- I would blow Dane Cook
- Dec 26, 2008
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quote:
‘Don’t play with the big boys’
In the PM’s office, you’re either “compliant or an enemy’’. One tirade by his right-hand woman sums up the siege mentality.
Mark Connell came back to his desk to find three missed calls from an unfamiliar number. Then came the fourth call.
Shouting down the line at a million miles an hour was the principal private secretary to the Prime Minister, Sally Cray, as she tore into Connell, who is the chief of staff to NSW Deputy Premier John Barilaro. It was shock-and-awe stuff.
“I’m so f..king angry,” came the tirade from Malcolm Turnbull’s senior staffer, who Connell had never met.
“Your boss will cease (talking about Turnbull) and he will step down from this talk about Turnbull and the leadership.
“You guys are on the second rung; don’t play with the big boys.
“I don’t give a f..k if I have to quit my job in order to sit down in front of (The Daily Telegraph editor) Chris Dore and tell him all about your boss and what he has been up to!
“I know you’re high-fiving in there; you’ve got plans to keep going with the story and do press conferences.
“If I’m not allowed to leak about your boss and tell people what’s ... going on (with him) I will quit (so I can do so).”
Cray listed some unsubstantiated slurs against Barilaro she claimed she could present to the media as she continued to swear and threaten.
The call came an hour after Barilaro had given an interview to 2GB broadcaster Alan Jones on 2GB on December 1 calling on Turnbull to resign.
Connell, a former staffer for John Fahey when he was federal finance minister, had warned his boss not to do the interview — to no avail. You can hear in the interview Jones pushing Barilaro to the edge as the Deputy Premier proffers up private criticisms he has made to Jones about Turnbull on air and then finally the NSW Nationals leader proclaims: “My view is Turnbull should give Australians a Christmas gift and go before Christmas.”
And this: “Turnbull is the problem, the Prime Minister is the problem. He should step down and allow for a clean-out of what the leadership looks like federally.”
Now Connell was copping it from the PM’s office in a roasting the likes of which he had never experienced before.
Connell insisted to Cray that there were no more press appearances planned. That was it. (Later in the day, Barilaro tried to avoid cameras at a funeral in Canberra).
But Barilaro’s spray came at the worst possible time imaginable for Turnbull — about two weeks out from the Bennelong by-election which the PM desperately needed to win to keep his majority and to preserve his leadership.
The Barilaro comments ran on the front page of The Weekend Australian and ran strongly through evening news bulletins.
By the time Connell went into the NSW Premier’s office to discuss how the Premier was going to react to Barilaro’s comments, Gladys Berejiklian’s office already knew all about the Cray call.
Separately, a senior government figure had been deployed by the Turnbull office and contacted the NSW Nationals’ deputy leader, Niall Blair. The operative told him that if Barilaro had any skeletons in his cupboard, he had better watch out.
The incident gives an insight into the workings of Team Malcolm; an insight into what some ministers say has become a kind of “siege mentality” which is gripping the Turnbull office as the Prime Minister and his closest ally, Cray, become distrustful of people within their own ranks. This siege mentality extends to journalists and media outlets who do not toe the line constantly with favourable coverage for the PM.
The Turnbull team plays for keeps.
Cray is known to regularly send messages on WhatsApp or send texts to journalists complaining they are not doing enough for Turnbull and letting his opponent off the hook.
Cray is known in Canberra as the Prime Minister’s de facto chief of staff — a kind of “new Peta Credlin”.
There are disagreements over whether or not Cray operates in the same fashion as Peta Credlin did when she was chief of staff to Tony Abbott. Some say that Cray is kinder to MPs and staff; to be summoned to Credlin meant very bad news back in the Abbott days.
There is also an argument that while Credlin was more involved in the policy formulation with Abbott, Cray is more involved with giving Turnbull confirmation and reassurance and her defenders say she is “more collegiate”. And there seems little doubt Turnbull consults his ministers and his leadership group more than Abbott did.
But there seems no doubt that Cray is a central figure in the Turnbull regime, just as Credlin was in the Abbott team; and she therefore bears some responsibility for the flawed political strategy of the government.
One source described Ms Cray’s spray at Mr Barilaro as “uncharacteristic” and it came at a time of high pressure in the government when the Bennelong by-election was on and LNP MP George Christensen was threatening to quit the Coalition.
Government for the PM seems to be something of a “family affair”. Cray and Turnbull’s indigenous affairs adviser, Kerry Pinkstone, are personal friends of Turnbull’s daughter, Daisy.
