CHAPTER TEN

A touch of the Keatings

Two days after the coup that toppled Malcolm Turnbull, Peter Dutton was unrepentant and utterly remorseless. Dutton’s actions destroyed Turnbull, destabilised the government, damaged his own standing, and threatened to send them all into oblivion. In the immediate aftermath, colleagues surveying the wreckage – particularly those who had ambitions of their own – predicted he would never lead the Liberal Party, so angry were they with him for the demons he had unleashed, and so nervous were they about the electoral consequences.

In the months leading up to the election, Dutton remained defiant. The mood in Queensland had lifted. Up there, unlike down south, he reported they were glad that Turnbull was gone. After the election, he felt vindicated. Yes, his leadership bid had been thwarted, but he had succeeded in eliminating Turnbull, and by his reckoning this had saved the government. The Liberal National Party had regained the seats of Longman and Herbert. The further north you went, the higher the swings to sitting MPs. Dutton’s primary vote in Dickson went up by more than 1 per cent, while his two-party-preferred margin rose to 2.4 per cent. Labor’s use of him down south as the bogeyman appeared to have little impact on the Liberal vote. He remained insistent that Turnbull could never have won the election, and that his own actions were justified.

Even so, there were tinges of regret. He was supremely confident he could have won the election as leader, but he had been outmanoeuvred by Malcolm Turnbull and Scott Morrison, and undercut by Tony Abbott’s few friends and many enemies.

Dutton was particularly stung that people thought he was Abbott’s stooge. It was one of the biggest drags on his numbers. When word seeped out that Abbott would be back on the frontbench if Dutton won, Dutton lost votes.

Dutton wanted to be seen as his own man, making his own decisions; however, to some, it looked like he was being used by Abbott and his acolytes to wreck Turnbull’s prime ministership, and was, intentionally or not, providing a back door for Abbott’s resurrection. Dutton was mightily insulted by the notion that he was Abbott’s surrogate.

However it might have looked to those on the outside, Dutton insists he took steps well before August 2018 to make it clear to Abbott that he was never going to act as his proxy. Ultimately, this made little difference to some of his colleagues, even those who liked Dutton, who thought that a victory for Dutton would mean a victory for the years of bastardry by Abbott and his acolytes – not to mention the prospect of a wipe-out at the election.

Dutton tried to separate from Abbott, although he was careful never to be overly critical of him publicly. He told Abbott he would never be his Trojan horse. Abbott was upset, but Dutton didn’t care. He said later he didn’t even want Abbott in his cabinet, and would not have wanted him there if he had won. This differs from what Abbott’s friends were telling people. According to them, Abbott ‘absolutely’ had an undertaking from Dutton that he would be appointed to the frontbench. When it became clear that this prospect was costing him votes in the party room, Dutton told journalists who were asking that no promises had been made. He told colleagues who were also asking that Abbott would not be on his frontbench.

Like most of his colleagues, Dutton would have been happiest if Abbott had just disappeared. So while Dutton was not the Trojan horse for Abbott, Abbott was the riderless, stalking horse for Dutton. He created the environment for Dutton to act. He did the dirty work, creating the constant sense of crisis that ensured Turnbull never got ahead in the polls, enabling Dutton to inflict a killer blow. Abbott’s behaviour repulsed so many Liberal MPs that it cost Dutton the votes he needed to succeed. His running mate, Greg Hunt, as unpopular in his own way as Abbott, also cost Dutton precious votes.

Dutton was hearing what everyone else was hearing: Abbott saw him as a vehicle to return him to the leadership. One backbencher planning to do media the next day texted Dutton on the Sunday night, asking him if he was planning anything on the leadership so he could couch his answers carefully. Despite all the signs to the contrary, and in keeping with his denials to Turnbull and others, Dutton assured him he wasn’t. Regardless, this MP, who liked Dutton, took the opportunity to warn him that if he did, it would look as if he had been put up to it by Abbott and Co., and it would end badly for him.

Peta Credlin had reportedly told friends – what one associate called a fantasy option – that Dutton would wrest the leadership from Turnbull, he would go on to lose the election, then Abbott would regain the opposition leadership, and – simsalabim – go on to repeat history by destroying a Shorten Labor government and becoming prime minister again himself. Credlin was utterly convinced that Dutton would be the one to replace Turnbull, just as she seemed convinced that Shorten would win the election.

Reviewing the period, Dutton was disenchanted with both Abbott and Turnbull: ‘They were in a death embrace. For 10 years. I would talk to Abbott when he was PM, and he would go on about Turnbull. I would say, “For fuck’s sake, stop obsessing about Turnbull.” Then when Turnbull was PM, he would go on about Abbott and I would say, “For fuck’s sake, stop obsessing about Abbott.” They were obsessed with each other. It was debilitating. It couldn’t go on.

