He pauses, he stutters, he umms and he ahhs. Hesitant moments as his hands wave meaninglessly in the air; awkward body shifts and gestures attempt to make up for the lack of substantive comment. No, it’s not Tony Abbott on a bad day: it’s Malcolm Turnbull.

Not since Kevin Rudd last graced our TV screens have we had a prime minister who a) has so many words to deploy and b) has so little to say with them.

In case you missed the excruciating Leigh Sales love-in on the ABC’s 7.30, here are some of the redacted highlights of Mr Turnbull’s first major TV interview on his favoured home turf of Ultimo. Welcome to The Great Communicator, or if you prefer, Welcome to Waffle.

MT: ‘So they’ve got to – so freedom is the – freedom is the key point. I mean, it’s perhaps a bit simplistic, but one way you can say it – you can describe it is that… we believe that government’s job is to enable you to do your best.

So government has to provide the leadership, the sense that, you know, we know what we’re doing…

So everything I can say to inspire confidence is going to help the economy… It’s not just – I’m not agreeing with all of that list, by the way, but anyway…

One of the things I’m trying to do is to change the paradigm so that it’s a more rational one. You know, ‘cause you get into this crazy situation where politicians are backed up by journalists… [and] asked to say, “Will you guarantee that this policy will work?”

But the important thing is to be open-minded, consult, engage intelligently, explain the challenges to the public in a manner that respects their intelligence and then make a decision, and having made a decision, then argue, advocate, in other words, why your decision is right…

Well, look, there are – you probably can’t really – you can’t really rank them ‘cause they are very difficult. I mean, the – the – clearly the threat of terrorism, the, if you like, militant Islamist terrorist groups like Daesh in the Middle East and its various affiliates around the world, al-Qaeda, that is clearly a very – that’s clearly a big threat.

Well our Defence Force has – and this is not a revelation, Leigh. Our Defence Forces have to be able to play a role in a range of different potential conflict situations. But, you know, we’re not – we’re not seeking to, um, ah – I don’t want to – no-one – no-one, least of all the Australian Government, wants to exacerbate situations.’

Heaven forbid we should actually upset anyone! Certainly not in Mr Turnbull’s fuzzy world of niceness and ‘emotional intelligence’.

Mr Turnbull’s entire 22 minutes of verbiage could be summed up in half a dozen slogans: Terrorists are bad. War is dangerous. Governments must work. An economy needs confidence. And so on. His lengthy interview with David Speers on Sky News was more of the same, with a bit of ‘innovation’ thrown in. The art of communications – and leadership – is to simply express single-minded core ideas and more importantly, to clearly convey goals your government can be measured by, such as ‘stopping the boats’ or ‘scrapping the carbon tax’. Mr Turnbull’s banal, patronising platitudes seek to obscure the tough decision-making required of government under a fluffy blanket of cheeky smiles and good intentions. This is government for the asinine twitter generation. As we saw back in the days of ‘programmatic specificity’, its charm soon wears thin.

Discover your inner scribe

The Speccie Thawley Essay Prize offers the highest financial reward dollar per word currently available to any Australian wordsmith short of penning a best-selling novel. On top of that, it offers the winning writer an invaluable short-cut to being professionally published and reaching a wide and influential audience.

The task is simple. Write an essay (1,000-2,000 words long) that is provocative, insightful and engaging. Choose your own subject matter, but the winning essay should look at a person, event, or idea, no matter how well-known, obscure, unusual, historical or contemporary, that helped, or is helping, shape modern Australia. The winning entrant will enjoy not only the injection of five grand into their bank account, but a slap-up dinner with the three judges (John Howard, Michael Thawley, and Rowan Dean) and publication in the mag in January.

Send your entries before 30 October to rowan.dean@bigpond.com. More details can be found at new.spectator.co.uk/thawleyprize

Then again, you might prefer to spend your time having a crack at that best-selling blockbuster…