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.
Turnbull also overcomes Senate obstructionism through a "Warren Enscht" strategy. He releases plans to reform the tax system & reform the budget deficit. He presents legislation for the new tax system/budget reforms **before** the 2016 election, but this legislation has a "Warren Enscht"-like provision that prevents it from become activated until the Australian people re-elect Turnbull as Prime Minister and hence give him a mandate. The current Senate has a choice: either they pass the Budget & Tax reform legislation or they block it. If they block it, Turnbull calls a double dissolution election. Either way, Turnbull overcomes the Senate and gets his legislation passed (as long as he wins the 2016 election). Turnbull only has to worry about winning an election once and once only to get his reforms done.
To cap it all off, his wife Lucy Turnbull takes over the Greater Sydney Commission. She makes the 41 individual Sydney metropolitan councils irrelevant by moving planning regulation into the district level of 6 Sydney subregions. Eventually, the Greater Sydney Commission is given taxing powers by being able to levy property rates alongside state government land taxes. Councils then lose their day to day relevance and shrivel into an electoral "college" that provides democratic input into the real local government tier of the Greater Sydney commission (and it's regional NSW counterparts, which the GSC legislation permits the formation of).
Lucy Turnbull also sets the ground work for Parramatta-Olympic Corridor "city circle" to become the new Greater Sydney CBD.
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