Turnbull’s treachery knows no bounds

Cartoon: Johannes Leak

Losing the prime ministership is almost never handled well. Even the world’s greatest ever democratic leader experienced a kind of living death after being stripped of the prime ministership on the cusp of the victory he’d inspired.

Winston Churchill’s daughter confided to her diary in July 1945: “It was an agonising spectacle to watch this giant among men – equipped with every faculty of mind and spirit – walking unhappily round and round unable to employ his great energy and boundless gifts, nursing in his heart a grief and disillusion I can only guess at.”

It goes without saying that Malcolm Turnbull is no Winston Churchill, despite his cutting a swathe through journalism, law and business before entering parliament as a Liberal – destined, in his own mind, and the minds of many others, to lead his party and our country. Working closely with him (as deputy chief of staff) for the year or so he was opposition leader, I concluded that he had two fatal flaws as a politician: first, he lacked loyalty; and second, he had no real convictions, or at least none that suited a political leader of the centre-right, rather than the centre-left. Indeed, that might turn out to be the ultimate tragedy of his public life: that this able, if flawed and arrogant, man went into the wrong party, the party of what he regarded as his class rather than the one of his ­inclination. That is assuming ­Graham Richardson is right that Turnbull made repeated requests for Labor preselection in the 90s.

Instead, despite describing John Howard as the prime minister who had “broken Australia’s heart” after the defeat of the 1999 republican referendum, Turnbull had soon sufficiently made his peace with Howard (presumably taking advantage of the Tom Hughes connection) to be appointed the Liberal Party’s federal treasurer, or fundraiser-in-chief. Perhaps he’d decided that the Liberal Party would make an easier flag of convenience for his ambitions? In any event, he took advantage of that position to stack out the then member for Wentworth, Peter King, to enter parliament in 2004.

After narrowly losing the opposition leadership to Brendan Nelson in 2007, but being appointed shadow treasurer, he relentlessly undermined Nelson to become the leader himself in late 2008. He went on to lose the leadership when he tried to persuade the Coalition to back Kevin Rudd’s emissions trading scheme, crossing the floor to vote with Labor on the ETS after his partyroom threw him out.

After Tony Abbott won the 2013 election and appointed Turnbull communications minister, Turnbull schemed relentlessly to take the top job – succeeding in September 2015, in part, by agitating against Abbott’s preference to get an off-the-shelf submarine (rather than making our biggest defence acquisition a jobs boondoggle for Adelaide).

As PM, Turnbull made a point of repudiating or neglecting almost everything Abbott had championed: the Green Army workforce for landcare projects; the repeal of the “offend and insult” provisions of the Race Discrimination Act; the federation and tax reform white papers; the free-trade deal with India; and ­especially the Japanese submarine partnership.

Before finally losing the leadership in 2018, once more by trying to be bipartisan with Labor on climate change, Turnbull achieved as one of the few landmarks in an undistinguished prime ministership the submarine deal with France – to take an existing nuclear design and spend 15-plus years redesigning it and building it in Adelaide, only as a less-capable conventional boat, with less speed and less armament to stand up to China.

Part of Turnbull’s extraordinary spray at Morrison this week is pique at the overturning of one of his few substantive decisions. Hence his statement that taking one of the many exit ramps from the French contract was Scott Morrison sacrificing “Australian honour, Australian security and Australian sovereignty”. It was nothing of the kind. It was Turnbull’s successor finally acknowledging the implausibility of Turnbull’s deal, recognising our dramatically worse strategic situation, and choosing a vastly better military option in partnership with allies we can trust.

The main factor, though, in Turnbull’s taking the French President’s side over that of our own Prime Minister – really, in siding with France over Australia – is his smouldering fury at Morrison’s role in what he regards as the act of “political terrorism” that cost him the prime ministership.

Turnbull goes to some length in his memoirs to detail his claims of Morrison’s collaboration in the campaign to remove Abbott. He is probably still kicking himself for not foreseeing how Morrison (who only had a half a dozen or so rusted-on backers back then) would join with Peter Dutton’s backers to vote no confidence in Turnbull before using Turnbull’s numbers to take the prime ministership for himself.

That Morrison, with his more energetic campaigning and superior political savvy, managed to win the 2019 election, validating Turnbull’s removal, would have added to the sting. Hence Turnbull’s statement that “Scott has always had a ­reputation for telling lies” and that “he has lied to me on many ­occasions”.

You could hardly blame Turnbull for harbouring resentment against Morrison. That’s only human. The pity is that, unlike all the other former prime ministers, who have largely found meaningful roles making speeches, writing memoirs and working for good causes (even Rudd is president of the Asia Society in New York), Turnbull has become the miserable ghost he once railed against.

He seems oblivious to the adage that he who lives by the sword dies by the sword.

What’s obvious, though, is that someone who’ll side with another country against his own to spite his successor will have no compunction continuing the vendetta against the party that once gifted him the prime ministership.

Sadly, that’s the likely fate of any Liberal who has crossed Clan Turnbull come the next election campaign. Turnbull’s son worked against his father’s Liberal successor in Wentworth and campaigned against Abbott in Warringah. And Turnbull himself campaigned against the Coalition candidate in a recent NSW state by-election. Now, not only is he attacking Morrison as dishonest and untrustworthy to his leadership peers in Glasgow, with spite and on camera, but he’s frenetically criticising even Morrison’s net-zero emissions commitment as weak and inadequate.

One of Turnbull’s selling points to his parliamentary colleagues in his incessant campaigns to seize the Liberal leadership was that he was the Liberal most popular with Labor voters. Of course he was; he was the Liberal leader preferred by people who would never actually vote Liberal precisely because it wouldn’t really be the Liberal party under him.

The ABC and the old Fairfax press were happy to support Turnbull as a Labor-lite Liberal leader until the moment an election was called, when they naturally preferred the real thing.

The puzzle here is not the left’s continued delight in using Turnbull to discombobulate Morrison, but why serious Liberals ever ­supported him to be leader in the first place: once, perhaps, might have been understandable given his superficial appeal – but twice, surely, was unforgivable.