Opinion: Desperate Libs bring the big gun as Wentworth by-election panic sets in
ANYONE watching national politics this past week could be excused for thinking Scott Morrison’s Government has been going out of its way to ensure defeat in the Wentworth by-election, writes Dennis Atkins.
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JOHN Howard is the Liberal Party’s “in case of emergency, break glass” guy.
This week the party, panicked and petrified about losing the once jewel in the crown eastern Sydney seat of Wentworth, broke the glass and invited Howard, the Liberals’ second longest serving prime minister, to travel across the Emerald City’s stormy harbour and shake a few hands.
On the streets of Wentworth, Howard joined David Sharma, the Liberal candidate enlisted after the previous member Malcolm Turnbull quit Parliament and jetted off to New York for a month or so of rest and recreation.
The facts and what’s apparent on the ground couldn’t be more divergent.
Wentworth is notionally a 17.7 per cent Liberal seat, the eighth safest Coalition electorate in the country.
It’s also the wealthiest electorate in Australia with an astounding 85 per cent of residents in the top 10 per cent of the most advantaged people in the country while no one is in the bottom 60 per cent.
In Wentworth you don’t need to worry about keeping up with the Joneses, you already are the Joneses.
What we do know is that this big collection of Joneses are splendidly rich.
If they are buying a house, their monthly mortgage payments sit at an average of $3000 while renters hand $610 a week to the landlord.
A Liberal vote that peaks at 91 per cent two party preferred in Vaucluse at the north eastern end of the electorate – and is even relatively high at its lowest point of 51 per cent in Rushcutters Bay, adjacent to Kings Cross – seems unassailable.
These facts should make today’s by-election in Wentworth the least interesting contest this weekend.
Whether Australia can stage a comeback in the desert against Pakistan, or David Hayes again beat the bookies with his sneaky entry in the Caulfield Cup, Ventura Storm, seem of much greater interest.
For a number of inconvenient reasons, these facts might count for nothing and that’s why the old master was ushered out one more time.
Howard’s primary task was to urge wavering Liberal voters to not desert their traditional political home.
“If enough people decide to register a protest vote then the seat could go to an independent and that will rob the Morrison Government of its working majority,” Howard says.
“It will make the remaining months of this term of office very difficult and it will feed the view in the community that a Labor government is more likely at the next election.”
Internal Liberal Party polling – talked about but not seen in detail – shows why this “protest vote” might be a decisive factor.
The Liberals’ primary vote has halved, apparently, falling from just over 62 per cent in 2016 to less than 35 per cent, while high-profile independent, former AMA president, Sydney City councillor and celebrity doctor Kerryn Phelps has support said to be almost 40 per cent.
Labor’s vote is about where it was in 2016 when Evan Hughes could only manage
17 per cent.
So, if Phelps finishes first, she would almost certainly win with Labor preferences as she would if Sharma tops the vote and she is within striking distance.
Losing half of your primary vote and watching a traditionally rock solid Liberal seat, held for more than a decade by much loved local Turnbull, slip through your fingers is political negligence of the highest order.
However, anyone watching national politics this past week could be excused for thinking Scott Morrison’s Government has been going out of its way to ensure defeat.
They might have tried every trick in the campaigning book – and some that shouldn’t be there – but what should have been winning gambits quickly became a succession of exploding cigars.
Two rushed foreign policy swerves – suggesting the Government might shift the Australian embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to West Jerusalem, and considering transferring asylum seekers on Nauru to New Zealand – looked transparently cynical and could backfire.
A stuff-up over a Pauline Hanson Senate motion containing white supremacist language – which the Coalition voted for and then opposed – brought into question political management and judgment.
Concern over simmering disquiet among voters about Turnbull’s removal – acknowledged by Morrison when he said he understood why people in Wentworth were angry – was added to with the appearance of a nasty, dirty tricks email aimed at Phelps.
Because of the sexual nature of the email, some Liberal campaigners fear it will cast a “homophobic” slur on the party in a seat which voted 80 per cent in favour of marriage equality.
If all this wasn’t enough, the Nationals decided to remind voters how this by-election was kicked off with political infighting and leadership instability.
A whisper in the corridors hit the airwaves when former Nationals’ leader Barnaby Joyce confessed he’d like to get his old job back but wasn’t canvassing for support in any way.
No wonder the Liberals were wondering whether their junior Coalition partner was asleep through the September leadership crisis that felled Turnbull and caused today’s by-election.
In a week of high-risk policy gambles, some dumb missteps and unimpressive Parliamentary performances, the Nationals took the prize for stupidity.
On Saturday the whole Government may pay the price.
Dennis Atkins is The Courier-Mail’s national affairs editor
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