Updated April 26, 2020 05:44:48

Malcolm Turnbull has led his party twice. Once as prime minister. But he's incredibly chipper about the prospect of being expelled as a member.

"Oh, I'd be wounded!" he moans theatrically when questioned about the move by Liberal Party officials to strip him of party membership. "I'd just be a crumpled mess in the corner!"

Questioned about the appropriateness of such insouciance for a man twice accorded the ultimate honour available to a political party member, Mr Turnbull responds smilingly that "a bit of insouciance never goes astray".

In an hour-long interview to be streamed online on Monday night for the Sydney Writers Festival, Mr Turnbull's disdain for the organisation he once led is palpable.

He argues that the "crazed ideology" dictating the Liberal Party's policy on climate could now only be altered by a crushing electoral defeat, or an about-face on the issue from media magnate Rupert Murdoch.

"It's basically just Australia and the United States above all where this issue of climate policy has been turned into an issue of belief," the nation's 29th prime minister says in the interview.

"And it's bonkers."

"To be honest with you, I think the only way out of it unless you believe the Coalition can have a road-to-Damascus conversion which I think is unlikely is a devastating electoral defeat. I'm not saying I want that to happen, I'm just saying, being practical, that is what would shock the Coalition."

Mr Turnbull describes Rupert Murdoch's media empire as "the largest endorser of climate denialism in the world".

"I think if Lachlan Murdoch decided to become a greenie overnight, the Coalition would switch instantly. They'd turn on a dime. Andrew Bolt would suddenly discover he was a greenie, Alan Jones would develop a passionate love for solar panels, Peta Credlin would be, you know, into pumped hydro they'd all switch," he insists.

Mr Turnbull first joined the Liberal Party in 1973, and subsequently re-joined in 2001 after a long absence when he became interested in the seat of Wentworth, but has entertained a longstanding interest in Labor history and characters, a quirk which over the years has elicited reactions from his Liberal colleagues ranging from astonishment to fury.

As a student, he developed a fascination with the irascible (and by then, nonagenarian) Depression-era Labor premier of NSW, Jack Lang, whom Turnbull visited many times and about whom he subsequently wrote an unpublished musical with the late Labor speechwriter Bob Ellis.

He was good friends with Bob Carr and a long-term business partner of Neville Wran two more NSW Labor premiers.

The Howard government's long-term communications minister Richard Alston a recent federal president of the Liberal Party last week told The Australian that Mr Turnbull shouldn't wait to be expelled, but should see himself off the premises.

"For me, the first thing is Malcolm should reflect on is why he wants to belong to a party [for] which he clearly has no affinity," Mr Alston said.

"He should acknowledge the reality that he has no interest in party politics and no interest in the Liberal Party."

The 675 pages of Mr Turnbull's memoir A Bigger Picture contain multiple unflattering assessments of former colleagues including Tony Abbott, Scott Morrison and Mathias Cormann.

But the revelation that provoked Mr Alston's ire was Mr Turnbull's own disclosure in the book that he had been an instrumental agent in the establishment of the Guardian's Australian operation.

In 2012, Mr Turnbull writes, he suggested to Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger that he should look at publishing in Australia. Mr Turnbull writes that he then brokered a meeting between Rusbridger and Wotif millionaire Graeme Wood (a generous donor to the Greens), and introduced the editor to senior Australian journalists Lenore Taylor and Katharine Murphy.

Mr Alston was horrified by Mr Turnbull's revelation.

"The way he has behaved with the Guardian, pushing an outfit that was hostile to almost everything the Liberal Party believes in, tells you that he has no reason to want to stay other than to just cause trouble or be part of a vanity project."

Mr Turnbull is unrepentant.

"Do we no longer believe in the diversity of the media?" he asked.

"Do we no longer believe that our media, our political and public life is enhanced by having more voices, particularly if they're quality ones and practice good journalism and not just propaganda sheets like so many are?"

Malcolm Turnbull's Sydney Writers Festival session with interviewer Annabel Crabb will be streamed at 7:00pm on Monday.

Topics:government-and-politics,federal-parliament,federal-government,books-literature,turnbull-malcolm,australia

First posted April 26, 2020 05:00:59

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Malcolm Turnbull shrugs off calls for him to be expelled from the Liberal Party over his memoir - ABC News