When asked why he wouldn’t reveal how much he had given, Turnbull’s answer was as opaque as it was shifty. On Channel Nine, Laurie Oakes accused him of ‘looking like a hypocrite’.

The numbers are in fact worse than when Morrison and the Liberals in opposition railed against “debt and deficit disasters” and a “budget emergency”.

Turnbull isn’t convincing on the so-called bread-and-butter issues. And there is growing pessimism that it is already too late for him to turn that around.

“New Zealand has a much less fraught political culture. Key certainly didn’t have a deputy PM who led another party that had a deep antipathy to, and suspicion of, him. ”

“If Turnbull – and Abbott before him – had been as prepared to compromise on the construction industry watchdog as we saw this week, the ABCC and Registered Organisation bills would have passed a couple of years ago. ”

“Peter Dutton seems convinced the best way to deal with these extremists is to match them. In that, he has allies in the Coalition National Party. ”

“Shorten didn’t need Trump to prompt him to take his message to communities with high unemployment that are resentful. This week, He made his 20th visit to regional Queensland for the year. ”

Malcolm Turnbull’s intemperate attack on Gillian Triggs is a sure indication of the heat the PM is feeling from his hard-right flank. That he panders to it in such a ham-fisted way has many on his own side despairing.

“One Liberal says when Rudd quit as foreign minister, at a dramatic press conference in Washington, it was to blow up the government. Why would Turnbull risk it with Abbott?”