Both rent Lucy Turnbull’s $2 million apartment on the Kingston foreshore in Canberra during sitting weeks.
Even though bureaucrat after bureaucrat has served as Malcolm’s chief of staff; from Drew Clarke to Greg Moriarty to current incumbent Peter Woolcott — it is Cray who carries the political cards.
But how competent has she been in guiding the Prime Minister on the political course he needed to go on?
There’s a common whinge that Turnbull’s office is loaded with Liberals who live in the eastern suburbs of Sydney — people of Turnbull stock; not the types to know what hits people in the mortgage-belt suburbs.
“We have sucked up to the public schools — given them a whole lot more money — they’re not going to vote for us,” one minister says.
“We’re trying to suck up to ... the renewable energy community — no one in pro-renewables is going to vote for us.
“We can’t win with these positions politically.”
The expression used around Turnbull is that he gets “played on the politics” at every turn.
One minister warned The Australian of the pitfalls of this piece: “Sally sits there and she will try to attribute every off-the-record comment,” the minister said.
“Have you ever written a story about the Turnbull prime ministership before? Watch out.
“Malcolm’s office is very Sydney eastern suburbs ... so of course they hear different things from what we’re concerned about — which is energy prices and immigration.
“The biggest mistake he could make now — which Abbott made — would be for his office to become paranoid.
“For a long time I thought the right thing is that he’s got to listen to people (then he can improve) but then his instincts have to change. That doesn’t happen easily or quickly.
“If you changed Sally out, how much difference would it make?
“For the PMO, either you’re on their side and compliant or you’re one of the enemy. You’re either an insider or an outsider.
“Malcolm makes a snide remark about someone ... Sally takes it and says ‘I better implement that’.”
Another minister says: “The underlying flaw is he (Turnbull) just doesn’t have political judgment.”
The minister laments the departure of former deputy chief of staff Brad Burke in November 2016 from the office. Burke went to work in the private sector.
“I think Brad Burke was a big loss (in the office),” says one minister. “It was the Brad and Sally show for a while. They were the yin and the yang in terms of their views.
“The office is supposed to resemble Howard’s office but in fact it resembles Rudd’s.
“They have got small-L liberals running around.”
Burke was known by fellow staff as a “Malcolm whisperer”.
Cray has also been described as “Malcolm’s mood manager”. It seems careful tactics are employed to work with a prime minister who can be difficult.
“He listens to f..k-all people but he listens to her (Cray),” one former staffer says.
Cray’s reputation as the enforcer and gatekeeper was confirmed again when Tasmanian senator Jonno Duniam brought Tasmanian Premier Will Hodgman to see the PM at a time when the state government was lobbying Canberra for funding for the Mersey Hospital, one parliamentary sitting day.
Cray barred Duniam and Tasmanian Health Minister Michael Ferguson from the meeting and gave Duniam a talking to on “following proper processes”, accusing him of seeking to ambush the PM.
But one former staffer says: “I don’t think it’s a problem with Sal, I really don’t. Yeah, she’s tough, she’s the enforcer and all that sort of stuff. You can’t read through that how the Newspoll is the way that it is.
“People had a perception (when Turnbull came to power) that they saw him as about the republic, same-sex marriage, the environment ... those things weren’t the right thing for him to pursue ... it would have blown up the partyroom.
“In the absence of that, it was like ‘what’s the next big thing?’ And there was no next big thing.”
But a senior Liberal source is more brutal: “The real problem is there isn’t a political strategist in his office.”
Cray had become the strategist by default.
Policy adviser David Bold has become a central person in the office — the person who negotiates with the crossbenchers. A few years ago he was a press secretary to former NSW education minister Adrian Piccoli.
Then there is an able, honest group of press secretaries — former ABC Tokyo correspondent Mark Simkin, former Daily Telegraph gallery journalist Daniel Meers, former ABC journalist Hayden Cooper.
But these are all types who would hardly be part of a robust debate in the office on the way to proceed. They are efficient, intelligent but mild-mannered characters.
The energy adviser, Sid Marris, is a former Canberra bureau chief for The Australian. Foreign affairs is Phillippa King, a former DFAT official who worked for Mike Baird.
Clive Mathieson, the former editor of The Australian, joined late last year as deputy chief of staff from Gladys Berejiklian’s office.
The office is known to have a “flat structure”. It’s Cray and the rest. That means junior staffers can get access to the Prime Minister but it ensures Cray is the dominant figure.
