He posted a lovely video on social media paying tribute to his father Bruce, who took care of him single-handedly after his mother ran off when Malcolm was just nine. “Most of my childhood I spent with my dad … We were incredibly close. We didn’t have much money. He was a hotel broker, and for much of that time he was battling like a lot … single parents are …” He told how Bruce never spoke badly of his mother, though he had good reason to do so. “When my mother left us, he always spoke about her in the most glowing terms,” Turnbull said. “He talked her up, he told me how much she loved me, he did everything to make sure that we had the closest relationship. “I didn’t feel I missed out on anything because I had lots of love, a father who was very strong, very loyal and filled with love.” This is the authentic story of the man who is asking voters to endorse him as Prime Minister in his own right at the July 2 election. He was a latchkey kid with a lonely childhood who had been deserted by his mother. It may explain his prickly personality and drive to succeed, and perhaps render it more admirable. Either way, voters are entitled to know who he is and he is entitled to tell them, as every aspiring PM seeking election has done. Yet reaction to the video has been vicious beyond belief. Webzine New Matilda published a nasty article accusing the PM of playing “the poor dead single dad card”. The hashtag #Malcolmwassopoor did the rounds with malicious tweets referring to a “millionaire PM using dead parents to garner sympathy for his poor little rich boy self”. But one Greens supporter took the cake: “[His mother"> left him? If she’d known how he’d turn out she’d have aborted him, “wrote Viscount Dave. Where is Destroy the Joint now, and all those uptight defenders of Julia Gillard’s father’s honour? Or doesn’t it matter when the PM is a man?