Some who went too far in their praise of Turnbull now wish to bury him

Some of the former prime minister’s fans are beginning to see the error of their ways.

Former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull. Picture: AAP

A decade ago, during the Rudd and Gillard governments — long before fake news entered the lexicon — this paper described the concept of the false narrative.

Chris Kenny wrote editorials and Inquirer pieces analysing the concept as it applied to ABC and Fairfax journalists incapable of calling out some of the greatest public policy blunders since Federation. Think of the pink batts home insulation scheme that killed four installers, burned down houses, recruited organised crime figures to the insulation business and cost billions to fix. Or the Building the Education Revolution program that wasted billions forcing schools to accept cookie-cutter buildings they often did not want. Worst of all was Kevin Rudd’s dismantling of predecessor John Howard’s Pacific Solution: Rudd ended up opening our borders to 50,000 arrivals by boat while 1200 people drowned at sea.

The Left media would not call out these disasters because the preferred policy narrative of many journalists favoured action on climate change almost at any cost, big public education spending and a welcoming policy towards asylum-seekers.

Why the history lesson? For the first time since the decision of the Liberal Party’s “bed wetters” to topple first-term prime minister Tony Abbott in September 2015, the actions of axed Abbott successor Malcolm Turnbull this past week have forced some commentators to confront their false narratives about Turnbull. A dud cam­paigner who destroyed his own power over his party by fluffing the 2016 election in a dir­ectionless eight-week campaign that cost him 14 seats, Turnbull would have been unassailable to the Right had he fought a decent election.

That is not to say the toppling of Turnbull last August was in the government’s interests. The right-wing commentariat has its own false narrative here: Newspoll shows the government was recovering before Peter Dutton challenged. Turnbull was within strik­ing distance and had a strong economy about to reach surplus. The Coalition is now 10 points behind, so that didn’t work.

Turnbull also has claimed internal marginal seat polling at that time showed the Coalition just 51-49 down. Remember the public does not much care for Bill Shorten, whose taxation policies appear vulnerable to a scare cam­paign in a falling housing market.

The Coalition has repeated almost exact­ly the blunders of the previous two-term Labor government. Last week Scott Morrison took the same action Rudd did on his return to the top job in 2013. Morrison forced through a Liberal rule to prevent a spill against a sitting prime minister without a two-thirds partyroom majority.

Yet for all the self-interested factional destabilising, at least the Coalition did not make the sort of policy blunders Rudd and Julia Gillard made, sending the nation’s finances into a decade-long deficit spiral. And the Abbott government did stop the boats and axe the carbon tax, even if it could not repair the budget.

Now there is evidence the Left media is reassessing Turnbull in the way it failed to reassess Gillard, another of its favourites.

The Australian Financial Review columnist Joe Aston wrote witheringly of Turnbull and the Liberals’ infighting on Wednesday and Thursday. Former Liberal leader and regular Sydney Morning Herald columnist John Hewson on Thursday described his old party as “a directionless, self-obsessed rabble” unable to learn the lessons of defeats in Longman and Wentworth and the Victorian election. Newish Herald and Age chief political correspondent David Crowe wrote on Wednesday: “Malcolm Turnbull is not done making trouble for Scott Morrison.”

Last Monday, ABC 7.30 political editor Laura Tingle said Turnbull’s intervention the previous day to try to prevent Morrison saving Craig Kelly had only guaranteed party support for the new PM. By Tuesday night she was musing about how to deal with “peak ex-PM”, concluding “the ghost of the Turnbull prime ministership may not go away any time soon”.

Turnbull’s tweeting on Sunday night last week and interview with Fran Kelly on Radio National on Monday morning about the need for an early election (he had wanted March 2) to save the NSW Bere­jiklian government must have made his Canberra gallery con­fidants, particularly the ABC’s Andrew Probyn and Nine’s Chris Uhlmann, wince. Who sacrifices federal government for a state?

One long-term Turnbull confidant happy to give him the benefit of the doubt is the AFR’s Jennifer Hewett, who on Wednesday wrote favourably of Turnbull’s advocacy of his failed national energy guarantee, the one he secretly has been discussing with Shorten, who now plans to back it.

ABC Insiders host Barrie Cassidy also is sticking to his preferred narrative: Turnbull could have succeeded if his left-wing principles were not undermined by Abbott, he told ABC Radio Sydney on Friday. Yet the week’s analysis overall was a far cry from the previous week, when many were happy to excuse Turnbull ally and one-term member for the seat of Chisholm, Julia Banks, for moving to the crossbench.

Unable to resist the notion the Coalition has a woman problem, many journalists fell in behind Banks. But this is largely a false narrative. As a conservative PM, Abbott had a female chief of staff, Peta Credlin; a female deputy, Julie Bishop; independently minded wife Margie and three daughters; and for two decades had raised money for the Northern Beaches Women’s Shelter.

There was another media false narrative in August when many journalists blamed this newspaper for Turnbull’s fall. They can’t have been reading it. The Australian did no more than advocate for a better Turnbull government. Sure, a couple of columnists were hard on him, as a couple of others were hard on Abbott. The paper’s Canberra bureau had been working harder than its rivals and was closer to the thinking inside the Coalition, just as it was closer to the challenges against Rudd, Gillard and Abbott. Political editor Dennis Shanahan knew Dutton was thinking of moving a long time before The Daily Telegraph wrote it.

What to say about Turnbull? He is like his former friend Rudd. Both are extremely wealthy, unable to take criticism and not really from the culture of their parties. The prime ministership was about personal validation rather than the good of the nation. Both had insecure childhoods. Rudd’s father died early and Turnbull’s mother left the family when he was 10.

Whatever the pathology, it is time journalists stopped letting themselves be used by Turnbull in the way Rudd still uses the Nine papers.