Hey friends! Are you wondering what the dickens is going on at Parliament House?
Then allow me to present to you “What the Dickens is Going on at Parliament House (August 2018 Edition)

Obviously, if your story doesn’t begin with the Big Bang it isn’t the whole story, but for brevity’s sake, I’ll start in 2015:

That’s when things started going downhill for the Liberals - when Malcolm Turnbull challenged Tony Abbott for the leadership of the party. He cited among other things that the party had lost 30 Newspolls (an influential (and historically accurate) opinion poll that asks ~2,000 people who they’d vote for if an election was being held that Saturday) in a row.

You may remember that one of the key points of the 2013 election was that the ALP had been chopping and changing their Prime Ministers, in response to Newspoll numbers - and that the Liberals wouldn’t be carrying on that sort of nonsense…

But when the poll numbers weren’t looking so good (if you really think you have to slash budget expenditure on the scale that the Abbott Government did, you really shouldn’t let your treasury ministers be photographed smoking cigars at Parliament House on the day of the budget speech.) the Liberals lost their nerve.

To cut a long story short, Mr Turnbull cut deals and made promises and got enough votes to take over the party. So he was duly appointed Prime Minister, and was able to keep the party popular enough with the electorate to win the 2016 election.

Malcolm comes from the small-L moderate wing of the Liberal Party: so he’s supposed to be financially conservative like the rest of the Coalition, but also socially progressive. He had been the Opposition Leader before Mr Abbott and was brought down when he tried to get them to back Kevin Rudd’s Emission Trading Scheme in 2008. So when he regained the leadership, people expected that there would be some movement back towards the left on the social issues front.

But there wasn’t. The deals that Mr Turnbull cut with conservative figures in the party such as Senator Mathias Cormann and Peter Dutton tied his hands on things like gay marriage, and the damage that he had inflicted on the NBN as Communications Minister in the Abbott Government was done. On top of that, he had to make concessions to the socially conservative and economically protectionist National Party once he became leader of the Liberals because the Coalition Agreement[note 1] is an agreement to support the leader of the Liberal Party, not the Liberal Party in general.

Since then, Mr Turnbull has been walking a fine line between disappointing those who are trying to get him to be more conservative and those who want him to be more progressive (and also those who support Labor, the Greens, and other left-of-centre parties.) Not to mention people like me who are just disappointed that he doesn’t seem to stand for anything beyond being Prime Minister.

Anyway, a few months back, Mr Turnbull also passed the magic barrier of 30 lost Newspolls and since then, many people have been expecting a challenge from the conservative wing of the party. So naturally, in this position of strength, he decided to take on energy policy – and he actually did fairly well, more or less getting the State Premiers and Labor Party on board to support the National Energy Guarantee, a policy considered not just good, but good enough.[note 2] But the deal had to go through the Coalition’s Joint Partyroom, and that’s where the fight started.

He got the votes in the partyroom, but hardline coal supporters like Mr Abbott and former National Party leader Barnaby Joyce threatened to “cross the floor” and vote against the government’s proposal. So there was a bit of a scramble by key Turnbull supporters like Treasurer Scott Morrison and Environment Minister Josh Frydenberg to try and keep them on board because while Labor was probably willing to live with the National Energy Guarantee, the government didn’t want to have to rely on their votes.

So we come to last weekend, and Messrs Dutton and Abbott are agitating for change, while Mr Turnbull and his supporters are fighting a counter-insurgency. Hoping to strike before they were ready, Turbull opens the regular Tuesday morning Party meeting by declaring the leadership vacant.

Both Turnbull and Dutton contest the following vote, and while Malcolm does retain the leadership, Mr Dutton gets too many votes, and it’s widely reported that his days as Prime Minister are numbered.

So, Peter Dutton resigns his position as Home Affairs minister – partially because that’s the done thing, but mostly because it frees up his time to campaign for the leadership instead of running one of the largest Commonwealth ministries.

Since Tuesday, things have been in flux. A number of ministers who supported Mr Dutton in the leadership vote offered their resignations, again because the conventions of Westminster democracy demand that’s what you do. Mr Turnbull asked most of them to stay on, but there has been a constant drip of conservative-leaning ministers demanding that their resignations be accepted.

Thursday morning, Mr Dutton challenges Mr Turnbull to call another vote on the leadership, but Turnbull refuses, basically saying that he had his chance on Tuesday and he didn’t have the numbers.

Just before lunchtime, a small deputation of ministers makes its way to the Prime Minister’s Office. Headed by Senator Cormann, the Leader of the Government in the Senate and Turnbull’s last remaining conservative powerbroker, they were there to tell Turnbull that a) they didn’t think he had the support of the partyroom anymore and b) they were abandoning him ahead of the forthcoming bloodbath as well.

With the majority of the ministry having resigned, the Government used its numbers to force the House of Representatives to shut up shop for the day after only two hours (normally it should have continued working until 5pm) and Malcolm calls a press conference.

Turnbull says that he will call a partyroom meeting tomorrow, but only if Mr Dutton can present a petition with a majority of the Liberals’ signatures on it. If this meeting happens, he won’t contest the leadership again, and strongly hints that he will resign his seat, forcing yet another By-election.

He pretty much dares Mr Dutton to show he’s got the numbers by requiring a petition from half the partyroom (which is apparently in line with the Liberal Party’s rules) before he will call another meeting. Mr Turnbull says that if he does get the petition and loses the vote to vacate the party leadership, he won’t re-contest and will resign his seat in parliament. But there’s also another condition – he’s going to wait for the advice of the Solicitor-General, the Commonwealth’s top lawyer, on whether Mr Dutton’s interest in a family trust renders him ineligible to be a Member of Parliament (and therefore Prime Minister) under the infamous Section 44 of the Constitution.

Meanwhile, the Senate continued with the rest of its business, even making a brave (but rather farcical) attempt at Question Time, which began with the new Leader of the Government in the Senate rattling off a long list of portfolios and a short list of Senators who would be taking questions relating to them.

So as at 8pm, Mr Turnbull remains (for now) the Prime Minister, with Mr Dutton ‘doing the numbers’, while moderate Liberals Mr Morrison and perennial Deputy Party Leader Julie Bishop have both thrown their hats into the ring for the ballot that is almost certain to go down tomorrow.

Meanwhile, at Yarralumla, the Governor-General’s calendar has been hastily rejigged to allow him to remain in Canberra until someone clears this mess up.

Dramatis Personae

• Malcolm Turnbull MP - 29th Prime Minister of the Commonwealth of Australia (NSW, Liberal Party, moderate wing)
• Tony Abbott MP - 28th Prime Minister of Australia (NSW, Liberal Party, conservative wing)
• Peter Dutton MP - Leadership Contender, formerly Minister for Home Affairs et al (QLD Liberal National Party, conservative wing)
• Senator Mathias Cormann- until today, Leader of the Government in the Senate (WA Liberal Party, conservative wing)
• Julie Bishop MP – Minister for Foreign Affairs, Deputy Leader of the Liberal Party since 2007 (WA, Liberal Party, moderate wing)
• Scott Morrison MP – Treasurer, formerly Minister for Immigration and Social Services (NSW, Liberal Party

[Note 1] Literally every Liberal PM who wasn’t Malcolm Fraser between 1975 – 1980 has led a minority government and relied on the support of the National Party to govern.

[Note 2] Energy policy has been a garbage fire in this country for the past 10 years. Most people recognise that a bipartisan solution is needed, and businesses have been screaming for it for some time now.