Getting away with murder, twice, by David Samuel, commenting on the recent by-election in the seat of Wentworth.

Why did so many of the electors of Wentworth appear to believe that Turnbull had been badly treated by the Liberals? Most commentators agree that it was a major factor in the result.

Yet the evidence shows that the very opposite is true. And that’s before we remind ourselves of his earlier record of dealings with Liberal party leaders, first Brendan Nelson and then sitting Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, where he literally got away with murder – twice.

His ghost still shapes Australian politics

The only explanation can be that they’ve been brainwashed by the media. The media will, of course, do their best to ridicule such a suggestion but it is self-evident that the public’s opinion on politics and politicians is moulded largely by what they’re told by the media, both social and anti-social, and there is no doubt that the media is heavily biased to the Left.

Thus when all the op-eds say in general terms that the leadership spill deposing Turnbull was nothing more than the personal revenge of wicked right-wing extremists against poor St Malcolm-the-Martyr, many believe it and adopt such views as their own. Success in persuading an inexpert public to run along the rails prepared for them enables the media to then report that the electors are angry with the Coalition, so feeding the general anti-Liberal sentiment further.

Any view to the contrary was, of course, unlikely to be published.

The same story I heard from my PC friends last month: the coup against Turnbull was entirely motivated by bitterness and the personality defects of Dutton and Abbott, and had nothing, nothing at all, to do with policy. The left are programmed to move in lockstep by the ABC.