Liberal Party official review says Malcolm Turnbull must attack Bill Shorten’s weaknesses, call out Labor’s ‘lies’
EXCLUSIVE: THE PM must immediately target Bill Shorten’s weaknesses and attack with greater ferocity, the official review of the Liberals’ says.
NSW
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PRIME Minister Malcolm Turnbull has been ordered to immediately expose Bill Shorten’s weaknesses and step up these attacks with greater ferocity during the campaign, according to the review of the Liberals’ performance in the 2016 Federal Election.
Former Liberal federal director Andrew Robb’s Review of the 2016 Federal Election, obtained exclusively by The Daily Telegraph, has recommended the Prime Minister, his senior leadership team, the federal executive and senior party figures change their campaign techniques, step up research, focus on ethnic voters and call out Labor’s lies, to lift their performance at the next federal election in two years’ time.
It also urges the Turnbull Government to respect the Liberal Party’s core supporters, amid concerns they deserted the Party in droves, refusing to man polling booths or donate to the party, furious with the Government’s proposed superannuation changes.
“While governing for all, at all times respect, and be seen to be respecting our base,” the review states.
Indicating Mr Turnbull and his senior team are out of touch, Mr Robb’s review recommends they are exposed to an “interactive research program” to “help build an intuitive vision and narrative which properly takes account of diverse community sentiment.”
The tightly-held review’s first recommendation is for the Liberal Party to “recognise and respond to the fact that the next campaign effectively begins the day after polling day.”
READ THE FULL LIBERAL PARTY REVIEW HERE
It says the Liberals must “consistently define and expose the weaknesses of our opponents and their leaders throughout the term of Parliament and then strongly through the final 33 day campaign period.”
In the campaign cycle, the Prime Minister faced criticism for failing to ruthlessly obliterate his opponent with targeted negative campaign ads.
The Review found the Liberals were far too slow to respond to Labor’s “Medicare” lie, where Opposition leader Bill Shorten claimed the Government planned to cut and outsource Medicare.
“Never fail to strongly expose and unequivocally rebut the lies and misrepresentations of our policy positions, starting in the same media cycle, and continuing until the claims are discredited,” it states.
Mr Turnbull’s demeanour was described as “calm” when the recommendations were presented in a two-hour session at the Federal Executive meeting in Sydney on Friday.
He supported all of the recommendations being adopted.
There were about 20 senior Liberals delicately discussing the failings of the election campaign while eating scones at the board table of Doltone House in Elizabeth Street.
The transactional cost of changing prime ministers was mentioned in passing by Mr Robb.
He was said to be nuanced in the discussion.
Over the course of the two-hour discussion, the point was made several times that the Liberal Party went to an election with a leader who had been there for less than a year and a federal director who had been there for six months which both led to a general unpreparedness.
Extraordinarily, as The Daily Telegraph revealed on Friday, none of the Review’s recommendations into how the Liberal Party fared in the 2016 campaign touch on whether the brutal knifing of a first-term sitting prime minister had an impact.
Addressing criticisms the Government has no narrative, the Review recommends the Liberals “formulate a clear plan, priorities and build a supporting narrative of where a Coalition is taking Australia.”
The Review says that “as a matter of urgency the federal executive investigate all existing funding and campaign expenditure practices” to assess transparency, improper use of funds and other practices which bypass the spirit of electoral laws.
The review is critical of how the Turnbull campaign neglected ethnic voters.
“There was no real strategy in place to communicate effectively with ethnic groups,” it states, recommending the Liberals “establish strong on the round links with ethnic communities and develop campaign plans relative to these communities.”
It also calls for the Liberal Party to “drive cultural change within the Party to establish a stronger and more diverse membership and supporter base.”
The Daily Telegraph revealed on Friday the Liberal party had run out of money to conduct regular polling and market research ahead of the 2016 federal campaign, meaning strategists were flying blind with what punters cared about.
To address this, the review recommends “the Party must have a structured market research program running for the full 3 years to provide our Parliamentary Party with a continuous understanding of community sentiment regarding policy and other political developments.”
During the campaign itself, the review calls for regular detailed, statistically relevant research in marginal seats to “identify turning points, and or softening or hardening trends”.
It urges the use of a small data and data analytics team to take “our understanding of various electorates to a whole new level” and “vastly improve our targeting of messaging via all forms of communication media.”
The review states it is a “priority” for the party to be “financially solid.”
It also says candidates, especially in marginal seats, should have “extensive media training” and “coaching in party policy” — and possibly even a mentor — to help them deal with the media.
Mr Robb’s review says that as Labor retreats from campaigning in safe Liberal seats, the next Federal Election needs to have an “integrated, research driven campaign to suppress the Green vote in seats like Higgins, Kooyong and elsewhere.”
It also recommends the Federal Executive look to overseas experience to try and boost fundraising, including examining the role of public funding, advertising and the impact of the digital age.
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