With friends like these….

How unsettling mornings must be of late around a certain breakfast table at a waterside mansion in Point Piper. The newspapers waiting with the toast and tea are — who could have predicted such a reversal? — universally full of bad news. Like the Fairfax story whose homepage teaser is reproduced above. The story itself is innocuous, a clip-job recapping of Australian leaders who have turned on the waterworks for one reason or another, but do notice the caption.  In the space of just a few words, the home-page editor manages to remind readers that

(a) the current Prime Minister is the sworn enemy of unions and workers

(b) the current Prime Minister favours rich property investors

and

(c) the  current Prime Minister is a sook

On second thoughts, the caption is probably the handiwork of some work-experience kid, as they are cheaper to hire than competent journalists and subs, and what does the Age‘s vestigal readership of share-house uni students and amorous arborealists know anyway? But its authorship is beside the point; what will be so disconcerting in Point Piper is the realisation, dawning brighter with every passing day as the election draws near, that this isn’t how things were meant to play out. Recall how Liberal pollster Mark Textor sneered after the coup that his party’s conservative base “doesn’t matter”, that the loss of those fusty fossils would be more than compensated by our latest PM’s magnetic appeal to Greens and Labor types.

So flattering such insights and endorsements must have been, so much appreciated by an ego polished to blinding brilliance by a lifetime’s delight in hearing how special, how wonderful, how talented and smart is its owner. That voters could resist such charm and wisdom well, really, it seemed not so long ago unthinkable. One only had to read Niki Savva’s encomiums, or bathe in Peter Hartcher’s near daily gush of awestruck mush to know the truth as reckoned by those who think they matter most (“…in his very first remarks as Prime Minister, Turnbull threw the switch from fear to confidence…“). As for Mark Kenny, not even Uriah Heap could have held a candle to his obsequious unctions (“In one fell swoop, the Prime Minister has taken control of a sea of floating imponderables, transforming uncertainty into certainty…“).

Yet here we are, just seven months later, and the PM might just as well be the member for Warringah. Their poll numbers are identical and, a thought that must burn like acid, wasn’t it those same dire results that doomed his predecessor?  Not only have conservatives turned their backs, as predicted, the departing legions are rather larger than Textor might have imagined. And what of those anticipated recruits from the ranks of wind-turbine fanciers, gay-marriage advocates, common room philosophers, militant vegans and other representatives of the political class George Orwell dismissed as sandal-wearing, food-faddist pantywaists. Why aren’t they reporting for duty as predicted?

One reason might just be that our latest PM’s appeal was purely one-dimensional during those days when he was still honing his knife : he wasn’t Tony Abbott. Now he is just another Liberal PM and an election is coming, so the time is ripe to remind readers that, global warming ‘n’ all, he remains the leader of the wrong party. As Tony Abbott might have observed if Turnbull had been one to seek advice, being neither Green nor Labor is the original sin of politics in the eyes of those adolescent editorialists who populate modern newsrooms.

Ah, well, at least he can count on keeping Mrs Woolcock on the team. Unless he sacks her hubby, that is.

For a further indication of how the tide turned, follow the link below.

— roger franklin

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