The lessons Morrison must learn from Victoria

Instead of spruiking his government’s positives, Scott Morrison is fussing about gender on birth certificates. He needs to take lessons from Dan Andrews and John Howard, writes Paul Williams.

Commentators are calling it a “Dan-slide”.

But election outcomes are never forged on the strength of a single factor and rarely on the strength of a leader alone.

While Victorian premier Daniel Andrews and his steady leadership of Victorian Labor deserves kudos for winning up to 55 seats in the 88 seat lower house (with 43 per cent of the primary vote (up five points since 2014), this was one of those rare state elections where federal factors indeed played a role.

Make no mistake: even though last weekend’s result was overwhelmingly born from state issues, the federal Liberals’ leadership larks in August are clearly taking their toll. Just ask NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian who, staring down defeat next March, has made it clear she needs PM Scott Morrison on her campaign as much as she needs an ebola outbreak in downtown Sydney.

There are at least six lessons the Andrews Government’s win offers Australian political leaders, and especially Morrison.

There’s no doubt Daniel Andrews was a formidable foe to the Victorian Liberals, but an election victory is about more than a leader. Picture: Nicole Garmston

The first is that voters reward politicians who promise modestly and realistically, then deliver in full. A second is to keep investing in infrastructure. Third — as all state governments worth their salt know — deliver robust social services. Victorian Labor ticked all three boxes with their promise and delivery of hospitals, schools, rail — and even road despite the costly, messy decisions around the dumped East West Link project.

Fourth — and this is a big one — demonstrate internal unity as evidence a party can deliver stability in government. Not only did the federal Liberals’ shenanigans reflect badly on Matthew Guy’s state opposition, but the federal and Victorian state Greens’ own internal wars — from light green versus dark green ideological battles, to allegations of sexual misconduct — have seen progressive voters flock back to Labor. This augurs badly for both parties in every state, and federally.

Another powerful lesson is for parties to offer more than polished leaders from central casting who do little more than recite punchy sound bites in the local vernacular. Daniel Andrews, like Annastacia Palaszczuk, is like a next door neighbour: a sincere but unpolished bloke who, in his ordinariness, quietly demonstrates he’s just like you — and all without uttering so much as a syllable of “fair dinkum”.

This ties into a last lesson: offer voters more than negative fearmongering. While Andrews warmly enthused Victorians about their future, Guy shouted at them to be afraid of African crime gangs, Islamic fundamentalist terrorism, heroin injecting room, and even the Safe Schools program.

No reasonable person says Australian governments, police and voters should ignore crime gangs comprised of any ethnic mix, or indeed terrorism spawned by any ideological bent. But voters know they’re unlikely to be affected personally by these relatively rare events, whereas underfunded roads, hospitals and schools everyday affect Australians every day of the week.

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian has made it clear Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s services are not required in her re-election campaign. Picture: Kym Smith

Worryingly for Coalition, the Federal Government — and especially Morrison himself — appears to fail each of these six criteria: Morrison has promised too little (the Coalition dumped Malcolm Turnbull’s National Energy Guarantee), and therefore delivered too little.

He also appears to blame the states for infrastructure shortfalls while his government invests big in Pacific Island infrastructure to counter Chinese influence (that will hardly prove popular with punters).

And, far from flooding services with cash, Morrison took a beating for reducing Foodbank’s funding — later reversed — to provide emergency relief to struggling families.

The last three criteria reveal an even poorer performance: the federal Liberals’ factions are still at war, and the Nationals question their own leader’s abilities; ScoMo’s tactic to market himself as a knockabout Aussie via blokey slang is now mocked by all and sundry; and the Coalition is wholly consumed by the same narrow, negative narrative of fear over crime, ethnicity and terrorism.

This is hardly the nation-building vision Australians are crying out for.

While Morrison is right to enter the population debate — congestion and animal extinction are those rare issues that affects every urban Australian, conservative or progressive, have or have not — where is the Coalition’s core argument of superior economic management? You would hardly know that inflation and interest rates are still low, that the housing market is cooling or that unemployment is at its lowest in six years.

Where former Liberal PM John Howard would be spruiking these achievements on every radio and television station, Morrison is warning us of the dangers of changing gender options on birth certificates.

Yes, the Coalition has lost its mojo. Let them have a term or two in opposition to sort themselves out.

Dr Paul Williams is a senior lecturer at Griffith University and a Courier-Mail columnist.