Looking Back at Malcolm Turnbull's Year of Meaning Nothing

What is the standard by which we measure the success of a leader? Let's say it's "the country didn't explode and you technically hung onto power for an entire calendar year". By that measure—and that measure alone—we can call Malcolm Turnbull's 2016 a win.

By any other measure, however, it's a flaming pyre. An exemplar of centrist politics in the 21 st century: craven capitulation that pleases nobody.

What made this such a disastrous year for Turnbull? After all, he won an election. Although maybe that's not such a big deal; Australia no longer changes Prime Ministers at election time. We don't like to be obvious.

Turnbull's time in power has been a litany of double speak and obfuscation. Leave your "he's a politician, what else is new?" in the comments below, but even the worst moments of Tony Abbott's disastrous eighteen minutes in office were a result of beliefs he genuinely held. Nobody doubted for a second that bestowing a knighthood upon Prince Philip was the sort of hyper-privileged promotion that reflected the world Tony Abbott fantasises about at night or when women are talking. When Malcolm took office, the knighthood may have been quick to go, but like the change in leaders it was a cosmetic change only. If Australia was surprised by terrible policies enacted by someone who clearly believes them, what did we think when they were promoted by someone who didn't?

Turnbull's origin story is one we should, as a society, repeat at least as often as we reboot Spider-man: despised by the right wing of the Liberal Party, Malcolm was only able to seize power from Tony Abbott because he was a popular figure who could pull the Coalition out of its tailspin and deliver an election win. In exchange for the Prime Ministership, he would have to continue the same policies as his predecessor, and not deviate from the message. The problem was the salesman, they hoped, not the product.

Turnbull's naïve calculus was this: as an economic conservative and social progressive occupying the left flank of a right-wing party, he would transform into a consensus-builder, a centrist gravitational point around whom all would orbit. Unfortunately, he slipped through the looking glass and became the negative print of this ideal. Desperately holding onto his tenuous position, his necessary lurches to the right anger the base that thought he represented a more thoughtful politics, while his rarely-voiced progressive opinions anger those on the right who want him to align with the party's base. Leading from the rear has not met with success.

Now, the Faustian pact is out of control, and the one chance he had to get out of it has passed him by. Turnbull was destined to deliver a massive election win for the Coalition, one that he would allow him a mandate. Let Turnbull be Turnbull is the catchcry that is echoed around Turnbull's frontal lobes and nowhere else.

But the election win was at best limp and at worst Pyrrhic. The Coalition lost 14 seats in the House and three in the Senate. Turnbull's mandate never came, and, still saddled with the policies of Tony Abbott and the budget of Joe Hockey and a cabinet that included Scott Morrison and Peter Dutton, he could not turn to his party and say, look, my brand of populism won, I'll take it from here. He was even more beholden than before.

Worse than that, the double dissolution allowed Pauline Hanson's One Nation to win over the disaffected conservative base the Coalition had been trying to wrestle back for twenty years. Moving to the centre would only provide more red meat for Hanson and her band of barely-competent conspiracy theorists. The Coalition had to move back to the right, and knew they'd have to up the draconian rhetoric. Or, as it's sometimes known, racism.

Enter Immigration Minister and man flipping over tortoises in the desert Peter Dutton.

When Dutton dog whistled Australia's far-right in November by suggesting Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser (who left office in 1983) had made a mistake by letting Lebanese-Muslims into Australia – further linking terrorism to second and third generation immigrants – all eyes turned to Turnbull. Those on both sides of the political divide stared him down, challenging him to condemn or support Dutton's comments. Turnbull was damned either way.

"There is no question," Turnbull began, emerging from a janitorial closet he'd swiftly ducked into, "that there are lessons to be learned from previous immigration policies," he said, removing his false moustache and "Mr Llubnrut" nametag, "and the minister was reflecting on, you know, on policies many years ago." Jumping on to the back of a passing potato truck, Turnbull shouted over his shoulder: "He's entitled to do that."

And he was so close to ending 2016 on a high note, too. There was a brief moment where Turnbull looked like he'd scratch out a win, or at least the appearance of a win, which in politics is the exact same thing. The Senate finally passed the ABCC bill, the (sort of) reason we'd had a doubly-dissolved election in the first place. The bill was a watered-down version that likely could have been passed before the election anyway, and combined with the also-watered down backpacker tax bill, it at least appeared as if they'd achieved something.

But this Gaussian blur of a win was itself short-lived.

The dying days of 2016 have presented as the perfect summary of the Turnbull government. Josh Frydenberg, Minister for the Environment and Energy, in a noble effort to ensure his photo op with Jean Claude Van Damme was only the second most embarrassing this he did that week, claimed that the government would consider an emissions trading scheme for the electricity sector and then a day later insisted that they wouldn't and he never even said that they would and also these aren't even the droids we're looking for.

Turnbull, who lost his dry-run leadership in 2009 due to his support for an ETS, could not have smacked Frydenberg down faster. "We will not be imposing a carbon tax," he told reporters, "and we will not be imposing an emissions trading scheme, however it is called. An emissions intensity scheme is an emissions trading scheme. That is just another name for it."

And so Turnbull, a man who believes in the need to combat climate change, cannot allow a minister to suggest that they might be considering climate policy. Turnbull, who claims to be in favour in same-sex marriage, hides behind the obfuscating plebiscite tactics demanded by the extremes of his party. Turnbull's Prime Ministership will be defined by a three-word slogan: "Power Over Principles," leading us to wonder: what possible use is there in empty power?

It's a question we won't get an answer to until Turnbull is finally ousted by his own party and quits politics forever. But really, who can be bothered waiting 10 months?

Lee Zachariah is journalist, TV writer, and author of Double Dissolution: Heartbreak and Chaos on the Campaign Trail, out now from Echo Publishing. You can also follow him on Twitter.