Shaun Carney: Banking on Shorten’s unpopularity is a losing strategy

AFTER the poor result of the Super Saturday by-elections, Prime Minister stayed depressingly true to form expressing contrition while denying he had anything to be contrite about, writes Shaun Carney.

IN his first comments about the weekend’s by-election results, Malcolm Turnbull stayed depressingly true to form.

He scoffed at Labor’s success in retaining the four seats it was defending. There was absolutely nothing for Bill Shorten to celebrate, he said, because by-elections are always good for oppositions.

But he also went on to promise the government would “look very seriously and thoughtfully and humbly at the way in which the voters have responded”.

What was he trying to say? If the government never stood a chance in Longman in Brisbane’s outer north and Braddon in Tasmania, why did it run candidates and campaign so hard, including multiple visits by the Prime Minister?

It didn’t have to.

In Saturday’s two WA by-elections, it didn’t think it could win and therefore chose not to stand candidates.

Malcolm Turnbull stayed depressingly true to form.

Obviously, the government believed it could take Longman or Braddon or both from the ALP. Its own people were talking about that as a live possibility last Friday. And if, only hours after the polls closed, it had already concluded there were no implications in the Longman and Braddon results, where is the value in “seriously and thoughtfully and humbly” examining them? It is just this sort of mishmash of thinking and messaging that has caused the government to regularly find itself on the back foot for the past two years.

Simultaneously, the Prime Minister was expressing contrition while denying he had anything to be contrite about.

But while various nervous unnamed Coalition MPs in marginal seats are quoted in the media questioning Turnbull’s direction, let’s look at this as an opportunity for the Prime Minister. He can reset.

It’s surely his last big opportunity to confront the consequences of the self-indulgent political strategy he’s been pursuing until now.

His contempt for Shorten is not hard to see whenever they square off in Parliament. There looks to be something personal in the PM’s attitude to Shorten and he seems especially exercised about the Labor leader’s past relationships with business figures such as the late Dick Pratt.

Shorten — far from polished, even a bit clumsy and, worst of all, a former union official — is deemed unworthy of sitting at the top table. That attitude has leached into the government’s approach to policy and positioning.

As the government has managed to make small steps in reducing Labor’s lead in the opinion polls since the Budget in May, it’s concluded that Shorten is so personally unpopular that he poses no threat.

Supposedly Turnbull and his people have become convinced that they have the Labor leader’s measure.

This reminds me of what senior Labor figures used to tell me about Tony Abbott as opposition leader — you know, the Tony Abbott who won the 2013 election in a landslide.

Thus the government advocates a tax cut for big business and the trickle-down theory in which largesse at the top eventually finds its way into workers’ pay-packets, can’t get itself square with the Catholic schools, panders to Pauline Hanson, tries to appease all sides when it comes to energy, and kids itself that the preferred prime minister measure in the polls is the method by which Australians vote.

It’s a salad of stuff with few identifiable signs of where the government wants to take the country — save for jobs and growth, which is not really an idea. It’s rarely asked: what does this government stand for? It seems to stand for getting through each week and holding on to power.

Shorten and the ALP can be cast as waging class warfare but at least there’s no doubt about what they’re looking to do. The Coalition under Turnbull? It’s not easy to tell.

This is an inversion of much of the Howard years, when the government’s purpose was clear and the opposition’s objectives were obscure.

True, it can be argued the government’s one big idea is to cut the company tax rate from 30 per cent to 25 per cent. That now looks to be losing some support within the Coalition in the wake of the by-elections.

But it was always on shaky ground.

In terms of public support, the policy’s problem is that it looks like a straight-out gift to the corporate sector, including the dreaded banks, right at a time that wages are flatlining, CEO pay packages are absurdly generous, secure employment is in decline and household indebtedness has reached an all-time high.

One possible way it could become an electoral plus would be to invite big businesses to enter into some form of social contract that outlines explicitly how they would share the benefits with ordinary Australians and their families, with the government keeping a watchful eye.

But that would involve risk and we haven’t seen much of that under this government.

Some in Canberra might not be able to see it but many voters in middle Australia are deeply unhappy with the economic status quo. They are looking for clearly defined policies and direct talk.

It’s not too late for the Prime Minister to rescue his fortunes but he’ll need to forget Shorten and be more inventive and assertive.

More of the same won’t be welcomed by the public or his party room colleagues.

Peter Dutton, for one, whose seat is next door to Longman, is not going to sit by and see his political career — and his future leadership prospects — frittered away.

Originally published as Shaun Carney: Banking on Shorten’s unpopularity is a losing strategy