Andrew Bolt: Whinging Malcolm Turnbull always pointing finger of blame

From losing referendums to the prime ministership, every time Malcolm Turnbull fails he has the same tired excuse — someone else is to blame.

Malcolm Turnbull - the Point Piper moaner - is at it again.

Here we go again. Every time I’ve seen Malcolm Turnbull flop, he’s blamed someone else for getting in his way.

Remember when he lost the 1999 republican referendum as head of the Australian Republican Movement?

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

No, don’t blame his defeat on his appallingly elitist push, or voters figuring for themselves that what wasn’t broken shouldn’t be fixed.

Same story when Turnbull — to his shock — came within a seat of losing the 2016 election as prime minister.

This time he blamed the opposition for, er, opposing him: “The Labor Party ran some of the most systematic, well-funded lies ever peddled in Australia.”

Turnbull has blamed someone else for all of his flops. Picture: Steve Pohlner

Again, don’t blame Turnbull for running another elitist campaign, knocking off each day at lunchtime and being too proud to raise much money from donors.

Don’t credit voters for having a mind of their own.

This week the Point Piper moaner was at it again, now accusing Murdoch newspapers like this one for persuading his colleagues to dump him as Prime Minister in 2018.

Turnbull told a Senate inquiry that figures in Murdoch’s News Corporation had “this crazy agenda” to get rid of him, despite Murdoch’s daily papers in fact unanimously backing him in the 2016 election.

“The most powerful political actor in Australia is not the Liberal Party or the National Party or the Labor Party, it is News Corporation,” he said.

But where in Turnbull’s conspiracy theory is there room for the truth: that he was such a listless waffler and green bore that he lost every opinion poll for nearly two years before his colleagues dumped him? And didn’t he learn from that 1999 referendum journalists can’t lead voters by the nose, as he implies?

Back then, every daily newspaper in the country bar two — the Financial Review and the West Australian, neither owned by Murdoch — urged voters to back Turnbull’s republic.

Yet every state still voted no.

Voters will decide for themselves if Turnbull’s fish smell rotten.

No journalist can make them think the stink is sweet.

Oh, and Turnbull should stop thinking it’s an outrage not to agree with him.

The few remaining conservative commentators, now tolerated almost only in News Corporation, should be free to disagree without Turnbull screaming it’s a conspiracy that must be crushed.