Malcolm Turnbull may well be the circuit breaker that Australia has been searching for. But he will need the big C conservatives in his party to swallow their pride, writes Barrie Cassidy.

If you doubt the rise of Malcolm Turnbull has significantly boosted the prospects of the Coalition Government being re-elected, then consider this.

A leading betting agency has already paid out to all those who backed the Coalition to win.

That premature settlement of accounts was rare even in the days of Black Caviar. It is an unprecedented assumption to make on a new leader's first day in office.

If all goes right, you can see where the bookmaker is coming from.

All this talk of an era of disposable prime ministers - five in five years - this time misses the point.

The country has just gone through an extraordinary period of leadership turbulence. The almost singular dimension to Australian politics for six years or more has been a deep disappointment - even despair - with the quality of leadership on both sides of politics.

Monday night's party room decision was not so much an extension of that crisis, but a desperate community led plea to do something about it. For years discussions on the parlous state of politics in this country have inevitably led to the name Malcolm Turnbull being raised.

He is not the messiah. Nobody is. But he may well be the circuit breaker that the country has been searching for.

Certainly a large slice of the electorate will want that to be true.

The bookmaker though has gambled (hey, that's what they do for a living) that Turnbull will be allowed to lead a united team, and that the big C conservatives will swallow their pride and give the new leader the space to carve out his own political personality.

To insist that he stick with the current policy - the current direction and strategies - won't do it. They must give him the flexibility to make changes that allow him to embrace, and not disappoint, the new constituency that is now available to the Liberal Party; that is, the political centre, the soft Labor voters and the young.

If he is not allowed to do that, Bill Shorten will be free to develop the line he has already put out: that Turnbull has "sold out all the things that were important to him".

The Government, Shorten said, "needs a new direction and not a new salesman." He is right about that.

Tony Abbott, and how he responds longer term, is critical to this.

Keep in mind, Julia Gillard would have won majority government had Kevin Rudd accepted his defeat. The well timed leaks in the middle of an election campaign made the difference in a very tight result.

Abbott was criticised in government for focussing on the negative, railing against issues, tearing down policies and people, but failing to build and advance.

Abbott has been a relentlessly driven warrior since his university days, identifying social, economic and political trends that offended him, and setting out to block and defeat them. The worst result would be if he found the drift from conservatism to small l liberalism too tough to take internally. If he was to decide that putting a stop to that was his new mission in life, then Turnbull would suffer.

There is nobody more formidable at destroying opponents and concepts than Abbott.

The early signs suggested some uneasiness in Coalition ranks would be justified. Unlike deposed leaders in the past, Abbott did not immediately call a news conference to speak - however briefly - and thank the country for electing him and congratulate the new leader. As hard as that is to do, that is what you do.

Nevertheless, when Tony Abbott did finally speak, he promised to make the leadership change "as easy as I can", and said he would not engage in leaking or backgrounding.

Abbott's colleagues say he is too decent a person to play the spoiler; he would never do that. The bookmakers apparently agree.

Turnbull will hope they're right; Shorten will be praying they're wrong. Because a united Coalition under Malcolm Turnbull will be almost impossible to beat. On that, I'm with the bookies.

Barrie Cassidy is the presenter of the ABC program Insiders. He writes a weekly column for The Drum.