposition may appear to be breaking apart, but the climate change bunfight was really just the Coalition's perfect political storm.

The ETS divides climate change sceptics in the National Party from pragmatic sceptics and believers in the Liberals.  Within the Liberal Party, it divides science sceptics, climate change believers who are against the ETS and those who are eager to support an ETS outright.  And it has divided the rank-and-file Liberal Party members from some in the parliamentary leadership.

To rebuild his leadership and authority, Turnbull needs to foster team momentum after the crash.  He needs to spend the summer parliamentary break reflecting on how, in the words of one of his colleagues, he can "start acting like a leader and stop acting like a boss".

The job of a political leader isn't just to make decisions, it's to lead a team and take them with you.  A leader cannot do that when they're shoving decisions down their colleagues' throats and fudging the numbers to deliver their preferred outcome.

And Turnbull has the perfect mould to shape himself around -- John Howard.  Howard's success was built on years of swallowing his pride, cultivating the backbench by listening to their opinions, even if the conclusion was polite disagreement.  Even as prime minister, Howard had to suck-it-up every now and again.

Philosophically, Turnbull and Howard are different leaders in different times.  But like the party they have each led, their challenge has been to unite against the economic recklessness of the Government they oppose.

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