Inevitably this brings us to this week’s stories about Murdoch’s alleged hand in the destruction of the prime ministership of Malcolm Turnbull. According to reports in the ABC and The Australian Financial Review that differ in detail rather than substance, days before Turnbull was forced to walk the plank on August 31, Murdoch told fellow billionaire Kerry Stokes, the Perth-based chairman of Seven West, “Malcolm has to go.” Stokes apparently disagreed. Illustration: Jim Pavlidis Credit: "That means we get Bill Shorten and the CFMEU,” he told Murdoch in a version of the story reported by the AFR.

Not to worry, says Murdoch, according to the ABC report, "They'll only be in for three years – it won't be so bad. I did alright under Labor and the Painters and Dockers; I can make money under Shorten and the CFMEU." According to this version of events in the days after the conversation News Corp titles ramped up the pressure on Turnbull, abetted by shock jocks Ray Hadley and Alan Jones, employed by 2GB which is owned by Fairfax Media. The conservative chorus insisted that leadership instability would cease only when Peter Dutton replaced Malcolm Turnbull. Rupert Murdoch and Malcolm Turnbull. Credit:Fairfax Media Finally Stokes was convinced that Turnbull’s fate was sealed, but rather than back Dutton, who was planning to rip up a GST deal that benefited Western Australia, he backed a third contender, Scott Morrison, according to the ABC’s report.

On Thursday, August 23, Stokes' newspaper The West Australian ran a front page headline reading: "PM SHOULD STAND ASIDE FOR SCOMO." Stokes has since denied these versions of events in an interview with The Australian newspaper. It is perhaps notable that though Stokes is quoted in this story, Murdoch is not. Loading One close observer says that Stokes has a problem not so much with the reporting of the conversation with Murdoch, but the way he was cast as being party to a coup. According to this line of reasoning, from Stokes' point of view he had objected to the removal of the Prime Minister and, in the end, once accepting that Turnbull’s leadership was terminal, he backed the successor that Turnbull himself preferred. Others in the News Corp stable have ridiculed the notion that Murdoch calls his editors to direct them on what lines they should take on particular issues. This is a point made by News Corp insiders whenever it is claimed that Murdoch micro-manages his editors.

To be fair though, no one suggests that this is how Murdoch exercises influence in his newsrooms. As former Herald Sun editor Bruce Guthrie told ABC radio this week, Murdoch does not issue daily orders to his editors. He simply lets his views be known in the knowledge that they will be duly reflected in his outlets. A former News Corp executive, Bruce Dover, once described this process as “anticipatory compliance”. Loading Others argue that Sky News commentators like Peta Credlin, the former chief-of-staff to Tony Abbott, who savaged Turnbull from the day he took office - and who is known to be close to Lachlan Murdoch - are simply not as powerful as some imagine.

Sky News ratings, particularly for the night-time commentary programs that have come to resemble Fox News, are dwarfed by those of the free-to-air stations. This misses the point, though. Few Australians might watch Sky News, but every Australian politician does. Either way, Australians may now reasonably ask what role two media moguls, one of them an American citizen, had in removing a sitting Australian prime minister. Loading And whether or not you accept the reports that their role was significant, the circumstances surrounding the fall of Turnbull still highlights both the extent and the limitations of Murdoch’s power in contemporary Australian politics.

There was a time not long ago in which Murdoch's political favour was up for auction. During those years centrist governments and oppositions in Australia and Britain were forced to compete for his blessing, or at least to take care not to cross him. “It’s the Sun Wot Won It,” boasted Murdoch’s most influential British tabloid after an unexpected Conservative victory in 1992. Just two years later Tony Blair introduced the world to “New Labour” and won Murdoch’s support. He even became godfather to one of Murdoch’s children. Bob Hawke and, in particular, his treasurer Paul Keating famously backed Murdoch's bid for the Herald and Weekly Times group, paving the way for Murdoch to consolidate his Australian power. As Robert Manne later wrote, "Labor was rewarded with the support of the three most popular Australian newspapers, Sydney’s Daily Telegraph and Melbourne’s Herald and Sun, in the 1987 election." The competition between the parties prompted by Murdoch’s lack of political fealty significantly amplified his power. Ray Hadley helped pile the pressure onto Malcolm Turnbull. Credit:AAP

But recently News Corp’s stance has hardened to the right, a shift that is to the considerable benefit of the left, at least in Australia, says one former senior Labor politician. “There is no point in [Labor] trying to please Murdoch anymore,” he said this week. From his point of view the most powerful voices in the News Corp stable, both in print and on Sky News, will now back the Coalition in any circumstances. Further, he notes, despite what he calls determined campaigns against the ALP in key western Sydney seats in elections in 2013 and 2016, Labor’s vote held. Loading There are competing theories about what caused News Corp to align steadfastly to the right, given the success it has had playing the parties against one another.

Some believe it simply reflects an evolution in Rupert Murdoch’s personal views. Another theory is that the hard conservative line is actually pragmatic. News Corp, said the Labor veteran, is utterly wedded to a workforce deregulation policy that centre-left governments simply cannot provide. More than one observer has suggested that generational change is behind the shift. According to this theory, Lachlan Murdoch is more ideological than his father. After all Lachlan’s tutelage in power came about in America when Fox News was rising to dominate conservative politics in that country. As Lachlan undertook his American apprenticeship, Fox News, created for Murdoch by the hardliner Roger Ailes, had open access to President George W. Bush as he prosecuted a war in Iraq that Fox championed. Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch in 1996 announcing Ailes as chairman and CEO of Fox News. Credit:AP

Ailes genius was his understanding that Fox’s attraction was its hard line and its certainty. Whatever the cause of the shift, the result in Australia over recent years has been dramatic but almost unnoticed. While key Coalition figures are still drawn to the sorts of thing that curry favour with Murdoch’s commentators, like parliamentary coal fondling and culture warfare, the newly stabilised Labor Party has been left alone to stake out positions that are more in line with centrist Australia. On gay marriage, climate change and on energy policy, the Coalition, egged on by conservative commentators, has gone to war with itself over just how far to the right it should veer while Labor has adopted positions that not only suit its base, but are in line with popular opinion. Just this week as female Coalition MPs revolted over the brutality of the internal politics that accompanied the leadership spill, an analysis revealed that after the next federal election the Liberal Party might be left with just five women in office. In response, the party engaged in a debate over the ideological purity of a quota system that might improve female representation.

By comparison Bill Shorten responded by releasing a photograph of himself surrounded by his beaming female colleagues, the women who make up around 45 per cent of the parliamentary Labor Party, including half of its leadership team. As though to hammer home the point Labor then released a policy to help overcome the hole left in women’s superannuation policies when they take time off work to have children. Whatever happened during the August bloodletting, Turnbull’s backers are certain that Rupert Murdoch - and/or Lachlan - played an active and decisive role. Asked why though, one of that group struggles for an answer. After all, Murdoch had done well out of Turnbull’s government, he observed. The economy is humming along, media law reforms welcomed by Murdoch had been passed and there was even talk of introducing a tax on digital giants that have battered Murdoch’s business model.