Malcolm Turnbull
Federal Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull, a millionaire lawyer and former investment banker, walks out of a government party room meeting in Canberra's Parliament House February 9, 2015. Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott survived a challenge to his leadership after his ruling Liberal Party on Monday voted down an attempt to unseat him after weeks of infighting. A secret party room ballot to declare the positions of party leader and deputy leader vacant was voted down 61 votes to 39, chief party whip Philip Ruddock told reporters. Reuters/Sean Davey

Former Victorian Premier Jeff Kennett has slammed Malcolm Turnbull, comparing the former Liberal opposition leader to Kevin Rudd and calling out his leadership bid as “opportunistic”.

“Malcolm has never worked with the brief. He has always gone outside it and expressed the view to increase his popularity with the public,” Mr Kennett told the ABC.

“This act by Malcolm Turnbull is one of gross disloyalty, extreme egotism and he is, without a doubt, the Kevin Rudd of the Liberal Party."

And if Mr Tunrbull electable? “God only knows,” said Mr Kennett.

While the silence from party members has been deafening so far, Queensland Liberal MP Wyatt Roy has come forward to back Mr Turnbull publicly, telling 612 ABC Brisbane that Australia needs “to change the way that we do business in this country”.

“ When you look at the reforms of Bob Hawke and Paul Keating and John Howard, they were very significant. They set up this country for the prosperity that it has today. We've had, you know, over 25 years of uninterrupted economic growth because of those reforms.

"If we are going to continue to have those reforms, if we are going to continue to have rising living standards, we need to have effectively a new round of reforms. We need to embrace innovation and entrepreneurship.

“I think we should still be bold in our reforms but the way we communicate needs to be done differently."

But the real test of politics is, of course, what people think, and if social media is an accurate measure of what the Australian public thinks, then:

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