In the early days of the government of our 12th Robert Menzies, Fred Daly recounts an encounter between the great man and an acerbic colleague, Archie Cameron.
Exasperated, Menzies eventually scolded his critic: “Archie, I do not suffer fools gladly”; to which Cameron responded: “It might be news to you to know that bloody fools have a lot of trouble putting up with you too.”
Fast forward 60-odd years to our 29th prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull. One of the reasons Turnbull, like Menzies, lost his party’s leadership in his first attempt was apperception of arrogance — an inability to admit that others had a point of view, however (in his view) misguided it might be.
Turnbull is undoubtedly smart, but he is not as smart as he thinks he is. Let’s face it, nobody could be. And he has an overweening self-confidence that frequently passed into hubris: I once wrote that there were only two human constructs visible from the moon, one being the great wall of China and the other being Malcolm Turnbull’s ego.
As a result, he has a tendency to overreach himself. When he was running the republican cause in 1998, he declared victory during the constitutional convention, only to be effortlessly out-manoeuvred by John Howard, who landed him with an unviable proposition that was easily defeated in the referendum that followed.
I once wrote that there were only two human constructs visible from the moon, one being the great wall of China and the other being Malcolm Turnbull’s ego.
As opposition leader, he believed he could destroy Kevin Rudd’s prime ministership through the machinations of a mole with the improbable name of Godwin Grech, who turned out to have fabricated the evidence.
He has had time to reflect on what may well have been his youthful extravagances and follies, but the fact that they occurred at all is one reason that many of his colleagues were reluctant to vote for him on Monday. In the end, they decided they had only one option: the Rudd option, adapt or perish.
The die is cast; they cannot turn back now. But it doesn’t mean that they have to like it.
Turnbull says he has changed, and has sold himself as a persuader, not a brawler like his predecessor: he will not be an autocrat, but primus inter pares, first among equals in a more inclusive, consultative cabinet. It is a worthy ambition, but it is also one last coined by another prime minister, one who lasted even less long than Tony Abbott: the ill-fated Harold Holt.
Turnbull has to lead, or there is no point to him: he becomes just another directionless figure like Tony Abbott — or, for that matter, like Bill Shorten.
He has had to temporise on climate change and gay marriage in order to secure his numbers, but he also has to send a decisive signal that he is moving away from the extremes of the conservative right and back into the liberal mainstream.
The right, including large sections of the media, will never accept Turnbull as one of them and have repeatedly said so.
He has emphasised the need for a change in the political culture, and he is right: the Abbott culture, if one can dignify it as such, was peremptory and brutal and ultimately unacceptable. But culture by itself is not enough; there will have to be substance, policy, and even, dare one suggest it, vision.
Malcolm Turnbull’s resurrection will obviously be welcomed by much of the population, which has been yearning for a government which is less confrontational, less driven by threats and bullying — just more civilised. But those who had been rusted on to Abbott will feels both betrayed and suspicious of any new direction.
The right, including large sections of the media, will never accept Turnbull as one of them and have repeatedly said so. But he can afford to ignore them; after all, they are unlikely to switch their votes to Labor or the Greens, and that, in the end, is all that counts.
And in any case, for the hardheads of the right, it does not really matter who Malcolm Turnbull is or what he does, as long as he can turn around the polls. That, after all, is the sole reason they held their noses, blocked their ears, shut their eyes and re-elected him.
Mungo MacCallum is a political journalist and commentator.
