Andrew Bolt: Malcolm Turnbull still haunting Australia like a miserable ghost

Malcolm Turnbull will not stop until he smashes the Morrison government, but his whole life shows he’s a deeply wounded man who does not dare to admit that he failed.

In his vengeful autobiography last year, Malcolm Turnbull wrote something both comic and tragic: “I’m not a hater, as so many people in politics are.”

Comic, because the former prime minister on Tuesday again savaged the man who replaced him, saying Scott Morrison had “lied to me on many occasions” and “always had a reputation for telling lies”.

And tragic, because who’d want to be Malcolm Turnbull, for all his millions? Who’d want to be so utterly deluded, and end his days so crazed with rage and spite?

Turnbull three years ago said something equally delusional: when he stopped being prime minister “there is no way I’d be hanging around like embittered Kevin Rudd or Tony Abbott”.

“Seriously, these people are like, sort of miserable, miserable ghosts.”

Yet here he now is, the most miserable of ghosts that’s ever haunted this country, and this was always likely to be how Turnbull’s career ended.

His whole life shows Turnbull is a deeply wounded man who does not dare admit to himself that he failed. He must blame someone else, annihilate that psychic threat and show the world he is magnificent still in his revenge.

I don’t want to be all Sigmund Freud, but Turnbull has spoken movingly of how his mother walked out on him and his dad when he was just eight or nine.

It’s not a stretch to say it’s left Turnbull a horror of being abandoned and seeming unloved, and it shows.

Malcolm Turnbull must always blame someone else.

In 1999 he lost the republican referendum as head of the Australian Republican Movement, and couldn’t accept voters saw his campaign as hopelessly elitist, or his arguments weak.

Instead, he blamed monarchist John Howard, denouncing him as “the prime minister who broke the nation’s heart”.

Likewise, when billionaire Kerry Packer dropped Turnbull from a business deal, Turnbull, incensed, leaked damaging information on his former friend to the Australian Broadcasting Tribunal.

The pattern continued. In 2009, Turnbull was replaced as opposition leader by Tony Abbott. The “excruciating pain and ­humiliation” was unbearable, he wrote: “Suicidal thoughts started to enter my mind.”

But Turnbull couldn’t accept he’d been sacked for being unpopular. He instead blamed Abbott and took vengeance, mocking him in the media, betraying a private conversation with him, and voting against him in parliament.

But all this was just the entree.

Turnbull’s soul-burning anger will settle for nothing less than smashing Scott Morrison and his government.

In 2018, the Liberals again sacked Turnbull, this time as Prime Minister. The reasons were obvious: he’d lost every poll for nearly two years, and had again tried to drag the Liberals to the Left.

Turnbull again couldn’t take the rejection, but this time his revenge was more titanic than anything seen before.

He didn’t just call for a royal commission into the Murdoch newspapers he blamed for his fall.

Turnbull seemed to desperately need the Liberal overnment to be thrown out by voters. To be ground into the dust, to prove it was wrong to reject him.

One by one, he singled out Liberals he thought had betrayed him – and knifed them.

He backed an independent to run against Health Minister Greg Hunt, who’d voted against Turnbull in the leadership ballot.

He accused Finance Minister Mathias Cormann of “treachery” for not backing him to the bitter end, and even contacted German Chancellor Angela Merkel to denounce Cormann as a “climate denier’ in a bid to stop him from heading the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

Turnbull accused Finance Minister Mathias Cormann of ‘treachery’ for not backing him to the bitter end. Picture: AAP

He repeatedly attacked then attorney-general Christian Porter, who’d refused to ask the Governor-General to help Turnbull stay as prime minister, and even implied Porter was somehow responsible for the death of a disturbed woman who’d accused him of rape, saying it was “counterintuitive” to believe she’d killed herself.

Yes, Turnbull really is that maddened with hate.

Then there’s Morrison. What hasn’t Turnbull done to try to destroy him, too?

He’s attacked Morrison for going on holidays to Hawaii when bushfires burned, and for talking “nonsense” and “misleading” voters on global warming.

He’s attacked Morrison’s vaccine rollout as “a colossal failure”, although 78 per cent of adults are now fully vaccinated.

He’s attacked Morrison as “deceitful” for tearing up a contract with France to build diesel submarines, and even rang French President Emmanuel Macron to denounce him.

And now that Macron has accused Morrison of lying to him about that subs deal, without showing proof, Turnbull jumped in to say Morrison lied to him, too.

Turnbull will not stop. Read his history.

Morrison and his government must be smashed. Turnbull’s anger – his soul-burning anger – demands nothing less.