MALCOLM TURNBULL & THE LIBERAL PARTY’S CIVIL WAR

Former Liberal Party leader and prime minister Malcolm Turnbull, in his campaign against Prime Minister Scott Morrison and the Liberal Party is one of the greatest acts of political disloyalty in Australian history. Through the pursuit of causes close to his heart, Turnbull destabilised a government he was once part of and courted forces openly hostile to it. Senior Correspondent at The Australian Financial Review & author of Ego – Malcolm Turnbull and The Liberal Party’s Civil War Aaron Patrick has now explored the egos, alliances and thwarted power that have left a trail of personal destruction across the political world. Aaron Patrick spoke for The Sydney Institute on Monday 8 August 2022 to explore some of the highlights.

MALCOLM TURNBULL & THE LIBERAL PARTY’S CIVIL WAR

AARON PATRICK

Thanks Gerard, it’s a real pleasure to be back here at The Sydney Institute, and thanks to everyone who came here tonight to listen to me speak about my new book. I’m looking forward to having an interesting discussion this evening. I started off the book in 2021, in the Sydney lockdown, when I was locked at home like most of us, really bored, and I needed something extra to do. So, I thought, I’ll write a book about the Morrison government. As I was working through this, I thought, maybe the Morrison government isn’t interesting enough. So, I thought, maybe I’ll do a comparison book about Malcolm Turnbull and Scott Morrison as prime minister. I started researching their family backgrounds and I discovered that Scott Morrison’s father had been the mayor of Waverly and had been on the Waverly Council for 15 years. It was an aspect I didn’t realise, and I thought, this must have had some influence on Scott Morrison’s background, on his personality, his interest in politics. Of course, Malcolm Turnbull’s background was all very well known to everyone. Then I concluded that Scott Morrison wasn’t interesting enough to base a whole book on.

So, I thought, I’ll do a book about Malcolm Turnbull’s relationship with the Morrison government, because he’s been pretty aggressive in his public commentary about it. The more I looked into it, the more links I found between Malcolm Turnbull and some of the protagonists during the Morrison government. Then, I started to think, there’s something in this. This could actually work really well as a book. As I was writing throughout 2021, I started to become scared that Malcolm Turnbull would stop criticising the Morrison government. Fortunately, my fear was misplaced. The main question I get asked about Malcolm is, “Did he speak to you?”, and I say he did, but they weren’t like a meeting of the minds. I was in a bicycle shop in town in January this year trying to pick up my bike which I smashed in the top of my garage as I drove in. I got a call from Malcolm Turnbull – and I had sent him one of the chapters, that morning, one of the really edgy chapters, to ask him to fact check it.

I swear, within an hour of receiving it, he called me back and we had a conversation and he said “Aaron, I’m not going to be your editor.”, and I thought, that’s a fair comment. He said, “I’m not going to talk to you”, and I thought, “That’s your prerogative.” Then, the men in the bicycle shop couldn’t understand why this tall bloke was sitting there on the phone, for almost an hour. I’m like “When am I going to be able to try and get my bicycle because I can’t just hang up on Malcolm.” So, where does this leave me?

I had the pleasure of reading a review of my book, published by my own company a couple of weeks ago, which basically ripped it apart and claimed that I had fundamentally misunderstood Malcolm Turnbull’s motivation. I thought it was good of The Age to commission an ABC journalist to review the book. Malcolm said to me “I’m not doing this for revenge, I’m doing this to make Australia a better place, because I have a good understanding of public policy and I’m able to contribute to it.” That’s a legitimate argument, and Jonathan Green believes it – good on him. I think the evidence bears itself out, but I present the evidence to all of you in the book and make up your own minds, and feel free to disagree with me.

I think Malcolm Turnbull’s behaviour was one of the most remarkable things that I’ve ever seen in Australian politics. He’s not the first prime minister to turn on his own party, but he’s the first one to do it in such an intense and dedicated fashion. It goes to an important question of politics, the practice of politics and the practice of leadership. Which is, do we owe our organisations which help create us a form of institutional loyalty? Even when they turn on us. Even when they humiliate us and remove us from power. For me, I think it’s an important question which goes to our judgement of Malcolm Turnbull as a man. I think you can separate the man or woman from their actions, or how they lead, and in Malcolm’s case, we’re entitled to judge him for his post political behaviour. Particularly when we’ve got plenty of other examples to compare him to. Anyway, it makes for great material. When I had finished the book, and we were in discussions with the publisher about when we’d publish it, they told me that they couldn’t publish it before the election. I was insistent that they did, because I felt that I got it done before the deadline, and that Australians were interested.

