Normal text size Larger text size Very large text size Malcolm Turnbull was ready to be sworn in as prime minister. He had beaten Tony Abbott for the Liberal leadership and now he needed to make the 10-minute drive to see the Governor-General. But he'd hit a snag. It was called the Nationals. Without their country cousins and Coalition partner, the Liberals didn't have a majority in the House of Representatives. They couldn't form government. The Nats were driving a hard bargain. Turnbull was resisting. And parliamentary question time was looming. Then-Prime Minister Tony Abbott and Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull on 14 September, 2015. Turnbull would oust Abbott as PM that night. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen Who would stand up in the prime minister's position at the dispatch box when the clocked ticked 2pm? Abbott hadn't tendered his resignation to Cosgrove. So far as the constitution was concerned, he was still prime minister. But it was September 15, 2015, and the Liberals had voted Abbott out the night before. Abbott's timing was an inconvenience; the Nats were the obstacle. The Nationals leader at the time, Warren Truss, had pointedly reminded MPs the night before that "my Coalition agreement is with Tony Abbott". It was a personal pact, not a party one. It did not automatically transfer to the next Liberal leader.


Truss is a courtly, slightly fusty figure, yet can be firm. His position was toughened by his deputy, the bare-knuckled Barnaby Joyce. In fact, Truss's own leadership was under pressure. He had to demonstrate to his own party that he could be tough on Turnbull. The Nats were suspicious of Turnbull's progressive instincts and his prime ministerial plans. As a senior Turnbull aide put it, "mostly they were suspicious about Malcolm bringing all the gays in and doing climate change". They wanted to be sure that he would keep Abbott's policies on these hottest of hot-button issues – no change to climate change policy, no change to same-sex marriage policy. Specifically, Turnbull had to pledge that he would keep to Abbott's plan for a plebiscite on same-sex marriage. Then deputy prime minister and Nationals leader Warren Truss, with his deputy leader Barnaby Joyce, in 2016. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen The problem, of course, was that the Australian people were expecting Malcolm Turnbull to be what Malcolm Turnbull had always been – on these big issues, the exact opposite of Tony Abbott. What none of the Australian electorate knew was that, to win the final votes he needed for the Liberal leadership, Turnbull had already promised some conservative MPs from Queensland that he wouldn't alter Abbott's policies. And now the Nationals demanded that he put the pledge in writing. Otherwise, there would be no Coalition. Turnbull argued for more flexibility, especially on same-sex marriage, but the Nats weren't yielding.


Turnbull already had one wrist cuffed by his promises to conservative Liberals. Now he was about to have the second wrist handcuffed immovably into a formal, written agreement with the Nats. Loading The negotiations between the two leaders started around 8am, face to face, then broke off and resumed later over the phone. Even after Turnbull thought they had an agreement, Truss was still consulting his party, going through the text word by word. As agonising hours ticked by, Christopher Pyne kept checking with Turnbull's staff. "What the hell do we do about question time?" They decided to postpone to 2.30pm. Abbott eventually gave his valedictory press conference starting around 12.40pm. Turnbull's staff told reporters they were delaying the swearing in ceremony out of courtesy to Abbott. In fact, they were sweating on the signed letter from Truss. Frantic calls were made. They didn't yet have a Coalition. "I had no choice," Turnbull complained to colleagues. He grudgingly went along with the Nats. He agreed to spend $10 billion on the inland rail freight line. He even agreed to a little extra something for Joyce – power over water policy was added to his portfolio of agriculture. Turnbull took water from a Liberal to give it to Joyce.


The Nats got everything they wanted. The signed letter from Truss finally reached Turnbull's office around 1.15pm. The letter, true to custom, has never been published. Abbott resigned to the Governor-General by email rather than in person, unorthodox but not unprecedented. Officials delivered the original by hand. Turnbull was sworn into the prime ministership around 1.35pm. The restraints he wore were not yet visible to the public, but the new leader was shackled to the very policies that the Australian people thought had been discarded along with Abbott. As the political psychologist James Walter of Monash University put it: "He was tying his hands from the first." Loading Replay Replay video Play video Play video Abbott had been deeply unpopular. The people thought that Turnbull had saved them from him. In truth, the Turnbull government was a policy cohabitation with Abbott. In his most incisive summation, Abbott said Turnbull was "in office, not in power". At the time, the small handful of Liberals who knew the situation agreed that Turnbull had had no choice but to yield. But some have since rued that fateful moment.


"We shouldn't have agreed" with the Nationals, "we should have pushed back", a leading member of the Liberal moderates faction Simon Birmingham, the Minister for Trade, Tourism and Investment, for instance, has since told colleagues: "The high-risk approach – did the Nats have the guts to walk away from the Coalition?" Some of them were talking tough at the time. A Nationals senator and Joyce understudy, Matt Canavan, said, "I see no reason to rush into a Coalition agreement" even as it was being negotiated. Other Nats urged their leaders to boycott the routine Coalition party room meeting with the Liberals that day. Why? To keep themselves apart and, implicitly, to threaten to stay apart. He sold everything he believed in, then later surreptitiously tried to take it all back. Eric Abetz on Malcolm Turnbull But Birmingham, who served as a key numbers man to Turnbull in his coup against Abbott, now believes that it would have been worth the risk of a Coalition crisis: "One of my greatest regrets was the conversation with Malcolm the morning after" the successful leadership challenge, Birmingham lamented to colleagues. Sitting in Turnbull's office of Communications Minister because the deposed Abbott had taken up residence in the Prime Minister's suite – where Josh Frydenberg and Mathias Cormann supplied him with Scotch and other essentials for several days – Turnbull and Birmingham discussed the demands of the Nationals. "The Nats were playing a hard and heavy hand and the call was to cop it, and deal with it later," Birmingham observed to colleagues. But it was never dealt with later, except on the Nats' terms.

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