Um, no, it most certainly wasn't. Especially considering he didn't really have a 'message'.
The Bronwyn Bishops of the world whom I am temporarilly placing you in the cmopnay of need to shutup. Under the circumstances Turnbull is showing exceptional leadership. Rudd is exceptionally popular and is a very skilled politician, the polls reflect that not Turnbull's failure. Malcolm once he became leader did all the personal stuff about how his dad was his hero and he smoked pot when he was young, sensible he has now put his head down and began plugging away at the negative economic indicators.
His opposition to the stimulus was the right move, the economy is goign to get worse before it gets better and when it does get worse people will invariably begin to question whether or not a different strategy could have curtailed the problem better. He and Hockey are both excellent communicators and have wisely made debt the main topic of conversation. Debt allows Turnbull to get the best of both worlds,
1) imagine if we didn't have a gazillion dollars of debt to pay off.
2) Imagine all the long term infrastructure that mountain of money the government has thrown around could have built.
The job rise has been incredibly bad luck for Turnbull. I as most people did expected it to plummet in which case Turnbulls "three important things: Jobs, jobs and jobs" would have been dynamite. I believe these figures are abberations and the next ones will show a significant drop in unemployment so Turnbull shouldn't abandon the strategy. He needs to stay on target and keep pumping the message. Until the next figures come out he should say that the government has created nowhere near as many jos as it should have done and that he would have created more for less debt. Some people will raise their eyebrowes but there won't be an election in the next six months and when unemployment does start rising Turnbull's message will carry the day.
If Hockey is loyal to Turnbull then this time next year it'll be game on, Turnbull set to take in excess of twenty seats from Rudd. But if Joe is in it for his own leadership ambitions alas it will be an unpleasent 12 months for the liberal party(sans Costello and his divide and conquer strategy).