If Malcolm Turnbull wins the upcoming election, it's possible he will gain the authority to drag the Liberals towards more centrist policies. And this terrifies the conservative culture warriors, writes Peter Brent.

If the Coalition is returned with a working House of Representatives majority this year, Malcolm Turnbull will be the first prime minister to take his or her government to clear re-election in 12 years.

The last time it happened was way back in 2004, five prime ministerships ago, on the other side of the global financial crisis, when the mining boom was yet to peak: John Howard's last hurrah, against Mark Latham.

Twelve years later, Australian politics is characterised by repeated downgraded public revenue, government jitteriness and voter grumpiness.

On last Sunday's Insiders, Cabinet Secretary Arthur Sinodinos anticipated an altered dynamic inside the Liberal Party once Turnbull has an election win under his belt, suggesting that:

A returned government with Malcolm Turnbull at its head after the election I think will have the capacity to stamp its authority on all sorts of issues and I think people in the party will respect that.

Now, Arthur is supposed to be highly intelligent - people have been telling us "Arthur is very smart" for years - but ruminating in this way on national television was pretty dumb, and a red rag to Liberal conservatives.

He was right though. Re-elected prime ministers generally accrue added stature, and not just within their party. The voters have spoken, after all, and any suspicions that the Opposition might just get over the line have been shown as a mirage.

This result was always going to happen. Our national storytellers leap aboard the current paradigm, telling us that to dissent from this prime minister is to dissent from the country. Forests are slaughtered (or at least page impressions generated) to explain this person's special connection with middle Australia or, at least their astonishing political skills.

Perhaps paradoxically, the revitalisation is further heightened if the result had earlier appeared unlikely. Howard's 2001 re-election, after he seemed without any hope of survival eight months earlier, utterly transformed him. Opponents threw up their hands in resignation; his colleagues admitted they never should have doubted him and that he had always known what he was doing. Importantly, it inoculated him to future poor opinion polls, because everyone knew this was the guy who always comes back, a fighter who is best with his back against the wall.

Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to seek, up and down arrows for volume. Watch Duration: 12 minutes 4 seconds 12 m Arthur Sinodinos joins Insiders

A similar transformation occurred after Paul Keating's 1993 victory; it was said at the time that he now enjoyed more authority inside the party than Bob Hawke ever had.

In both cases, the confidence that another rabbit could always be pulled out of a hat eventually collided with reality.

The Coalition under Turnbull has not yet lagged in voting intentions, in any opinion poll, although it has recorded a few 50-50s. The polls may or may not dip into negative territory, but even if they do Turnbull won't achieve Keating or Howard status in 2016. He will, though, enjoy an elevation, and not just among surviving marginal seat MPs.

Sinodinos's weekend self-indulgence provoked a subtle backlash; one journalist even suggested that if the Labor Opposition makes any gains at the election, it will raise the question of what the point of last year's leadership change was.

Which involves a dramatic rewriting of what those events six months ago were about.

Before last September, one heard or read from time to time politically engaged people of a leftish persuasion affirming that, such is the emptiness of the modern ALP, if Turnbull was leading the Government they would, for their first time, vote Liberal. It's unlikely any of them think that today. Turnbull is behaving like a Liberal prime minister; his chosen current main battleground, industrial relations, is the chief remaining point of demarcation between the major parties.

Still, it is possible that a re-elected Turnbull could drag his party towards more centrist positions on some issues, like same-sex marriage and climate change. It would not make him "Labor-lite", but instead rather like conservative prime ministers in the United Kingdom and New Zealand.

This of course is exactly what conservative culture warriors, having been spoilt by the almost 12 years of the Howard government, and then by Abbott, are terrified of.

In late 2010, in correspondence in the Quarterly Essay, the Financial Review's Laura Tingle recalled that at the outset of that year's election campaign a Labor frontbencher told her:

Laura, just remember it wasn't the polls that were the reason Kevin was done over. It wasn't because we were worried that he would lose. It was that we were worried he might win and we'd be stuck with him!

Labor's division six years ago was mostly about personality, while this one is about identity and ideology, but many in the government would "worry" about a good result in 2016.

Of course it's possible, though very unlikely, that Labor will win this election. That would utterly repudiate the events of last September, send Turnbull and his supporters to purgatory and raise the esteem in which Abbott is held immeasurably.

Some Liberals might secretly wish for such an outcome.

Either way, the fight for the Liberal identity begins on Sunday morning after the election.

Peter Brent is a writer and adjunct fellow at Swinburne University. Visit his website and follow him on Twitter @mumbletwits.