Joe Hildebrand: Libs, Labor in race for core vote

Both Liberal and Labor are under assault in their own well-heeled heartlands, writes Joe Hildebrand.

There has been much public soul-searching in the Liberal Party over the weekend, from the last prime minister to lead it to victory from opposition and the bloke faced with that unenviable task the next time around.

Both Tony Abbott and Peter Dutton have urged a back-to-basics approach, with Abbott advocating an appeal to traditional social values and Dutton advocating an appeal to bread-and-butter cost-of-living concerns.

At face value, this might seem like an internal crisis of conscience between the philosophical and the practical but, in fact, the two are one – and if the Liberals manage to combine them, they could represent an existential threat to Labor as the party of the working and aspirational class.

Clearly, the Libs are a basket case. They are a bruised rump federally, internally dysfunctional in NSW and could barely fill a Tarago in Victoria. I won’t even mention Western Australia where they’d struggle to load a moped.

But the problem for Labor is that anti-Liberal votes are taking the long way home before they get to the ALP – and at the last federal election too many didn’t get there at all.

Both Liberal and Labor are under assault in their own well-heeled heartlands – the Libs from the teals and Labor from the Greens. This cost the Liberals five seats in NSW and Victoria, and Labor three seats in Queensland.

Both Tony Abbott and Peter Dutton have urged a back-to-basics approach.

It is very difficult to see how many of these seats will come back to either party in the long term. They are affluent and indignant and will vote for whichever local Karen most aligns with their latest moral crusade. They have the luxury of voting on principle because they don’t have pressing economic problems.

Whatever either party spends on trying to hold or win back these inner-city seats, it will unlikely be a solid return on investment – and with billionaire backers and millionaire activists, it’s doubtful they could find enough to spend anyway.

And it is not as simple as the Greens killing Labor, and the teals killing the Libs. Two of the three federal Brisbane seats the Greens won were taken from Liberals. And as the Victorian election showed, Labor is increasingly butting heads with the teals in leafy electorates.

So, Labor and Liberal find themselves in the same position. Both parties are under attack by well-heeled left-wing parties and movements motivated almost exclusively by issues such as climate change, “integrity” and identity politics – all of which are largely abstract concepts in the daily lives of suburban Australians.

The difference is that this tsunami has hit the Liberal Party at what is arguably its lowest ebb. Scott Morrison was viscerally unpopular by the end of his tenure and Matthew Guy was, at best, an insipid leader.

Labor, by contrast, has had three years of strong party discipline under Anthony Albanese, and in Victoria is ruled with an iron fist by the cult-like personality of Dan Andrews.

Yet the ALP faces the same structural problems that the Liberals do. While they are not as immediately pressing, the warning signs are there.

Labor, by contrast, has had three years of strong party discipline under Anthony Albanese.

Despite his resounding election win, Andrews copped an almost 6 per cent swing against his government in the primary vote. It’s just that those votes came back to Labor because the opposition was so woefully unappealing. The ALP was also the overwhelming beneficiary of Green and teal preferences – but what happens when those candidates start edging higher and knocking Labor out of the race? In Melbourne and Brisbane, it’s already happening.

More concerning for Labor is that as the Socialist Left faction increases its hold in Victoria – note the post-election defection of a swath of what used to be politely called “rats” – it is more reliant on upper-middle class and leafy seats, which are exactly the kind that Greens and teals like to nibble on.

Meanwhile, in the lower-socio-economic and blue-collar suburbs of Melbourne, voters turned heavily against Labor on a two-party-preferred basis even amid the Danslide 2.0. Funny how socialism always seems to be more popular with the wealthy than the working class. Hence, Werribee workers turned against Andrews, while Waverley worriers turned towards him.

Fortunately, the good ship Albanese is riding high in the water, as the latest Newspoll shows, but that 39 per cent primary vote is over six points above what Labor actually recorded at the federal election.

That victory was built not on traditional outer-suburban seats such as Lindsay and Longman or regional blue-collar seats like Capricornia but on a rogue result in WA fuelled by the runaway popularity of Mark McGowan.

Meanwhile, with little left to lose in its once blue-ribbon urban seats, the Coalition is now free to pursue outer-suburban and regional votes with unrestrained vigour, both by appealing to conservative social values, as Abbott is urging, and immediate economic concerns, as is Dutton’s focus.

Likewise, if Labor wants to survive long-term as the natural party of government, it needs to forget about inner-city lamentations and embrace the wants and needs of its true heartland – a heartland that sure as hell ain’t Newtown and Northcote.

And it needs to do it now before the Liberals get there first.