What is it about Malcolm Turnbull? It seems that everyone in polite society is chatting about the maverick communications minister. Since he took on the media beasts Alan Jones and Andrew Bolt he has won applause from the usual suspects for representing true progressive values. Yet by reducing his right-wing nemeses with a nuclear-powered verbal assault — the likes of which only teenage children with particularly strict mothers might recognise — the ambitious Member for Wentworth may have overstepped the mark. Attacking the two most prominent media allies of the Coalition government is a very odd move, if not a silly one. A man of Turnbull’s distinction and self-respect couldn’t be expected to hold back. But it’s hardly a good strategy for someone we all suspect wants to win over Liberal MPs eventually.

His critics agree, and suggest that Turnbull does not even want to win his colleagues over. After all, the logic goes, he’s not really ‘one of us’: a natural Liberal. How could a man who wants gays to get hitched and the Queen booted out of Australia have any place in Tony Abbott’s government, much less be taken seriously as prime ministerial material?

In fact, Malcolm Turnbull is a real Liberal, a big-L Liberal.

Annabel Crabb once said of the modern Liberal party: ‘The archetypal Liberal MP now looks less like Alexander Downer and more like Jackie Kelly.’ In other words, the average member doesn’t look like our Malcolm either. And that’s where the confusion sets in. Malcolm sits comfortably in a grand Liberal tradition. But the current party has moved to a more populist, lower or middling class setting. It looks more like the Labor Right with every passing day.

Yes, Turnbull stands as a proud Republican. But so do those loony lefties Joe Hockey and Julie Bishop. Republicanism may be out of fashion nationally, but there are still a few Liberals — and a distinct fraction of Liberal ministers — who don’t mind the idea of an Australian head of state.

Yes, Turnbull supports gay marriage, but he also reflects growing support in the party room. Liberal MPs, such as Teresa Gambaro and young shooting star Kelly O’Dwyer, want the move; and as public opinion polls continue to show rising support for same-sex marriage, it is a fair bet more Liberals will come out. And what could be a greater conservative victory over those sexual free-for-allers of the 1970s and 1980s than encouraging them to come round to the idea of state-bound matrimony?

A main contention of Bolt and co is Turnbull’s supposed support for the ABC. ‘This is Turnbull, on the far Left of the Liberal party, charming a constituency that hates Abbott and which would back Turnbull to replace him,’ argued the Melbourne-based Bolt in the now infamous column where he accused Turnbull of plotting to take the prime ministership with the aid of the inner-urban forces of darkness. Never mind that Turnbull has done more than any communications minister in nearly 15 years to bring the ABC into line.

This is the man who stood up to ABC managing director Mark Scott time after time over the Indonesian spying scandal story, saying it was ‘an error of judgment’ and that the national broadcaster was acting as an ‘advertising amplifier for the Guardian’. A man who finally ensured that the ABC and SBS are subject to an efficiency study like every other publicly owned entity and said we had to ‘ensure that the ABC and SBS fulfil their charter responsibilities at least cost to the community.’ These are hardly the comments of a cash-splashing socialist.

Not to mention that Turnbull was the communications minister who presided over the end of the ABC’s control of the Australia Network — a goal championed by the hard Right for years. At the same time, Turnbull has a strong enough political antenna to know the ABC’s popularity with many sections of the community (not least rural and senior voters) and to ensure his tough love approach highlights the love bit. Turnbull is right to call himself a ‘friend of the ABC’. As Oscar Wilde quipped: ‘A real friend stabs you in the front.’

Yes, Turnbull is a climate change enthusiast, but as a true team player he has supported Abbott’s proposal to remove the carbon tax. Then there are his free-market credentials. ‘I’m a libertarian’ he has proudly stated. From what I last gathered, the Labor party didn’t really dig all those libertarian ideas about small government.

As for Turnbull and Labor, there’s the small issue of tribalism. The old story goes that Turnbull chose the Libs over Labor (despite both of them flirting with him) because he believed the Liberal party was more ‘meritocratic’. Well, there’s a lot of truth in that estimation. The dominance of the union movement in the ALP, despite it only representing 17 per cent of the population, is a testament to its accuracy. One really cannot envisage Turnbull the merchant banker and Kerry Packer lieutenant fitting in well with the factional warlords of Sussex Street. There’s also the small fact that Turnbull (a man clearly more in tune with Paul Keating’s economic values than Doug Cameron’s) may have been too socially progressive for the Labor Right with its old-style Catholic conservatism.

Turnbull is his own man, of course, but if any one party can accommodate him, it’s the Liberals. They sit perfectly with his philosophy of how this country should be run, and they can accept and even adapt to his more progressive views. It’s the kind of party that likes his style of self-made, by-your-bootstraps talent and success. When it comes down to business (and money is Malcolm’s strong suit) he’s a quintessential Liberal.