Analysis: Ashton Hurn stays silent about Jack Batty’s role in Liberal leadership push | Paul Starick
Time is already against the newly installed Liberals leader Ashton Hurn as she struggles to explain how she arrived in the top job, writes Paul Starick.
If you follow the logic of Ashton Hurn’s argument about how she arrived in the state Liberals’ top job, she is the accidental leader.
Her present position makes it looks like she just fell into the job because there was a sudden vacancy, having lacked any ambition or substantial policy agenda to be the alternative premier.
This vacuum is already being filled by speculation – mostly, but not exclusively, put about by her Labor opponents – that fellow Liberal moderate Jack Batty was one of the backers of a slow-moving coup to push Ms Hurn into the leadership before she was ready.
In this scenario, Ms Hurn leads the Liberal Party to disaster at next March’s state election – albeit saving some furniture – and prematurely torches her electoral stocks.
Then, Mr Batty is a key beneficiary.
He has saved his seat, the supposedly blue-ribbon seat of Bragg in Adelaide’s east, and is strongly positioned as a future leader.
Whether these are the rumblings of political opponents or theories founded in substance, there remain some significant gaps to fill in the fledgling Hurn leadership story.
Ms Hurn, 34, is a decisive, confident, eloquent and intelligent person, who has been working continuously in politics since 2011, when she started in former Liberal premier Steven Marshall’s Norwood electorate office – even before she finished a University of Adelaide bachelor’s degree in social sciences, majoring in politics.
Ms Hurn is starting to lay out a policy agenda – she and new shadow treasurer Ben Hood next week will release objectives for a widespread state tax overhauled.
Given her experience and talent as a communicator, though, Ms Hurn could do a lot better to explain to the South Australian public she hopes to lead how and why she ended up as the alternative premier. Time might be her enemy.
At the moment, she is sticking to the party line that Mr Tarzia decided to resign on Friday, December 5, and she was persuaded by colleagues over the weekend to put herself forward for the leadership.
Mr Batty was among key Liberals standing behind Ms Hurn as she unveiled her shadow cabinet at Montefiore Hill on Friday morning.
Asked by The Advertiser if Mr Batty was being rewarded for a key role in the push to install her as leader, Ms Hurn said she was not interested in what Labor had to say about her shadow cabinet and insisted she had “a really strong, united team that is ready to govern”.
“I just reiterate that Vincent has made it really clear that he resigned, that there was no kind of ulterior motive or whatever way you want to put that. He was really clear in his press conference on Friday, and since that point, I’ve got no reason to second-guess his rationale,” she said.
Numerous Liberals have told The Advertiser about the push to install Ms Hurn as leader, as they have about MPs being asked to sign a letter demanding Mr Tarzia step down.
As one Liberal figure said: “This operation was clean and clinical. Everyone, that’s everyone, was on board.”
Voters tend to admire a strong leader and expect a degree of ruthlessness, so many might not be too distressed about the idea of Ms Hurn being involved in a well-executed coup.
Ms Hurn benefits from starting with low expectations. Lowballing is a political tactic that involves setting such a low standard of performance that, even with a modest achievement, the outcome seems spectacular.
Some senior party figures are predicting, optimistically, that the Liberals will win 10 seats next March – an improvement on current predictions of about two to three, but still well short of even the current record low of 13 lower house seats.
It’s a low bar. Anything better than three seats and her promoters will argue she did better than Mr Tarzia would have at the helm.
The big question that will be answered by the March 21 election date is whether Ms Hurn simply has too little time to put her party into a competitive position.
With less than 100 days, it is an enormous challenge. If she succeeds, some might say it’s a miracle. If she fails dismally, others might be ready to take her job.
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