We’ve always known there was a group of people within the Coalition who would have rather died with Tony Abbott than lived with Malcolm Turnbull, but it’s still startling to watch a political party indulging a public implosion when the stakes are so very high.



Right now the Coalition cannot be entirely confident that it will emerge from the count with enough seats to govern in its own right, and instead of sending a message of stability to a crossbench that may yet decide its fate, the government has descended into vitriol and recrimination.

The current festival of the smackdown, which was unleashed on Saturday night, prosecuted by only a handful of malcontents, has a simple objective: to make sure beyond doubt that Turnbull knows he has no authority to exercise within his own government – that if he remains as leader, he will be the captive creature of his enemies.

Enemies of Turnbull would say this is only reinforcing a reality that is already obvious, the natural consequence of his own electoral failure, a justly deserved reckoning.

Strip away the animus from that analysis, it’s more or less right. This election has fundamentally wounded Malcolm Turnbull to the point where it is hard to see how he can recover.

Short term, yes: self-interest can begin to assert itself if the count over the next couple of days trends favourably to the Coalition, but long term, the outlook is incredibly uncertain.

Anyone who saw the prime minister speaking in Sydney on Tuesday would have seen how diminished he looks after his weekend electoral shock: his anger only just in check, the slight unsteadiness in the delivery.

Turnbull is now in a position where he has to bow penitently before the voting public, acknowledging voter disillusionment, vowing to work harder, acknowledging the extent of the campaign miscalculations.

But in the penitence, came a hint of steel. Labor’s Medicare campaign was a grotesque lie, the prime minister said, teeth gritted, but the government had laid the “fertile ground” for the grotesque lie to take root.

He didn’t mean his own government of course. He meant Tony Abbott’s government and that first Abbott/Hockey budget that hacked into the health funding, in the process calling into question the Liberal party’s commitment to universal healthcare.

“There was some fertile ground in which that grotesque lie could be sown. There is no doubt about that,” Turnbull said on Tuesday, eyes fixed in the middle distance.

The coded message to colleagues was obvious: so you think we get out of this mess by retreating to the old mess? Like, really, people? That seem sensible to you all? Back to the people who had no political judgment at all?

John Howard also appeared in public briefly on Tuesday to call for a truce in the civil war. “This hasn’t been an outcome that we wanted,” Howard said. “But it’s not the end of the world and people shouldn’t start slitting their throats, certainly not Liberals.”

Good advice.

He had a bit more good advice. “They should remember the character of their party.”

What he meant by this is the homily he often delivers: the Liberal party is a broad church. It works best when the wins and losses between moderates and conservatives are carefully calibrated by incumbent prime ministers. It’s a balancing exercise.

That was a message for everyone: Turnbull and enemies of Turnbull.

Trouble is Turnbull did everything he could during his prime ministership to avoid poking the conservative wing in the eye. There were concessions on the marriage equality plebiscite, on safe schools, on climate policy – big concessions, not glancing references.

Turnbull tried to deliver the Howard matrix, at some cost to himself. The concessions he delivered to the right as prime minister left voters confused about who he was. Was he the straight talking centrist prepared to go to the wall for a principle, or was he something else entirely – an opportunist who would do anything for a second run at leadership?

Turnbull has already tried to sue for peace. Anyone who suggests otherwise is myth making. The problem for Turnbull was the compromises were never enough.

Howard’s model for reconciliation was the model that sustained his prime ministership for more than a decade, but there are real questions about whether or not the Coalition centre can hold when competing factions of the party are brimming with acrimony, and intent on sending each other a message that they are just not interested in suing for peace.