There’s only one surprise about Turnbull’s fiery memoirs: That they took so long to publish

It was always going to happen. My only surprise is that it took so long – exactly 20 months, in fact, for former PM Malcolm Turnbull to publish fiery memoirs after losing the top job to Scott Morrison, writes Paul Williams.

IT WAS always going to happen.

My only surprise is that it took so long – exactly 20 months, in fact, for former PM Malcolm Turnbull to publish fiery memoirs after losing the top job to Scott Morrison.

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Former PM Malcolm Turnbull’s book is bad timing

Turnbull’s ‘A Bigger Picture’, released this week in a mammoth 700 page tome, isn’t just any run-of-the-mill tell-all. It promises to be more revealing than the self-congratulatory Hawke memoirs, and more scathing than the more traditional volumes of John Howard and Kevin Rudd.

Given the paradoxical life and style of Australia’s 29th prime minister – a progressive republican in what has become a deeply conservative Liberal party – the book throws light on a type of factional politics largely hidden from public view. We all know Labor’s dirty linen, but few know how an equally divided Liberal party manages to lock down its own day-to-day dissent.

If nothing else, ‘A Bigger Picture’ will be a soap-operatic page-turner where recriminations are tossed around as only an ex-PM can.

Copies of former Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull’s autobiography which is critical of current prime minister Scott Morrison. (Photo by William WEST / AFP)

Yet already the anti-Turnbull brigade has vowed never to read it or, should they be gifted a copy, to “throw it in the bin”. Why? Because Turnbull’s performance was, at best, merely average, or simply because they hate centrist politics.

But, whatever one thinks of Turnbull the man or as PM, only a fool would dismiss this book: the former prime minister has set the cat among the political pigeons like no other recent memoir. A refusal to read it is an admission of an ignorant mind.

Yet the book does pose several ethical problems. In attacking conservative rivals – Turnbull claims a Peter Dutton prime ministership would have caused “enormous damage to the social fabric of Australia” – and in telling tales on progressive allies such as Julie Bishop, Turnbull is clearly stretching the bonds of loyalty and personal trust, not to mention cabinet confidentially.

But Turnbull rejects any accusation of disloyalty. He instead insists he’s merely “writing history” – one comprised of a “truthful” and “balanced” account. Of course, there’s no such thing as “the” history of anything: just “a” history written through the necessarily subjective lens of personal bias. When Scott Morrison and Peter Dutton write their own memoirs, those same biases will be found.

Now, Liberal party conservatives are so exasperated by Turnbull’s tale that some are calling for his outright expulsion – for life – from the party’s NSW division. While the anger is expected and justified, one wonders if expulsion – or even suspension – is an appropriate response for a party that its founder, Robert Menzies, deliberately named “liberal” and not “conservative”. Menzies’ successor, Harold Holt, would undoubtedly argue against Turnbull’s expulsion: the Liberal party, he said, was “liberal always, radical often and reactionary never”.

Minister Malcolm Turnbull with Scott Morrison in their previous roles as prime minister and treasurer, respectively.

Even the NSW Liberal party’s own Constitution asserts the party’s commitment to “an intelligent, free and liberal Australian democracy” buttressed by “freedom of speech, religion and association”. Moreover, the Liberals have long lambasted a Labor party willing to expel MPs for crossing the parliamentary floor.

In the conservatives’ defence, the NSW Liberal party Constitution does provide the right of a State Executive to suspend or expel members for three reasons: for supporting candidates other than Liberal-endorsed persons, or for committing serious criminal offences, or for causing “embarrassment” to the party to the point of impeding its electoral success.

Clearly, Turnbull could be expelled under the third clause, even though it’s difficult to see how Morrison, now hailed a COVID-19 statesman, could be damaged by a petulant Turnbull. But any motion of expulsion requires the support of more than 75 per cent of State Executive members. And, if expelled, that member can be refused re-entry to the party for up to five years. Yet nowhere in the NSW Constitution is there a provision for a “life ban”.

So what sort of message would Turnbull’s expulsion send to an Australian electorate already jaded by party-political game-playing? That the Liberal party’s ego is too fragile to countenance internal critics? That the only members welcome are those who toe the party line? If Menzies and Holt defended Turnbull today, would they, too, face expulsion?

The great irony is that the man driving Turnbull’s expulsion, Christian Ellis, is a former Family First member who was, himself, once banned from the Liberal party.

“This [expulsion move] is not a motion of vengeance or spite,” Mr Ellis said this week. But in trying to dump one of its own – in trying to rewrite history and win the Liberal culture war – it’s hard to see this mischief as anything else.