Clive Palmer not the only one to shoot from the hip

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/03/clive-palmer-not-the-only-one-to-shoot-from-the-hip

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The big question about big Clive Palmer is why he’s in Canberra at all. Is it to implement an as-yet mostly undisclosed policy agenda? Is it an exercise in self aggrandisement? Is it a more calculated play to try to influence policy in a way that benefits his businesses? Or is it to settle old scores with Tony Abbott and blow the place up?

This week’s Yosemite Sam-style efforts strongly suggest the latter.

First Palmer attacked the prime minister’s chief of staff and closest confidante in an entirely unjustifiable way, claiming that Peta Credlin stood to make a “massive benefit” if she got pregnant under the Coalition’s paid parental leave plan.

It would have been an outrageous and incorrect personal attack in any circumstance (Credlin would be covered by the already generous public service scheme). As foreign minister, Julie Bishop, pointed out, the fact that it is on the public record that Credlin has been “struggling with IVF” means it was also an attack with a special capacity to wound.

But his attempted justification clearly reveals where Palmer was actually aiming, before he got his facts wrong.

"I believe as chief of staff … she exercises undue influence on government policy to the detriment of many of the elected members of parliament," he told reporters. "I think policies should be formulated from the party room," he said.

"It shouldn't come down from Tony Abbott's office telling elected members of parliament what they will do." That is, of course, exactly what many government MPs say, and what some senior figures have told the prime minister.

Almost at the same time Palmer was on the other side of town firing different shots in the air in an interview with Michelle Grattan in the Conversation.

He said a Coalition government led by Malcolm Turnbull would have different policies and be “more approachable”, that “Tony Abbott’s policies seem to create great division in society” and that the government would be more popular if Turnbull were leader.

“Malcolm Turnbull was a great leader of the Liberal party. He’s a very popular person. He represents a part of the Liberal party that doesn’t seem to have much influence in policy making [now],” he said, in case anyone had missed the intent of his message.

Then there was the radio interview he gave Tuesday on radio 4BC when he was (again) asked about his dinner with Malcolm Turnbull and he took a couple more potshots. He had been, he said, at a “very boring dinner where the prime minister was about to speak” and which a number of Liberals obviously hadn’t wanted to attend either. That would be Turnbull and Liberal vice-president Tom Harley, with whom Palmer then enjoyed his now famous Asian meal.

Abbott is already trying to calm his friends on the right, tetchy at Turnbull’s profile and Abbott’s continuing low poll ratings. The fact that the ideologically driven distractions the government has engaged in at the urging of those same friends on the right – things such as changing the Racial Discrimination Act – might be contributing to Abbott’s woes and rapid loss of political capital may or may not enter their consciousness.

They do seem entirely unaware of contradictions in their arguments – Senator Cory Bernardi, for example, seeing nothing amiss in attacking Turnbull for distracting from the government’s message by responding when commentator Andrew Bolt accused him of leadership manoeuvring on national television and a nationally-syndicated newspaper column.

"I thought it was inappropriate, it was unwise to do, and I think it's just kicked the whole thing along,'' Bernardi said.

That would be the same Bernardi who kicked budget dissent along by twice criticising the budget on his own blog.

Surely the Coalition has noticed that the gunslinger is in town, wild and unpredictable, with his party is about to take a balance of power position in the Senate and (at least according to what he’s saying this week) not speaking to the government about anything and apparently set on maximum disruption.

In those circumstances the government can ill-afford to allow Palmer to lead them into internal divisions and distractions. Whatever his ultimate motivation, Palmer’s intentions towards the Abbott government are clearly not friendly, and definitely inclined towards maximum disruption. The question is whether the Coalition will fall for it.