Others argue that Cray is not as forceful or full-on as Tony Abbott’s former chief of staff, Credlin, who, of course, came under such fire for being so dominant and for allowing herself to be portrayed as the real power behind the throne.
But, then, says one staffer: “What’s the message from the government press office?
“What is our message? I couldn’t even tell you.
“At least when Abbott was PM we had an (idea) of what we stand for. Malcolm derides these three-word slogans, but they work.
“You have a discussion with any long-term Coalition staffer and we don’t know what we’re fighting for.”
One vigorous defender of Turnbull and Cray is Workplace Minister Craig Laundy.
Laundy told The Australian that Turnbull and Cray simply had not had enough credit for the difficult policy areas they had been able to tackle at the end of last year — such as same-sex marriage and the National Energy Guarantee — through a divided partyroom.
“I don’t think he gets the credit he deserves in steering issues through a partyroom with a variety of extremely strongly held views,” Laundy says.
“Sally has been integral in facilitating these outcomes.
“Where she and Malcolm have been unfairly criticised is there have been a variety of things that have hit them from left field ... most notably citizenship.”
Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg, a former Abbott supporter and a right-winger, also defended Turnbull’s ability to achieve outcomes.
“It is no secret energy policy has been a tricky area for the Coalition and Malcolm Turnbull over many years,” he says. “But now we have a real breakthrough with the National Energy Guarantee due in no small part to the Prime Minister’s ability to lead, actively listen and constructively engage with his colleagues and stakeholders to deliver an important reform in that national interest.”
Some around the political traps jokingly refer to Malcolm and Lucy Turnbull as “Frank and Claire” after the characters in the US TV series House of Cards.
Visitors to Turnbull’s house were certainly left laughing to themselves after discovering the PM has a rowing machine downstairs, a bit like president Frank Underwood in House of Cards.
There is no question that Lucy Turnbull does play a role in some of the key decisions the Prime Minister makes.
There is no greater example of that than the bonking ban — the ban deployed on ministers not to sleep with their staff as Turnbull decided to get royally stuck into Barnaby Joyce and his morals after a tough question time following revelations Joyce was expecting a child with a former staffer.
Turnbull himself has said on the record that he came to his decision after a discussion with his wife.
The “Praetorian Guard” of the right wing that Malcolm Turnbull relies upon for his survival, Mathias Cormann and Peter Dutton, had argued vehemently to Turnbull that he should not introduce the bonk ban. Cormann and Dutton also advised Turnbull against antagonising Joyce in the press conference where it was announced.
But Turnbull came to his own “captain’s call” after discussions with Lucy.
It had been a difficult parliamentary week but the issue had been done and dusted.
“He stands up there at five minutes to five ... with a policy about what should be morals around marriages,” one staffer says incredulously.
There seems little doubt the concept of a cities minister and “cities deals” came from Lucy Turnbull’s time as chairwoman of the Committee for Sydney and she was present at early meetings on the subject; although lately Malcolm has been at pains to distance Lucy, the Greater Sydney Commission chairwoman, from these sorts of discussions.
Other signs of Lucy Turnbull’s influence include when the Prime Minister called a royal commission into juvenile detention in the Northern Territory after watching ABC’s Four Corners with his wife.
There were also suspicions in government when Turnbull got up in the house and gave his foolhardy pronouncement that Barnaby Joyce was “qualified to sit in this house and the High Court will so hold” that former barrister Tom Hughes QC (Lucy’s father) might have given Turnbull such advice.
After all, Mr Hughes’s legal advice was sought — and given in short phrases in writing — to Turnbull while he was opposition leader.
A surreal moment came last August, when Malcolm and Lucy Turnbull met Barnaby Joyce on the weekend in parliament house after the then deputy prime minister got the NZ high commission advice on the previous Thursday suggesting he had dual citizenship.
As the Prime Minister typed away on his computer, quoting various parts of the Constitution, he assured Joyce it would be OK and the High Court would find in his favour. Lucy Turnbull was finishing Turnbull’s sentences for him.
The Solicitor-General had cautiously advised Turnbull that it was “likely” the High Court would find in favour of the government — not that it was a lay-down misere.
Turnbull’s treatment of the issue in the parliament was another example of an overreach by the Prime Minister and poor political judgment.
Overreaching is a common trait — like when he went to moralise on Australia’s cheating cricketers a week ago and ended up criticising sledging when that is all politicians do every day.
The stories of the volcanic temper of Turnbull are many.