Clearly, Australians were interested and engaged in politics during the election. But I was told the publisher had a much bigger, more important book to publish which was getting precedence over mine. Which was Sam Maiden’s book about the treatment of women under the Morrison government, in which I expected to make an appearance. So, I had to bow to Sam being a priority, because she’s much better known than I am, and I presumed that her book would sell extremely well, because it would tap into one of the great critiques of the Morrison government, which is that it didn’t understand women. It turned out Sam didn’t get her book done in time, and it’s not easy to do so, so I don’t criticise her for that. My book was published after the election anyway, and it turns out that I was entirely wrong; that was the appropriate time for it to be published. Because, in a way that I didn’t entirely foresee, it explained, I would suggest, one or some of the reasons that the Liberal Party lost the election. Which is that Malcolm Turnbull and others helped create, very successfully, an image of Scott Morrison that we all understand, and that a lot of Australian women rejected.

I think Scott Morrison was not as bad a prime minister as the election result would suggest. He clearly wasn’t perfect, but I did not feel that he deserved to be criticised for his religious beliefs. I’m no Pentecostal but I don’t see any reason why that faith should really impact a person’s ability to be a great leader. I think Scott Morrison’s governments shepherding of Australia through the pandemic was strong. On any objective basis, they managed that with competence. But Australians were tired, and they didn’t particularly like the prime minister, and in their infinite wisdom, we have to respect that. Respect and try and understand their judgement. I presume Malcolm was pretty pleased with the result too, because I think he would have seen it as a vindication of himself. I feel for him, because to have a burning sense of betrayal or failure that drives you to seek revenge on your former colleagues is not the most noble of motivations, and a very human way to behave. But not one that is likely to generate happiness or satisfaction in a life.

Questions & Discussion

Question: What I found interesting in your book was it seemed to me that Malcolm Turnbull had a path from his home straight into Radio National Breakfast with interviews from Patricia Karvelas and Fran Kelly. You also mentioned in your book, the most extraordinary allegation as about the case of Kate, when Mr Turnbull seemed to suggest on about 3 occasions, without being picked up, that Kate may not have committed suicide. That, in fact, she might have died through other means. What was that kind of relationship between Malcolm Turnbull and Patricia Karvelas that led to those kinds of comments you could make in a 7-10 minute interview at primetime and get away with it?

Aaron Patrick: In your specific question about Katherine Thornton, Christian Porter’s accuser, and Malcolm Turnbull’s comments about that, you are alluding to a cause which is very close to your heart and a lot of other conservative hearts. Which is, the allegations of institutional bias within the ABC. It’s a very fraught and dangerous topic for those of us in the media to engage in. I have been partially cancelled by the ABC for a number of years now. For exactly what, I don’t know for certain. I find that I’m wary of using platforms like this to attack or condemn the ABC. In part, because I think it does a lot of good in some ways, and in the ways in which it behaves unfairly, I think they are thoroughly described in the conservative press. I remember living in the UK, where I covered the media, and I covered the BBC. The BBC, while attracting similar criticism, did seem to be more effective at presenting a broader spectrum of arguments. I formed the view that that was partly because of the funding mechanism; because of the direct relationship between the people that consumed the BBC’s content and the money the BBC received.

Maybe that’s something that we should one day consider in Australia. In relation to Christian Porter’s accuser, the accusations made against Christian Porter, and the effect they had on him, to me is one of the most remarkable things I’ve ever seen happen to a politician in public life. Because there was a man who was legitimately seen as a potential prime ministerial candidate, who was entirely destroyed in his reputation by allegations. Even its most ardent advocates acknowledged it could never be proven to be truthful or not. As a society, I think it’s worthwhile – and that’s what I’ve tried to do in this book, even though I was concerned that it would cause a lot of blowback towards me – to examine the facts of the matter, and work out as a society what do we do in these situations? Where people are accused of very serious crimes, and in effect there is no way for them to defend themselves. I tried very hard to present the circumstances of the case in an objective and fair way. Peter Van Onselen came up to me last week in Canberra and very generously said “Aaron, Porter wouldn’t have liked it and Kate Thornton’s people wouldn’t have liked it either, so well done.”

