Friday 4 December 2015

Turnbull & Macfarlane "Art of War" conspiracy strategy?

Former industry minister Ian Macfarlane and Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull were previously good friends and close allies.  In 2009, Macfarlane was a Turnbull backer in the leadership spill between Turnbull and Abbott.  Macfarlane was also Turnbull's key negotiator with the Labor Party over climate change policy.  This suggests between 2007 and 2009, Macfarlane switched from being a climate skeptic into a climate believer.

This week we discover Macfarlane proposes to switch over to the National party, apparently over dissatisfaction over being dumped from the ministry.  Is Macfarlane now back to being a climate change skeptic like the rest of the National Party?  The superficial interpretation of these events may indeed be true and the events of this week may have blindsided Turnbull.

But let's come up with some "left field" alternative scenarios.  Assume Turnbull is a strategic genius (like his historical perceptiveness in relation to China and the Thucydides trap).  Could he have masterminded a switch of his ally Macfarlane over the National party?  Macfarlane then is in a position to take up leadership of the National party on retirement of current leader Warren Truss.  He then modernises the National party and purges it of some of it's science denying elements.  Macfarlane can also negotiate a new coalition agreement which frees Turnbull from policy restrictions which the current one imposes.  Turnbull post 2016 elections (assuming he wins the election) is then in position to overhaul the Liberal-National party climate policies.