Polling shows Shorten would surge in popularity if Dutton was PM – as it happened

The hour is late. Parliament is quiet. Don’t be fooled though, the various contenders will all be doing the numbers and working the phones tonight.

We’re going to wrap up the coverage now. Thanks so much for sticking with me. It’s been a hell of a day. Remember to tune in tomorrow, when we’re likely to learn who will be the next prime minister of Australia.

Here’s what we’re expecting:

• There’s a Turnbull-imposed time for the party room meeting at midday tomorrow. Turnbull is saying he’ll only hold the meeting (and therefore allow a spill for the leadership) if he is presented with the petition of 43 signatures, a majority of the party. Dutton’s camp think they’re close to that number.
• The possible contenders so far are Scott Morrison, Peter Dutton and Julie Bishop. That is liable to change. The numbers are being worked late into the night. Our latest word was that Morrison was slightly ahead of Bishop as the alternative candidate to Dutton.
• Turnbull is all but done. The fatal blow was delivered by Mathias Cormann, Michaelia Cash and Mitch Fifield this morning, when they abandoned him. If the spill is called, Turnbull will take it as a vote of no-confidence in his leadership and step aside. He says he would leave parliament, which puts Dutton in a tricky position, because it triggers a byelection and jeopardises the Coalition’s ability to marshall a majority in the lower house.
• A crucial piece to this puzzle is Dutton’s eligibility to sit in parliament. Turnbull wants the solicitor general’s advice on Dutton’s case before the party room before the leadership spill. It’s unclear whether that advice will arrive in time. Dutton’s camp thinks he’s in the clear, and have their own legal advice to support that position. Leading constitutional lawyers disagree. They think there’s a serious question to be answered by Dutton. Only parliament can refer him to the high court but the issue might be enough to create doubt and anxiety in Liberal ranks.
• Don’t forget those crossbenchers and rogue Nationals, either. Darren Chester, a Nat, is still not saying whether he would guarantee confidence and supply to a Dutton government. Other crossbenchers are making similar statements. The Coalition has a one-seat majority.

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“Hang your heads in shame,” the NT News blares on tomorrow’s front page. Fair to say the paper’s reflecting voter sentiment. Hard to see any new PM getting much of a bump in the polls, given the messiness of this spill.

An accurate representation of my current surroundings.

Jennifer Westacott, the Business Council of Australia chief executive, says the current leadership crisis engulfing parliament is affecting business confidence and certainty. Worst of all? It’s been like this for a decade.

She tells Sky News:

This is terrible. It’s terrible for business confidence. It’s terrible for certainty. But mostly it’s terrible for Australian people, who want to think that their parliament is there to advance their interests and think about their jobs, and their future, and their kids future.

The worst thing is that we’ve been in this ... for a decade. And what that’s meant is that as a country we have just stopped being able to get anything done. All the issues and problems that existed last week are here this week and will be there next week. We have an unproductive economy ... we don’t have an energy policy, we’ve got rising energy prices.

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We’ve just heard a very interesting dissection of the Liberal party’s woes on the ABC’s 7.30 program, where both Amanda Vanstone, former Howard minister, and John Hewson, former Liberal leader, appeared. They both raise concerns about Dutton’s ability to actually guarantee supply through the House of Representatives, which could prove a barrier to the governor general making him PM.

Hewson says the conservatives are “kidding themselves” if they think they can win with a narrow, far-right position.

They are kidding themselves to imagine that they could win an election by taking a hardline, right, genuine conservative position to the Australian people. To give up the centre ground, to give up some of the left issues that are of importance to very significant percentages of the Australian community, they’re kidding themselves they can win by narrowing the focus.

He also labels Abbott and Dutton “wreckers” and says it will only be a matter of time before Abbott destabilises a Dutton cabinet.

Abbott’s convinced hapless Dutton to lead the country. For how long? Imagine a Dutton cabinet with Abbott sitting there. How long would it take before he started to destabilise Dutton? He’s about rewriting the past. That’s the tragedy of all this - very self-absorbed behaviour on his part, risking the future of the Liberal party.

Hewson’s comments are less than welcomed by some within the Coalition.

Vanstone says the Liberal party, under Howard, was able to accommodate the broad church. She said that was crucial to Howard’s longevity.

Vanstone said the belief that you needed to lurch to the right to win in Queensland is wrong.

If it’s so critical to the right wing that we have someone like Dutton as leader, how does Warren Entsch, in the most northern seat in Queensland, a same-sex marriage supporter, get re-elected? You know why? Because he’s a good member, that’s why.

Zed Seselja, a conservative and key Dutton backer, says there is “around about” the required number of names on the petition calling for a party room meeting. That does sound awfully vague, but it’s roughly in line with what we heard from Liberal MPs earlier. You’ll remember that Turnbull has told them they need 43 signatures (a majority of the party) to force him into a party room meeting.

Well look I don’t know. I am not running the signatures. I’ve heard that it’s over 40, certainly around about the mark. But I would say this to you Leigh, it would be extraordinary and I would say untenable if we were to say that we would leave Canberra without having resolved this issue.

Seselja also says questions about Dutton’s eligibility for parliament are a “red herring”.

He says Dutton’s got strong legal advice that he’s in the clear, including from a former commonwealth solicitor general. The questions have been around for months but Labor has not sought to bring it to parliament for a referral to the high court.

He says it’s very difficult to win elections without the party’s base backing it. That’s why people are supporting Dutton, he says.