I thought that was a very generous remark for Peter to make. When I was going through the editing process with Harper Collins, when it came to the chapter, there was a moment where I was describing Malcolm Turnbull dialling into Fran Kelly, just after the rape allegation broke. I think it might have been three days afterwards. At that point, Porter’s identity wasn’t known. It was the great parlour game for anyone interested in politics in Australia to try and work out who it was. People were actually creating spreadsheets online of cabinet ministers to try and work out who it was. Malcolm knew who it was, because Kate Thornton had contacted him to tell him that Porter had allegedly raped her when she was 16 years old. Malcolm got on the radio and said “it’s said she committed suicide. Well, did she? What really happened here?” The implication of what he said was that if she didn’t commit suicide, she was murdered. The publisher was saying to me “You’ve put this interview at the start of the chapter, but it doesn’t fit chronologically”, because the events in this chapter start with Louise Milligan’s report. I said, “We need to emphasise this.” This very interview, to me, sums up the entirety of Malcolm Turnbull’s behaviour towards the government.

We need to draw attention to this, explore it and try and understand and convey to people the significance of these comments. I was literally doing an interview half an hour ago with ABC Radio Brisbane drive time, and this came up. Steve Austin said to me “We may be made too much of this. Maybe Malcolm Turnbull misspoke or it’s just a case of rhetorical overreach.” And I said “Surely you can make that argument, but Malcolm Turnbull, for all his faults, is a skilled orator. Verbal communication is probably Malcolm Turnbull’s greatest skill, and he revelled at all of these interviews with the ABC.” I don’t begrudge the ABC for running him, because he made great radio and television. But I also think the rest of us are entitled to judge him by his words.

Question: There were repeated calls for Malcolm Turnbull to be expelled from the Liberal Party, why wasn’t he? Would that be beneficial or not, or doesn’t it matter?

Aaron Patrick: Should Malcolm Turnbull be expelled from the Liberal Party? Straw poll; everyone put their hand up if they thinks he should be expelled. Who cares? We have Christine Forster down in the front; she was a Sydney City councillor for the Liberal Party, and I’m not sure what your position is. Should he be expelled, Christine?

Christine Forster: He should be, as all members of the Liberal Party should be, subject to due process.

Aaron Patrick: The Liberal Party has very strict rules; salary politician’s answer.

Question: Your book is more than just about Turnbull; it’s really about Turnbull’s relationship with the media, and how the media really has become an active player in modern politics. I take it that you think that the media’s role in politics now, their activism, is not a good thing for politics?

Aaron Patrick: I got myself in a bit of hot water last year when I suggested that a group of senior female journalists had become unashamed activists, trying to bring down the Morrison government. I’ve never backed away from that assertion. What I didn’t mention in the article is that plenty of male journalists have been political activists’ way before they did. In a way, I was saying good luck to them for standing up there and pursuing the agendas that they felt was important. It is not a simple issue, because while we need good objective reporting, it would also be naïve of us to think that journalists who become commentators will not use their pens to push for certain outcomes. In a way, that’s what the readers want. Unfortunately, it’s harder sometimes to be more in the centre these days, because we’ve convinced readers and voters that the other side is so bad, of such ill will, that when you go in the middle and say “They’re all mostly decent people trying to get the best outcome they can”, a lot of people don’t want to hear that. You get a lot of pushback. It’s much safer to go into a tribe on either the left or the right if you’re a media commentator. That’s what I’ve been trying to put against. I can’t criticise other journalists for being opinionated, because I am in a lot of my writing, and that’s what the readers seem to enjoy most.

Question: Can you put this into context a little bit more for us; in one of your earlier remarks, you said that leaders have, in the past, said negative things about their party after they have lost, but not to the extent that Malcolm Turnbull did. Can you give a few comparisons?

