How a scorned Malcolm Turnbull took his revenge

Malcolm Turnbull’s payback against the 13 ministers who had dared to challenge him was furious and swift.

Malcolm Turnbull with his granddaughter Alice. Picture: Kym Smith

Malcolm Turnbull’s payback was furious and swift.

Within hours of their resig­nations, the 13 ministers who had dared to challenge the Prime Minister were sent official notices from the head of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, Martin Parkinson.

Their staff were warned that the department had been directed by the Prime Minister’s office to cut off access to all communi­cations, including emails and phones, immediately.

Parkinson said, in at least one message recounted to The Weekend Australian, that this was not the approach the department would normally take.

Usually departing minsters and their staff are given a few days’ grace to sort out affairs: things as simple as putting out-of-office ­notices on their emails. Parkinson was acting under instructions.

“They just began shutting shit off,” one MP said. “It was brutal. It was vindictive.”

Another source said: “Some of the offices had to negotiate with departments to get more time but others were booted out.”

One minister claimed his newspaper subscriptions had been cut off within hours of his resignation letter being received.

None of the rebels was spared the humiliation. Parkinson had given a cabinet minister just enough time to transfer his number to a new phone before his was disconnected.

Senior ministers confirmed this morning that their communications had been cut off within hours of their resignations, by departments claiming to be acting on instructions from the Prime Minister’s office.

Parkinson has denied that his department was involved. He claimed that departing ministers should be treated with courtesy and had issued no official direction for resigning ministers to be denied access to phone and email services.

However, one minister who resigned said within hours their office was contacted by their relevant department to apologise that they had been instructed by the Prime Minister’s office to shut them down.

The Weekend Australian has confirmed with four of the 13 departing ministers that they had communications cut within several hours of their resignations.

At least two were given only hours notices that their phones were also about to be disconnected.

Two ministers told The Weekend Australian that they had believed that their relevant departments had been acting under instructions from the Prime Minister’s office.

Parkinson did not deny that the unusually swift severing of communications for ministers had occurred. He denied only that his department was responsible.

He also said that he had told departmental secretaries to act with courtesy to the resigning ministers.

However, one minister confirmed that a staff member was called by an official from their department to apologise, claiming they had been directed by the Prime Minister’s Office.

“A key requirement is that departing Ministers and their office be supported and accorded utmost courtesy and respect, a message I emphasised to Secretaries this week,” Parkinson said in his statement.

“Neither Prime Minister Turnbull nor his office issued any direction to me or my department about any of the alleged matters.”

The Weekend Australian had attempted to contact the PMO on Friday afternoon but calls were not returned.

A spokesman for Mr Turnbull this morning claimed they did not direct departments to terminate communications but this has been disputed by ministers.

“That is a matter for individual departments, but it did not happen under any direction from either the Prime Minister’s Office or the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, as Dr Parkinson’s statement makes clear.”

It was regarded by Peter Dutton’s backers as an overt move to try to sabotage their leadership push. Yet this would not come close to the wrath brought down upon Dutton himself in the bid by Turnbull to ensure conservatives were kept out of The Lodge.

From Tuesday, Turnbull was briefing that if he was turfed from office, Julie Bishop, Craig Laundy, Darren Chester, Julia Banks, Kevin Hogan and others could ­either go to the crossbench or quit parliament, sparking by-elections and forcing a general election.

“They will deliver Bill Shorten the top job within weeks if they win,” a Turnbull supporter said.

Turnbull’s fear campaign was aimed at blowing up support for Dutton and calling into question his ability to maintain a majority in the House of Representatives.

Before Turnbull’s news conference on Thursday, during which he confirmed he would quit parliament and force a by-election in Wentworth, his office was briefing that he wasn’t going anywhere. “He’ll stay in parliament even if he loses. He won’t walk,” a Turnbull adviser said.

Nobody believed the spin. In truth, Turnbull was meeting MPs, fanning instability and pushing a narrative against Dutton.

The dirty tactics bought precious time for Scott Morrison, who by then had reached an ­accord with Turnbull that, with the Prime Minister’s leadership terminal, he would work to ­deliver the leadership to the ­Treasurer.

Whether Turnbull knew it or not, Morrison had pushed the button on his own campaign a week ago.

While Morrison is conser­vative, he is not regarded as one of the conservative tribe in the parliamentary party, largely due to his decision in 2015 to back Turnbull over Tony Abbott.

When Dutton was pushed early into declaring his hand ­during a radio interview the Thursday before last, Morrison’s people were quietly telling people not to rule out his name in a leadership contest. In the meantime, he remained loyal to Turnbull.

A pivotal moment for Morrison had come during the fallout of the national energy guarantee. Morrison had held a snap news conference, during which he was asked about a Nationals plan to intervene in the electricity market. “Well, price control has never really been a Liberal Party policy. It’s never been a Liberal value as my understanding of the Liberal Party — and I have a pretty reasonable one — you won’t find that enshrined in Liberal philosophy, I don’t think,” Morrison said on August 15.

