Malcolm Turnbull has bowed out of politics by cleverly engineering his preferred replacement as prime minister and returning to his Sydney Harbour mansion and a $200 million fortune.
The 63-year-old former television journalist, lawyer and merchant banker was ambushed on Tuesday when former home affairs minister Peter Dutton challenged him, narrowly losing 35 votes to 48.
The millionaire from Sydney’s wealthy eastern suburbs, who before politics did business with the late Playboy founder Hugh Hefner on behalf of billionaire media mogul Kerry Packer, was certainly no stranger to naked ambition, at least in politics.
Malcolm Turnbull (pictured with granddaughter Alice) has bowed out of politics by cleverly engineering his preferred replacement as prime minister
His challenger Mr Dutton, the preferred choice of right-wing Liberal politicians who admired his hardline stance on immigration, called another challenge for Thursday.
Peter Dutton challenged on Tuesday and came within seven votes
The lawyer in Mr Turnbull prevailed, demanding a petition signed by a majority of the Liberal Party’s 85 federal members of parliament be presented before a spill motion could be voted on.
The delay of the party vote until Friday gave Mr Turnbull the time to draft his ultimate replacement Scott Morrison into the race.
Mr Morrison, who ironically supported Tony Abbott in September 2015 when Mr Turnbull knifed a first-term prime minister, would go on to become the immediate former PM’s preferred candidate.
The millionaire from Sydney, who before politics did business with Playboy founder Hugh Hefner on behalf of billionaire media mogul Kerry Packer, certainly knew about naked ambition
The Turnbull government treasurer, who turned 50 in May, was the consensus candidate, who was able to appeal to both moderates and conservatives within the Liberal party room.
A day before the race, the Turnbull government’s attorney-general Christian Porter raised questions about Mr Dutton’s constitutional eligibility to remain in parliament, as a childcare centre group director who received taxpayer subsidies from the commonwealth.
He referred the matter to the solicitor-general, which may have convinced MPs who voted for Mr Dutton on Tuesday to switch their support to Mr Morrison on Friday.
Julie Bishop, the Liberal Party’s deputy leader from December 2007 until today, ran in the contest but was knocked out at the first round, as the candidate for moderates.
Malcolm Turnbull (left) was able to engineer the numbers so Scott Morrison prevailed as his replacement
In his final speech as prime minister in the courtyard of Parliament House in Canberra, Mr Turnbull praised both Mr Morrison and Ms Bishop, but wasn’t si kind to Mr Dutton.
He took aimed a right-wing ‘insurgents’ within the Liberal Party who destabilised his leadership, as proxies for his bitter predecessor Mr Abbott.
‘The people who chose – Peter Dutton and Tony Abbott and others – who chose to deliberately attack the Government from within, they did so because they wanted to bring the Government down,’ Mr Turnbull said.
However in a parting shot at these destabilising elements in the Liberal Party, he gloated at how Mr Dutton had lost to his preferred candidate Mr Morrison.
Turnbull, accused of being too close to Labor personally and ideologically, can at least go home to his mansion at Point Piper on Sydney Harbour, in Australia’s most expensive suburb
‘I was impressed by how many of my colleagues spoke or voted for loyalty above disloyalty, how the insurgents were not rewarded,’ he said.
While Mr Turnbull lasted less than three years as prime minister, he at least was the richest man to ever hold that office with the Business Review Weekly magazine in 2009 estimating his worth at $200 million.
The former prime minister, who once asked former PM Bob Hawke and powerbroker Graham Richardson about being a Labor senator, served 1,074 days as PM, three more than Gough Whitlam, who was dismissed from office in November 1975.
Before going into politics, Mr Turnbull was in business with the former Labor PM’s son Nick Whitlam, running a merchant bank with him during the late 1980s and 1990s.
The former Liberal leader, accused of being too close to Labor personally and ideologically, can at least go home to his mansion at Point Piper on Sydney Harbour, in Australia’s most expensive suburb and spend more time with his grandchildren.