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Craig Laundy, a Liberal MP and key Turnbull backer, has just appeared on ABC’s 7.30.

He said the spill was “bizarre”, “crazy” and “insanity”. Laundy says the Liberals don’t even have candidate preselected in some electorates, despite the fact the spill may precipitate an early election.

I mean, we’re now in a situation where if the spill motion does carry tomorrow, we have a party room meeting, you know, we could potentially be in an election in the not-too-distant future. We still don’t have candidates preselected in a lot of seats around Australia.

Laundy says the minority of rebels in his party simply did not learn the lessons of Labor’s inner turmoil in the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd years.

There are personalities involved today that saw that and didn’t learn from it.

He said the Liberals were within striking distance of Labor in the polls. They were in a better position than Howard had been. And yet, he acknowledges the spill has done tremendous damage.

This is the crazy world of Canberra. There was no one who had stopped and thought.

Guardian Australia understands that Julie Bishop has now rung more than a dozen MPs canvassing support.

Josh Frydenberg and Steve Ciobo are still in the field as potential deputies, we’re told.

The current assessment from moderate Liberals is that Scott Morrison, the other horse in the race, is faring better than Bishop in their current count. That does not rule Bishop out of the race, by any stretch.

Moderates are also saying there’s a real question of whether the party room meeting will, in fact, happen tomorrow. You’ll remember that Turnbull has tentatively scheduled the meeting for midday tomorrow, but only on the proviso that he receives a petition with the signatures of a majority of his party.

We’ll wait and see how it all develops tomorrow.

23 Aug 201805.26 EDT

Ben Doherty

Peter Dutton as prime minister would be less preferred as PM than the Labor leader, Bill Shorten, a second poll released today shows.

While the two-party preferred polls have put Labor in the ascendency for almost two years, the albatross around the opposition leader’s neck has been his stubborn unpopularity compared with the man about to lose the prime ministership, Malcolm Turnbull.

Dutton as prime minister would reverse that: Shorten would be more popular in every state, and across all age groups, except those over 65, who narrowly favour Dutton, Roy Morgan snap polling from Wednesday shows.

Part of the rationale behind the Dutton for PM putsch was as an attempt to buttress the swing seats in Queensland – in danger after a disastrous showing in the Longman byelection.

The Liberal MP Scott Buchholz, who holds the safe Queensland seat of Wright, told Guardian Australia that Dutton is popular in his community, which is “ground zero for One Nation” because his record allowed the Coalition to argue they had “stopped the boats”.

But polling suggests the conventional wisdom that Dutton “saves the furniture” in Queensland is wrong: he is not more popular in his home state.

And the numbers confirm that south of the Tweed river – where most Australians live – the hopeful new prime minister has a significant problem.

Both Victoria and NSW have state elections within the next year – Victoria in November and NSW next March – and the ascension of a hardline right leader is being seen

Allied to that, in the context of a looming federal election – which could be sparked immediately by resignations from a parliament where the government holds just a one-seat majority – Dutton is viewed by many as a liability.

The poll compared Labor leader Bill Shorten with Dutton and showed Shorten ahead in every state.

• The gap is closest in Tasmania, where Shorten’s lead is 53% to 47%.
  
• In Victoria, Shorten’s home state, the lead is massive: 64.5% to 31.5%, a lead of 33%.
  
• Even in Dutton’s home state of Queensland, the margin is still sizeable: 53% to 40% - a gap of 13%.
  

The Senate wrapped up a short while ago. Safe to say the senators will be glad to be out of this place.

It’s very quiet in parliament. We haven’t heard any more on that ever elusive petition. But we’ll bring it to you as soon as we possibly can.

A bit of vision of that speech from Liberal senator Linda Reynolds earlier. She spoke of bullying and intimidation, and her disillusionment, while pleading for politicians to find a better way of working.

The Greens senator Andrew Bartlett, once a senator for the Australian Democrats, is resigning and speaking in the Senate.

A pretty depressing day for him to leave. He gives us a view of how the parliament has changed during his more than 20-year career.

Everyone who works here says there’s a problem with the current state of parliament, he says.

They all say things have gotten worse. They use a variety of different words. But they all say roughly the same thing. This place is nastier, it’s stupider, it’s more dysfunctional. It’s less effective at doing the job that we are all meant to be here doing. That we all get paid and overpaid to do. We are here to represent and work with the community to work in a way that ensures we are a united, caring society.

As so many people have noted over the course of this, over that whole period of time since 2008 we’ve seen nothing but instability delivered through our political system.

Bartlett says there will be no “third coming” for him in the Senate. If he does come back, he will sit in the lower house and seeks to win the seat of Brisbane from the Liberals.

Bartlett returned to the Senate in November as a replacement for Larissa Waters.

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23 Aug 201804.52 EDT

Paul Karp

Malcolm Turnbull set a pretty huge hurdle in Peter Dutton’s way earlier today when - in addition to seeking advice from the solicitor general - he suggested that he would have to persuade the governor general he is eligible to sit in parliament before he could become prime minister.

What does the governor general think about being asked to police the eligibility of a prime ministerial aspirant by the sitting prime minister?

A spokesman gave a short response:

The governor general, by convention, acts on the advice of the prime minister and government on such matters ... questions relating to political events are best directed to the government.

It’s an ambiguous and unilluminating response. Perhaps Turnbull could warn Peter Cosgrove off giving Dutton the gig – but the governor general has given no hint how he would exercise an independent judgment on prime minister designate Dutton, if it comes to that tomorrow.