C’mon Julie, it’s time to charge on this Turnbull shambles

Malcolm Turnbull: The grand daddy of disappointment.

It is almost 46 years since I was elected as a state organiser of the NSW Labor Party. I left the Parliament in March 1994 but I doubt that anyone would not consider that I have maintained a pretty keen interest in politics ever since. In all that time I have never seen anything like the utter shambles government has become in this country under the Prime Ministership of Malcolm Turnbull. The only occasion when we saw chaos like that we are now witnessing was on view during the Khemlani affair, and the affair between Jim Cairns, then Treasurer and Deputy Prime Minister, and the glamorous Juni Morosi, not to mention a bid for financial support from Saddam Hussein which saw Gough Whitlam sacked by a treacherous, drunken Governor-General and then an election which saw the smashing of Whitlam and the hope he had brought with him to high office.

Remember how much faith we all seemed to have had in Turnbull when he was first elected? The brutal knifing of Tony Abbott was forgiven as Australia hoped it had finally found someone who could lead us to something like the promised land. Instead, they got an arrogant show-pony who possessed a heart the size of a split pea and a chronic lack of the judgement and ticker to make decisions. If Whitlam was a disappointment, this bloke is the daddy of the massive let down. John Howard felt that government ought to be able to make the citizenry feel “relaxed and comfortable”. Now Australians are so filled with dark forebodings and rank pessimism that they will reach out to a false messiah like Pauline Hanson who lacks the wit to look past burqas as a major issue in this country.

The government will not fall on a vote of no-confidence in the House of Representatives because the vote of Cathy McGowan will see it scrape through. Barnaby Joyce will comfortably be returned in New England but neither of these bits of good news should provide any solace to our PM. Added to the crass stupidity of his thirty losing Newspolls gaffe we now have, even from him, the most breathtakingly arrogant statement of them all — “and the Court will so hold”.

What will be the future now for legislation passed by one vote like the penalty rates bill? There are several bills which might now finish up before the same High Court bench which accepted holus bolus the arguments of Justin Gleeson over his successor Stephen Donaghue in the MPs’ citizenship case.

Our Prime Minister can’t blame Tony Abbott for this debacle. He needs only to look in the mirror to know where to place the blame. Watching the High Court tsunami smash his government won’t change one iota Turnbull’s approach to running his party, the parliament or the nation. He is incapable of change because despite the rotten stinking mess he has created, he still thinks he is the smartest person in the room.

His defence of Michaelia Cash last week topped off arguably the worst week endured by a government in almost five decades. Not only do I not believe a word of her confected defence, I believe she should resign because I have never seen a minister look this stupid. She should do her beleaguered boss a big favour and just fade away.

Turnbull was hardly able to decide who should be acting Prime Minister when he heads off to Israel. I doubt that five per cent of the voters have ever heard of Nigel Scullion but they have all heard of Julie Bishop.

The question then becomes: Where do we go from here? In the minds of voters, Turnbull is finished and gone. He is done and he is dusted. Nobody, it seems, has the guts to declare him on. Come on, Julie, how big is your heart? You may not be able to win an election but you could save many pieces of coalition furniture. At Beersheba they didn’t hide in the trenches. They charged — and so should you.

Watch Graham Richardson on Sky News, Wednesdays at 8pm.