Malcolm Turnbull looked for all the world like a prime minister who had dodged a bullet when the high court declined to throw out the postal survey.
His relief in the moment expressed itself as arrogance. Here was a comprehensive victory over enemies, within and without. He leaned over Bill Shorten, like a heavyweight boxer who had just put his opponent on the mat.
The reaction – pure adrenaline – tells you a lot about a prime minister living in a near permanent state of siege.
If you watch politicians over a long period of time, at the top of their game, when things are going well, when the big moments come, when events intrude and impose themselves, they tend to dial themselves down.
Their words and reactions mould to the moment and shape it into some sort of collective experience. Leaders at the top of their game speak for the nation and causes beyond themselves.
They don’t burst out of moments, discordant – which was Turnbull on Thursday, triumphant, oversized, self-referential – taking grim possession of his high court victory, a trophy on a belt.
In any case, while he lacked grace in the moment, the prime minister had a victory, and a significant one, on Thursday.
The importance of this milestone can’t be overstated.
Courtesy of the high court, Turnbull remains one step ahead of the enemies within, and without, and he will use the opportunity to try to build some political momentum.
But the victory doesn’t begin and end today.
Today is just the start of a critical period which will determine whether Turnbull is still prime minister by the time Australians are heading back to the polls.
Turnbull now has to decide whether he takes up the opportunity of the equality campaign to reach and connect with the supporters he has disappointed since taking the top job.
The alternative to leading and connecting is handing the opportunity of this campaign to the two people who desperately want his job – Bill Shorten and Tony Abbott.
Abbott will want to use this campaign to show his colleagues, who are currently deeply frustrated with him, that he can beat Shorten in a head-to-head political contest.
That’s Abbott’s strongest claim to any comeback – his demonstrated capacity to come from behind and beat Labor.
Shorten also faces some very high stakes. He will want to convince voters who are frustrated with the deficiencies of the Turnbull government, but not at all sold on him, that he is prime ministerial material.
Neither are going to waste the opportunity of this campaign.
So, the question is, faced with these challenges, what is Turnbull going to do?
There is another question beyond Turnbull’s own agency at a critical moment, and it’s this. What are Australian voters going to do to him?
There is a good reason why governments don’t generally contract out decision making to the public, apart from elections, which are hard to avoid in democracies.
The main reason decision making isn’t generally contracted out in representative democracies is because governments aren’t, then, in control of the agenda.
Turnbull is now hostage to a process which will either deliver what he needs – a decisive yes vote and a smooth path to parliamentary resolution of a poisonous issue for the Liberal party – or more pain.
Turnbull, by his own actions, has put his fate in the hands of Australian voters, rather like David Cameron did in the Brexit campaign when he asked Britons to work out an issue his riven political party lacked the stomach to deal with.
It didn’t end so well for Cameron.
How will this story end for Turnbull?
