Former Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull (Image: AAP/Joel Carrett)
Former Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull (Image: AAP/Joel Carrett)

Wentworth is Turnbull country. When he won the seat in 2004, the residents stood a little taller; finally they had a local member who could reflect their status and become prime minister. 

Malcolm and Lucy were like the royal family of the east: wealthy, highly educated and lovers of the high arts. Which other politician would have a Bill Henson photograph hanging on the wall of their harbourside mansion? And speak about that artistic controversy with such erudition? 

When Turnbull was brought down by the right-wing of the Liberal Party in 2018, causing him to leave politics and flee to New York, the locals’ collective fury could be felt from Mars. 

Wentworth voters are one of the country’s richest and most highly educated; this means they are economically conservative and socially progressive. To have their Oxford-educated PM replaced by that (low) churchy, (allegedly) rugby-league-obsessed bogan from the Shire felt like a coup — the People’s Republic of Wentworth has been in turmoil ever since. If they could have seceded from the Commonwealth and, like Prince William of Hutt, appointed their own king and queen, they would have.  

Post-coup, Malcolm has kept his public criticisms of the Liberal Party to a minimum, but that hasn’t stopped his son Alex, a Singapore-based fund manager. In 2018, Alex said: “It’s impossible to vote for the LNP in good conscience”, adding he had no intention of entering politics himself. “My father fought the stupid and the stupid won.”

Alex’s Twitter feed has also been a source of constant comment, culminating in yesterday’s long, 10-tweet thread venting his fury about the news that Australian Financial Review’s Aaron Patrick was about to publish a book entitled Ego: Malcolm Turnbull and the Liberal Party’s Civil War.

According to a story in the AFR, the book asks whether Malcolm has been involved in efforts to destabilise the Liberal Party and also whether he has contributed to Simon Holmes à Court’s Climate 200 group, which is assisting independent, climate-focussed independents with money and advice.

“Aaron Patrick is getting published by HarperCollins, a News Corp subsidiary,” Alex wrote.

“If you think there’s a lot of rigorous fact-checking going on there I have a bridge to sell you. The whole story appears to be that if the [Liberal Party] loses the election it is the fault of four people only [the Turnbull family, which includes daughter Daisy], one of whom doesn’t even live in the country. That’s completely insane. Firstly — I am the only one ever active in broadly-defined Teal seat [independent] politics.

“Secondly I have not been active for ages due to being stranded offshore during the two years of COVID — in turn thanks to the Liberals’ slow and incompetent vaccine rollout and inability to build quarantine accomodation. Well done I guess?

“The real story here is that in the Australian press gallery ‘clown world’ a Teal wave represents an existential threat. Firstly, guys like [the AFR’s Phil Coorey] and [Aaron] Patrick live out of the 5pm chum bucket drops from the government. They get the news given to them and call it work.

“A more diffuse power base of parties and independents and complex issue-by-issue voting means you might have to talk to more people and do more work. It’s a terrifying thought for people this lazy.

“It also represents an existential threat to the kind of networks of weird kompromat that seems to be the adhesive of human relations amongst dysfunctional alcoholics and sex pests that roam Parliament House. The Indy candidates are women who have no time for that [bull shit emoji].

“So when people ask ‘it’s so nasty and personal, they really hate your guts’ — why yes they do. But that says a great deal about the current paradigm — that the thought of a number of capable women getting into Parliament without a party affiliation represents such a threat.

“As everyone knows apostasy in a cult is the worst offence and as a private school-educated male I am to them the absolute worst: after all why would I turn up this opportunity to be Barnaby Joyce?

“So I expect more losing their minds and more venom but really is this going to solve the fundamental issue that voters are tired of this and now have good alternatives?

“It’s all so tiresome — and completely ignores that what has fundamentally happened is that politics is now more competitive and that local voters now have more agency and power. Deal with it. Nobody was born to rule.”

Patrick responded yesterday with a long tweet thread of his own. 

“If Morrison loses, Alex will have had zero to do with it, as far as I can tell. As for his father, that’s another (big) story, which I explore in Ego.

“[Alex] also believes my stories are handouts,” he continues, “but the last drop I got from this government was in 2018.”

Next he tweets, “I don’t dislike him or any of the Turnbulls, who are accomplished people — and dangerous to cross.” 

Regarding Alex’s remarks that “nobody was born to rule”, Patrick replies, “Simon [Holmes à Court’s] father was a billionaire. Turnbull was one of the richest men elected. They deserve scrutiny.” 

As in 2019, Malcolm and Lucy have decided to sit out this election campaign in New York, where they own an apartment. This didn’t stop Malcolm, however, from doing an 11-minute interview on Radio National this week on Australian foreign policy.

When Patricia Karvelas slipped in a question about Wentworth at the end, he said he was staying out of the election contest and that his only contribution would be “to vote”.

“They are both very good candidates; [the Liberals’] Dave Sharma is a very talented guy and [independent] Allegra Spender is an outstanding candidate. Whichever one is elected will be a very fine representative for Wentworth.”

It is hardly a ringing endorsement of poor Dave, is it? I’ve heard Turnbull express more enthusiasm for crayfish.

Phil Coorey’s response was blunt, pointing out that while Labor had circulated the transcript of the Turnbull radio interview, nobody in the press gallery had really cared.

In the end, will Sharma, who holds the seat on a 1.3% margin, get a Turnbull endorsement? In his 2020 autobiography, A Bigger Picture, the former PM wrote about the 2019 election, which came just months after the Wentworth regicide.

“I had concluded the best thing I could do for Morrison was to stay well away. He asked me to write a letter to the Wentworth constituents urging them to vote for Dave, but the text they proposed was so disingenuous I concluded it was better I say nothing.”

Turnbull said that his contribution to the 2019 election had been to give Sharma “some good campaigning advice” — did it include the aphorism that “all politics is local”? My spies on Woollahra Council report that Dave, on his trusty Vespa scooter, has been turning up to local community group meetings and avidly discussing the size of car parks.

The biggest community issue, I hear, is the number of flooding-induced potholes regularly causing the local BMWs to blow a tire. If you’re a voter with this problem, you have three weeks to call Sharma’s office and get him round to fix it. Just don’t blame the rain clouds on climate change.