One former minister, who did not want to be named, recalls Turnbull ringing him abusively, unimpressed by his alleged behaviour and calling him the “C” word before saying both he and Lucy were very disappointed in him.
Another story emerges of a staffer who was asked by Turnbull whether his question time performance was any good.
After offering a couple of small critiques, Turnbull got stuck into her.
“Why is it that you’re f..king telling me this and my senior advisers aren’t telling me this?” the Prime Minister is said to have said.
“Why is it I’m being told by the press secretary how we should answer a question?”
When a staffer issued a press release about the US resettlement of refugees with a couple of mistakes in it, Turnbull is said to have walked out and said: “Get this f..king staff member in front of me right now. This f..king thing’s got to be right.”
He is known to tell other staffers: “I’m not listening to your f..king advice.”
Some of that behaviour is described as “Ruddesque”.
Tony Abbott confirmed to The Australian the veracity of a reported incident in 2014 when Abbott was PM where on a plane flight back from The Australian’s 50th anniversary celebrations Turnbull told Abbott he was the most “disloyal c...” he had ever met.
“The reports I read about that particular flight were accurate,” Abbott says.
But another former staffer says Malcolm has “mellowed” incredibly since his early days as a minister in 2006 and ’07 and even his period as opposition leader; and this seems to be acknowledged by others.
Abbott also accuses Turnbull of leaking against him in the lead-up to the leadership coup in September 2015.
“There was a lot of leaking out of the Abbott cabinet and it was designed to damage the government and, in particular, me,” Abbott says.
“I suppose there might have been more than one leaker but there’s no doubt that information did not always stay confidential if it was in Malcolm’s interests for it to become public.”
In June last year, after the PM heard that Liberal member for Canning Andrew Hastie was planning an event with a Liberal Party branch in WA involving Peta Credlin, the Prime Minister saw fit to phone the MP.
Credlin recalls Hastie telling her later it was a “difficult conversation”. But Hastie, after discussing the matter with the PM last week, told The Australian he recalled it had been a “cordial conversation” last year. “The PM received the flyer for (the) event before I had approved it, which was the substance of the conversation.”
One minister says of the PM and his office: “I think there is a bit of a siege mentality.”
To examine Turnbull and the reason for his 30 consecutive Newspoll losses, the focus really comes on the man — not his staff or the influence of his wife. And how he is outplayed at politics constantly by Labor.
After all, he could have better advice — but what is the point when you tend not to take advice you are given in any case.
The true killer for the PM was a period of three months — between February and April 2016 — when he faffed around with what he was going to do on tax reform.
In this time, the primary vote of the Coalition in the Newspoll went from 46 per cent to 41 per cent. It has never really recovered.
The opportunity to reform was lost; it was gone. But the indecisiveness was there. There for all to see.
When it came to election time in July 2016, the primary vote got to 42 — enough, Liberal HQ hoped, to snare 78-80 seats.
The vote famously got the Coalition 76 seats — a lousy one-seat majority which means it is dealing with the potential threat of the LNP’s Christensen crossing the floor all the time.
The rot began when former NSW premier Mike Baird, who had already come out in September 2015 urging a 15 per cent GST to help pay for rising health costs, was encouraged by the Turnbull camp to come out again and push for tax reform in February 2016. Baird had conversations with Turnbull where the PM made it clear he was willing to push ahead.
The federal Treasury modelling came back and it showed that it was all too hard and it was a lot of reform pain for no real benefit to the budget bottom line — particularly when the “no one can be worse off” political rule was followed.
Then Turnbull switched to a proposal for the states to collect their own income tax and tax reform was abandoned.
This after months of statements about “innovation” which amounted to not much.
“He had a plan to become PM but no plan to govern,” one minister says.
So Turnbull and his campaign team came up with the best economic/political narrative they could come up with: “Jobs and Growth” to take to the election.
“It worked but it wasn’t enough,” laments a former staffer.
A defender of Turnbull says: “Around tax reform, it’s not 2001 (when Howard introduced the GST) where (you have a) surplus” and gimmes could be handed out to compensate so no one was “worse off”.
“A lot of people underestimated the extent to which he’s had to try to take the party with him,” the supporter, a respected MP, says.
“You can’t as leader just say ‘I’m heading in this direction; same-sex marriage, a republic.
“He had promised cabinet government. You can’t criticise him for captain’s picks and then say he consults too much.
“At the end of the day the numbers are what they are. We have got 12 months to turn that around.”
There is some feeling that last year there has been improvement in a policy sense but the political handling of issues has been abysmal.
