In the closing scene of the movie Goodfellas, Henry Hill “breaks the fourth wall” to lament his departure from life as a gangster.



Having ratted out colleagues and now residing mulishly in witness protection, Hill tells the audience he was completely addicted to the life. He was a movie star “with muscle”.

But today, in the suburbs, he says, “everything is different. There’s no action. I have to wait around like everyone else … I’m an average nobody. Get to live the rest of my life like a schnook.”

It might seem a leap from Ray Liotta to Ian Macfarlane – the longtime Liberal who chose on the final sitting day of the federal parliament to become a National – but do bear with me.

Like Liotta in that final memorable scene, Macfarlane broke the fourth wall this week to tell journalists he’d briefly contemplated spending the rest of his life as a suburban schnook before dismissing that idea as impossible and seeking a fast track back into the Turnbull ministry.

Macfarlane is a straight shooter and his account of his contemplations really was that frank. And perhaps Malcolm Turnbull richly deserved that, having dumped his good friend from his newly formed cabinet in one of the more brutal calculations of the recent leadership change.

Perhaps the prime minister really did have that one coming.

But the mentality behind the stated Macfarlane rationale – I’ll claw myself back, whatever it takes, because I’m entitled – tells us a lot about the current state of Australian politics.

For most of the past five years, Australian politics has lived in a state where internal battles regularly trump the external battles of ideology and philosophy and public policy that are actually supposed to form the modus vivendi of public life.

Australian politics has indulged a five-year temper tantrum at the voters’ expense. Many of our elected representatives now seem to feel total impunity in airing their petty grievances, conducting public pity parties and taking steps to avenge their honour.

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Kevin Rudd established the contemporary standard of actions taken in pursuit of an operatic grievance, but rather than fleeing from that particular example in horror, various politicians seem intent on perpetuating the cycle.

With our exiled Goodfellas gangster, we see a character so institutionalised and conditioned to brutality he’s forgotten how to exist outside his milieu.

We can detect that same impulse in Rudd’s destructive three-year howl at the moon, in Tony Abbott’s nascent petulant warblings, in Mal Brough’s very odd righteous indignation at having to answer questions about why the minister responsible for parliamentary accountability is currently the subject of a police investigation, and in Macfarlane’s fleet-footed cosying-up with the Nationals.

What we see is an entitlement culture, writ large – people who have long since parted company with the sense of how their behaviour might translate to people in ordinary, non-political life, where shit just happens and you just deal with it because there’s no back door, or second chance, or nifty power bloc to come to your aid.

After the brief promise of new politics, the final parliamentary week for 2015 ended with a noxious and cacophonous “me” symphony.

Mal Brough thought he should stay. Ian Macfarlane thought he should go. Tony Abbott thought Julie Bishop should stop lying and recite the version of history where he was scandalously robbed of the prime ministership and absolutely wasn’t a dupe. Bishop thought ‘there there’, Tony. There, there.

The prime minister, for his part, thought colleagues might like to desist from talking endlessly about themselves and each other if they wanted to help him to hit reset on the government and prevent the Coalition from enduring the ignominy of being a one-term government.

Turnbull told them as much in their final party room discussion of the year. Merry Christmas everyone. I’m trying to fix this. Do shut up.

This past week was the week where Turnbull began his inevitable collision into the various consequences of blasting Tony Abbott out of the prime ministership in September.

Since unleashing his global excitement revolution, Turnbull has been running on top of the water, accelerating in order to gain propulsion, like a bird taking flight.

But this week the arc dipped under the weight of Tony’s anger and Ian’s bruised feelings and Cory’s pique and the inalienable right of every Australian farmer and miner not to live without their diesel fuel rebate, the chaotic legislative program – and, of course, that special minister of state Turnbull didn’t ask to step aside temporarily, notwithstanding the more-than-obvious merits of that as a course of action.

Malcolm’s core project – to convince everyone that he can be the one to end the nonsense – ended the parliamentary year splattered with nonsense.

Turnbull’s lingering Brough conundrum is also bigger than it seems.

Turnbull’s life choices, to think back one last time to Henry Hill, have never been as limited as prime minister or schnook. His capacity to project as a figure who can hover elegantly above the institutionalised deficiencies of Canberra is one of the great strengths of his personae, even if it makes him a figure of suspicion in political circles.

Turnbull has always positioned himself above the fray, a character bigger than party and talking points, a person of independent means and outlook – not a hidebound creature of culture and creed and habit, and certainly not a politician in hock to numbers men, or loyalists, or fixers who need to be humoured even when they’ve fallen into perfidy, or outlived their usefulness.

This is an illusion to some extent, but a compelling one in an age where people look in hope to river guides, and gurus, and truth tellers, but no longer trust in institutions.

As well as pondering the precise merits of the Brough case as events unfold, there’s one specific calculation Turnbull has to bear in mind, and it’s this: Voters think I’m different, because I’ve told them that I’m different. When it’s counted in the past, I’ve even shown them that I’m different. What is the cost to me if I prove to them that I am exactly the same?