‘A long time ago, I told Tony Abbott I would never be his proxy, never be his Trojan horse. That upset him at the time. If people think I am some shrinking violet …

‘I don’t take direction from anyone. I did my level best to make that government work. I formed a judgement in Queensland and elsewhere, that just as they did with Abbott, they could not connect with him [Turnbull].’

Months later, after he had had a little time to reflect on what had happened, when he spoke to me for this book – and before he unloaded to NewsCorp tabloids about Turnbull – he was still comfortable with what he had done. He had no remorse, no regrets. At least, none that he cared to share.

He had over that time, however, concluded that Turnbull had played Morrison, stringing him along, never intending to support him, and that equally Morrison had played Turnbull, publicly standing by him while privately allowing his lieutenants to muster the numbers to depose him. In the end, of course, that meant Dutton got played, too.

Neither of them will regard this as a compliment: there is a touch of the Paul Keatings about Peter Dutton. It is not intended as an insult. Well, not entirely.

Keating was confronting, colourful, polarising, thoughtful, funny, alarmingly frank, loved by the party’s base and by his rusted-ons in caucus, and, ultimately, at his peak, a ruthless cut-through politician. So is Dutton. Keating could not and, even now, cannot be ignored. Nor could Dutton.

When Dutton told the chair of Qantas, Alan Joyce, and other business people lobbying heavily for same-sex marriage to stick to their knitting, it was deeply evocative of Keating’s determinedly un-PC observation many years before that no one could ever convince him that two men and a cocker spaniel were a family.

There is one critical difference. Although Dutton has friends across the factional divide in the Liberal Party – certainly more than Morrison ever had, being infinitely more popular in the party room than Morrison ever was – he has not managed to breach the great divide between his base and elite opinion, from the battlers to educated suburbanites and lifetime subscribers of the Opera House. And who knows now if he will ever get the chance – although if we have learned anything over the past dozen years, it is to expect the unexpected. Having crossover appeal in these days of vitriol and polarisation could be overrated; but in a compulsory preferential-voting system, it is critical to have some appeal south of the Queensland border and beyond the narrow confines of the party base. And beyond the right-wing media pack, whose first preference was always Abbott. It would have been easier for Dutton to remake himself as prime minister – like Morrison, for instance, has been able to do.

Colleagues such as Jane Prentice and others urged him to get out of the immigration portfolio, but he was reluctant to let it go. Initially, it was because he wanted to see the last of the refugees rehoused from the detention centres on Manus Island and Nauru, and then later because it dealt with issues close to the heart of the Liberal base.

The thing about Dutton, which some people find confounding, is that he is generally well liked by colleagues outside the right. Prentice, who lost her preselection to a man, describes him as a sweet, nice guy.

The party’s federal president, Nick Greiner, was incredulous that Dutton had challenged Turnbull, and agreed with those who said that if Dutton was the answer, it was a pretty strange question. However, after getting to know Dutton better, Greiner liked him, regarded him as intelligent and much more nuanced than he had realised.

Dutton and leading moderate Marise Payne had worked together for 20 years. He regarded her as a friend. After it was over, they had a drink in his office, went through what had happened, and then, he says, they ‘hugged it out’.

The private Dutton is a very different persona from the public Dutton.

When he became home affairs minister – a portfolio created for him by Turnbull over the objections of Julie Bishop and George Brandis – there was an opportunity for him to branch out more into areas of national security. He zeroed in on African gangs in Melbourne, which won him the support of Jason Wood, who held Latrobe for the Liberals, but his language dwelled on conflict rather than reconciliation. While that won him the votes of the Woods of the world, it alienated others.

Gangs are a serious problem in many Australian communities, whether they are bikies, Vietnamese, Lebanese, Greek, or Chinese. The debate on immigration was getting a nasty edge – not just subliminally, but also in overtly racist or bigoted ways, as politicians such as Fraser Anning and Pauline Hanson competed for the vote of the maddies with ever-more-extreme positions. It panicked hard-right Liberals and Nationals from the deep north into trying to compete for their votes, and gave a unsavoury tone to the debate on immigration targets.

There was a debate to be had about migrant numbers and congestion in cities, and about how to get new arrivals to settle in regions or places such as Adelaide or Tasmania, but there were those who overstepped the mark – including Labor’s leader in New South Wales, Michael Daley, caught on tape saying that educated Chinese were taking the jobs of Australians, forcing young people to flee Sydney. Daley’s offensive remarks cost Labor votes during the state election, and continued to reverberate during the federal election.