The remarks publicly rejected Turnbull’s pledge in The Australian to target major energy retailers, and force them to lower energy bills. The following day he backflipped. The shift in language was followed by a news conference with Turnbull and Josh Frydenberg, during which the trio effectively killed the NEG and pledged to adopt a radical ­Nationals plan that included a threat to divest assets of the major energy companies.

It was Frydenberg who would come to play a key role in getting the three votes that delivered Morrison the leadership. Within 24 hours of the surprise leadership ballot called by Turnbull on Tuesday, Morrison’s numbers men Alex Hawke, Ben Morton and Stuart Robert were busy working on colleagues.

“They were in and out of ­people’s offices all day,” one MP said.

While Hawke and Morton later denied any involvement, they were slowly peeling votes from the Dutton camp.

Dutton was prepared to give Morrison the deputy leader’s position, and allow him to remain as treasurer, if he would back him in the second leadership ballot.

The only deal Morrison was interested in was one where he was prime minister and Dutton was his deputy.

Frydenberg voted for Turnbull but had pledged his vote to Dutton in a second ballot. This didn’t come to pass. Sometime between Tuesday and Thursday, a deal was believed to have been done for Frydenberg to become Morrison’s deputy if he won.

Frydenberg was spruiking on Thursday night that he would be an “unaligned” candidate for deputy.

Fellow Victorians were unhappy with Dutton’s choice of Greg Hunt as running mate. It is believed Frydenberg brought several Victorian votes over to Morrison, which in the end might have been the difference.

It wouldn’t have been, however, had the campaign to blow up Dutton’s ambitions not been so vengeful. Turnbull began telling colleagues early in the week that his leadership rival would be forced to a general election because he couldn’t command numbers on the floor, nor win crossbench support.

Turnbull had also opened communications with Governor-General Sir Peter Cosgrove.

“He was telling everyone the G-G would not endorse a Dutton government,” one MP said.

Turnbull’s meddling was nothing more than an attempt to stall for Morrison, who by then had become his proxy candidate. It was exposed by Sir Peter through a spokesman, who confirmed that the governor-general “by convention acts on the advice of the prime minister”.

Turnbull had effectively wielded the section 44 smear against Dutton — fuelled by Labor — to call into question Dutton’s eligibility over his family’s ownership of two childcare centres. Engaging the Solicitor-General to review Dutton’s status bought another 24 hours for Morrison to get his ducks in a row.

Turnbull arrived in his office yesterday at 8am, relaxed and confident of the outcome. The Dutton camp was confident as well. They believed Dutton’s numbers were holding firm. No one believed Bishop was a threat in a three-horse race.

What unfolded yesterday morning bordered on the insane.

Turnbull was bunkered in his office, facing increasing public pressure to call a partyroom meeting and end the crisis.

On Thursday night, Liberal Party president Nick Greiner, who had been Turnbull’s pick for the role, sent him a message, ­demanding the crisis be resolved the next day. All state Liberal Party presidents agreed. But Turnbull wouldn’t budge until he saw the petition for a partyroom meeting with the 43 signatures — a majority of the 85 members of the party who he believed were his traitors.

Turnbull had reverted to the barrister that he was, invoking the fig leaf of due diligence and ­proper process. Fed up, Dutton marched to his office and handed it over in person. A colleague of Dutton commented: “This prick is now playing hard ball.”

Turnbull had spent the morning with the government’s house leader, moderate powerbroker Christopher Pyne; Laundy, the member for Reid; and senator ­Arthur Sinodinos, who had ­returned to Canberra amid the crisis to give counsel to Turnbull, despite still being in recovery from cancer treatment.

The lunacy shifted to another level when government whip Nola Marino was forced to ring everyone on the list to verify whether they had signed the ­petition.

The familiar scene of a prime minister walking through the parliamentary halls to the political gallows was played out at midday. MPs began entering the Liberal partyroom at 12.17pm. When Marino emerged just ­before 1pm to read out the result, Dutton’s camp was in shock: 45 votes for Morrison, 40 for Dutton.

Turnbull’s campaign had worked.

Dutton and Mathias Cormann, the two senior conser­vatives, had buttressed Turnbull’s leadership for two years despite increasing pressure from conservative colleagues.

Turnbull in many ways owed the longevity of his leadership to the loyalty these two conser­vatives afforded him, in spite of his progressive agenda.

In the end, he could not abide a government that would elevate Tony Abbott back into the cabinet, as would be almost assured under Dutton.

The final act came when the Prime Minister’s office leaked a photo of the petition to the media, with the names of the 43 “insurgents”, who numbered more than half of the partyroom.

“It was a bastard act,” a now former cabinet minister said.

And so it was that the decade-long Abbott-Turnbull war came to an end.