Joe Hildebrand: Support the Teals and Labor loses its workers

Those voters who switched to be on the side of the Teals at the last Federal election are helping to kill the Labor Party, writes Joe Hildebrand.

The left love to talk. Better still they love to shout. What they can’t seem to do — despite constantly demanding it of others — is listen.

Take, for example, the alarming story in the Sunday papers: “Blue collar workers deserting Anthony Albanese for Peter Dutton.”

That’s Bad News Bears. If the Labor Party is losing, well, labour, then it has a pretty apocalyptic identity crisis to confront.

Worse still, the polling came not from a right-wing think tank but with the official seal of the left’s former ranks: the pollster-de-jour RedBridge co-founded and driven by ex-senior Labor official Kos Samaras.

Let us go now to the exclusive report in the Sunday Telegaph:

“The latest RedBridge poll has found a surge in support for the Coalition among voters with vocational and TAFE educations, with it now well ahead of Labor among tradies.

“This shows Mr Dutton’s decision to ignore the affluent Teal seats and concentrate on outer suburban and regional seats appears to be paying dividends…”

Oh dear. And here’s the kicker: RedBridge was also the primary pollster for the Teals.

In other words, they know what they’re talking about.

Recent polling suggests Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and the ALP are losing the support of the labour market. Picture: Martin Ollman

But who could have predicted this catastrophic collapse in the blue collar vote for what is supposed to be the blue collar party? Why weren’t we told?!?

We were. And if you are a Teal voter who helped elect Monique Ryan in Kooyong or Allegra Spender in Wentworth, congratulations: You’re helping to kill the Australian Labor Party.

Many of the ultra-rich luvvies probably just didn’t care and still don’t. They wanted to register their right-side-of-history votes on long-term and lofty issues like climate change and “integrity” but of course couldn’t bring themselves to dirty their names by voting Labor.

This was the simple Teal conceit: It gave poshos who felt a bit icky about ScoMo a safe and beige option — the political equivalent of hand sanitiser.

But all over, within, and underneath these haughty hand-wringers was a highly sophisticated and eye-wateringly well-funded so-called progressive political machine that was acting nudge-nudge wink-wink in concert with what was supposedly Labor’s objectives.

After all, you knock off the Prime Minister and his would-be successor and that means the government loses and the opposition wins. Simple, right?

Turns out it was too simple by half — which was too much simplicity for even its simplest zealots to comprehend.

Peter Dutton is attracting the tradies. Picture: Richard Dobson

Because as was immediately clear to those with even half a brain — too high a threshold for many, sadly — taking the Liberals from a party forced to appease wealthy pearl-clutchers for both money and votes to a party whose only hope of survival rested on stealing working-class seats in the suburbs and regions was, from any true Labor perspective, a very, very, very bad idea.

Labor is now being smashed by the Coalition among those working-class voters in those working-class seats. This is a disgrace for the party of the worker.

But the perennially shocked and outraged left will pretend that this was a wholly unforeseen event caused by circumstances entirely beyond their control or a sinister conspiracy of right-wing capitalist forces.

Well how’s this for the trifecta: Well before the election, an uncommonly handsome and explicitly Labor-supporting columnist working for the Murdoch press warned that this was exactly what would happen and begged idiot lefties to stop it.

Urging Labor voters in Kooyong to preference Josh Frydenberg over Monique Ryan I wrote on May 15, 2022: “As someone with deep Labor sympathies myself I know this is a difficult argument to make but it is also an incredibly important one — if you live in Kooyong, and you love the Labor Party, it is vital you give your preference to Frydenberg over Monique Ryan.”

Monique Ryan took over the seat of Kooyong from incumbent Josh Frydenberg at last year’s Federal Election. Picture: Martin Ollman

I also wrote this: “Without moderate leadership, and without having to worry about any moderate urban seats that the teals have taken over, the Coalition would be free to pursue the sort of populist momentum that has been seized by One Nation and the United Australia Party.”

This: “And with economic indicators heading the way they are the incoming government will have very restless and disaffected voters in those (outer-suburban and regional) electorates to deal with. Whoever is opposition leader could be prime minister a lot sooner than people think.”

And this: “If a more muscular and working-class oriented Coalition takes those votes it could change future election outcomes forever.”

That was more than a year and a half ago, before the Albanese Government even existed. No paywall impeded that column, no subscription was needed. Anyone could have read it and it appears a very large number did.

Indeed I know many of the left are voracious readers of my columns, including the august Teal godfather Simon Holmes a Court, who has blessed me with his Twitter commentary from time to time.

Perhaps the Teals knew they were ultimately crippling the ALP and didn’t care or perhaps they were too stupid to know it in the first place.

Either way they have now been statistically and strategically exposed as the cuckoo in the nest. In their self-important upper-middle class quest for ideological purity they have dopily parachuted the Coalition’s strongest working-class warrior right in the middle of the ALP’s outer suburban ranks.

And now we have proof that it is not the Liberal Party whose survival they most threaten — it’s Labor.

If only someone had listened.