It’s from The Saturday Paper so they are obviously not trying to help the Libs, but it wouldn’t be the first time they got something like that wrong. The story is titled: Turnbull sought GetUp! help before spill. Via Tim Blair who has his own take on all this: GETUP! AND GO TO HELL which you might consider worth a look. But first read this:

The request from Christopher Pyne was simple but unexpected. Malcolm Turnbull’s leadership was in trouble, and he was hoping GetUp! might help do numbers for him.

It was the last Saturday of November in 2009 and the phone call was to Simon Sheikh, then national director of the activist group.

“He complained that conservative organisations, particularly the Australian Christian Lobby, were contacting MPs to advocate support for Abbott,” Sheikh says. “He asked if I could organise for people to email or call MPs in support of Turnbull.”

Pyne had specifics in mind. He offered to provide GetUp! with a list of about 10 undecided MPs, whose votes might be swayed by a lobbying campaign. Given the events of this week, it seems particularly curious in hindsight.

Sheikh and Pyne had established a reasonable relationship, although the MP had expressed his frustration that GetUp! did not sufficiently distinguish between moderate Liberals such as himself and the party’s conservatives.

My problem is that I can barely distinguish between what Pyne thinks of as “moderate Liberals” and the ALP.