The federal Coalition is still in a good spot for Scott Morrison to remain PM

Lessons of the past show us that, despite recent negative polling, the Government can win next election, writes Nick Dyrenfurth

Many voting Australians won’t have been born or were too young to remember 2001. As the year began, polls showed Kim Beazley’s federal Labor with a commanding lead over John Howard’s Coalition government, described by voters, thanks to a leaked memo, as ‘mean and tricky’ and ‘out of touch’.

The memo, the work of Liberal President Shane Stone, came amid popular anger over the GST’s implementation while soaring petrol prices aroused the ire of consumers.

In February, the Coalition was well beaten by Labor in Queensland and Western Australian state elections. The next month, Howard’s government lost the safe Queensland seat of Ryan at a by-election.

In response, a cashed-up Howard began targeting swinging voters in outer suburban seats and halted the automatic indexation of the fuel excise tax, a form of ‘sorry’ in other words (but not to the Stolen Generations).

John Howard celebrating the night of his election win in 2001.

In Victoria, the Liberal two-party preferred vote fell at the Aston by-election in June, but it retained the seat.

The real ‘circuit breaker’ came with the arrival in August of the Norwegian container vessel Tampa and ugly debate subsequently waged over asylum seekers and border security, the latter accentuated the next month by the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States.

Howard was returned with a slightly increased majority, not the landslide many polls ­predicted.

ALP figures believed that they had prevented a potential landslide loss.

“Five weeks ago,” Beazley announced in his 2001 election concession speech, “it looked as though we in the Labor Party faced one of the most devastating defeats in our history.” But the 2 per cent national swing to a government seeking a third term in office – the largest swing to an incumbent since 1966 – was indeed devastating to Labor.

Two decades later, a federal ­Coalition is in power seeking a fourth term and facing growing voter anger, this time over its mishandling of Covid vaccination and hotel ­quarantine.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has faced voter anger over the slow vaccine rollout. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Gary Ramage

Millions of Australians live under some form of restrictions with little ­financial help given the withdrawal of the JobKeeper scheme. Mean, tricky and out of touch anyone?

Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Treasurer Josh Frydenberg spent last week refusing to utter the word “sorry” or apologise for our glacial vaccine rollout, until the former’s hand was forced.

“I’m sorry that we haven’t been able to achieve the marks that we had hoped for at the beginning of this year,” the Prime Minister said.

Yet the PM’s position is recoverable, no matter recent polls showing Labor on track to win the next ­election.

Pandemic incumbency is not to be dismissed lightly, nor the Coalition’s ability to position itself as superior managers of the economy and better able to pay down debt, regardless of evidence to the contrary over the last decade.

Morrison’s road map to victory is paved entirely by vaccination, which, in turn, will determine the health of the economy in the lead up to the next election.

In this he can learn from Howard’s electoral pragmatism of 2001. The government must urgently adopt a five point “carrot and stick” jab plan:

1) a tripling-down on securing vaccine supplies and ensuring supplies of locally-made AstraZeneca are not wasted – three million doses reportedly have been;

2) super-charging mRNA production capability to rapidly respond to Covid variants and future pandemics thus reducing Australia’s reliance on foreign supply chains for vaccines and essential medical supplies;

3) incentives to vaccinate (via vaccine passports for quarantine free travel and entry to major events, hospitality and entertainment venues) paired with a public awareness ­campaign;

4) disincentives for not vaccinating (charging for jabs after October); and

5) setting a clear date for an early 2022 re-opening with no more ­lockdowns.

The arrival of the Norwegian freighter container ship Tampa carrying refugees off the coast of Christmas Island helped John Howard win the election.

The Prime Minister’s claim of a “road map to Christmas” whereby “everybody who has had the opportunity will have had it” and lockdowns will be a “thing of the past” fundamentally lacks such ambition and is far too open-ended.

Morrison can learn from the ­example of Howard in another ­respect. Prior to 2001, Pauline Hanson’s far-right One Nation party sent shivers down the spine of Howard’s government.

In 1998 it performed strongly at the Queensland state election and won almost 9 per cent of the national vote in the federal election of the same year.

In 2001, its performance in Western Australia effectively handed power to state Labor. Pivoting right, Howard not only saw off the One ­Nation challenge off the back of his stance on Tampa and 9/11 – the minor party’s primary vote more than halved – but in August he took the ­decision to order Hanson be placed last on all Liberal how-to-vote cards.

It is time anti-vaxxers like Clive Palmer are opreferenced below Labor by the Coalition.

Faced with vaccine hesitancy, ­fuelled by the government’s own poor messaging, anti-vax campaigners, whether conspiracy theorists attending last weekend’s freedom protests or billionaire Clive Palmer’s mass pamphleteering efforts, it is time Morrison waged war.

Palmer’s United Australia Party, set to contest the next election, must be preferenced below Labor with Hanson and any other anti-vaxxers on Coalition how-to-vote cards.

In the national interest, Anthony Albanese should reciprocate.

Failure to do so would completely undercut the national vaccination ­effort, our only road map out of this mess, and means of navigating Covid’s transition from pandemic ­endemic.

It might also cost the PM his job, something to truly feel sorry over.

Nick Dyrenfurth is Executive Director of the John Curtin Research Centre.