Morrison has one person to thank for his remarkable win

It was the outcome that few of us saw coming, but ultimately, Saturday’s federal election proved one thing: Australians only voted Scott Morrison in because they believed the alternative was worse, writes Paul Williams.

Saturday night and the text messages flew thick and fast.

“What the *$@% is happening?” friends and relatives asked.

We can only pore over the goat entrails to understand exactly how a Coalition — so recently at war with itself and written off by every serious commentator in the country — won an unwinnable election despite rising unemployment and low wage growth.

And that makes this result the most surprising since 1993 when Paul Keating trounced John Hewson. Back then an unpopular Keating — after 10 years of Labor government and during a recession, no less — defeated a smooth and telegenic intellectual who promised to repair the national economy. But Hewson’s solution was GST, which terrified a nation already hurting in its hip pocket.

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Another parallel lies in the LNP’s surprise defeat at the 2015 Queensland state election when an unpopular Campbell Newman lost Australia’s biggest ever majority when trying to sell asset privatisation. It would have been easier to sell ebola.

The lesson from this election is simple: an unpopular leader cannot sell unpopular policies. Picture: Scott Barbour/Getty

The lesson is simple: a popular leader can sell an unpopular policy (as NSW Premier Mike Baird did when privatising electricity distribution), and an unpopular leader can sell a popular one (as Keating did in opposing the GST). But an unpopular leader has no chance of selling an unpopular policy. Newman couldn’t convince Queenslanders to sell their state assets, just as Bill Shorten — less popular than Malcolm Turnbull on his worst day — could never convince middle Australia that higher marginal tax rates for upper income earners are in the national interest.

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Twenty-twenty hindsight is a wonderful thing. Shorten this morning would be measuring for new curtains in the Lodge if he’d steered a small target campaign that spruiked jobs and pension increases and little else.

Conversely, if a more accessible figure like Tanya Plibersek had led Labor and explained how taxes fund schools, hospitals and border security, then she too might be doing some cabinet-making.

Morrison should be thanking Shorten and Labor for his win. Picture: Saeed Khan/AFP

That’s why no election is ever truly decided on a single issue. Indeed, there are probably 16 million micro-reasons as to why Saturday’s result defied expectations. But, if pushed, we can boil down Australia’s motivations to just three factors: a rejection of a Labor leader who never really looked or sounded like an alternate PM, a poorly explained tax package that pushed worried voters into Coalition territory, and, after seeing five PMs in six years, a desire for a little stability.

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Then there’s regional Queensland — the half dozen seats under 4 per cent that, six months ago, looked certain to fall to Labor — where a fourth factor played out: the fear a Shorten government, unenthusiastic about coal, was unsympathetic to an entire mining industry responsible for feeding so much of the state. Add to that the anger regional Queenslanders felt on seeing a Greens-led caravan “come up from down south to tell us how to live how lives”, and the temptation to reject Labor’s agenda became irresistible.

Yes, Queensland, the state that so often breaks federal Labor’s heart, has again cruelled the party’s dreams. But Labor’s problem this year wasn’t just a fired-up PM. It was also the populist right which peeled votes off Labor before washing through to the LNP. If you ever again hear the LNP whinge about compulsory preferential voting, remind them how CPV delivered Morrison his victory in Queensland.

Should Albanese win the leadership ballot Morrison could be in for trouble once more. Picture: Hollie Adams/The Australian

Ultimately, the biggest winner on Saturday was the “art” of campaigning itself. And credit to Liberal strategists who hid the party’s lacklustre frontbench and made this a presidential contest between ScoMo and Bill Shorten — a race Shorten could never really win. Add the Coalition’s ads warning of Labor’s allegedly poor economic management (just don’t mention Bob Hawke!) — and Morrison’s superior presence both in person and online — and we see how Labor was always going to fail.

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But all this could prove cold comfort for Morrison by this time next year, especially given the fact the Coalition merely limped over the line on Saturday. This result was not a loving embrace of a Morrison-led Liberal party but just enough grudging support to remove Shorten.

And if Australia’s economy tanks alongside China’s, if the Coalition fails to address low wage growth, clean energy, urban decongestion and a thousand other tangible concerns, and if the PM is contrasted strongly with a well-liked Anthony Albanese as Labor leader (perfectly adept at bringing back the blue-collar vote), then Morrison may well be spilt by Josh Frydenberg before 2022.

Then we’ll see if Morrison truly believes in miracles.

Dr Paul Williams is senior lecturer at Griffith University.

Originally published as Morrison has one person to thank for his remarkable win