There were equally intense arguments against backing Rudd; some partisan, some not.

The cabinet meeting on the matter was bitterly divided. It was left to Turnbull to make the call. His decisions to take it to cabinet in the first place, and then to delay announcing his ultimate decision, were variously criticised as signs of weakness, indecision and churlishness.

He was accused of leaving his Foreign Minister Julie Bishop isolated on the issue after he changed his mind. It was reported the entire foreign affairs "establishment" felt Australia should back Rudd

Rudd then weighed in by releasing a series of letters which suggested Turnbull was also duplicitous and ended up refusing to nominate him having said earlier he would.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Indonesian President Joko Widodo meet on the sidelines of the Association of South-East Asian Nations summit in Laos last week. Supplied

Beazley backs Turnbull over Rudd

But a defence of Turnbull over this episode has emerged from an unlikely source.

The former Labor leader, and Australian ambassador to Washington, Kim Beazley says he discussed the Rudd nomination with Turnbull in Washington when the Prime Minister visited in January.


And he says the position Turnbull put then was utterly consistent with the position he eventually put publicly in July.

"My conversation with Malcolm was 'en passant' as we were travelling around Washington," Beazley told the The Australian Financial Review. "It was not the most important thing on the agenda.

Malcolm Turnbull with daughter Daisy and son-in-law James Brown (left) at Government House in 2015. Andrew Meares

"It would have occurred three weeks after the alleged conversations he had with Kevin before Christmas.

"This wasn't something he wanted to do and the reasons for that went to a critique of the notion that you could just nominate someone and nothing more. He thought that if you put someone up you couldn't run away and he was reluctant to see that as a priority for the government.

"And, second, he just had doubts about Kevin's suitability for the job.

"He was aware that he would face accusations of churlishness but he felt you had to take these things seriously and make the right judgment."

Happier times: Malcolm Turnbull with his first ministry. Andrew Meares


Beazley believes the Prime Minister was "quite badly handled" by the media, and Rudd, over the affair. He also hotly disputes the idea the foreign affairs establishment were all behind Rudd, arguing that, from the highest levels of the Foreign Affairs Department, there was considerable opposition to the nomination.

Does this matter? For many it was, and is, a "beltway" issue of no relevance to ordinary voters.

But the Rudd affair became a powerful part of the narrative about the Turnbull prime ministership which has repeatedly portrayed him as not standing for anything, being a captive of his conservative colleagues, or someone who stuffed up anything they touched.

Challenging the 'Turnbull's a disappointment' narrative

Beazley's intervention forces us to think again about this incident, and opens a wider appraisal of Turnbull's prime ministership than has generally been seen in the orgy of words marking 12 months since he toppled Tony Abbott.

Consumer sentiment

Much has been made in the past year – and the past week – of the high expectations voters had that Turnbull would transform politics, and their disappointment that he has not.

The Prime Minister's performance is rated in terms of these expectations. Many of those who criticise him notably do so because he has not delivered what they particularly want.


On the left, there is disappointment on issues like climate change and same sex marriage. On the right, the criticism is he hasn't done enough on tax reform, budget repair and industrial relations.

But there is very little said about the way the Turnbull prime ministership actually works. Whether it is good, bad or indifferent, it is certainly a very, very different prime ministership.

Let's be blunt here. This is a bloke who is not particularly good at retail politics, nor particularly concerned about running to the beat of the retail politics drum.

As one cabinet minister says, "You will observe that a particular issue isn't quite zooming down the ski slope politically and he thinks that's fine, he's relaxed. He doesn't mind things being a bit 'off piste'."

Yet all those who have moaned about three-word slogans and politicians driven by the 24-hour media cycle and "announceables" still don't seem happy with an approach so conspicuously lacking such frenzy.

Few doubt Turnbull's intellectual capacities. But few also observe that the prime minister sees his job foremost as head of the "Office of Wicked Problems", not first as the beating heart of a political organisation focused on winning the next election.

