Bob Hawke had Paul Keating and John Howard had Peter Costello. Both PMs held off their younger rivals by deploying the oldest trick in the book: performance.
A tired Hawke faced removal only after he'd won four elections straight. Howard was axed by the voters.
No prime minister since has commanded such performance-inspired loyalty. Not one.
Kevin Rudd fell to Julia Gillard in his first term and she then fell to him on the rebound. Rudd lost the 2013 election to Tony Abbott, who fell in the party room to Malcolm Turnbull before he could seek re-election.
Turnbull, 63 next week, is unchallenged, but there is despair in Coalition ranks after he surpassed another milestone recently, the two-thirds mark towards his own definition of failure: 30 losing Newspolls.
On the maths alone, Turnbull would either be toast already or on notice.
Yet his greatest ally is the absence of a viable alternative. If Peter Dutton is the answer, colleagues say, the question did not involve a capacity to attract the centre-ground of the electorate. Treasurer Scott Morrison commands little party room support and as a fellow moderate, Julie Bishop is hardly likely to be the beneficiary of a move against Turnbull.
But is this really the field?
Is the longstanding assumption in Australia that a national leader must have decades of ministerial experience, age, and be a household name, simply old hat?
Around the democratic world, voters are opting for the opposite - fresh, young, new. The antithesis of experience. Untried equals untainted.
The rise of the 37-year old leadership novice Jacinda Ardern in New Zealand fits a pattern that has seen a number of young and/or inexperienced leaders preferred: think Austria's 31-yr-old Sebastian Kurz, Canada's Justin Trudeau, France's Emmanuel Macron, and yes, even Donald Trump. He might be 70, but politically, he was an outsider who'd never held elected office.
Smarter Liberals are waking up to the possibilities.
Relieved of its stultifying orthodoxy, the electoral question is as simple as it is existential: who can lead us to a win?
The answer might be right in front of them. Of the lesser-known tier-two ministers, the standout is Josh Frydenberg. Ambitious, articulate, relentless, and at 46, relatively young.
A pragmatic modern conservative with a friendly face, the Energy Minister could be pitch-tuned to these digitally disrupted times.
Voters couldn't pick him in line-up? It's almost a tagline.
