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Turnbull is playing a losing game with conservatives
Michelle Gratin
Turnbull is letting the right inside and outside the Coalition progressively tighten their grip on him. He's become, or maybe always was, a whatever-it-takes man, and it's taking more and more to deal with situations as the power of the right strengthens, post Brexit, post Trump and in the age of Hansonism.
With a note of condescension, Tony Abbott recently described Turnbull as "growing into the role of prime minister", saying he was "now governing as an entirely orthodox centre-right" prime minister. It was the sort of compliment that wasn't one, if you were Turnbull.
Yet whatever he throws to the wolves will never be enough to satisfy them. Liberal senator Cory Bernardi has won the day on the EIS but now wants Australia to pull out of the Paris climate agreement. Columnist Andrew Bolt endorses Kevin Rudd's assessment that Turnbull is the most ineffective conservative prime minister since Billy McMahon.
The future is always another land but it is hard to see how Turnbull can become anything like his own man in 2017. If he had secured a big rather than wafer-thin victory at the July election, he'd have some political capital – and that capital, like the financial kind, carries its own strength. As it is, he's at the beck and call of those who hold the mortgage over him and, just now, they are not actually the voters
