08:59

Liberal MP Craig Laundy, a key backer of Malcolm Turnbull until the very end, has just been on 2GB radio, talking to Ben Fordham.

“Mate, I am physically, mentally and emotionally absolutely annihilated,” he said.



Fordham asked him what he thought of the result of the spill, and Laundy sighed for a long time.



Then he said: “Um, I just, I have sat back this week and I have watched the party I love tear down a great man and a great friend and, geez, wow.”



Fordham: “How’s Malcolm dealing with all of this?”



Laundy: “You know what? He’s shattered, obviously, as anyone would be. Put yourself in his shoes.



“But, mate, the thing that struck me, and I’ve had the privilege of having a seat at the table all week … and I think this is probably his barrister background, but in the middle of a crisis, mate, you know, he just stayed calm the whole way.



“He’d turn to me and look at me and say, ‘they’ve lost their mind haven’t they?’ and I’d say “mate, I think they have, but you know we’ve gotta keep working through”.”



Fordham asked him if Turnbull had reflected on the fact that he had torn down a first term prime minister, in Tony Abbott, and now it had happened to him, and that that would have instigated some of this week’s events.



Laundy said: “Look no, but it obviously did [play a role, given] the personalities involved, and I’ve obviously been as involved in what’s happened today as in what happened to Tony Abbott.



“But there’s one clear and distinct difference. When this happened with Malcolm in 2015, the backbench came to Malcolm in desperation. What’s happened this week is that the Dutton forces have gone to the backbench.



“Now some of the behaviour this week, I had one female senator and two female members of the House, when it came to the letter, the petition, that were physically stood over to sign it, and they refused.



“This is the sort of behaviour you had going on.



“And I’m the federal minister for workplace relations, guess what? Parliament house is a workplace. That sort of intimidation and bullying is something you can actually file a claim against.”



Fordham then wondered if Scott Morrison would be given some space and fresh air by the Dutton camp.



Laundy said he hoped so.



Laundy: “We need generational change in politics, because right now politics is broken, and I trace it back to, this is 10 years of tumultuous times, starting back in 2007 with the [Kevin] Rudd era.



“The people that came in in 2013 and 2016, you know, inside my party but also across the chamber, inside our party at the moment you’ve got this great chasm of the left and the right, and historically those that are the senior leaders of both sides have been at each other’s throats for 20 to 30 years, but the hope of the [party] is the next generation.



“The guys on the right of our party right now, the next generation – Michael Sukkar, Zed Seselja, Tony Pasin, these sorts of guys – are good mates of mine and the people on the left of the party that came in more recently.



“We didn’t experience those first lot of horrible years. We’ve sort of inherited and watched on and now, I think hopefully with Scott [Morrison] and Josh [Frydenberg], is a generational change which I think’s needed.



“Let’s hope.”