Out of touch campaign a train-wreck for Turnbull | EDITORIAL

It’s a fair question.

In 2013, Australia rejected a Labor government which was overwhelmed by years of Rudd-Gillard-Rudd destabilisation.

Last September, we were told that the man we elected Prime Minister – Tony Abbott – couldn’t win Saturday’s election – and, just like that, he was gone.

Now the man installed by the Liberal party room to replace him has copped a flogging and it might be weeks before we know who we elected to lead the nation.

From the healthy margin of seats left to him by Mr Abbott, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull is struggling to cobble together enough seats to form government.

Tellingly, many parliamentarians who plotted against Mr Abbott during last year’s spill have now lost their seats.

Hindsight is always a wonderful thing, and Mr Turnbull and his allies have blamed Labor’s so-called Medi-scare campaign and even former treasurer Joe Hockey, but the stinking fish of this campaign lies resolutely on the doorstep of the Prime Minister himself.

First, he took the job without an election.

In September, amid the spill, Mr Abbott said: “The Prime Ministership of this country is not a prize or a plaything to be demanded”.

“It should be something which is earned by a vote of the Australian people.”

He was right: the people were robbed of a say, just as they were by Julia Gillard when she deposed Kevin Rudd.

Then Mr Turnbull, having won the prize, didn’t know what to do with it.

He spent months toying with the idea of a GST increase before shelving it for lack of interest, then he woke up one morning only to announce he would reform the Federation by allowing states to raise taxes.

Except no-one was buying it, and the grand idea was gone in a matter of days.

His polling and his popularity has plummeted ever since.

Now, to his shame, the nation faces the possibility of a hung parliament, or a government on a knife edge.