YET AGAIN OUR FAITH IN A NEW PRIME MINISTER HAS QUICKLY DIMMED, WRITES PAUL TOOHEY
Malcolm Turnbull sashayed into power, looking the business. The idea was that some of the luck and cleverness that has blessed him would bless the nation. Six months on, the curse of Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott is upon him.
Since the departure of John Howard in 2007, Australia has had five prime ministers (including Rudd's second coming), memorable because their leadership has been so forgettable.
The job of PM is the most coveted in politics, yet those who have recently elbowed their way to the top have been unable to gather support for reform, retreated at the first sign of resistance, or been betrayed by their own panicked colleagues and sent from office in tears, anger or both. 
Loss of faith in prime ministers, by parties and the public, has become a phenomenon of Australian politics.
Is the job too hard? Do they not make them like they once did? Or has Australia just had an exceptionally bad run?
Contemporary politics has been likened, unhappily, to Twenty20 cricket: you've got to play every ball. The complaint relates to the demanding immediacy of Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, which some believe has ruined the old political narrative.
The big announcement gets no more than a half-day's attention before it's irrelevant but is that the fault of social media and short attention spans, or is it the impoverishment of the idea? Turnbull's plan last week to hand the states income-tax-raising powers was declared dead within 36 hours of the announcement. Twitter was not at the crime scene holding the bloodied knife; that wound was self-inflicted. No one knew the plan, because Turnbull hadn't made the case.
Also blamed is the "24-hour news cycle", a mythical grievance that supports the dual fallacy that leaving all-night TV and radio unfed will allow the other side to control the talking points, and that the entire nation refuses to sleep because they're busy waiting up for the next bit of breaking news out of Canberra.
There is no true 24-hour television news in Australia. They may be on air at 4am, but they're regurgitating yesterday or taking foreign feeds. As for radio, they don't call it the graveyard shift for nothing.
Jeff Kennett was in opposition a decade in Victoria before seizing power in 1992. It allowed him to build policy. Voters knew what and whom they were getting. He says the social-media complaint is a cop-out. And leading the country has not got harder.
"The job hasn't changed," Kennett says. "It's not too hard. What has occurred is that people have pursued office to be in office, rather than winning office to deliver on an agenda." Kennett says Twitter and 24-hour news does not excuse the paralysis that hits incoming PMs.
"I don't see that at all.
"It's a wonderful challenge that can be won. The most powerful thing a leader has got is a simple message, simply expressed, that the public understands. There has been none of that." In fact, if there is any place to sell a simple message, it is social media. NSW Premier Mike Baird and Queensland's Annastacia Palaszczuk have not let it sucker-punch them.
Victoria's Dan Andrews has resisted heavy criticism and is earning respect for sticking to his plans. South Australia's Jay Weatherill - in a state with 8 per cent unemployment - has been rewarded with high popularity for being conversational with voters.
Federally, it is possible to bypass the Canberra press gallery and go straight to the people, but with no policy to discuss, chatter shifts to how long the PM will last.
There was a squirming pleasure to be had in watching the all-controlling Rudd struggle and fail as Labor ate its own entrails and dumped him for Gillard in 2010. But the thrill of such spectacles has worn thin. Australians want a strong and steady PM. Turnbull was supposed to be it. People --even Labor people - have wanted him to succeed.
Instead, it's happening again.The Australian's Newspoll this week revealed the Coalition has lost its lead to Labor for the first time since Turnbull replaced Tony Abbott, who was ditched after his own dire run in the polls. Turnbull's talk of taking people on a bracing political journey has been traded for the idea that he might, if lucky, fall across the line at the coming election.
Turnbull has hurt himself with his inability to sell a message, which is what happens when you don't have one.
The public is left to conclude that he has sought office for himself, not the country.
"Turnbull is scrambling much as we had to in the second iteration of Rudd," says Bruce Hawker, one of Rudd's key strategists. "So you get the whole policy-on-the-run stuff that crippled Rudd in his second campaign." Turnbull, it seems, is jammed. He needs a mandate to lead, so he can silence discontent in his party and be true to himself, but the lack of an articulate vision is seeing him bear witness to the erosion of his own authority and popularity - which is being replaced by rising Labor.
"We're not seeing the real Turnbull and that's a real problem," says Hawker, who made the same comments about Gillard.
"The public would be responsive to the real Malcolm Turnbull, but his party won't let him go down that path. It's the structural issues in the parties that create these problems." With our democracy so proven and our streets free from upheaval, Australia can for a time be set on autopilot. But with that comes the long seasons of leadership and policy drift. Kennett says Turnbull took power saying he wanted good leadership but "it is clear he had no agenda".
"Even Abbott came with some agendas. But he was not a marketer. He wasn't a good communicator. Malcolm's a better communicator, but of what and for what?" he says.
Perhaps the problem for Turnbull, in part, lies with his fit within the Liberal Party.
Hawker characterises Turnbull as the first leader since Robert Menzies with a true desire to govern from the centre (he could also include Rudd in this), but says: "He's not being allowed to do it, because the party is being pushed further to the right.
"RememberGough Whitlam was nearly expelled from his party for wanting to take on the faceless men. Keating and Hawke worked the system well, how to massage the unions and others when they needed to.
"Now, structurally, the parties are struggling to cope with leaders who are bigger than the party but are popular with the electorate." Howard made unpopular conviction-decisions on gun laws, military intervention in East Timor and asylum-seekers and went to an election with a GST policy that looked likely to spell his doom.
Bob Hawke and Howard seemed to stay in touch with the people. Paul Keating less so, but he could never be accused of selling himself out.
The recent bundle of PMs is isolated and unsure, seemingly surrounded by advisers who think the game is Twenty20.
Shane Stone, the former Northern Territory chief minister who was federal Liberal Party president for much of Howard's rule, does blame social media, saying: "People get addicted to this stuff. I find myself totally estranged from the process. I bear a deep disappointment of where we are right across the political spectrum.
"No one takes time out to think and analyse and explain why. They promise everything even if they can't deliver. The most sensible thing that came out of the last few weeks was Scott Morrison saying, 'Don't expect much in the Budget'." Howard promised he'd "never, ever" introduce a GST and later went to an election on it. "He said: This is what I believe in, and if I have to pay the price I will," Stone says.
What is confounding about our recent PMs is they fully understand the risk of inert leadership yet continue to walk the same plank.
It's simple: give us something to talk about, or we'll talk about you. "No, the job's not too hard," Stone says. "They've got every imaginable support at their fingertips. They have smart people, who know what's come before, what's worked and hasn't. They're all tooled up, but it's not translating."Where are the conviction politicians? Who draws the line in the sand?"