"I think there has to be the strongest action taken against this practice of sledging. It has got right out of control, it should have no place in, on a cricket field." A reporter pointed out the obvious double standard: "Doesn’t it happen in Parliament?" Father Turnbull ignored this impertinence to continue his sermon and call for "review and reflection". For everyone else. Such as Barnaby Joyce. Remember the prime preacher assuring us that "I'm not here to moralise", knowing full well that was exactly what he was doing as he condemned Joyce's "shocking error of judgment" that had "appalled all of us". Turnbull had urged the then deputy prime minister to take leave to reflect, he said. He then pronounced a new commandment to be added to the ministerial code of conduct: Thou shalt not have carnal knowledge of thy staff. “This is the standard that I will hold - from this day forth - all my ministers to,” he intoned in a Moses moment that raised the question of whether Rabbi Turnbull might be more fitting than father. Then there were the churches. "They will be shamed" unless they immediately agreed to the government's proposed redress scheme for child sex abuse, Turnbull said and threatened to use his "megaphone" to do so.

And the banks. To pursue profit above all else "is not simply wrong but can place at risk the whole social licence, the good name and reputation" of a bank, lectured the former Goldman Sachs investment banker. Malcolm Turnbull and Julie Bishop at Parliament House on Tuesday. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen Once again, Father Turnbull was pulled up for inconsistency. The then senator Glenn Lazarus challenged Turnbull for his selective application of standards: "I want a national corruption watchdog established in this country, said Lazarus. "It should include politics, but if Malcolm wants to go after one area of one industry he needs to stand tall and be prepared to subject his own party and all others to the same level of scrutiny." Of course, Turnbull was not prepared to do so. To this day he refuses to commit to a federal ICAC or IBAC, even though Labor and the Greens now support the creation of one. As you might have noticed, one striking aspect of Turnbull's moralising is that it is only ever in support of a popular position. He doesn't damn popular causes. He wants to surf in on them. More like a teenager craving acceptance than a real moral leader.

Of course, Turnbull has every right to lecture others and to pronounce judgment. As Prime Minister, he is himself subject to censure and extended abuse every day. By the media, but also by everyone with a Twitter account or a platform of any kind. Everyone else gets to have a crack at him, why shouldn't he be free to have a crack back? Peter Dutton and Malcolm Turnbull. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen So that's fine. So long as he doesn't expect to be taken seriously in his sanctimony. Remember when he tried to assert not the policy or power superiority of the Liberal Party but its moral ascendancy over Labor - "we are not run by factions" - only to have his own party conference laugh at him openly? No matter how much moralising he might attempt, it will not win him any special grace. Easter is a time of death and renewal, but the Liberal Party has already come to the view that there will be no new life for the Turnbull prime ministership. The federal parliamentary Liberal Party doesn't need to see another Newspoll to form the judgment that his leadership is terminal. Turnbull has already "lost" 29 of the 30 consecutive Newspolls that he set as the vital test of success. Turnbull's self-defined time limit is due to expire in the next fortnight.

Nothing dramatic will happen at that moment. The Coalition is resigned to losing the 30th. But it won't be a meaningless milestone. Instead, it will signal open season on Turnbull for his internal critics and rivals. The real problem for Turnbull is that his party also expects him to lose not just 30 but 40 or 50 and to keep on losing. He won the 2016 election by the barest of margins and, to be in a position to win, needs a pretty convincing, sustained recovery. There is not even the barest hint of one and his party has given up hope that he could engineer it. Tony Abbott launches Pollie Pedal on Wednesday. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen There are four arguments that counsel against such a fatalistic view of the government's prospects. First is that there's nothing unusual about a government suffering a mid-term slump. Governments can recover. Turnbull still has a year or more before he has to face the people.

True. But a mid-term slump is normal and natural for a government attempting a difficult, unpopular reform. In Turnbull's case, there is no such reform agenda. In fact, he very deliberately rejected difficult reform when he tossed aside Scott Morrison's early plan for a wholesale reform of the tax system. This is a government that is unpopular even while doing its best to court popularity. Second is that Turnbull has already signalled that he'll be handing out personal tax cuts. The May budget will no doubt supply the detail. Surely this will be a popular move that could improve the government's fortunes? Loading Not at all. Labor has created the fiscal room in its budget plans to offer even bigger tax cuts. It will match and outmatch anything that the Coalition offers. In any case, jaded voters know to expect tax cuts around election time and have not given any recent government any credit for them. Just ask John Howard.

Third is that the Coalition will be campaigning on its favoured suits - a strong economy and secure borders. It can credibly claim to be delivering both. This is true but irrelevant. Again, the case of the Howard government illustrates that voters will acknowledge economic prosperity and border security and then, if they're so minded, casually remove the government presiding over them. Today, voters are so minded. Fourth is the Coalition's best hope - Bill Shorten. That if the election can be reduced to a personality contest, Turnbull will win. Turnbull's boosters can credibly make this case. Which is why Shorten is building up a formidable set of policy offerings to take to the people, based on putting fairness first. A country that has come to believe national prosperity to be inevitable is putting a new premium on a fairer distribution of its fruits. Shorten is not relying on his personal charisma, which is just as well. And even if the tide turns against Labor, it can always reach for its alternative leader, Anthony Albanese, who is awaiting any opportunity for the leadership. He has the magic elixir of contemporary politics - the appeal of authenticity.

Anthony Albanese is Labor's alternative leader. Credit:Andrew Meares The Liberal Party has no compelling alternative to Turnbull. If it did, he'd be long gone. But it has three aspiring alternatives. The most obvious is the least plausible, Tony Abbott, who, in the Easter spirit of resurrection, this week offered as a political rule that "you're always better the second time around". The voters don't intend to give him the chance and neither do his colleagues. The most often touted is Peter Dutton. The conservative faction will begin agitating for him in earnest as the year progresses. As my Fairfax colleague David Crowe pointed out in a column on Friday, Dutton's call for special consideration for refugee status for white South African farmers is being read in the party as an appeal to the conservative base as part of his positioning for the leadership. He has been building factional support and is now the clear factional favourite. Does Dutton have leadership ambitions? Absolutely. Will he strike at Turnbull to achieve them? Not quickly, not readily. But more junior members of the conservative faction and their media cheerleaders will set about months of destabilisation and, when the party is ready, Dutton will be ready. The most plausible is Julie Bishop. Of the Liberal leadership contenders, she is the only one who could credibly improve the Coalition's vote and win an election. She is the champion of Liberal moderates and demonstrates her star power every time she visits a colleague's electorate to campaign for them, which she does tirelessly.

The conservatives have been busy in recent months claiming that Bishop is exhausted. The favoured phrase is: "Julie's checked out." They're trying to psyche her and her admirers out of the contest. It's not working. She fully intends to seek preselection for the next election and, when she has it, her enemies will have to find another line of attack. She will not challenge Turnbull as he challenged Abbott nor will she do any obvious destabilising. But when the leadership is in play, she will be a contender. She will not allow Dutton to go unopposed into the leadership and she would expect to prevail. Quietly, the Liberals' expectation now is that Turnbull will not be leading them to the next election. They will focus increasingly on their post-Turnbull prospects as the year wears on. Turnbull had his chance to be a moral force when he first took the prime ministership. But when he abandoned every big cause he'd ever championed during his three decades in the public eye - the republic, climate change and gay marriage - and accepted the Abbott policy settings as a condition of taking the job, he lost every skerrick of moral authority with the people.