What’s your New Year’s resolution this year? Lose weight? Get a year’s subscription to The Spectator Australia (wink, wink)? Well, little Billy Shorten has one resolution and one only – to hang on to his job.

As we enter the New Year, we’re either three or nine months away from a federal election. Like every other pundit in the country I should be telling you that this will be ‘the most exciting and unpredictable election you have ever seen!’

It won’t be. It’s going to be really boring. Turnbull is going to win. Sorry.

This could all blow back in my face and the Prime Minister might be found in bed will millions of dollars of stolen cash or Beyoncé Knowles or both tomorrow night.

Or, who knows, the Labor Party might even find the stomach to dump Shorten. But as things stand, the Government is heading for a very comfortable victory.

Now don’t let this basically assured victory get you down. Let’s be honest, after the year Australian politics has had, we could probably do with a nice predictable election to calm us all down. There are no state elections next year (two territory elections but it’s not really the same, is it?) and very probably no prime ministerial coups in the offering. And the chances are – or so it seems, don’t blame me if I’m wrong – Bill Shorten will remain Labor leader up until polling day.

The Labor Party, one must admit, has held up pretty well considering what it went through under Rudd and Gillard. They haven’t torn each other’s faces off, there’s been no mad Marxist Jeremy Corbyn type at the forefront. It’s a credit to both Bill Shorten and to the much maligned Labor leadership election process that a lot of the old battle wounds have started to heal.

But Labor’s ‘year of ideas’ has been a flop. Apart from superannuation reform – which everyone and their granny now backs – the ideas have ranged from the farcical to the rather silly. From their zero carbon emissions by 2050 (a rather extraordinary target in the absence of any real plan), to their $40 cigarette packet tax which will be more regressive than the GST hike they claim to despise, and the lack of any clue about government spending, Labor does not look ready to hop back onto the treasury benches.

The crux of Labor’s dilemma is that they will be attacked from two fronts this election year. One, their ambition to be the new, cool, centrist, sexy, party of the future has been dashed by Malcolm Turnbull and his love affair will all things young and hip and innovative.

And at the actual ballot box, they have a bigger problem. It’s been taken for granted that Greens voters will always give their preferences to Labor. But in 2016, that’s all set to change. Malcolm Turnbull – if he plays his cards right – will get a huge flow of Greens preferences and this could really challenge Labor both in the tight Labor-Liberal marginals and in inner-city luvvy seats where people like Tanya Plibersek and David Feeney have to fend off Green challengers.

If I’m willing to make one big prediction (which I may regret) for next year’s election it is that the biggest winner from the Turnbull coup, apart from a re-elected Coalition Government, will be the Greens.

Between an erosion in Labor’s preferences both ways and a competition between the ALP and Greens over what remains of the lefty voters which they will win, the Greens are set to pick up seats in parliament.

Enter Turnbull. He’s probably going to an election with a big tax package including maybe a jacked up GST, media reform plans, ideas to improve cities, and an energised push to fix competition. With all these reform and policy goodies, it really might be the most exciting time to be an Australian, or so everyone’s hoping.

He has a talented, sparkling team (except for Mal Brough maybe – eek!) and he’s got the people’s hearts. But the Prime Minister will need to make tough choices soon and that’ll definitely put a strain on his glorious honeymoon.

He’s lucky in that he has political capital to burn and something like a GST hike – unlike, say, anything in Joe Hockey’s unloved 2014 budget – will be no big surprise to the electorate. Turnbull may face a few bumps but there’s unlikely to be any great fall unless he really cocks it up. And, no, conservatism is not dead. The moderates certainly have the upper hand in the Coalition now for sure but the capital-r Right of the Liberal Party now plays an important role in keeping Turnbull to account and in shaping the government agenda. That’s good for Malcolm Turnbull and it’s good for the new leaders of the Right like Peter Dutton and Josh Frydenberg.

Sure, it’s not all peaches and cream for the likes of Eric Abetz and Kevin Andrews. But frankly, their time had come and there’s a new generation ready to take on the conservative mantle. It’s one of Tony Abbott’s many mistakes that he didn’t utilise the talent of his government’s young guns early on, and there will be no stopping them now.

The 2016 election is set to be a bit of a fizzer. The most important election is likely to be the almost inevitable Labor leadership election afterwards. If things are really very bad, everyone may just let Shorten stay, because why waste time? But there is a strong chance the bloodletting which strangely never happened after 2013 will finally take place.

I’m talking more than two candidates. I’m talking intra-faction battles (Albo vs Plibersek, Clare vs Bowen). And if providence is really good to the Coalition, we may get a wild card outsider who wants to shake up the Labor Party and return it to its wacko roots – here’s looking at you, Wayne Swan.

So don’t despair. This next election is likely to bore you. But this election will probably restore the entire system to a state of normality. We’ll end up re-electing a competent, centrist government as we always do.

At least you’ll have the American election to keep you awake – probably at night – in 2016.

Get 10 issues for just $10

Subscribe to The Spectator Australia today for the next 10 magazine issues, plus full online access, for just $10.

SUBSCRIBE 10 issues for $10 REGISTER 3 articles a month

Already a subscriber? Log in