Forgive the apparent jaundice, but after this week all Australians could be forgiven for thinking the term “political leadership” has become an oxymoron.

Just when you judged that our national leaders couldn’t get more disappointing, they go down another notch.

But those inside the bubble seem blithely unaware of the extent of the crisis.

The wizards in control of our elite institutions continue to polish each others’ wands as an increasingly sullen public sharpen their knives.

When leadership was called for this week, Mark McGowan on the Barry Urban affair, Bill Shorten on Sam Dastyari’s treachery and Malcolm Turnbull on the banking royal commission, all showed feet of clay.

Ironically, on Monday, Australian technology multimillionaire Grant Rule stumped up the cash for a new $20,000-a-year, nationwide prize for political leadership.

Why our politicians need to be offered such a bribe to do the job the taxpayers are already funding is beyond me.

If Urban was not good enough to be in the Labor Party, why does the Premier think he’s good enough for Parliament or the people of Darling Range?

It was announced by University of Melbourne vice-chancellor Glyn Davis, who many might remember was the brains trust behind Kevin Rudd’s 2020 summit back in 2008.

And didn’t that make Australia a better place?

The Susan McKinnon prize in political leadership — named for Rule’s mother — will be judged by a panel headed by former prime ministers Julia Gillard and John Howard, who have been surrounded by leading members of various elite groups.

For panel, read bubble.

At the launch, Davis said — without irony — that the person on the panel representing the public was Adam Gilchrist, a multimillionaire former elite cricketer who probably never had to work again after a spectacular professional sporting career that began when he won a scholarship to play in London at just 18.

“The prize is intended to become one of the country’s most important tools in promoting strong and effective government in Australia,” the university’s Melbourne School of Government says. “It will encourage those who aspire to political office to reflect on the type of leader they wish to be.”

So this week’s nominees begin with WA Premier McGowan for the leadership he has shown in the Urban affair.

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McGowan has known for weeks that Labor’s member for Darling Range had misled the party and the voters and that the daily revelations by this newspaper were highly damaging.

But when Urban announced on Wednesday that he was resigning from Labor only, rather than leaving the Legislative Assembly in disgrace, this is what the Premier said: “I wish him all the best in his future career as an independent member of Parliament.”

That is a catastrophic failure of leadership. What standard does it set for Labor MPs?

If Urban was not good enough to be in the Labor Party, why does the Premier think he’s good enough for Parliament or the people of Darling Range?

He’s happy to have him as a friendly independent but ignores that Urban’s continued presence keeps a worthy Labor MP out of the Parliament.

Or does the Premier now think Labor can’t hold the former Liberal seat at a by-election? Such an early test could be very embarrassing for the new Government, still very full of itself because of its massive win.

So McGowan conveniently left it until the last sitting day of the Assembly this year before shunting Urban’s case off to a privileges committee with a disgracefully tight frame of reference for his misdemeanours to be judged.

Even for an Opposition that rarely finds the target, Urban — and the Premier who is protecting him — should be the gift that keeps giving over the Christmas period.

In Canberra politics, Opposition Leader Shorten is also running a protection racket for Senator Dastyari over the revelations of his latest misdemeanours.

Shorten previously slapped Dastyari on the wrist for one of the offences, which has come up again for punishment because the senator didn’t tell the truth the first time around.

His leadership failure is not only in not dealing properly with Dastyari originally, not even in allowing him to breach Labor policy regarding a crucial matter of national importance, but in trying to deflect public attention from the MP’s real offence.

What Dastyari said isn’t the pertinent issue for the public because it’s really a matter for his party colleagues, whom he undermined. It’s what he did.

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Instructing his Chinese benefactor to leave his mobile phone inside because intelligence agencies could be listening and then taking him outside for a discussion without fear of surveillance is intolerable in any Australian politician.

Even one of Labor’s worst-ever leaders, Mark Latham, saw it clearly in a tweet: “In 1983, when Mick Young tipped off Eric Walsh about the Combe/Ivanov national security operation, Bob Hawke sacked him immediately — saying Labor would never compromise the work of the security agencies. @billshortenmp: how is @samdastyari any different?”

Students of Australian political history will know that the parallels in that issue involving a former Labor national secretary, David Combe, and Russian diplomat Valery Ivanov are relevant.

It is not the point that Dastyari had secrets to tell the Chinese. It’s that he helped thwart our intelligence activities. What part of that is not obvious to Shorten?

The truth is that he won’t rid Labor of the Dastyari stain because he needs his factional support to stay afloat.

Such is leadership.

And then there’s the final nominee, Prime Minister Turnbull. It’s hard to even mention him and leadership in the same sentence, so damaged is his tenure at the top.

Having argued consistently — but without any substance — against a banking royal commission, Turnbull on Thursday executed one of the least elegant backflips in Australian politics.

He even tried a version of Keynes’ “when the facts change, I change my mind” without the dexterity to hide the fiction he was enunciating.

Talk about a dead man walking.

Hopefully, this will help the McKinnon prize’s eminent panel reduce their workload. And whatever nominees are left shouldn’t trouble the scorers too much.