MALCOLM Turnbull will be Australia’s 29th prime minister, after responding to more than a year of dissatisfaction with Tony Abbott by launching a brutal and well-planned challenge.

Speaking to the media on Monday night after his 54-44 win in the partyroom, Mr Turnbull pledged to be a more consultative leader who would take voters with him when explaining policy.

He said he would lead a traditional Cabinet process, pointing to criticism of Mr Abbott’s many disastrous “captain’s calls”.

“We will be making decisions in a thoughtful and considered manner,” the former communications minister told reporters.

He said he wanted a “thoroughly Liberal government” that was committed to giving “freedom to individuals”.

He went on to say that in order for Australia to compete on the world stage it had to be “agile, innovative and creative” and pledged to drive the country in that direction.

“There has never been a more exciting time to be alive today and to be in Australia,” he said.

“This has been a very important, sobering experience today. I am very humbled by it,” said the man often accused of displaying limited humility.

“We need to have in this country — and we will have now — an economic vision, a leadership, that explains the great challenges and opportunities that we face,” Mr Turnbull said.

He would be “seeking to persuade, rather than seeking to lecture”.

Mr Turnbull was quick to establish critical benchmarks of the new administration:

● “The culture” of his leadership would be “thoroughly consultative”

● The Abbott climate change policy would be retained, despite Mr Turnbull’s past preference for a market-based emissions trading scheme

● To appease the Liberal right, he promised a “thoroughly Liberal government committed to freedom, the individual and the market”

● And to satisfy Liberals who believed policy was stalled in last century under Mr Abbott, he promised not to attempt to “future-proof ourselves” and to “recognise the disruption we see driven by technology … is our friend, if we are agile and smart enough to take advantage of it”.

He paid tribute to the outgoing prime minister, saying the party owed him a “great debt”.

“The burden of leadership is a very heavy one,” Mr Turnbull said.

He singled out free-trade agreements and stopping the boats as among Mr Abbott’s biggest achievements.

“I want to thank Tony for that,” he said.

Mr Turnbull won’t be prime minister officially until he is sworn in by Governor-General Peter Cosgrove on Tuesday. Then he will have to face Parliament and Labor taunts.

The Government will undergo a massive overhaul of style and substance with a new frontbench next week, expected to include Scott Morrison, an Abbott supporter, getting the job of Treasurer.

Christopher Pyne, a South Australian and Turnbull backer, might be the new Defence minister with responsibility for getting the Navy’s new submarines built in Adelaide.

Earlier, Mr Turnbull beamed as he left the partyroom flanked by his deputy, Foreign Minister Julie Bishop. Mr Abbott looked stunned as he walked past the cameras.

Ms Bishop, who in the afternoon told Mr Abbott he had lost the confidence of his colleagues, will retain the deputy leadership.

She won the partyroom’s second vote for deputy leader 70-30 over Kevin Andrews.

There were two extra votes for the deputy leader contest because there was one informal ballot for the first vote and Victorian senator Michael Ronaldson made it to the partyroom in time for the second vote.

Mr Turnbull’s 10-vote victory means Australia has had four prime ministers in just over two years, with Labor’s Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd filling out the extraordinary list.

For the third time since 2010, voters will wake up tomorrow to find the person they had gone to bed thinking was their Prime Minister replaced without them having a say at an election.

It was a humiliation for Mr Abbott, who replaced Mr Turnbull as Opposition leader in December 2009 and appeared to cement his position in the Liberal hierarchy with a huge win over Mr Rudd in 2013.

He now will be recorded as one of the shortest-serving Liberal Prime Ministers with one year and 361 days, just ahead of Harold Holt who died in the Portsea surf in 1967.

And to rub in that humiliation, the Australian dollar rose on news of his downfall.

Ms Bishop’s overwhelming win indicates the party is not going to punish her for turning on Mr Abbott.

Ministers who backed Mr Abbott now will be waiting to hear their own fate in a Turnbull executive — should there be a job for them.

That includes some of the frontbenchers who walked in with Mr Abbott, including Joe Hockey, Eric Abetz, Jamie Briggs, Greg Hunt, Bruce Bilson, Josh Frydenberg, Kevin Andrews and Mathias Cormann.

Mr Turnbull’s ascension to the nation’s top job is likely to threaten Labor’s strong polling numbers. Here’s how Opposition Leader Bill Shorten reacted to the news on Twitter.

Australians know that with Malcolm, it will always be about Malcolm. — Bill Shorten (@billshortenmp) September 14, 2015

Australia doesn’t need another Liberal Leader - we need a change of Government, and Labor’s up for the fight. — Bill Shorten (@billshortenmp) September 14, 2015

Former Labor prime minister Julia Gillard, who rose to lead the country in a similar fashion as Mr Turnbull has, also weighed in.

Congratulations to Malcolm Turnbull on becoming Prime Minister - a great honour and responsibility. JG — Julia Gillard (@JuliaGillard) September 14, 2015

The Coalition’s junior partner The Nationals — who have had a strained relationship with Mr Turnbull in the past — will meet in the morning to discuss their reaction to the leadership change, the ABC reports.

HOW IT WENT DOWN

After remaining coy about his leadership ambitions for the best part of the year, Mr Turnbull announced that he would challenge Mr Abbott in Canberra yesterday afternoon.

Mr Turnbull has savaged Mr Abbott’s leadership style, saying “we need advocacy, not slogans”.

He said Mr Abbott was not “capable” of the “economic leadership” needed to run the country.

Perhaps the most convincing point Mr Turnbull made was that the Coalition had lost the past 30 Newspolls in a row.

“Ultimately, the Prime Minister has not been capable of providing the economic leadership … he has not been capable of providing the economic confidence that business needs,” he said in the afternoon.

“We need a style of leadership that … explains the challenges and how to seize the opportunities. A style of leadership that respects the people’s intelligence, that explains these complex issues and sets out the course of action we believe we should take and makes a case for it. We need advocacy, not slogans.”

WHAT TURNBULL STANDS FOR

In many ways, Mr Turnbull is considered Mr Abbott’s opposite within the broad church of the Liberal Party.

While Mr Abbott was considered one of the most socially conservative Australian prime ministers in decades, Mr Turnbull has been criticised within his own party for not being conservative enough.

Unlike Mr Abbott, Mr Turnbull supports gay marriage, wants Australia to replace the British monarch with an Australian president as head of state, and backs a policy of making polluters pay for their carbon gas emissions.

Despite his more progressive tendencies, Mr Turnbull has indicated today that he would maintain Liberal policy to hold a plebiscite on same-sex marriage and he has vowed to stick with the party’s existing targets on climate change cuts.

Mr Turnbull, a 60-year-old former lawyer and merchant banker known for his moderate views, has long been considered Mr Abbott’s chief rival.

Mr Turnbull was opposition leader for two years before he lost a partyroom ballot by a single vote to Abbott in 2009. His downfall was his belief that Australia should make polluters pay for their greenhouse gas emissions.

Opinion polls show that Mr Turnbull is more popular than Mr Abbott, but many of those who prefer him vote for the centre-left Labor Party.

Mr Turnbull, who holds the seat of Wentworth in Sydney’s exclusive eastern suburbs, is the type of classical liberal who has become rare in the oddly named party, which has been overrun by conservatives in recent decades. It was called the Liberal Party when it was established in the early 1940s because it believed in individual freedoms, while their Labor opponents favoured state control and heavy regulation.

Mr Turnbull is a self-made multi-millionaire regarded by some as arrogant and has been nicknamed “The Silvertail” due to his wealth and privilege.

— With AAP