![Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has chosen the course of a timid survivalism.](/web/20170104171121im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/t/1/r/4/d/image.related.landscape.460x307.gt7xh4.png/1481429436680.jpg)
The only reason Turnbull still has his job
After losing 14 seats at the election and with serial blunders since, Turnbull is fast losing the confidence of his colleagues.
Peter Hartcher is the political editor and international editor of The Sydney Morning Herald. He is a Gold Walkley award winner, a former foreign correspondent in Tokyo and Washington, and a visiting fellow at the Lowy Institute for International Policy. His latest book is The Sweet Spot: How Australia Made its Own Luck and Could Now Throw it All Away. His 2005 book, Bubble Man: Alan Greenspan and the Missing Seven Trillion Dollars, foresaw the collapse of the US housing market and the economic slump that followed.
After losing 14 seats at the election and with serial blunders since, Turnbull is fast losing the confidence of his colleagues.
If Trump wants a fight with China based on ideological phantasmagoria, Australia can't stop him. But we'd be crazy to abet him.
The cause of cleaning up Canberra is an inevitable one. The only question is who will best do it, and whether the energy will be channelled constructively.
While there has been a global outpouring in response to the election of Donald Trump, we've heard no real response from the world's second power, China.
The Chinese didn't imagine that the US would walk away from global leadership so readily. But it has happened, in plain view. On Friday.
When Donald Trump was still campaigning for the White House, the Turnbull government dreaded the thought that he might succeed.
An Australian sitting in a big conference in Kansas City two weeks ago startled the audience with a basic fact.
Most pundits might have misread the US election. But one pundit read it very clearly, and well ahead of Tuesday.
In the grand sweep of world events, the US election is a choice between two different approaches to managing the decline of US dominance.
When Malcolm Turnbull grasps Joko Widodo's hand to welcome him to Australia on Sunday, it will crystallise a remarkable contrast of political fortunes since they two leaders met in Jakarta year ago.
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