Christopher Pyne: ScoMo’s government has a problem – the past two years have been particularly scrappy

If the polls are right, the Liberals are in for a drubbing – but the awful figures may just prompt voters to think again, writes Christopher Pyne.

Are the SA Liberals facing annihilation? According to two polls published in the last week, the South Australian Liberal Party is facing a catastrophic result at the Australian election.

Regardless of the efficacy or the methodology of The Australia Institute and Australian Greens polls, both show the SA Liberals heading for a drubbing in the seats of Boothby and Sturt and in the Senate.

We should take them on face value.

Clearly, the result in the recent SA election reinforces the view that both Sturt and Boothby could be lost by the Liberals to Labor.

The result at the SA Election in the Legislative Council confirms that Labor will win two to three seats in the Senate from South Australia.

To fix a problem, the first thing you’ve got to do is recognise that there is one. The government of Scott Morrison has a problem – the last two years have been particularly scrappy.

The Covid pandemic has wrought havoc with people’s livelihoods, families, plans and minds. It’s perfectly natural that voters would be grumpy and seeking to blame someone for how they feel about the world. In a democracy, they usually blame the government of the day.

On the other hand, there is a general realisation among people that I speak to that the economy has performed remarkably well in this global crisis.

The economic impact of the pandemic has been estimated as 30 times worse than the Global Financial Crisis of 15 years ago. Yet in comparison with the G7 nations of the world, Australia’s economic growth is the highest, our inflation is the lowest, our unemployment is the lowest, our debt to Gross Domestic Product is the lowest.

In other words, Australia has outperformed the US, the UK, France, Japan, Germany, Canada and Italy in economic terms emerging from a global pandemic.

Dr Rachel Swift. Rachel is a Liberal candidate for the seat of Boothby. The seat is currently held by retiring Liberal Nicolle Flint. Picture: Roy VanDerVegt

There is even a grudging respect for how the Australian government has handled the pandemic. You only need to know one statistic to confirm this – if the average rate of deaths across the developed world had been repeated in Australia, 46,000 more Australians would have died from Covid. That’s 46,000 Australians who are alive today because of the policies implemented by the Australian government.

Sure, there’s always more to do. But is that record a good reason to smash the South Australian Liberal Party to smithereens?

If Labor wins Boothby and Sturt, they will hold 80 per cent of the federal seats in South Australia. Eighty per cent, with maybe somewhere between 50 and 55 per cent of the two-party preferred vote in this state.

It’s not good for democracy nor is it good for South Australia in Canberra that one party be so dominant over the other. Democracy thrives in a competitive atmosphere where everyone is being held to account. It withers in a one-party state.

In the federal election in 2007, I almost lost my seat of Sturt. I clung on by around 1700 votes, out of about 94,000 cast. It was an existential moment in what was a long career. I went on to serve for another 12 years for which I am very grateful.

I won in the end because of a seminal moment in the campaign that I am sure shook the voters of Sturt and they shifted the trajectory that they were on.

Liberal James Stevens now holds Christopher Pyne’s old seat of Sturt, and is running again. Picture: NCA Newswire/Gary Ramage

The day before election day, The Advertiser published a poll showing that I would lose the next day. I was behind my Labor opponent, 51 to 49 per cent.

A lot of people said to me that the poll was deeply unhelpful because it made me look like a loser. In fact, the opposite was true.

The poll reminded voters in Sturt that if they cast a protest vote against the government of the day they might just cause an outcome they weren’t expecting. In this case, they would have been replacing a local member with whom they weren’t particularly angry with an unknown quantity about whom they knew almost nothing.

The next day the poll was reversed and I won by the same margin, 51 to 49 per cent.

Boothby and Sturt have mostly been in Liberal hands since their creation in 1949. The majority of voters in those seats are traditionally middle class, hard working Liberal voters. In their Liberal candidates they have my successor, James Stevens MP in Sturt and Dr Rachel Swift in Boothby.

If they both lose then it will be because traditional Liberal voters have shifted away from them. But in doing so, voters need to deliberately choose such an outcome rather than assuming that they will win and that a protest vote will send a message to Canberra, while they will still be represented locally by two Liberal Members of Parliament.

I was literally saved with 24 hours to go in 2007 by voters getting that wake-up call thanks to The Advertiser poll.

Remember, if you lodge a protest vote, you just might end up with something you least expected.