IT WAS 7.10 AM on Thursday, 5 June 2014, and the airwaves hissed as Sydney’s most powerful broadcaster, Alan Jones, worked himself up to his well-planned-and-executed ambush: ‘Can I begin by asking you if you could say after me this? As a senior member of the Abbott government, I want to say here I am totally supportive of the Abbott–Hockey strategy for Budget repair.’
A heartbeat’s silence. Then Malcolm Turnbull flashed cold steel: ‘Alan, I am not going to take dictation from you.’
An ‘Oh’ escaped, barely audible. The Parrot, who’d lectured the country for forty years, was rocking on his perch. Nobody spoke to Jones that way. Trying to regain his balance, Jones pecked and squawked, attacking every which way, trying to get the famously volatile communications minister to explode. In career-ending fashion, if possible. Radio gold. Australia tuned in:
‘You’re sounding very nervous, Malcolm … Are you angry, Malcolm? … You’re not much good at teams … You have no hope ever of being the leader, you’ve got to get that into your head … You’ve got a few sensitive nerves there, Malcolm … You’ve got not a hope in hell of getting Tony Abbott’s job …’1
Sensing the danger, with unmistakeable effort, Turnbull channelled his rage: the more personal Jones got, the more lucid, and civil, and firm were Turnbull’s replies. His low voice was a weapon, expertly drawn, the tone of a barrister, a newsman, a debating champ, an actor’s son.
In 2014, however, it was also the voice of a failed Liberal leader, and perhaps already that of a washed-up politician, who now had to put up with this.
Jones and Turnbull went way back, of course, and they’d spoken the night before, ticking off the bullet points, though no clues had been given of the morning’s premeditated verbal assault. It was in keeping with their colourful history. Jones had disparaged Turnbull in 1981, during Turnbull’s first tilt at the plush Sydney eastern suburbs seat of Wentworth. And he had launched a barrage against the republic campaign in 1999. But Jones had backed Turnbull for preselection in 2004, when it really mattered.
The issue that morning—yes, Turnbull had dined with Clive Palmer, without telling his leader—was not actually the heart of the matter. Jones wanted to try and convict Turnbull, once and for all, on the charge he was not really a Liberal.
The story of the dinner had been running since Palmer and Turnbull had been snapped leaving the Wild Duck restaurant in Canberra the previous Wednesday. Turnbull was supposed to have been at a Minerals Council dinner at Parliament House that night, where the PM was speaking, but had snuck off for dinner with Liberal Party vice-president Tom Harley. In the parliamentary car park, they’d bumped into Treasury secretary Martin Parkinson—who had also left an empty chair at the mining dinner upstairs—and asked him along. Turnbull then texted his old friend Palmer, and he too escaped the turgid resources love-in, joining the threesome after entrees.
When the photos came out, two weeks after the Abbott government’s first Budget had tanked, there were days of fevered speculation about what might have been discussed over Peking duck and fried rice—washed down with some no-doubt-excellent wine—by the deposed leader, the machine man, the shafted Treasury official, and the maverick billionaire with an iron grip on the balance of power. It was dubbed a secret tryst, although there was nothing secret about the venue: a top-notch hangout deep in Canberra’s political drinking zone, and just around the corner from Turnbull’s Kingston apartment. Palmer, when quizzed, was at his enigmatic best: ‘I had a wonderful banana split—it was fantastic. I recommend it to all of you, a caramelised banana with a coconut ice-cream. That was the highlight of the evening for me; that was my focus of the night.’2
News Ltd columnist and Abbott supporter Andrew Bolt, interviewing the prime minister on his Sunday morning shout-fest, The Bolt Report, put it to Abbott straight: ‘Malcolm Turnbull is after your job.’ Turnbull was incensed—he was being fitted-up as disloyal—and called Abbott, who promised that Bolt’s question had not been planted by the prime minister’s office, run by the powerful Peta Credlin, Turnbull’s own former chief of staff, whom he had demoted when he was opposition leader—no love lost there. That evening, Bolt blogged that Turnbull had ‘lavished a lot of charm lately on Abbott’s natural predators, even last week launching a new parliamentary group of friends of the ABC, which got a (small) cut in the budget’. Turnbull hit back:
It borders on the demented to string together a dinner with Clive Palmer and my attending as the communications minister the launch by a cross-party group of friends of the ABC and say that that amounts to some kind of threat or challenge to the prime minister. It is quite unhinged.3
Abbott jetted off to France for the seventieth anniversary of D-day, leaving behind a mess. There was no leadership speculation less than a year into office, everyone agreed. But … wasn’t the Budget a stinker? Weren’t the polls terrible? Within days, an Essential poll confirmed—once again—that Turnbull was the people’s preferred Liberal leader, rating 31 per cent to Abbott’s 18 per cent.