Dutton never went that far, but he was not prone to nuances in his public statements. He saw it as his mission to sharpen the contrasts and to keep the base on side. ‘The base loves that stuff,’ he would say after particularly torrid interventions by him in debates.

It bought him some grief after the massacres in two mosques in New Zealand by a white Australian supremacist.

It was Keating who told me years before that he could easily flick the switch to vaudeville; but if you have seen the classic Hollywood movie that prompted him to say this, you have to be singing and tap-dancing while you do it, and not skip a beat.

Keating and Dutton have this in common, too: a disarming frankness, particularly when they are dissecting their enemies, wherever they might reside. Two days after the coup, I spoke to Dutton, just after an Insiders episode had finished screening. Calling back in response to an earlier message from me, he asked if I had been on the show. I wasn’t, but Barrie Cassidy hadn’t been able to resist re-running my prediction from my previous appearance on 12 August, when I had immodestly pointed out I was the journalist who first said we were in danger of becoming the Italy of the Pacific because of the churn in prime ministers.

‘It could be time to say arrivederci to all that,’ I had enthused, showing my mastery of Italian as well as forecasting. ‘Malcolm Turnbull will clock up 1,100 days in office on 18 September, making him Australia’s longest-serving prime minister in 11 years, zipping past Kevin Rudd both times, Julia Gillard, and Tony Abbott.’ Cassidy said this was like the kiss of death.

When I told Dutton, he laughed and said, ‘Thanks for that. You jinxed him.’ The thought had occurred to me, too.

Dutton, pledging to be 100 per cent behind Morrison, was keen to keep everything he had. ‘I don’t need to change my image in that respect. The best thing I can do is continue to appeal to older Australians’ concerns about borders, visa cancellations, law and order,’ he said.

Later that same day, Morrison took immigration off him and gave it to David Coleman. For some, this was a sign that concerns remained about Dutton’s eligibility. His enemies not only thought he was too divisive in that portfolio, but they believed he was shifted because of fears that the many decisions made by him as immigration minister could be subject to challenge. Coleman was uncontroversial and safe.

Despite Turnbull’s insistence that he had not been aware of questions surrounding Dutton and section 44(v) until they blew up in the media, Dutton was certain the whole question of his eligibility had been dredged up by Turnbull in that week to try to discredit him, because the prime minister’s office had had access to the files on his family’s financial interests for months after all MPs conducted audits during the chaos over citizenship, when politicians fell like skittles.

Not long after this, after the same-sex marriage plebiscite, Dutton confided to Cormann that he would look at his options mid-term. He did that, preparing to strike after Turnbull had lost the 40th Newspoll in a row. ‘That was D-Day,’ he told me.

That would have been either during the next sitting brackets around mid-September 2018 or early October, which, strangely enough, fitted the timetable that Cormann had outlined to people in December 2017, when he told them that Dutton would assess his position.

Even before the Longman by-election, Dutton was becoming exasperated with Turnbull.

‘He couldn’t make a decision. He debated around for too long on every issue. Every political opportunity passed us by,’ he says.

‘All the talk about good cabinet government was a backhander for Abbot, which was fine. He wanted consensus.’

Although he gives credit to Turnbull for instituting proper cabinet processes, he complained that at times a discussion would be interminable, with no decision made and no conclusion reached.

‘You had 13 ministers who resigned. He lost 14 seats at the last election. We were still talking about noodle nation NEG, and people didn’t understand it. He couldn’t succinctly put a message. He was one of the brightest people. He was a terrible campaigner. He ran the worst campaign in Liberal history.

‘He restored integrity to the prime minister’s office – the whole cabinet government process was a contrast to Abbott,’ he said.

‘But it was code, or cover, for not being able to make a decision. I was assistant treasurer to Costello, and in cabinet, he or Howard would say here is this issue, it’s a tough one for us, here are the options. [In the Turnbull cabinet] all of our discussions were rambling, they just went on and on and on. Nothing leaked, not even from the last one. I did my best to make it work. We were going to get smashed. No question, in my mind.’

Dutton harks back to the cabinet discussion in July 2016 on whether the Australian government would support Kevin Rudd’s nomination to run for UN secretary-general.

‘He had obviously been playing footsies with Rudd on the United Nations,’ he says.

‘The room was split 50–50 as to whether Rudd should receive the support of the government. He walked out saying we would have to give further consideration. He couldn’t make the call. He couldn’t make the call himself, because ultimately he was not a Liberal at heart.

‘Howard and Costello were on a different part of the spectrum. They were instinctive Liberals; they could make decisions. Malcolm saw the Liberal Party as a vehicle to become prime minister. He was a barrister who could argue the brief for either side.’

