Rupert Murdoch was in Australia the week Turnbull was toppled. The Sun King and the Crown Prince of Point Piper spoke by telephone before the Liberal leadership was spilled on August 24. The media proprietor denied his empire was campaigning for the PM's ouster, besides The Australian. "Boris [nickname of the paper's editor-in-chief Paul Whittaker] is the only one".
But only days earlier, Murdoch met with Seven West proprietor Kerry Stokes and implied the very opposite. "Malcolm has got to go," he told the Perth billionaire.
