There is a breath of fresh air that has wafted through our political system over the last three weeks, ushering in a balmy spring-like feeling of optimism and goodwill. Its name is Malcolm Turnbull. Under the leadership of the Member for Wentworth, a Sydney harbourside locale recognised as a bastion of political wisdom and repository of progressive thinking, our politics have taken on a kinder, gentler and more sophisticated sensibility. Collaboration, consensus, consideration is the new lingua malcoma. Indeed, our sometime columnist Troy Bramston has gone so far as to dub Mr Turnbull Australia’s ‘philosopher king’, a description that barely manages to do justice to our new PM’s uncanny ability to guide his people calmly through difficult times with a firm hand and an even firmer sense of humanity and compassion.

OK, enough of that claptrap. Whilst we appreciate that many of our readers are understandably delighted to be led by an individual who is the darling of the media classes and whose name doesn’t evoke a knee-jerk response of loathing and vitriol whenever it is mentioned down at the local wine bar or lawn bowls club, it is best to remember that political leadership is most effective when it is a combination of decisive actions backed by inspirational rhetoric. Whilst there is much to criticise about the deposed prime minister’s short-comings in selling his message, and taking people on his ‘journey’, there is little to complain about the actual decisions taken by Team Abbott over the last two years. With the recent conclusion of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and the (hopefully) imminent signing of the China Free Trade Agreement, it is clear that on trade the Australian people have been exceptionally well served by Mr Abbott and, more importantly, by his appointment of Andrew Robb to the Trade portfolio. As respected business writer Robert Gottliebsen noted in the Australian, ‘we can now tell our children and our grandchildren that the good times will return.’

Hopefully. But if the economy is the main game in town, as claimed by Mr Turnbull as justification for his coup, then he and Treasurer Scott Morrison will have to do a lot more than ‘listening to’ the self-serving lobbyists of the various welfare, business and union groups who dominated recent ‘debate’ via their ‘economic summit’. It is verging on the infantile to proclaim – two years after the demise of Labor’s gargantuan spendathon and nearly seven years on from the GFC – that we all agree we need ‘growth’ and ‘productivity’. Mr Turnbull and Mr Morrison are apparently hoping to craft some kind of grand compromise that they can sell to a numbed public on the basis of ‘consensus’. Already, with ‘nothing off the table’ it looks like a Labor-like raid on superannuation is clearly ‘on the table’.

Let’s instead hope that Mr Morrison concentrates on applying the same single-minded focus to cutting our bloated health and welfare spending that he applied to Mr Abbott’s brief to stop the boats, but the omens are not good. Thus far, ‘confidence’, ‘flexibility’ and ‘innovation’ are the mots du jour.

A similar trick – hold a conference, ‘listen to’ everybody you invite, and then form a ‘consensus’ – appears to be waiting in the wings for climate change policy shifts as well.

But it is on the question of Islamic terrorism and radicalisation that Mr Turnbull’s ‘gentler’ approach is of most obvious concern. On the very day that our new PM hit the airwaves to denounce his predecessor’s talk of ‘death cults’ and ‘Team Australia’, a teenage Muslim immigrant hit the streets of Parramatta to murder a fellow Australian whilst shouting ‘Allah’.

Mr Turnbull may employ whatever language he likes, but the inescapable truth of the matter is that Curtis Cheng and Farhad Jabar would both still be alive today if Farhad’s family, friends and community had pushed him into the arms of Team Australia rather than allowed him to slip into the clutches of a death cult. No amount of fancy words or fuzzy meanings can obliterate the grim reality here and in Europe – the problem of Muslim radicalisation is inextricably linked to the near-impossibility of assimilating large Islamic migrant communities into a modern, western, secular, democratic, free society.

Lazy five G

Time is fast running out for you to make the most of your chance to pick up a lazy five grand simply for having a good idea and scribbling it down on a piece of paper, on your iPhone, on your tablet or wherever else it is you commit your best writing to these days. 30 October is the deadline for this year’s Spectator Thawley Essay prize. You’ll be kicking yourself like crazy when the winner is announced in January and you go: ‘But I could have written that!’