Piers Akerman: Malcolm Turnbull has left the Liberal Party in ruins
THANKS for nothing, Malcolm. You have left the Liberal Party a smoking ruin, the nation weary and despairing and your candidate Scott Morrison a tainted Prime Minister, Piers Akerman writes.
Opinion
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THANKS for nothing, Malcolm. You have left the Liberal Party a smoking ruin, the nation weary and despairing and your candidate Scott Morrison a tainted Prime Minister.
Tainted by your association with him and by your rancid engagement in a truly foul dirty tricks campaign during the past week which stalled the leadership ballot and questioned the integrity of every Liberal MP.
Well done. If a saboteur had been commissioned to destroy the Liberal Party, a better plan to wreck it and thwart its electoral chances could not have been devised. But deviousness is in your DNA. Maybe that’s why you chose the Bar as a career, where weasel words and straw men and false arguments can win admiration from some seeking to sail close to the legal winds.
Like a few others who believed you may have been able to make a greater contribution to parliament than Peter King, the suburban barrister you undermined to win preselection for the seat of Wentworth and ease your way to Canberra 14 years ago, I have apologised for gross misjudgment.
Your victory over King saw the Liberal vote fall by 10 per cent in Wentworth, making it a marginal seat. You then made a political career of tearing down colleagues who never stooped to the tactics you relied on.
Brendan Nelson, who took on the challenging task of leading the party after the 2007 electoral loss and performed admirably as opposition leader, has shone in his role as head of the War Memorial. You gave him a year as leader and tore him down. Let’s hope no one ever thinks you should be given an opportunity to refashion yourself in future.
Tony Abbott didn’t brief against you when he stood against you for the opposition leadership after you had sold out your party to Kevin Rudd’s lunatic obsession about global warming. He didn’t have the time or the inclination because that’s not his nature.
Joe Hockey was to be your challenger a week but he went to water and Abbott stepped up though you bragged he didn’t have the numbers.
He won by a vote on December 1, 2009, but you thought you’d had enough and told your electorate you were quitting on April 6, 2010, only to reconsider after a discussion with John Howard, and withdraw that decision on May 1.
Abbott had you in his shadow ministry and gave you a ministry when he lead the Liberals to victory in 2013. You worked tirelessly to white-ant his leadership, succeeding on September 15, 2015. You didn’t offer Abbott any position in your government nor did you put forward any policy.
All you were after was the prime ministership and you didn’t know what to do when you got it.
At the 2016 election you lost seats. Homosexual marriage was not a vote winner with the Liberal base nor was the attack on superannuation but you hung on with a one-seat majority, vacillating on policy, trailing your Labor-lite policies before the luvvies who watch Q&A and neglecting those who choked back their dislike for you and remained loyal to the party.
You rewarded their loyalty by effectively strapping on a suicide vest last week and virtually threatening to trigger your own and the Coalition government’s political deaths unless you were permitted to remain in office or nominate your successor.
Malcolm, you have been disloyal to those who gave you the most loyalty, to the end.
Even for you, it was a disgraceful performance, an act which displayed more than breathtaking arrogance and showed absolute disdain for the voters who remained faithful to the cause.
To the bitter end, you have been without doubt the most venal, most shallow and most ineffectual prime minister in the history of the Liberal Party. Single-handedly (though you might like to pay your usual florid tribute to the contribution your wife Lucy has made to your political decisions), you have destroyed the party’s base, you have perverted its principles, and in NSW you have thwarted attempts to introduce democratic reforms into the local division.
Yet, in your moment before the microphones, you claimed to be the victim of bullies. This was an outrageously ludicrous claim at any time but when made by an individual threatening to blow up a party and a government, it is a sordid act by a man who promised to deliver certainty and delivered nothing but instability.
One example of the gulf between you and John Howard whom you laughably claimed as your mentor remains with me. Twice I have been a guest at NSW Liberal Party functions held in the Great Hall at Sydney University. The first was when Howard was prime minister. He made an excellent speech about the traditions of the party while thanking those who had given so much for their time to the cause. After a lengthy evening with the party faithful, the not-so-young men and women who run the sausage sizzles and man (no disrespect intended to the hardy women who were devoted to their party) the voting booths, Howard refused to leave until he had personally seen everyone safely into a taxi. In pre-Uber days, getting a taxi to enter the dark and tangled roads of Sydney Uni to pick up passengers was in itself a challenge.
On the second occasion, when you were prime minister, you talked about yourself. You highlighted the fact that you had been a student at the university, you had sat in the hall, you talked of the motto inscribed above the dining hall and patronisingly translated the Latin Sidere mens eadem mutato as “the stars change, the mind remains the same” but it was all about you.
Then you fled, quickly. Maybe you had somewhere more important to go, more impressive people to be with, maybe you found you didn’t have anything in common with those who represented the backbone of the party.
I found myself talking to one of the stalwarts who had been helped by Howard to a taxi in years past and the sense of dismay at your approach was palpable.
Malcolm, you have been disloyal to those who gave you the most loyalty, to the end. Morrison and Josh Frydenberg may pay for their loyalty to you unless they distance themselves now from your reeking legacy.