Illustration: Rocco Fazzari Of course, in the intelligence department, Keating was the standout. PJK, as we knew him, had three extraordinary intellectual skills. He could soak up information like a sponge. He had an intense strategic imagination. And he could mix both with the vernacular to emit a spray of one-liners with the perforating lethality of a Gatling gun. So yes, Keating used his intelligence, as both weapon and wand – but not as bridge. Never, in my experience, has an Australian prime minister used intelligence to connect with the country. Never has the PM conversed with us as if we were functioning adults. That's why the Abbott years were so unutterable. Sure, the policies varied from dismal to disastrous. But more than that, during the winking and smirking "ditch the witch" years, when the country seemed to be run by a gang of schoolboy inebriants, most depressing was the shared presumption that public debate is a game of idiots. Malcolm is different. His intelligence has light in it. I often disagree with him. We don't see eye-to-eye on tax, I'm suspicious of the TPP, I believe the sale of Darwin's port to the "private" company of Chinese government billionaire Ye Cheng was unwise and the approval of Adani's coal mine shocking. There is no moral case for coal.

And yet. And yet. Malcolm speaks to us not as a rabble of blithering chimps wanting their buttons pushed but as grownups, capable of considered argument, reasoned reflection and conscientious decision. For Australia, this is huge. So here's my prediction. Malcolm – who like Beyonce is known universally by his first name – will be the longest-serving prime minister since Menzies. Possibly ever. Malcolm has occupied the middle ground so thoroughly that Bill Shorten – who against Abbott looked almost plausible – is suddenly Mr 15 Per Cent, and shrinking. This was always on the cards. It's been rumoured for years, and from inside sources, that, back at the start, Malcolm either courted or was courted by Labor. Malcolm denies it and perhaps it doesn't matter, except that from the moment he crossed the floor for climate change, he was a shoo-in for the chattering classes. Before that, throughout his Republican push, people tut-tutted. "He's no politician," they grumbled. "He's arrogant. He's rich. He lacks timing." Lately, though, Malcolm's timing has been impeccable.

To join one party yet please the other is a high-risk strategy – if strategy it is – that in retrospect looks like genius. Starting softly, he fell (42-41) at the first hurdle then, when all seemed lost, hit his stride just when our "plague on both your houses" clamour reached fever pitch. But this is more than a prediction. It's a judgment. Malcolm's political longevity will be a Very Good Thing. Not because he'll necessarily manage to repurpose the crazier cowboy fringes of the Coalition. But because – far more importantly – the explicitness of Malcolm's intelligence makes it OK for us to be intelligent too. Not just OK. Intelligence is almost expected. And expectation, as we know, is the best single predictor of performance. I'm kind of surprised to care. I never considered politics terribly important in a "comfy bloody country" like ours (to quote Bob Hawke from Keating!), where everyone will eat tomorrow and the parties are virtually indistinguishable. Certainly it never seemed to matter much who was in charge. But I was wrong. Who knows why, but people take their lead from leaders. The worst effect of the Abbott years was the way intellectual thuggery became normalised. Trickle-down ethics.

So I'm not just talking political smarts or intellectual agility. The lucid intelligence is one that operates on higher principles than crowd-pleasing, rabble-rousing or the routine party hackery of the common-or-garden political mind. To have an intelligence of this kind leading Australia is a shift of immense significance. Deriving from something that, at risk of sounding naive, you may almost call goodness, it gives Malcolm the potential to be not just a practical leader, in the usual way, but a moral one; a leader of minds. Pick any of Malcolm's speeches, interviews, even media releases. His first act, within a week of becoming Prime Minister, was to give $100 million to counteract violence against women and children. Since then he has killed the dopey knighthoods, established a $250,000 prize for scientific innovation, launched a book on Whitlam, dudded Christopher Pyne's $100,000 degrees and promised to change the ludicrous "publish or perish" funding that has so white-anted academia. But that's not all. When Malcolm says "good teachers change lives"; when he reminds the G20 of the "potential for renewable energy, especially solar"; when he warns China "not to fall into a Thucydides trap", bringing war to the South China Sea; when he promises friendship and support to Indonesia or insists – in contrast with Abbott's relentless "bomb them" belligerence – that Paris demands a political solution: throughout, you sense the cool and true moral intelligence at the helm. Relief is what I feel, like the southerly buster after a 40-degree day. It says my inner child was right. The weak and stupid are the ones to fear.