ANNOUNCER: Malcolm Turnbull from Wentworth.

REPORTER: Brendan Nelson's leadership was on borrowed time.

ALEX SOMLYAY: I'd like to announce that Malcolm Turnbull has been elected as the leader of the parliamentary Liberal Party.

REPORTER: It was hardly a decisive victory but more than enough for the man who'd coveted the job for the best part of a year.

MALCOLM TURNBULL: I will not lead a party that is not as committed to effective action on climate change as I am.

CHRIS UHLMANN, REPORTER: The leadership threat comes from inside his own tent and some Liberals seem determined to destroy the leader.

KERRY O'BRIEN: If Tony Abbott becomes leader on Monday, he will be your third new leader in two years. That is not a good look, is it?

NICK MINCHIN: I think it is unhealthy for parties to keep changing leaders all the time.

TONY ABBOTT: Very impressive.

REPORTER: Tony Abbott seemed as shock as any one at the outcome of the Liberals leadership vote

TONY ABBOTT: I am feeling a bit overwhelmed.

Australia is under new management and Australia is once more open for business.

(Cheering)

SABRA LANE: While the Prime Minister survived the spill motion, it was effectively a vote of no confidence in him.

TONY ABBOTT: Good government starts today.

REPORTER: Malcolm Turnbull delivered a bombshell eight months in the making.

MALCOLM TURNBULL: We have lost 30 Newspolls in a row. It is clear that the people have made up their mind about Mr Abbott's leadership.

TONY ABBOTT: We are not the Labor Party.

SCOTT BUCHHOLZ: Malcolm Turnbull was successful on 54, Tony Abbott, 44.

REPORTER: His second rising as Liberal leader comes almost 7 years to the day from his first.

TONY ABBOTT: There will be no wrecking, no undermining and no sniping.

MALCOLM TURNBULL: Hi there, I'm Malcolm.

ANDREW PROBYN: Mr Turnbull's initial stratospheric ratings reflected his broad appeal but compromises on climate change and same-sex marriage shattered his mystique.

POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I think he has had difficulty conveying a clear message for what he stands for.

PETER DUTTON: I would challenge for the leadership of the parliamentary Liberal Party.

LEIGH SALES: Three years after Malcolm Turnbull rolled Tony Abbott, Peter Dutton is trying to oust Malcolm Turnbull.

MATHIAS CORMANN: We advised the prime minister of our judgement that he no longer enjoyed majority support in the party room.

SCOTT MORRISON: This is my leader and I'm ambitious for him.

NOLA MARINO: The successful candidate was Scott Morrison. He won this vote by 45 votes to 40 for Peter Dutton.

MALCOLM TURNBULL: Australians will be just dumb struck and so appalled.

LEIGH SALES: Malcolm Turnbull. welcome back to the program.

MALCOLM TURNBULL: Great to be with you.

LEIGH SALES: You handed over the final part of your book to your publisher a couple of months ago.

Could you possibly have imagined how much the world would have changed in the period of time before it came out?

MALCOLM TURNBULL: No, no, it seems like a completely different world but it's important for us, for life to go on.

It is important for us to keep reading. It's an Australian book with an Australian publisher, an Australian printer and Australian book sellers who all need things to sell.

So we decided to press on and stick to the date we'd set last year.

LEIGH SALES: What are your observations as you look at what is going on in the world at the moment?

MALCOLM TURNBULL: This virus defies our very humanity. This is biology confounding politics just like climate change is physics confounding politics.

Here in Australia, so far, the response has been effective and we are seeing the curve flattening.

So I think all the governments in Australia can take some satisfaction, no cause for complacency, of course, but some satisfaction that so far the measures are working but the economic shock will be massive.

LEIGH SALES: Let's go back to a time before we were all living in this new normal when politics was politics and that was the final week of your prime ministership.

You, yourself, had set the bar of losing 30 Newspolls in a row as justification for the removal of a leader?

MALCOLM TURNBULL: That is not quite true with great respect. I wish I'd never said that but the critique I made of the Abbott government was that essentially that it was a bad government and I cited as evidence that its political cause was lost really as a means of persuading my colleagues that we had lost 30 Newspolls in a row.

But yes, I certainly mentioned it but that wasn't the reason I challenged Tony Abbott, not at all.

LEIGH SALES: None the less, you did by citing that then give you colleagues a excuse later to say well, you live by the sword, you die by the sword?

MALCOLM TURNBULL: Certainly they were able to use that but the reality is that when the coup occurred, when Dutton and the right-wing group that supported him, Abbott and others and their friends in the Murdoch media and the right-wing media generally, they overthrew my government and overthrew my prime ministership not because they thought I'd lose an election but because they thought I would win it.

LEIGH SALES: Why do you think they didn't want you to win an election when you were leading their side?

MALCOLM TURNBULL: This is what's happened to the Liberal Party. It has become so tribalised.

There are some very key observations of George Brandis in the book which I think are among the most insightful about the way in which the right-wing have basically taken the Liberal, the liberalism out of the Liberal Party and they would have preferred Abbott and his friends and the Murdoch media, the right-wing shock jocks, they would have preferred Bill Shorten to be prime minister than me.

Link:

Malcolm Turnbull on how the Liberal Party operates behind closed doors - 7.30 - ABC News