Remember Kim Carr’s dire warning: ‘The government has effectively signed the death warrant on Australia’s last fresh-fruit cannery, ensuring the destruction of thousands of jobs.’ Bear in mind the Labor stalwart’s cacophony when you ponder the stunning turnaround in SPC Ardmona’s fortunes. Far from being propped up by taxpayer handouts, the fresh fruit business owes everything to the sound principles embraced by federal cabinet and, more importantly, to thousands of individual consumers.

Chief among them was ‘mummy-blogger’ Linda Drummond. The local produce activist galvanised public opinion via a spontaneous, non-professional and highly effective grassroots Twitter campaign to encourage patriotic consumers literally to put their money where their mouth is. Called #SPCSunday, the viral idea saw shoppers using SPC products to create a special dish every Sunday. The upshot was an abrupt upturn in sales that, in turn, encouraged Woolworths to offer the company a $70 million shelf-space deal that guarantees jobs for the next five years.

More importantly, the success story gives Mr Abbott (and Joe Hockey) the narrative they have been craving. No doubt the government’s critics will dismiss the turn of events as a classic case of ‘getting lucky’, but they are wrong. Governments, like individuals, make their own luck. The SPC story illustrates the difference between free market innovation and the dead hand of state control, between union muscle and the purchasing power of individuals.

It is consumers who have bailed out SPC, not taxpayers — although often they will be the same person, the difference being that it is consumers themselves who came to the rescue; they weren’t forced to by an interfering or panicked government. Individuals’ desires are being satisfied by the marketplace, not by Treasury. The battle is being won by entrepreneurs and shoppers, not by mandarins and bureaucrats. Adversity has created its own success.

The challenge for SPC Ardmona will be to recognise this creative power and embrace it. For too long, such companies have listened to the siren calls of protectionism and ‘enterprise bargaining’. Down that path lies oblivion. SPC must take advantage of their good fortune and correct the mistakes of the past by quickly freeing themselves from the debilitating shackles of the unions.

The challenge for the government will also be to recognise the good fortune this event has given them. They have a story to tell now; evidence that their sound economic principles can deliver the critical changes needed. The proof, as it were, is in the tinned peaches. It’s relevant to Qantas, Holden and elsewhere; that given the opportunity the consumer can be trusted to deliver far more potent results than the taxpayer. Too bad it is a tale that Mr Abbot himself undermines with his continuing commitment to his Paid Parental Leave and Direct Action policies, which seem to imagine that the taxpayer performs better than the consumer.

Malcolm in a muddle (yet again)

At the risk of sounding like the pub bore, we return to the subject of the Member for Wentworth, this time over his parliamentary attack on conservatives who were unimpressed by his chardonnay-set antics at the launch of the Saturday Paper (see last week’s Leader). After we went to press, a fiesty Malcolm Turnbull declared: ‘They apparently would like me to be — just as Senator Conroy was the minister for left-wing communications or the minister for communications that agree with the Labor party — the minister for communications that agree with the Liberal party.’ He further asserted: ‘Those who think that this Liberal minister should be like Senator Conroy and seek to persecute or suborn or bully those who do not agree with him have got it completely wrong.’

Yet Mr Turnbull is creating a straw man. No conservative has called for a right-wing version of Senator Conroy’s public interest advocate. The criticism of his performance at the Morry Schwartz event was not the fact that the Liberal frontbencher agreed to launch a left-wing newspaper: there’s nothing wrong with more voices entering the marketplace of ideas. The criticism was directed at Mr Turnbull’s spontaneous desire to indulge in belittling conservatives such as Rupert Murdoch and his Australian newspaper — to the delight of the left-wing crowd and with a series of quips that didn’t survive the cold light of day.

The invention of a ‘right-wing Stephen Conroy’ is a fantasy of Mr Turnbull’s own imaginings; a straw man that does not address the criticism of Mr Turnbull’s appalling judgment when sucking up to his beloved left-wing audiences.