Sydney Notebook

The other day, I went to a boozy barbecue near Sydney’s northern beaches. The guests were all political mates of mine and we chatted about those insurgent populists who threaten to upend established conservative parties across the globe: Donald Trump, Marine Le Pen, Geert Wilders, Beppe Grillo and, of course, Pauline Hanson — Australia’s version of all four. We put our wide-ranging discussion about domestic politics in an international context. But it was not until the next morning that I realised that we had not even talked about Malcolm Turnbull: he’s our fourth prime minister in four years, who was famous in the UK in the 1980s as the defence lawyer in the Spycatcher case.

In my hungover state, I texted my friends and asked them if they noticed anything odd about the night before. No one even brought up Turnbull. My BBQ buddies are no focus group: we’re just a bunch of conservative journalists, academics and businessmen, who usually vote for the centre-right Liberal party (where the word ‘liberal’ still means more or less what it meant in the 19th century). Still, it’s hard not to conclude that Turnbull, like another Tory ‘moderniser’, David Cameron, is passé. He is the moment that has passed into history.

It was not supposed to be like this. When Turnbull backstabbed his predecessor Tony Abbott in a Liberal party coup 18 months ago, the media herd declared ‘hallelujah!’ The 62-year-old climate enthusiast and former merchant banker, we were told, would transform Australia into a beacon of progressiveness. At the time, I remember attending one of those swanky dinner parties in metropolitan Melbourne where eyes lit up at the mere mention of Malcolm. There was a real sense of excitement. In an echo of Harold Macmillan’s famous declaration that Brits had ‘never had it so good’, Turnbull declared: ‘There’s never been a more exciting time to be an Australian.’