Dutton says that colleagues, both in Queensland and in marginal seats, were going into meltdown, pressing him to do something.

He accuses Turnbull of having built up expectations in Longman – unlike Morrison, who downplayed them in the by-election for Turnbull’s seat of Wentworth.

‘Nobody in the country thought we could win Wentworth,’ he said. ‘We could have won if Turnbull hadn’t sabotaged us. There would have been wind in our sails. Because we lost it, Morrison lost some momentum.

‘I remember saying to him [Turnbull] in Longman, we have to be careful about expectations, because if we lose this, they are going to start talking about leadership again. You will be on your way to 40 Newspolls, and back in the mire.’

‘He said to me on two occasions, this government doesn’t survive without Mathias, Morrison, you, and me. We are the only four people who make it work.’

Dutton described himself, Morrison, and Cormann as the ‘Karl Roves’ of the government (a reference to the US guru instrumental in George W Bush’s presidential successes).

Dutton describes their relationship as ‘excellent’, including during the last crazy days of trying to sort through ‘the NEG 10.0’.

‘In leadership meetings, in NSC, cabinet, I did absolutely everything to make that government work,’ he says.

Dutton says the 2016 election campaign was the worst he had ever seen. He subsequently lost all hope that the government would be re-elected.

‘We lost 14 seats in 2016. He had to be coaxed out to make a statement [on election night].

‘All of this said to me we were on target to lose 14 more. Those who are criticising us now would say when there was annihilation, why did you allow it to happen?

‘And Malcolm would have been in New York, and would never have looked back – you know, it was Tony Abbott, it was ministers, it was blah blah blah.

‘I saw what the campaign was last time. There was not one element of improvement since. His decision-making, his decisiveness, none of that improved.

‘We needed to find a slogan somewhere between three words and 3,000 words. He just couldn’t communicate.

‘The residual hope was that people didn’t hate him. But they kept saying we are so disappointed in him. He saved us from Tony Abbot, but I don’t know what he stands for.

‘While they didn’t hate him, there was a prospect of turning it around, but it never improved.

‘You are at 38 Newspolls, 49–51, it was wipe-out territory.

‘Going around the electorate, people were saying we love your work locally, but we can’t vote for you. I would say we have done this and that, and they would say, you should get rid of him, or we will,’ Dutton recalled.

‘It’s exactly how it was in ’07 with Howard, and with Newman in the state election. Our numbers only held up because Shorten was there. Once we got into the campaign proper, we would be smashed. We were going to get smashed.’

He dismisses Turnbull’s claims that marginal-seat polling showed the government ahead. ‘Nobody saw this polling. It’s bullshit. People were over us, and they were over him. People had already made a decision. The numbers were artificially inflated because of Shorten.’

He says that at the time the Daily Telegraph and Ray Hadley told the world he was making a move on the leadership, he was ‘working up in my mind what was feasible’.

‘After Longman, the debacle of the NEG, I started to conclude that the wheels were well and truly coming off. All the marginal-seat people thought they were going to be wiped out.

‘What was going to happen with the NEG, his signature policy? We couldn’t get it through the parliament. We would still be talking about it today.’

He also believes that the company tax cuts should have been dumped at the end of June, even though his very good friend Mathias Cormann was still committed to them.

‘They should have been dropped. Mathias thought he could get them through. Turnbull should have had the leadership capacity to make that call.’ Again, in Dutton’s view, this was proof that Turnbull couldn’t make the hard decisions.

More and more MPs were going to him, he says. Not to Abbott. While Dutton had told Abbott long before that he would never be his stalking horse, he had also told him he ‘didn’t need to be out there doing stuff’.

‘Tony could never help himself. Abbott, Abetz, and Andrews were never in the inner sanctum. I wasn’t a proxy for him; I find that insulting. I talked to people whose political judgement I trusted, and senior people within the government.’

When the Daily Telegraph story broke, he dismisses his delay in responding as inconsequential. He had two choices. ‘Those things, you either feed them or you ignore them. I thought making comment would just feed it.’

Asked if he meant what he said in the tweet, he said, ‘Yes, I did.’

However, he does admit he was talking to people that weekend. ‘I was sounding people out, to see where they were at. Trying to inform myself where the mood was at.’

There was a lot more than that, of course, as his conversation on the VIP plane with Steve Ciobo showed.

Dutton also admits he had spoken to the Liberal National Party president, Gary Spence. ‘He thought Turnbull had to turn things around quickly, or there had to be a change,’ he says. In fact, by then, Spence wanted Turnbull gone.

