Turnbull the gift that just keeps giving for Labor

Malcolm Turnbull at the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow.

Malcolm Turnbull has become a serial boofhead. His interventions criticise the party which put him in the Lodge. Labor just has to sit back and watch as Turnbull takes an axe to his former colleagues. I use the word “colleagues” because Turnbull has no mates. He managed to stride through the corridors of power in Canberra without making a true friend. Whether this is because he is a horse’s arse or is simply too aloof while considering himself to be the smartest person in the room is anyone’s guess. The Liberals know they have a traitor in their midst but also know there is little they can do about it.

To expel Turnbull from the party, as many of its members have suggested, merely confers martyrdom on him. He would relish the role of martyr and would not see it as in any way inhibiting or restricting because that is pretty close to the role he plays now. This bloke knows how to wreck but has no idea of how to build. He will be a thorn in the prime ministerial backside for years to come. Any journalist in the gallery knows you don’t have to call a Labor figure to bucket the government as long as Turnbull is alive and well.

He suffers from many of the same afflictions as Kevin Rudd. You won’t make friends when you are as up yourself as these two. Both of these gentlemen detonated a nuclear device beneath their prime ministerial careers. Many a dry eye was offered when news of their demise became public. There was a noticeable lack of friends leaping to their defence because of the reasons I have just outlined. Their friends were few and far between. When the first moves against Kevin Rudd were being made, one Victorian frontbencher told me that I “would be staggered at how few caucus members would vote for him”. Rudd must have finally sensed this because when the crunch came he was not a starter in the race for the top job. He avoided what would have been a serious public embarrassment.

Rudd’s ridiculous legacy is the stupid “leader for life” rule. If at some point a future caucus wants to dump the leader, it will still be done. Once a vote of no confidence is passed, no leader, not even a Kevin Rudd, could hold out against that tide. Labor rarely dumps the leader when we are in government and maybe that is because we rarely get into government. Labor’s time in power is too precious to squander frivolously. Leaders of the Opposition can be dumped much more “easily” although it is hard to describe a boots-and-all leadership struggle as “easy”. Bitterness is a big by-product of any leadership ballot and takes time to drain away.

Bob Hawke had an extraordinary knack of bringing people hostile to each other to an accommodation. That is a skill few people have and nobody I have ever known had that quality in such abundance as R.J. Hawke. This was integral in making Hawke the great man he was.

Labor only wins elections when it has a charismatic leader and they don’t grow on trees. Albo is trying a different tack. He is exactly what he seems to be – a forthright, decent and honest bloke. In a month of Sundays you will not meet a better bloke. He grew up with hardship and has a genuine feeling for those less privileged. This takes Labor back to where it should always have been. Now it is clear that Labor has two aims. It wants to give a lift to those at the bottom end while giving those aspirational voters with more drive than many of us an opportunity to feel comfortable voting for a Labor Party he leads. Albo will never settle for running a respectable second. He wants to win.