Peter Dutton Insists He Still Supports Malcolm Turnbull, But He Would Say That, Wouldn’t He?
The first step in mounting a leadership challenge is insisting you're definitely not mounting a leadership challenge.
Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton has attempted to shoot down rumours that it’s on, tweeting on Saturday that it isn’t on despite media reports that it might be. Only, if it were on, Dutton would definitely say it wasn’t, so him saying it isn’t on doesn’t mean it’s not.
Speculation has been growing in recent days that Malcolm Turnbull’s position as Prime Minister could be under threat due to unrest among Coalition MPs over the National Energy Guarantee (NEG). Many see Dutton as the most obvious conservative challenger to the PM, and he certainly didn’t do anything to quash that when he hinted on 2GB radio that he’d consider resigning from the cabinet so he could freely speak out about the policy.
“If my position [on the NEG] changes — that is, it gets to a point where I can’t accept what the government is proposing, or I don’t agree — then the Westminster system is very clear, you resign your commission, you don’t serve in that cabinet and you make that very clear in a respectful way,” Dutton told 2GB host Ray Hadley on Thursday.
But on Saturday Dutton declared via tweet that he still supported Turnbull and the policies of the government.
In relation to media stories today, just to make very clear, the Prime Minister has my support and I support the policies of the Government. My position hasn’t changed from my comments last Thursday.
— Peter Dutton (@PeterDutton_MP) August 17, 2018
I gotta say, it’s not exactly the most strongly worded denial — and you’ll be shocked to learn it hasn’t done much to quell the rumours that Dutton is after Turnbull’s job. Labor frontbencher Mark Butler called the tweet “halfhearted” and said Dutton had on Thursday “set the foundation for a leadership challenge against his own prime minister”.
Turnbull, for his part, has already started capitulating in order to appease his colleagues. On Friday he announced he was dumping plans to legislate emissions targets agreed on in the Paris climate accords, despite having previously insisted that the Paris targets were not up for negotiation.
Translation: thank you, Prime Minister, for capitulating to conservatives’ demands to abandon legislated Paris targets. I reserved the right to resign on my Hadley interview, if not happy with legislation. We are running government & Turnbull ergo I don’t need to challenge, yet. https://t.co/yUnYZUHkUv
— Samantha Maiden (@samanthamaiden) August 17, 2018