Dutton is mightily suspicious about the sequence of events the following week, and outlines how he believes they unfolded. ‘Turnbull tells Julie Bishop he is going to open the leadership, but doesn’t tell anyone else,’ he says. ‘But he also tells the whip, Nola Marino, who has to prepare the ballots.’

Dutton then points out that the deputy whip was Bert van Manen, part of the Morrison bible group.

‘He [van Manen] would have known, he could have given them notice,’ he says, naming them: ‘Stuart Robert, Alex Hawke, Bert van Manen, Steve Irons.’ He says he has no proof, but he has ‘no doubt’ they did not vote for Turnbull, and in fact voted for him in that first ballot.

Thanks to media reports at the time, Dutton got it slightly wrong on Nola Marino. She and her principal adviser, Nathan Winn, figured something would happen, so decided on Monday to begin preparing the ballot papers. She did tell her deputies in advance, and his theory that van Manen then told other Morrison supporters to prepare is eminently plausible, especially in light of van Manen’s refusal to discuss what he did that day.

Dutton did not hesitate to challenge when Turnbull pulled his surprise spill. ‘I would have looked weak and impotent if I had not,’ he says, but bridles at suggestions that his campaign was chaotic.

Dutton was reluctant to say which colleagues he took into his confidence or whose counsel he sought on his challenge, beyond emphasising his closeness with Cormann. However, there were others who thought it might have been better if he had at least waited after the ballot on Tuesday, and partly stuck to his original timetable of striking again after the 40th losing Newspoll. However, that also would have given Morrison’s people more time to organise. Both the government and Turnbull would have bled to death.

Trusting his instinct that Turnbull was ‘dead’ after the first vote, Dutton determined to go hell for leather to bring Turnbull down. ‘I did not think about pausing,’ he says. ‘I thought he was terminal, and I thought it had to be resolved. It needed to be done more quickly, rather than stretching it out.’

Dutton surmises that Turnbull’s plan was to try to get to Friday, and then call an election as soon as he possibly could. The government would get smashed – as it was always going to, under him – and then he would blame the instability and Dutton for it.

‘He was playing for time,’ Dutton said. ‘He was playing Scott, and Scott was playing him. He was saying to Morrison and Bishop, you work it out. Morrison was in the same leadership meetings, NSC meetings, as me. He knew he [Turnbull] was hopeless. He could read it was leading to a crescendo.

‘Turnbull was hoping 43 signatures wouldn’t come up, he was leaning on the solicitor-general, and Hunt lost a couple of votes. The damage to me was done by section 44.

‘Turnbull was playing for time. I don’t think he was supporting Morrison for prime minister. The vote would never have been brought on if we had not got to 43.’

Dutton says Morrison never had the numbers on the conservative side. ‘He brought the “anybody-but-Dutton bloc,” Dutton says, fully aware of the fears of some of the moderates.

He is snippy that his plan to remove the GST from power bills was ‘mispresented’ by Morrison. ‘I thought there was a complete market failure in energy. The government had to do a few things to distinguish itself from Labor, and to get over the shock of losing another prime minister – something tangible on energy prices.

‘I thought it was necessary to try and restart the conversation. What was important was the 24 hours to frame it. I had planned to go straight to a drought-affected community.’

He also dismisses claims of bullying by his supporters. ‘People lean on people,’ he says. ‘We are not shrinking violets. People put their arguments.’

When I suggest that Michael Sukkar threatened Jane Hume’s preselection, Dutton seems surprised. ‘Not at my urging,’ he says.

Dutton knew on the Friday morning it was slipping away from him when Mitch Fifield visited to give him the bad news in person, and then knew that he was done for a couple of hours later when Scott Ryan rang to tell him he would not be voting for him.

He was happy with the reaction from punters later. ‘Almost without exception, people would say, good on you for getting rid of him, sorry you didn’t get there, don’t give up.’

Back then, he was confident about his personal future, and what he could have offered if he had succeeded in his leadership bid, making a subtle criticism of Morrison’s religious and social conservatism.

‘I thought I could campaign well,’ he said. ‘I knew what would work in marginal seats.’ That part was certainly true, given how he had managed to hold onto Dickson.

‘The stars aligned for me as best they could. I could have campaigned on law and order. I had credibility in that space. Negatives would have neutralised.

‘I am no further right than Howard and Costello. I am not the evangelical here, not out-and-proud on abortion, I voted for gay marriage, and I wasn’t going to bring Tony Abbot back. But you are framed with these things.’

As for why Turnbull was no longer prime minister, Dutton does not hesitate. It was all his own fault.

‘He blew himself up. In his last act, an act of political self-immolation, he demonstrated he had no political judgement.’