“His fundamental problem is political management. Basically a lot of Malcolm’s policies ... are sound,” one senior Liberal says.
“They had a look at the substance of funding for schools.
“He rolled out Gonski 2.0.
“But the politics of it are you have now got a whole bunch of pissed-off Catholics. If you look at the substance of what they have done in education ... Gonski 2.0 now based on need ... you can mount a very significant case as a policy reason for that being (in place).”
But then comes the mismanagement with Turnbull’s ally, Education Minister Simon Birmingham, accusing the Catholics of being bought by Labor for a “few pieces of silver”.
“More than a million Catholic school parents’ noses out of joint,” the Liberal said.
One minister says: “For someone who had been so successful in business ... the decision-making capacity is just not there.”
Nor is the ability to stick to a line. One week it’s national security; the next week it’s energy, the next week it’s the economy.
Failure to stick to a theme and create a narrative has been the political failure of the government under the Turnbull leadership.
When Bill Shorten announced he was going to end dividend imputation cash refunds for superannuants, Turnbull was slow to go on the attack and stay there; just as he was when it came to attacking Labor on Adani.
One Liberal describes a meeting at campaign headquarters in the last election campaign where Turnbull told senior party officials that he was not an attack-dog politician and could not be expected to act as such.
Another sign of Turnbull’s indecisiveness mentioned to The Australian was the suggested endorsement by the government of Kevin Rudd as nominee to be UN secretary-general.
The suspicion among senior ministers was that Turnbull had made some sort of guarantee to Rudd. Cabinet was “50-50” on it.
Eventually it was dumped but the issue went on for months.
“Malcolm came into politics at 50. He came into politics as a clearly successful businessman,” one Liberal says.
“It’s not an American system, people like Keating and Howard and co had refined their parliamentary skills under the parliamentary system.”
There has been great staff turnover in the office of Malcolm Turnbull. Not one of the media team was there for the last election. Burke left because he had a young family.
The corporate memory lies only with Cray who, apart from a couple of years at the ABC, has always been with Turnbull after moving to him in 2007 from backbencher Russell Broadbent’s office.
One clear criticism — or piece of praise depending on who you talk to — reflected on Turnbull is his incredible attention to detail (or micro-managing).
The Snowy 2.0 idea came from Snowy Hydro chief executive Paul Broad. Broad rang Turnbull’s then chief of staff, Drew Clarke, and suggested that the Prime Minister, who had been talking about hydro power, proceed with the project as a way to help with the energy issue.
Within a month, Turnbull was announcing the policy — having “grabbed it with both hands”, according to sources.
But what struck Broad was that, unlike other politicians, Turnbull was all over the detail. He would not leave questions on the project to staff but would ring the CEO directly for lengthy discussions.
A similar experience was had when energy company executives went to see Turnbull in the lead-up to the announcement of the National Energy Guarantee. They found him with Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg and Barnaby Joyce in a room — no officials.
One observer commented that it was like “everything was in Malcolm’s head”.
Turnbull sat there tapping away at a prime ministerial press release on his iPad.
Another example is the Prime Minister’s dealings with Sydney haematologist Professor Stephen Mulligan, who launched a cancer drug being introduced to the PBS with Turnbull and Health Minister Greg Hunt at Royal North Shore Hospital.
Professor Mulligan confirmed to The Australian that Turnbull personally rang him before the announcement to find out more about the drug.
The announcement last October at Royal North Shore was to launch the drug to treat leukaemia and lymphoma, Imbruvica.
The drug typically costs $187,000 and now costs patients $38.80 per script after the announcement. It’s the type of phone call a staffer would make and then brief his boss. But Turnbull took it upon himself to make the call.
“He was asking a couple of details about how the drug is used — what’s the treatment; how big a difference it’s made to patients,” the professor recalls.
Mulligan was impressed by how much Turnbull already knew before he made the call. But it shows a desire by Turnbull to do it all himself; to be the barrister on top of his brief.
To “have it all in his head” as the observer in the energy meeting put it. The trouble is when all the detail is in your head, it can become harder to deliver a clear message.
Turnbull’s love of renewables and the ETS killed him the first time as leader and Barnaby Joyce was growing frustrated.
All Joyce wanted last year was $5 million for a feasibility study into another coal-fired power station. Turnbull made sure that the lousy $5m had to go through a set of hoops, including a cabinet committee or a full cabinet before it got approved.
It never got there.
It was last November when Today show host Karl Stefanovic pushed Turnbull on his waffle.
