Malcolm Turnbull on Q&A: leadership plotters ‘effectively blew up the government’ – politics live | Australia news

Some parts of the News Limited empire – not all of it. Many of the tabloid newspapers were supportive of the government when they thought we were doing a good job. They weren’t sort of consistently seeking to undermine it. But I’ll give you an example.

One of my colleagues from Queensland – a man who has been a good friend of mine in the past, and I’ve helped in the past – he explained why he was supporting Peter Dutton to me. And he said, ‘The problem is with my branch members, my LNP branch members.’ He said, ‘Every night, the commentators on Sky News and during the day, Alan Jones and Ray Hadley, are having a branch meeting with them.’

Essentially, he felt he was being pressured by his branch members, and he felt he couldn’t resist that pressure.

Now, the problem is – and this is a fundamental problem that the Liberal Party faces – in order to be successful as a political movement, you have to win votes from the centre.

The Liberal party, to succeed, has to be a broad church.

And that means that it has to, you know, represent people with liberal views and people with more conservative views. That was Menzies’ broad church – how it’s talked about and so forth. That is being frayed. And what we’re seeing is voters saying to the Liberal party, “You are not liberal enough.”

Now, we should reflect on this, and the part – my party, the party I joined in 1973 – has to reflect on this. There are three really safe – formerly really safe – Liberal seats: Mayo in South Australia, Indi in Victoria, Wentworth now in New South Wales – my old seat.

All in very different areas but, forever, have been safe, conservative seats, safe Liberal seats.

They are now occupied by three Independents who are all women, who are all small-L liberals, and all of whom, in one way or another, have been involved in the Liberal Party in the past, either as being members of the Liberal Party or as having worked for Liberal Party members – and sometimes both.

So what that’s telling you is that the voters are – through voting for these Independents – saying, “We are concerned that the Liberal Party is not speaking for small-L liberal values, for genuinely liberal values, and therefore we take the matter in our own hands and we put in a liberal Independent.”

And that’s what you have in those three seats.”