I made my own bus blunder, but it wasn’t this bad

THERE is a harsh reality that many leaders refuse to accept; when you find yourself in a hole, sometimes the best thing you can do is stop digging. And the PM is now in a mighty big hole, writes Sam Dastyari.

SCOTT Morrison is travelling around Queensland on a bus this week.

Except he isn’t.

He is travelling with a private plane, a legion of staff and more personnel than a third world Government.

This is apparently what being ‘in touch’ looks like in 2018. Having a bus as a backdrop for photo events between trips from your jet to a limousine.

It’s about as real as the Prime Minister’s scripted social media videos, use of ‘fair-dinkum’ and tortured sport references.

There is a harsh reality that many leaders refuse to accept; when you find yourself in a hole, sometimes the best thing you can do is stop digging.

And the PM is now in a mighty big hole.

“His popularity numbers can’t be this bad,” I said at the start of the week to Kaila Murnain, the boss of the NSW Labor Party.

Looking through the polling on Scott Morrison there is only one conclusion I could draw: “These numbers are wrong.”

Prime Minister Scott Morrison is currently on a four-day bus tour of Queensland. Picture: AAP/Dan Peled

The NSW Labor Party head office on Sussex Street in Sydney is a place of many secrets. None more closely guarded than polling.

I had private polling a month ago showing that the Prime Minister had a net approval rating of eleven. These numbers now have him in negative territory.

“They can’t have moved this fast,” I pointed out to Kaila.

“No. The numbers are right. People have just figured him out,” she tells me.

Kaila, as usual, was right.

Sam Dastyari on Bill Shorten’s Labor campaign bus. Picture: Supplied

The published polls that came out this week reaffirm the trend that was once closely guarded; what we are now seeing is the incredible shrinking popularity of the PM.

And so as Malcolm Turnbull basks in a celebration of his failures before an ABC studio audience on the QandA program, Scott Morrison will be sitting in a hotel room wondering just what he can do to stem his popularity decline.

I’ve seen leaders where Scott Morrison is right now: hopelessly trying to change their political trajectory.

Half a decade ago people like myself came up with the ill-fated ‘Western Sydney Week’ for Julia Gillard; now the Liberals have the ‘Scomo express’ in Queensland. That’s what you do when you get desperate. Anything.

Former Labor Senator Sam Dastyari managed Opposition Leader Bill Shorten’s ‘Bill Bus’ during the most recent federal election. Picture: Mick Tsikas/AAP

There is nothing new in a bus tour.

I was the captain of the ‘Bill Bus’ at the last Federal Election. The name ‘Bill Bus’ was actually a default we had to run with.

I had initially named it the ‘Shortbus’, a name I had to abandon when a google search revealed that was the name of a 2006 avant-garde erotic movie.

“Why did we change it from ‘Shortbus’?”, Bill Shorten asked me as a I made everyone return their shirts.

I never told him the truth.

I travelled the country for seven weeks on a bus emblazoned with Bill Shorten’s image. We went from Queensland to Tasmania (via a ferry) and across to Perth.

Just when we thought it was over I was told by Bill that he wanted it back in Brisbane to be relaunched as the ‘Save Medicare Bus’ for the last week of the campaign.

The truth was that Bill loved the bus. He loved the camaraderie.

He loved the bootleg karaoke machine that had dodgy lyrics (mistaking ‘Bat out of hell’ with ‘hat out of hell’ was my favourite).

He loved the quiet of the long drives. We didn’t have the problem that Scott Morrison has, namely, an empty bus between campaign stops. Our problem was Bill only wanted to travel on it.

And sure there were all the risks that came with a bus.

My gravest fear was always someone adding a graffiti appendage to the Bill bus.

A breakdown in Coffs Harbour was followed with the headline ‘Campaign stuck in the mud’; people trying to get on the bus all the time thinking it was their regular service to the shops and, most worryingly, spending my nights with nightmares that someone was going to graffiti a giant penis on the damn thing.

But it was fun.

And Bill has kept doing it well after the bus was gone and that election was narrowly lost. Since the election, Bill’s made 50 trips to Queensland (77 nights spent there) and over 30 town hall meetings.

And that’s the thing. You can’t fake your way through these things. There are no shortcuts.

You can’t spend a week in Western Sydney at the Rooty Hill RSL (as I proposed Julia Gillard do). A stupid stunt for which we were rightly panned (Julia, I’m really sorry) or spend a few hours between flights in Queensland and think your structural electoral problems will go away.

Going through polling this week, Kaila reminded me of the old adage Bob Hawke used to have, which was “the mob will always work you out”.

What should be worrying for the Prime Minister is how quickly it has occurred.

The Prime Minister spent a previous life as a marketing executive.

Now he has the most difficult product of all: himself. Authenticity matters and selling a politician as folksy, in touch and likeable is beyond even his marketing abilities.

He’s hinged on a strategy of personality — just when Australians don’t think their politicians have any.

It’s odd and it’s also not working.

@samdastyari

Originally published as I made my own bus blunder, but it wasn’t this bad