tickleandrose wrote on Apr 9
th, 2018 at 11:15am:
I think PM Malcolm had been weighed down by the extreme right of the party. If you remember, when he first overthrow PM Abbott after just 1/2 term of extreme right wing politics, people were overjoyed. They thought the politics would swing back to the middle, and the mistakes would be undone. As a result, his approval rating was through the roof.
But then, he retreated pretty much back to PM Abbott policy, and too afraid to move. And that slowly eroded his popularity away. You see, Mr Shorten did not do anything, he did it all to himself.
He should have acted way before the last election. He should have gotten his leather jacket out, and do this things that he wanted to, like he said when he was frequent on Q&A. Do that he would have been very popular with the people, and his party room cant do anything to him.
I think he had a small window from between about September 2015 and Christmas 2015 when he had the opportunity to push a real 'Malcolm Turnbull' agenda. His polling was that high that he really could have just given the finger to the right in his party. Yet what did he do? He just waffled on about innovation without actually doing anything. After that period, the opportunity was lost - as the polls started narrowing, the right in his party became emoldened, and Turnbull froze with fear. His only solution then was to call a DD election. Hit the reset button, get his own mandate and try again. The result of course was a 1 seat majority, his authority and legitimacy in his own party shot to pieces. He's been paralyzed ever since. Two things have probably kept him in his place until now - 1. the lack of any alternative and 2. the inability of Shorten to really ram home his advantage in terms of poll numbers.
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