It has to be said that Dutton also made a number of fundamental errors. Instead of operating under the radar, he told people who told other people what he was planning, and they put it in the newspaper or broadcast it on radio, so Turnbull had plenty of warning and prepared accordingly. So did Morrison.

Because the first spill was brought on so abruptly by Turnbull, only a few of Dutton’s closest friends even knew of his plan. As a result, some of those who signed up to his campaign instantaneously after Tuesday’s vote treated it like student politics, or sought to heavy their colleagues. They seemed not to know or care that it is no small thing to remove a sitting prime minister. It requires meticulous planning and a deft touch with colleagues.

Others inside the Dutton camp described Cormann as the commander-in-chief of Dutton’s campaign.

‘He did attend meetings in the monkey-pod room, and was clearly in charge of operations. Mathias was certainly in control. Cormann dodged a bullet [afterwards] because a number of people involved kept their positions or were promoted, notwithstanding their behaviour,’ one said.

‘They would project numbers onto the screen and say they had the numbers, but they didn’t.

‘There was no structure, no planning.’

Others found the bloodlust off-putting. James McGrath says there was a level of joy back in 2015 at tearing Tony Abbott down, which disturbed him at the time.

‘I kept thinking this is pretty bad, what we are doing. It’s why Mitch [Fifield], Scott [Ryan] and I got Maccas and went home after the spill.

‘Some of Dutton’s people might have been more turned on by the kill, in getting rid of Malcolm rather than making Dutton prime minister. They were driven to get rid of Turnbull, when they should have been trying to sell Dutton. They didn’t give people a sense he would save their seats at the election. It was about killing Malcolm.

‘It also didn’t help him that Abetz, Andrews, and Abbott were doing media. They should have shut up and let the young Turks do it.’

Dutton’s supporters had no time to prepare – they’d been kept in the dark, they were given little direction, their confidence was misplaced, and then later they feared they had been misled.

At one point, Greg Hunt fed in intel that Josh Frydenberg would vote for Dutton. Frydenberg insists this was never the case.

Dutton now realises that Hunt was a bad choice of his for deputy. The Victorians were particularly unimpressed. Not only did most of them not want Dutton, fearing they would be wiped out at the election if he was leader, but they certainly did not want Hunt, even though he was a fellow Victorian.

Hunt was an effective energy minister and a dedicated health minister, charged with reversing some of the damage caused to the Coalition in the 2016 campaign over its health record and the Mediscare campaign. Almost every weekend as health minister, he would release details of new drugs, to fight cancer or arthritis or what felt like every other conceivable illness, which the government would be listing on the Pharmaceutical Benefits List to make them affordable for patients.

Previous health ministers would release the names of listed drugs en masse during the working week with little fanfare, receiving little or no publicity. Hunt knew how to get attention.

But he had a terrible temper.

A few months before the coup, Hunt was compelled to make a public apology to the mayor of Katherine, Fay Miller, for swearing at her during a meeting and pointing his finger in her face. Hunt twice dropped the f-bomb on Ms Miller, who later described his behaviour as misogynistic.

The charge of misogyny is hotly disputed by male colleagues. They, too, have been on the receiving end over the years, where Hunt has lost his temper and abused them in front of others. ‘He can be very nasty,’ one said.

Hunt was also widely suspected of briefing against colleagues and of persistently, covertly seeking to undermine Turnbull.

There was one notorious story from late 2015 that Hunt had made disparaging remarks about Turnbull to Australia’s ambassador in France, not long before the prime minister arrived in Paris. The ambassador, Stephen Brady, thought it prudent to inform Turnbull. Turnbull’s allies would remind him of this whenever they thought he needed to be on guard about enemies within. They related the story after the days of madness when, along with several other ministers, Hunt voted for Dutton, then pledged loyalty to Turnbull in parliament, then resigned, and then voted against him in the spill.

The former Victorian Liberal leader Matthew Guy had also warned Turnbull about Hunt. Around mid-2017, when Guy raised a local political problem with him, Turnbull suggested to Guy that he should ask Hunt to help him sort it. Guy was astonished, and told Turnbull he did not think this was a good idea. He asked Turnbull if he was sure he could trust Hunt to be his point man in Victoria, and if he believed him to be loyal to him. Turnbull said yes. Guy tried to tell him to remember who his friends were.

Ultimately, Dutton says he had little choice but to go with Hunt. He needed a Victorian, even though he was confident his strong stand on law and order would see his position improve there. His contacts on The Australian had told him that when it came to poll ratings, he was strongest in Queensland, followed by Western Australia, followed by Victoria.