A seemingly happy office

After all the melodrama of the Abbott office and its chief of staff, there is very little negative said about the Turnbull office. There aren't regular reports of things disappearing into it and never being seen again, or vendettas.


Turnbull's determination to run a "proper cabinet government", in which decisions are taken collectively, is also rather dismissed or little analysed. This is probably because it has been a long time since we have seen a prime minister not utterly dominant over his frontbench.

Those close to him repeatedly refer to the deal-maker's approach Turnbull has brought with him from a lifetime in investment banking and the law. He becomes intrigued by a particular issue, dives deep into it looking to emerge with a solution, whether that be to solve a legal problem troubling Australian Defence Force personnel conducting airstrikes in Syria and Iraq, or what to do about saving a steel mill in Whyalla, or tax reform.

Turnbull's interest in the Arrium steel mill in Whyalla saw him deeply engaged in steel-making technology and personally discussing buyout options and guarantees with administrator Mark Mentha.

His failure to push ahead with a revamp of the goods and services tax is widely proffered as an early example of his "do nothing", and/or flip-flop approach.

After all, the argument went, he had built up expectations of major tax reform after it had stalled under Tony Abbott.

Politically realistic options

But let's look at it through the Turnbull prism.

While commentators saw Turnbull's move to reconvene a meeting of last years' National Reform Summit as a sign of his determination to take up its agenda, from the prime ministerial perspective it was a fact-finding mission to determine the most up-to-date community thinking about tax reform.


Keep in mind that, at this point of time, GST reform advocates – which included state governments and business – had already "spent" the proceeds of increased GST several times over.

Turnbull had a look at the options and came to the conclusion that the budget couldn't afford the compensation bill. There were other debates about capital gains tax, negative gearing and he wasn't going there either.

To the Prime Minister it was a simple case of looking at the issue, making a pragmatic assumption about what could be done in a fiscal sense – and a political one – and deciding it wasn't a goer.

The idea that the government could sell an increase in the GST to fund company tax cuts was described at the time as the "go in to the study and get out the service revolver" political option. And of course it was.

While the company tax cut package the government eventually took to the election could pragmatically seen as the least of all evils – providing some lip service to tax reform at the least cost – it is actually something the Prime Minister fervently believes will help boost the economy.

Irrational criticism?

Turnbull seemed genuinely perplexed at the way he was criticised for failing to do more on tax at the end of last year. Such criticism was just not rational was his clear message at the time. Why was it that people thought you could do things that the budget couldn't afford and which would be utterly inequitable?

Before he lost the prime ministership, Tony Abbott had been gradually closing down all the tax reform options on the table, most notably superannuation.


And it was here that Turnbull and his Treasurer have moved furthest, no matter how unsatisfactory that might seem to those wanting a big blast of change, or to those within his party who argue it betrays their base.

Labor privately concedes Turnbull and Morrison moved not only further than the opposition thought they would move, but further than Labor itself.

On climate change, the expectations were that Turnbull would move the dial on Australia's approach to climate change.

But from Turnbull's perspective, the world has moved since he negotiated a deal on climate change with Kevin Rudd in 2009 that cost him his leadership.

The push for a worldwide emissions trading scheme collapsed, replaced by a more pragmatic system of agreements on emissions reductions. The Coalition's direct action scheme is not best practice, but it is adaptable and emissions reduction targets can be cranked up as the system is reviewed in the next couple of years.

Much of Turnbull's first year has been spent dealing with the legacy of policies already put in place by his predecessor. It has been a year of cleaning up as much as possible.

This week we are seeing a breakthrough on the budget.

There are more wicked problems occupying Malcolm Turnbull's mind – particularly resolving the nightmare of Manus Island and Nauru. Gradually finding solutions to such issues may see him rebuild his political capital over the next year.

The slide in the terms of trade, which has left most Australians suffering a decline in their incomes for the past five years, appears to be easing. Consumer confidence appears to be stabilising.

Maybe there will be time for voters to get used to the Malcolm Turnbull actually occupying the Prime Minister's office, not the one they had imagined 12 months ago.