When Malcolm Turnbull became prime minister I couldn’t help feeling conflicted.

The partisan in me saw him as a far more formidable opponent than the car wreck that the dodgem-derby leadership of Tony Abbott had created, someone unlikely to drive the Coalition off a cliff before the next election.

But the patriot in me saw the potential for a centrist leader who could move the nation forward on the critical issues that previous governments had failed to address, shifting the centre line of Australian politics to the left in the process.

Turnbull government records 80th straight loss in Guardian Essential poll Read more

I suspect many progressives had similarly mixed emotions. Here was a leader who had actually lost his job as opposition leader on a stated principal of addressing climate change; a leader who had led the movement for a republic against Abbott and John Howard.

Here was someone who understood the technologies of the future so well he had made his fortune on it; someone who embraced marriage equality, who would defend the Human Rights Commission from the culture warriors, who didn’t see asylum seekers as political pawns.

It’s worth reflecting on this lost well of good vibes this week as Turnbull confronts his own matrix of inadequacy. While Essential’s number is now 80 thanks to our weekly poll, the numbers between December 2015 and April 2018 show a similar trajectory.

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Enthusiasm for the Turnbull government began to wane almost immediately, as it became apparent that the price of power was to depart from many of the things Malcolm had professed to care about. There would be no change on the contrived process to frustrate same-sex marriage; no fast-track to a republic and no serious attempt to deal with climate change.

This was all portrayed as the transaction cost of gaining power – it was only a matter of getting through an election, and the real Malcolm would assume to control. That election was called on the pretence of passing legislation the Senate had blocked that criminalised the industrial activities of the CFMEU.

Embedded in the small print were laws to make it harder for all unions to campaign and bargain and keep the wages of ordinary Australians in line with the spoils being enjoyed by the moneyed classes.

During the campaign Turnbull went through the motions, preaching the jobs and growth mantra, his most effective intervention being when he wrote himself a cheque for $1.75m.

But it was only after his less than gracious election-night speech while clinging to power with a single seat that, in an almost instant case of buyers’ remorse, the two-party-preferred vote went into the negative.

The decline in Turnbull’s personal approval over that period is illustrative.

Diminished by the election result, Turnbull was unable to push through signature legislation including the company tax cut and unprepared to assert authority over his own party room and restore the market-driven triggers for energy transition that Abbott so wilfully trashed.

2017 flew by in a series of rolling crises, an expensive and divisive process on marriage equality, unconsummated thought bubbles on tax and the dysfunction of an ad hoc response to citizenship constitutionality.

And underpinning it all an economic system that was based on faith in trickle-down economics and industrial-scale tax minimisation but with no mechanism for ensuring worker pay packets picked up a share of economic growth.

The personal approval numbers had stabilised at the end of 2017 but since then they have again been derailed by his former deputy PM’s indulgences, the PM’s moralising and a newfound embrace of coal – undermining any sort of coherent leadership story.

As this week’s Essential Report shows the one and only thing going for Turnbull today is the lack of any credible leadership alternative.

While Julie Bishop has some appeal among more progressive voters, the combined ticket of “someone else/don’t know” represent the only viable leadership option. That position is even more compelling when Turnbull’s name is taken off the list of leadership options.

So as Turnbull clings on to the leadership by dint of the absence of any viable challenger, those of us who wished him well are wondering how we got him so wrong.

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Here’s my take. Turnbull never walked away from his beliefs in climate change or marriage equality or the republic any more than he is now walking away from a commitment to democratic principles by supporting legislative attacks on charities or any more than he’s walking away from a commitment to the free market by seeking to direct the business operations of AGL. The truth is he has never walked away from his beliefs because he never had any to walk away from.

Australians got Turnbull all wrong. He was never a conviction politician. He was only ever a lawyer arguing the brief in front of him. You catch it now and again when he addresses parliament, bashing the unions or defending the coal lobby – the dead look of a man paid to argue someone else’s brief for a living.

And right now Malcolm Turnbull is an advocate with the toughest of briefs: Malcolm Turnbull.