Aaron Patrick: There are two main examples; Malcolm Fraser went to the left after he left office, but not until later in his life, and he was not a prolific figure in media circles. Malcolm Fraser was probably the biggest example. But there was also John Gorton; he fell out badly with the Liberal Party, so much so that he ran as a Senate candidate in the ACT – and I think he got about 17 per cent of the vote. These were all in the pre social media era, but neither man had any significant political impact through their differences with the Liberal Party. I’m unaware of any examples post war from the Labor Party. In that sense, Malcolm Turnbull, in his relationship with his own political party as a prime minister, is unique.

Question: I’ve known Malcolm since he was 15, and I noticed on page 298, you say he wouldn’t discuss his childhood. It seems to me the rejection by his mother has led him to feel that the Liberal Party was like his mother. I think we should follow through his life.

Aaron Patrick: Thank you very much for your question, I appreciate it. It’s great to have someone here who’s known Malcolm Turnbull for a long time. I agree with you. I think Malcolm Turnbull’s family relationship is really important in terms of understanding him. I know this has been a well told story, but Malcolm Turnbull’s mother left when he was 10, and that decision had a profound impact on his childhood. In that he became a boarder at Sydney Grammar, at Randwick, and it was a small boarding house. My sense is that it was dominated by tough farmers kids. Malcolm was an intellectual; he was bullied. I think that must have created a great sense of betrayal from his mother.

At the same time, there was this fascinating sexual puritanism in Malcolm’s leadership as prime minister when he unhappy with his ministers having sex with their advisors. Putting aside whether you agree with the policy or not, and I do think there’s arguments on both sides, Malcolm Turnbull’s mother was, as far as I can tell, what they would have called a libertine at the time. She married one of her fathers’ friends; he was 30 years older. Within a week of the wedding, he got sick, and within six months he was dead, and she inherited a lot of money and some Point Piper apartments. Then, went on to marry two other men. By all accounts, Coral Lansbury was a woman who enjoyed her life; she enjoyed her sex life. She moved in entertainment circle in Inner Sydney. I think it’s fair to assume that she would have thought that the idea of banning sex in offices, basically between men and younger women, was quaint.

Question: So many people you speak to talk about Malcolm Turnbull as being Labor Lite, and probably quite a few people in this room might have that sentiment when they are asked to describe him in political terms. Do you think that he fits that bill? And was he always really in the wrong party of the two major parties in this country? Would he have been any more of a success in the Labor Party or would he have just been Kevin Rudd 2?

Aaron Patrick: That’s one of the crucial questions of Malcolm Turnbull, and why he was an unsuccessful Liberal leader. I know a lot of conservatives believe that, and I think that’s a very strongly held view amongst conservatives. It’s not for me to say that they’re wrong. I do not see Malcolm as a Labor Manchurian candidate. Malcolm grew up in Wentworth, in a capitalist household, he was a very successful businessman, an investment banker. He wasn’t a trade unionist. To my mind, he was on the far-left wing of the Liberal Party, which, as we know, would make him more left wing than some Labor MPs. But it doesn’t make him Labor. I accept that other people, who understand politics a lot better than me, have a different view. But I would see Malcolm as a proto-Teal.

Question: It might be apocryphal, but it was said that Graham Richardson blocked Malcolm Turnbull’s attempt to get into the Labor Party. Again, it might be apocryphal, that John Howard invited him into the Liberal Party and when he wanted to quit, after losing the opposition leadership, he said he should stay. What do you think about those decisions, if true, by those two men: Richardson and Howard?

Aaron Patrick: I don’t know if the Graham Richardson anecdote is true. It’s a good story. Clearly, John Howard played a central role in Malcolm Turnbull’s ascension as Liberal Party leader. John Howard promoted Malcolm Turnbull to Cabinet, and convinced him to stay after the Godwin Grech fair, and he was considering leaving politics altogether. In a way, I thought it was funny because Howard is badly disliked on the left, but he had the wisdom to create one of the greatest quasi left-wing figures in the whole Coalition history. Howard helped sustain and promote the politician who’s done almost as much as anyone else to advance the cause of climate policy in Australia, whether you like it or not, whether you think it’s an overreach or not.