Wily old Palmer stirred the pot, launching a shameless attack on Credlin under the cover of parliamentary privilege, claiming she was behind Abbott’s paid parental leave scheme: ‘Why should Australian citizens and businesses be taxed, and working women discriminated against, just so the prime minister’s chief of staff can receive a massive benefit when she gets pregnant?’4 Uproar. He had pushed every button. It was well known that Credlin had given up after unsuccessful attempts at IVF, and anyway, as a public servant her parental leave was sorted. Palmer was a hot-air balloon, and he popped that day.5
Turnbull texted Credlin, apologising for Palmer and offering to jump to Credlin’s defence: Chris Mitchell at The Australian had asked him to do an op-ed. Credlin, who had barely had any contact with Turnbull since Abbott had replaced him as Liberal leader in December 2009, replied: ‘We are not that close. I’d rather you didn’t.’ Is Turnbull feeling guilty? she wondered. It all made sense. Clive’s ridiculous outburst must have started with Turnbull, over that dinner at Wild Duck, having a whinge about Tony, about the Budget, about PPL, about her. She pictured Turnbull tying it all together in a savage dump on the government.
When Alan Jones, well briefed as always, goaded Turnbull about Credlin, Turnbull oozed sensitivity: ‘Alan, I don’t want to make political capital out of Peta Credlin’s pain, other people do. I’ve worked with Peta Credlin. She does a very good job for Tony and the nation, she does a tough job. This is really hurtful, personal stuff.’
On it went. Turnbull checked Jones, parried him, even found humour, and by the end of the interview had him eating out of his hand. ‘Well done!’ Jones said, and all but apologised for his old schoolmaster’s ruse. A polite goodbye, and a sharp click—Turnbull had managed to hang up on air. Then the volcanic anger that Turnbull had contained on air erupted in a roar of expletives.
It did die down. Turnbull was then four months shy of sixty. Come October, friends who had been to his thirtieth, fortieth and fiftieth birthday parties wondered where their invitations had gone. Turnbull’s circle of acquaintances was peerless—he could drop names on a global scale—but his circle of trusted friends was getting smaller and smaller. In fact, instead of a birthday party, Turnbull had a quiet drink in the office of the prime minister. Abbott was feeling magnanimous towards the man he had torn down in 2009. Malcolm simply was no longer a threat, it seemed, merely a loyal member of the government. Cabinet colleagues who didn’t even like him noted an air of resignation in Turnbull. Perhaps he might be ready for promotion to treasurer, given the federal Budget was proving unsaleable. Then again, perhaps not.
Three days before Turnbull’s birthday, on 21 October, the death of Gough Whitlam had reminded Australia what public life was meant to be about: not leadership intrigue, not mean, negative politics, but optimism and ambition for the future of the country. In condolence motions in federal parliament, no-one spoke with more feeling than Turnbull, who was moved to tears as he recalled Whitlam the enlarger—‘a big man with a big vision for a big country’—and the steadfast husband of Margaret for more than seventy years.6
Turnbull was moved to tears more often lately. People close to him say he mulled over quitting politics altogether—for good this time—at the end of 2014. After more than three decades in the spotlight, a quiet life with wife Lucy, and their new grandson, beckoned enticingly. Turnbull was feeling reflective and started a memoir, hoping to write something honest like Barack Obama’s Dreams from My Father.
Turnbull had been talked about as a future prime minister since before he could remember. It had been assumed. The Rhodes scholar, the Bulletin journo, the Packer lawyer, the merchant banker, the OzEmail co-founder, the Republican, the polly …. Turnbull had amassed enormous wealth, then enjoyed a meteoric rise in politics until wresting the Liberal leadership off Brendan Nelson after a year of unbelievable white-anting. Then, the train wreck. Godwin Grech. The climate sceptic revolt. The loss of the leadership by one vote to Abbott.
Could he serve another three years? Take down Abbott in his second term? In his early sixties, with Hockey and Morrison and Bishop on the rise? The sands were rushing through the hourglass, ever faster.
Monday, 26 January 2015. Australia Day. Turnbull was about to jet off to the US. A nation relaxing on a sunny public holiday, the long summer winding down, the barbies fired up. The honours came out, and along with the usual ACs and AOs was a very short list of new dames and knights—the ‘grace note’ of politics reintroduced by Abbott, avowed monarchist and self-confessed incorrigible Anglophile. Down in Canberra, the prime minister had knighted the Duke of Edinburgh, Prince Philip.
All round the country, barbecues stopped. ‘Abbott’s done what?’
Turnbull was back in the game.