Dutton had thought initially about asking Pyne to run as his deputy, because, in spite of everything, they got on reasonably well. He thought Pyne was pragmatic and would bring moderates with him. Pyne, whose office adjoins the monkey-pod room, and who says he could hear them talking through the connecting wall, thought this idea was hilarious. He says he heard Cormann say, ‘I will go and talk to Pyne about being deputy leader.’ He never did. He also heard them talking about courting Ann Sudmalis and Rowan Ramsey, so Pyne made sure the moderates got to them first.

Dutton would have preferred a woman as deputy, but the most senior Victorian female was Kelly O’Dwyer, and although he liked her, he believed she lacked gravitas. She never would have agreed, in any case. He also thought Frydenberg had been damaged by the NEG, and was aware of a non-aggression pact between Frydenberg and Hunt, so thought Hunt the best available option.

‘He didn’t bring any votes,’ Dutton said later. ‘It probably cost votes. That was a mistake.’

It most certainly was.

There had been speculation some time before that Hunt would be Dutton’s running mate. Dan Tehan saw it reported again in the weekend papers. On the Monday afternoon, when the corridors were exploding with talk of a leadership challenge, Tehan rang Josh Frydenberg.

Tehan told him that if anything happened, he should run for the deputy’s job. Tehan didn’t know at this stage who would be leader, but whoever it was, he would rather Frydenberg was deputy.

Tehan had some history with Morrison. He had been chief of staff to the tourism minister, Fran Bailey, when Morrison ran Tourism Australia and was responsible for launching young model Lara Bingle onto the world stage in the ‘Where the bloody hell are you?’ advertising campaign.

There was tension between Bailey and Morrison, and Tehan often had to act as a bridge between them. In one small historical footnote, Tehan and I helped make sure that Morrison and his crew were gazumped by Bailey in one of those minor battles that often occur between politicians and outsiders in the hunt for publicity. It happened after Bailey’s office got wind that Nine’s A Current Affair was doing a package, focussing on Morrison, on the decision by the British to ban the advertisement because of the use of that most offensive swear word, ‘bloody’.

It was March 2006, and one of my tasks back then, as a staffer in the cabinet policy unit, which came under prime minister John Howard’s office, was to help co-ordinate ministers and their media appearances. Tehan came seeking my advice about how his minister should handle the looming story on A Current Affair.

It occurred to me that the greatest journalist in the press gallery, Laurie Oakes, who loved nothing better than a scoop, might also not be averse to scooping another program in his own stable. I called Oakes, asking him if he was interested in doing a story that would feature an exclusive interview with the minister on the Poms. His report would obviously air on the Nine news before A Current Affair could screen its version. Oakes did not hesitate, and on 9 March 2006 there was Fran Bailey on the national news ridiculing the British for banning the ad.

‘This is, of course, from the country that gave us Benny Hill and the Two Ronnies and Ali G, so I’m a bit bemused,’ Bailey said. Bailey then took off for England, accompanied by Tehan and Bingle. Bailey had some friendly advice for Bingle: ‘Now, darling, you just sit there and smile, and I will do all the talking.’

Lots of shots of the beautiful Bingle; no sign of Morrison. Soon after, there was no sign of Morrison at all at Tourism Australia. He had been sacked.

It was only a minor setback for Morrison, with no hard feelings, hey – except that after he became prime minister, he gave Tehan the education portfolio in his ministry, charging him with resolving the conflict with Catholic Education over funding.

Tehan stuck with Turnbull during coup week – although, along the way, after Cormann told Turnbull that three other ministers had deserted him, Turnbull and his office thought that either Frydenberg or Tehan were included in the defections. Tehan had gone quiet, for reasons which would soon become obvious. Laundy rang Tehan, and asked if he could come and see him. He apologised for asking, but wanted to know if Tehan was still with them. Tehan said he was. The prime minister’s office believed him, and concluded that Cormann was lying.

Like others, Tehan’s assessment was that the vote on the Tuesday would not resolve the leadership, but initially he thought Turnbull would make it to the end of the week. He was hoping that things would settle down – even though, as he is fond of saying, modern politics is a funny beast. It takes on a life of its own.

‘It’s like sheep on a boat,’ was his way of describing it. ‘One or two go to one side, then more and more, and the ship starts to tilt.’

Tehan had another tricky task ahead, with Frydenberg challenging Hunt. Frydenberg and Hunt are – or were – best mates. Hunt was a groomsman at Frydenberg’s wedding, Frydenberg was best man at Hunt’s wedding, and they are godfathers to each other’s daughters.