In a sense, that, to me, was a sign of Howard’s cleverness. Because, having spoken to Christine Forster’s brother about this, who is Tony Abbott, I get the sense that he might have preferred that John Howard was more pro Tony Abbott and less pro Malcolm Turnbull. It’s a fascinating history; John Howard’s involvement in these two men. I’ll tell a story out of school. I got a phone call from Janet Albrechtsen, who wrote a very generous column about Ego a couple of weekends ago. She had been to a lunch at the Australian Club with Tony Abbott for his birthday, and she gave him a copy of the book. But at The Australian Club, for reasons I don’t understand, you’re not allowed to leave presents on the table while you’re having lunch – which was a shame because Malcolm Turnbull walked by in the middle of the lunch.

Question: You mentioned the Teal campaign. The Teal campaign, to my mind, didn’t just come about spontaneously, because a group of single-minded women decided to knock off mostly blokes in safe Liberal seats. They had money from Simon Holmes a Court. But it seems to me you touch on it just a little in your book. How much was Malcolm Turnbull involved in it? Because I think it was strategised, and there are some connections. Did you come across any further evidence about Malcolm’s role in the Teals? Because it’s really been very damaging to the Liberal Party. To my mind, it’s a bit like the DLP on the Labor Party 50 years ago; it’s taken a whole chunk of Liberal territory, and they’re going to take a long time to get it back.

Aaron Patrick: This is the great unknown story that the 2022 election could not crack, which was, were the Turnbull’s there operating the Teals behind the scenes? Because if they were, that was a big story. If it was, it would have been through Alex Turnbull, because him and Simon Holmes a Court were having interactions on social media. Clearly, Alex got burned in the 2019 election, where he came out publicly and urged people to vote against Dave Sharma in Wentworth. He was giving money to the Teals, and then was getting a lot of negative press coverage about it. If the Turnbull’s were behind Climate 200, then they’ve hidden it very well.

Question: Gerard and Anne had Troy Bramston here a few months ago, talking about Hawke and Howard and their management skills as prime ministers. Have you got anything to say about Turnbull’s general leadership skills?

Aaron Patrick: I’m always fascinated by how high-level leaders operate as managers. I explored this with Malcolm. What impressed me about Malcolm Turnbull is that, even some of the ministers who resigned just before he was removed as leader, acknowledged that he would sometimes, or often, allow ideas to contested. You could change his mind. Matt Canavan speaks quite positively about his management skills, and I think Canavan was in Cabinet with him at some point. When Canavan was minister for northern Australia and was representing coal interests. Another of his ministers, I won’t name them tonight, they said Malcolm enjoyed policy debate so much, it hurt the decision-making process. They’d be up there in Canberra, and they’d be talking about an issue for 3 hours, and Malcolm would say, “This is fantastic. Let’s come back to it tomorrow, 7:30 and finish it off.” They’re like “No we just want to go to bed; let’s make the call.” Whereas Scott Morrison was completely the opposite, he was one prime minster who liked making the decisions. He would make a lot of decisions without a massive amount of Cabinet discussion.

Question: Picking up on an earlier question in relation to betrayal, if it influenced Malcolm’s early part of his life, certainly he reacted with betrayal against the Liberal Party. His reaction to Christian Porter appears to be because of his perception of Christian Porters’ betrayal of him during the coup. He then pursued betrayal of Christian Porter, and his vindictiveness to Scott Morrison was because he felt betrayal there, because he’d promoted Scott. Betrayal influences many of his actions and reactions; do you have any other comment?

Aaron Patrick: About the betrayal Malcolm may have felt, or the one he may have reaped?

Question: He felt betrayed, but then his natural response to reactions to other people was one of betrayal.

Aaron Patrick: I imagine that Malcolm Turnbull doesn’t feel that he has betrayed the Liberal Party. He feels that he’s the aggrieved party here, and that he is acting out of a noble sense of duty to the country. It’s not just me who’s saying this, there were senior people from the Howard Government who went and saw him, and they basically said, “Please shut up”. He said “What are you talking about. What’s this Liberal base you’re talking about? I’m just out there on the ABC chatting away, I’m not seeking revenge.” So, it was almost disassociation between his actions and how he’s explaining them, even in private. I know that’s not a very good answer to your question, but we almost need Malcolm here tonight to answer that question – him or Lucy. I don’t know that anyone else can.