Finally, Turnbull retaliated. “Karl, you have got a job. If you are looking for a job and you need a job and you have got one because of the strong economic leadership we provided, you may think it is waffling but if you have been unemployed and you are getting a chance to get ahead, you would say you are being very patronising saying young people getting jobs is waffle,” he said.
Stefanovic cheered on the PM’s taunts, saying this was the side of Mr Turnbull the public wanted to see.
“This is the real you! This is what we want!” he said.
Only it isn’t the real Malcolm. It’s the talking points.
Those talking points, according to those close to Turnbull, are what he struggles to drive home and stay “on message” with.
Turnbull’s people were urging him to hammer the jobs message all through January.
Turnbull’s team thought it worked.
On February 4, the Turnbull government was closing — at 48-52 in the Newspoll. Then the Joyce scandal erupted.
But the problem many feel occurs with Turnbull and his team is there is always something or someone to blame other than themselves for the government’s flagging fortunes.
It’s Tony Abbott’s fault or it’s Barnaby’s fault or it’s the citizenship crisis’s fault or even The Australian’s fault for not doing enough to back the government.
Tough things happen to governments; the test is how you deal with them.
When the Barnaby Joyce-Vikki Campion scandal blew up, Turnbull agonised to Joyce on how much “pain” the affair had caused.
“Can’t you see how much pain I’m in; this is killing me,” he is said to have said to Joyce.
The way Turnbull came into the job, the fact he could only fall over the line by one seat; the fact he had to keep the conservatives happy against his own principles on occasion meant Turnbull had tied his hands to some extent.
He promised to be agile when he came to office but he has been far from it.
At least, some say, Malcolm is a deal-maker.
His biggest achievement as PM, other than getting same-sex marriage through, appears to have been his ability to survive by keeping Cormann and Dutton sweet on the conservative side.
What has kept Turnbull in the job is that Praetorian Guard of Corman and Dutton.
Both got their rewards: Cormann is now the Senate leader and Dutton got his super Home Affairs Ministry.
But should Dutton, who has just a 2 per cent margin in his seat of Dickson, decide that to survive there needs to be leadership change, the dynamics would fundamentally alter.
And Turnbull’s deal-making efforts failed a fortnight ago when the company tax cuts were blocked in the Senate — although the government still holds hope it can win over one more Senate vote to deliver what would be a major victory.
As he awakes today to his 30th losing Newspoll in a row — a benchmark he himself set — the Prime Minister and his family may well hear the clock ticking.
Bill Shorten is not trusted or liked by the public but still Labor leads, every time.
The voters have switched off.
Political party research obtained by The Australian lays out the challenge Turnbull faces to remake himself into anything vaguely like being in front in the polls.
The focus group polling was taken in the marginal Sydney seats of Lindsay and Reid in February and produced such comments about Turnbull as: “He’s pretty ineffective.” “No real changes have been made by him; nothing new.
“He is pretty slack, doesn’t seem to be pushing anything; he’s hollow, got no substance.
“I expected much more than I got. I thought a millionaire businessman could do a good job running the country.
“He’s got no balls. I think it jumps from point to point. He says he’ll do something but he won’t stick to his guns.”
Then, with regard to him being “out of touch”, the research says: “He’s an elitist. He is out of touch with average voters, especially people like me. He can’t engage with the average person.
“Rich businessman, he has no idea about ordinary people.
“He has people behind him telling him what he can do and can’t do.
“He hasn’t shown true leadership yet.
“Looking over his shoulder at Tony Abbott.”
Should things continue as they are, a leadership challenge could be in the offing.
Perhaps there will be a repeat of 2009 when there was a three-way contest for the top job between Tony Abbott, Joe Hockey and the incumbent Turnbull — when Abbott surprised everyone and won the top job.
It seems clear Tony Abbott and Julie Bishop are interested in the job and Dutton could be drafted if things continue to go badly.
Millionaire businessman Geoffrey Cousins, who lives in the same street as Turnbull in Point Piper, gave the most scathing picture of Turnbull when he responded to journalist Annabel Crabb’s essay on Turnbull in 2009 — in comments that are seen by Turnbull’s critics as holding true today.
“Are Australians this gullible? They are not. They see a man whose vision is of him, not of them. Surely the Coalition can produce someone of more substance. And even if that proves difficult, someone of better judgment.”
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/newspoll-siege-mentality-eats-at-team-malcolm/news-story/b7409e062c56f36496859e08095f3c88
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Apr 9, 2018 10:41