Frydenberg and Hunt had discussed their leadership ambitions over the years. Because Hunt had got into parliament first, because he had been there longer and was more senior, they both assumed he would be the first to make headway, and that he would do it with Frydenberg’s support. So assured did this seem that Frydenberg had once told his friend, ‘If you run, I can’t see myself running against you.’

Hunt was highly ambitious. Cormann had confided to people at the end of 2017 that no one was agitating against Turnbull (even though he also confided that Dutton was reserving his options for later in 2018), except Hunt. Hunt’s theory was that instability might work in his favour.

It did him no good with his colleagues, particularly the ones who suspected that he regularly briefed against them.

Tehan and the other Victorians would not wear Hunt. Tony Smith, Scott Ryan, and Kelly O’Dwyer all rang Frydenberg to urge him to run, and pledged to support him. They quickly coalesced.

On Thursday, when it became clear that Morrison and Bishop were both running, and that the petition was getting to the magic 43 required for another party-room meeting, Tehan told Frydenberg he had to run.

Frydenberg said he had to do something first. He had to go and speak to Hunt; he had to tell his friend face to face that he was going to run against him. It was an extremely difficult conversation. Hunt reminded Frydenberg of his words a few years before, and asked Frydenberg not to run against him. Frydenberg argued that they were now dealing with completely unexpected events. He said he would remain loyal to Turnbull until the end, but if the spill motion got up, and if Bishop did not run for the deputy’s job again, he would put his hand up. He felt he could make a contribution.

So much had happened since they had made their pact. Frydenberg seized his opportunity. This was nothing personal; it was politics. Frydenberg then rang people, such as Arthur Sinodinos, whom he had worked with in Howard’s office, and whom he regarded as a mentor, to seek his advice. He also asked for his vote.

Frydenberg asked for Melissa Price (later rewarded with a promotion to cabinet as environment minister) and Scott Ryan to be brought in to help with his campaign.

On Wednesday, Dutton’s friend Steve Ciobo began his own campaign for the deputy leadership. He thought it made no sense to have Frydenberg, because of the problems with the NEG.

Ciobo reached an agreement with Hunt that if Dutton were elected, he (Ciobo) would not run. What he neglected to do was make another deal with Hunt that if Dutton were not elected, Hunt would pull out. Ciobo on his own would have stood a better chance against Frydenberg.

On Thursday afternoon, with only hours to go, Frydenberg was in his office with a spreadsheet, sorting the numbers. He was surrounded by Tehan, Ryan, Price, and Karen Andrews, when who should stick his head in to say hello but Michael Kroger? Talk about awkward. This was the Michael Kroger, the Victorian president of the Liberal Party, who was now backing Dutton and Hunt, who had previously touted Frydenberg as a future leader, whose behaviour and interventions, either privately with MPs or in the media commenting on events that week, was considered inappropriate. As soon as he realised what he had stumbled into, Kroger quickly withdrew.

Later, Frydenberg told those helping him that Tony Abbott had called him and asked him not to run. Abbott was smart enough to know that Frydenberg would cost Dutton and Hunt votes, but not smart enough to realise that all his destabilising statements and behaviour to do with the NEG meant he was the last person that Frydenberg would listen to.

Frydenberg’s helpers divided up their lists, and began calling. By the time of the ballot the next day, Frydenberg had spoken to almost every Liberal MP. One of the points he made was that he was not running on anyone’s ticket: he was running as an independent.

There were around half-a-dozen people who voted for Dutton as leader who did not vote for Hunt as deputy, but voted for Frydenberg. The vote showed that he had drawn support from moderates and conservatives.

Frydenberg demolished Hunt. It was an utter humiliation for Hunt, delivered by his friend with the help of his enemies.

Frydenberg won on the first ballot with 46 votes. Ciobo came in second with 20, and Hunt came third with 19.

When his former boss John Howard rang to congratulate Frydenberg on winning the deputy leadership, Howard asked, tongue firmly in cheek, ‘What took you so long?’ Howard had become Malcolm Fraser’s treasurer in 1977 when he was 38 years old. By comparison, Frydenberg was an ancient 47.

Hunt was crushed by the vote. Afterwards, although he stayed active, making almost daily announcements about new drugs on the PBS, stakeholders from professional groups reported that he had lost interest. They began to bypass him, preferring to seek help on health matters from other senior advisers in the government, particularly Peter Conran, who had come out of retirement to run the cabinet policy unit again. Hunt’s colleagues noticed that he sounded beaten in private.

He spent the election campaign hunkered down in his seat of Flinders, beating off a stiff challenge from Labor and newly minted independent Julia Banks. Banks received 14 per cent of the vote, but there was a swing of only 3.65 per cent on primaries against Hunt.