Question: Malcolm Turnbull was prime minister for close on 3 years, and putting aside his antics post prime ministership, how do you think he’ll be regarded by history, as a prime minister? After all, climate issues aside, the China awakening did kind of happen under his watch as well.

Aaron Patrick: This is the first draft of history, so, I’ve written how I think history will regard him. Perhaps in the fullness of time, there’ll be more fulsome accounts and analysis of what he did. Malcolm Turnbull’s danger is that if he’s perceived to be wreaking personal vengeance against his successors, he will blind history to his achievements. Which were not nothing. So, that is a real danger for him. His book he wrote – I think he’s a brilliant writer, I really enjoyed his biography. But I think it was shameless self-promotion, which is not unusual in ex politicians. To be honest, I think Malcolm has a bigger agenda, which is that I think he wants to be President of Australia. That’s only a half joke.

Question: Your book has just come out, but you’ve been talking to a lot of people. Would you change it much already or not? How quickly is this story developing, in other words?

Aaron Patrick: Would I change the book? In what sense; why?

Question: Would you make any additions to what you’ve already said, in view of what you’ve learnt since the book’s come out?

Aaron Patrick: I’ve learnt a lot more about the Morrison government, and how it operated in some surprising ways. But that is going to be the subject of a very long magazine article, coming out in a months’ time, so I don’t want to give that away.

Question: To what extent do you think Lucy Turnbull had an influence on these events?

Aaron Patrick: The remarkable thing about the Turnbull’s is that they are a really powerful wealthy Sydney family, and they operate like one. This is how power really works in this town. They are a tight team, and they are very tight with their children too. If you fall out with them, they cut you off. Russel Pillemer was a colleague of Malcolm from Goldman Sach’s, who helped Malcolm make a lot of money. He fell out with Alex Turnbull over only $6 million, and that was it. This is the guy – Malcolm – who would ring up on New Years Eve and say “Mate, would you mind coming down to Kirribilli, because we’ve got a “party” on, and I need some mates there to fill out the numbers.” Pillemer would not want to put on a business suit and go down and eat public service food on New Years Eve, but he would because he was one of Malcolm’s oldest political and business allies. They may never speak again.

Question: On the relationship between Turnbull and Morrison, one of the abiding images that I have leading up to his toppling this for a second time was at a press conference. In terms of the relationship between Turnbull and Morrison, some question was put – and I haven’t seen this very often in Australian politics the two leaders at the top of government, or I can’t recall it – and Morrison put his arm around him, and he said, “I am ambitious for this man”, or words to that effect. How much did that – would that incident in itself be enough to continue, in his mind, as a reason why he has it in for anything Scott Morrison related.

Aaron Patrick: The fascinating thing about the Malcolm Turnbull/Scott Morrison relationship is how far back it went, and how much it changed after 2018. I didn’t realise until I started researching the book, that Scott Morrison had played what could have been an important, but unknown, role in Malcolm Turnbull winning the preselection for Wentworth. I think it was 2004, when Scott Morrison was director of the NSW Liberal Party, the people involved said Scott Morrison put his thumb on the weight in favour of Turnbull in the preselection with Peter King. Then, Scott Morrison got promoted very quickly to the front bench after getting to parliament – it might have only been 13 months. Going forward to 2018, when Scott Morrison said that to Malcolm Turnbull, he endorsed in front of the whole country, declared his loyalty. Peter Dutton ran against Turnbull, and Turnbull, in the end, decided not to contest. Scott Morrison, to most people’s surprise, became prime minister. If you listen to Turnbull’s language afterwards, it’s really conciliatory.

