The fact is Malcolm Turnbull just doesn’t get that he made the election mess

MALCOLM Turnbull was woeful throughout the election campaign and under his leadership the Liberals are dying on their knees, writes Rita Panahi.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull drives out of Bligh St Gov building after his press conference today. Pic Chris Pavlich

HOW do you a turn a record primary vote and massive majority into a possible hung parliament and demoralising loss? You elect Malcolm Turnbull as your leader.

Duplicitous, arrogant and out of touch, the Prime Minister ran a terrible campaign that appalled conservatives, underwhelmed the Centre and amused the Left.

Put simply, Turnbull is a dud; there has never been a politician whose abilities have been more over-estimated, nor a man who better personifies style over substance. How much longer will conservatives allow a perfidious impostor to devastate the party of Menzies and Howard? He not only made Bill Shorten look prime ministerial but also, in a huge error of judgment, refused to attack Labor’s weak points such as border security and the reintroduction of a carbon tax via an ETS.

Indeed if it wasn’t for Premier Dan Andrews’s attacks on the CFA in Victoria, Shorten would today be preparing for the Lodge instead of fighting off Anthony Albanese for the Labor leadership.

Even if the Coalition is re-elected in its own right, Turnbull’s dreadful performance has left him wounded, perhaps fatally. The Upper House is more feral than ever with Turnbull’s double-dissolution strategy backfiring spectacularly. The likes of Pauline Hanson — whose One Nation party may hold as many as four Senate seats — can thank Turnbull for reviving their careers. In Queensland One Nation secured more votes than the Greens.

Nationally, there’s been a record vote for independents and minor parties with about one in four Australians giving their first preference to candidates unconnected to Labor and the Coalition. The disillusionment among the electorate has seen a marked increase in the informal vote in some seats.

Let this be a lesson to parties of all persuasions: the base matters, as do principles.

Turnbull’s failure to fight during the marathon election campaign is due in part to his hubris.

Treating the conservative base with disdain, Turnbull refused to campaign on Abbott’s achievements and failed to effectively counter Labor’s Medicare scare campaign.

Someone within Turnbull’s inner circle should remind the PM that he is not a character on The West Wing and he’s certainly not the smartest man in the room.

The arrogance that led Turnbull to believe he was above grubby political life was a grave error. He needed to show some Abbott-like fight. Instead he ran dead.

While the Prime Minister’s election night speech has been described as “odd” and “a mad rant” by some Coalition MPs, he did show some passion but it was too little too late.

It was a bizarre performance from a panicked PM who used the occasion to threaten police action over Labor’s Mediscare campaign and failed to acknowledge the Coalition MPs who lost their seats due in large part to his ineffectual campaigning.

Worse still, it was the first time many had heard him utter the reason for the double dissolution we had to have: the Australian Building and Construction Commission, a point he should have been driving home throughout the campaign, not after the polls had closed.

Bill Shorten in Moonee Ponds yesterday.

Turnbull should have seized the opportunity on election night to show some humility by saying he understood why voters were angry and that he would do better.

He could have pledged to build bridges with the conservative base and other groups who have felt abandoned by his government.

Instead he ranted without taking responsibility. It lacked class and grace.

But Turnbull’s mediocre performance is nothing new; he failed as republican leader, was woeful as Opposition leader and underwhelming as Communications Minister.

It is extraordinary that a man who has consistently underperformed in political life has been held in such high esteem.

The Turnbull camp will insist that we’ll never know how Abbott would have performed if he was still PM and some will even argue that the election result would have been worse. That is self-serving nonsense. Coalition strategists and their Labor counterparts fully expected Abbott to be re-elected but with a reduced majority.

Turnbull was allowed to knife a first-term PM by spooked MPs who feared Abbott’s unpopularity would lose them their seats.

Many of the anti-Abbott plotters have been defeated in what might be described as karma.

Turnbull has run the most woeful campaign since John Hewson snatched defeat from the jaws of victory in 1993. Hewson was at least campaigning to introduce the GST, a courageous move, while Turnbull decimated the Liberal’s primary vote not by scaring the masses with a new tax but by boring them rigid.

“It’s better to die on your feet than live on your knees,” said Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata. It’s worse still to die on your knees which is the fate of the Coalition under Turnbull.

Rita Panahi is a Herald Sun columnist

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