He almost says the same thing back, he calls him Scott. He says, “I wish Scott all the best”. Clearly, in his mind, he did not blame Scott Morrison for his downfall. But then media reports started to emerge; there was one in The Saturday Paper by Karen Milton, I think it was the first one I read, then there were some other ones. It said that Scott Morrison had been playing both sides, and he’d tipped some of the numbers across to Dutton; not enough to make Dutton prime minister, but enough to destabilise Turnbull. If that was the case, Scott Morrison played one of the smartest leadership games in modern Australian politics. Almost certainly in the Liberal Party. I can’t remember anyone who’s done anything so clever – that’s really what he did. Then, you see Malcolm Turnbull becoming convinced of this scenario; that’s what happened. So, his language towards Morrison changes and becomes more hostile; it becomes “Scott Morrison”, “Mr Morrison”, and then in the end it just becomes “Morrison”. In the end, he just goes out saying “He’s just a liar”, “He lies to me”. He chases him to Glasgow, stands up in front of the world media, gives interviews to the BBC saying the prime minister of Australia is a liar. I’m convinced it was because he became convinced Scott Morrison was the man; he was the one who was responsible.

Question: When Mr Turnbull wouldn’t speak to you, and did for 50 minutes or so, what did he say?

Aaron Patrick: He said something like “I’ve given enough fucks already about this.” He said the same things he said in public, but he swore a lot more.

Question: Malcolm’s achieved his alleged goal, which is bringing down Scott Morrison. Does it go on from here though? Someone who, to me, has this temperament and modus operandus – he’s not going to be President of Australia, because we’re not going to get a Republic in his lifetime, the way we’re going. He does seem to be energised by his dislike of certain people. So, what does he do now? Does he destroy the Liberal Party totally? What would you say his next move will be?

Aaron Patrick: Just on the Republic, I think the Indigenous Voice is the first step towards a Republican referendum for the Labor Party. They’ll say “Look at this, we can do constitutional change. It is possible.” The Republic’s going to be a lot harder than The Voice. For me, the key question is, what happens to the Teal MPs? Do they coalesce into a new centre-right party? In six years time, do they essentially abandon this notion that they are independents, and they all run together? You can imagine them asking Malcolm Turnbull to join them, the President of the Australian Teal Party. Maybe he would.

Question: When you were here before the election, you did anticipate there would be a strong vote for the Teals. You probably didn’t suggest how many seats they would win. Obviously from the work you were doing then, you thought there was a strong support for them. Did you pick up any influence of Malcolm Turnbull or that time or was that just general support? I think you spoke about Goldstein and North Sydney.

Aaron Patrick: To me, Malcolm Turnbull’s values and positions – the way he articulated them, and the way he criticised Scott Morrison helped a lot of those affluent Liberals formulate in their mind why they disliked Scott Morrison. In that sense, I think his influence is unrecognised, but was potent. I remember staying recently with friends who live in Goldstein in Melbourne, which was Tim Wilson’s seat which was lost to an ABC journalist. These are people who went to private schools, top universities, professional degrees, live in a house with a swimming pool and have a beach house. They said, “We wanted Tim Wilson to go to Canberra and tell Scott Morrison what was important to us; climate, integrity, gender equality.” Essentially, what they were asking was almost beyond the capacity of the political system to deliver. Because they were asking Tim Wilson, who was then a parliamentary secretary, to campaign against the government. That was possibly Tim Wilson’s, and the rest of those MPs’, only chance of retaining their seats. But it’s incredibly difficult to expect any human to turn on the institution that gave them their entire career, their whole livelihood, their whole sense of identity. To turn against the people they see in their day to day life, who supported them for those jobs. But that’s what the electorates were asking them to do. There’s only one person I know in the world who’d be capable of doing that, and that’s Malcolm Turnbull.

Question: Scott Morrison, throughout his last couple of years, was subject to many slings and arrows from Malcolm Turnbull, and also Kevin Rudd. Why did he never fight back? Why didn’t he, if not himself through delegates or emissaries, fight back?

Aaron Patrick: Why did he not go to war with Malcolm Turnbull? Because when you’re in a leadership position, you have to be very careful, and you diminish yourself if you fight. I think Scott Morrison made a calculated judgement that there was nothing that he could do and nothing to be gained from fighting him back. I don’t know if that’s true or not, I don’t know what the counter factual is. But it’s possible he’s right. It’s possible that if he had done what you’re suggesting, it would have been even worse.