Bill’s Short-on details but Coalition hasn’t won yet

For a bloke who’s campaigned strongly over the past five years, Bill Shorten’s first week on the hustings was a shocker, writes Peta Credlin. But the Coalition still has a huge task ahead.

Winning elections is all about seizing the momentum and keeping it.

Sometimes that comes easy; your team is at the top of their game, the policy work is done (and it shows), and political luck is on your side, like when the ball hits the net and falls the right way.

Other times, it’s a struggle, the unforced errors are pronounced, and it seems you can’t pull a trick.

Like it was for Labor last week.

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For a bloke who’s campaigned strongly over the past five years, Bill Shorten’s first week on the hustings was a shocker. When the only job of Opposition is to work on election policies and get ready for the next contest, Labor appeared remarkedly unprepared for scrutiny.

There was a $6 billion hole in their cancer promise, the negative gearing changes used inaccurate statistics so the tax impact didn’t add up, and three weeks on from the release of Labor’s massive climate change — electric cars policy, Bill Shorten still refuses to release the full financial numbers.

Opposition Leader Bill Shorten in an exchange with Channel 10 reporter Jonathan Lea during a press conference. Picture: Kym Smith

I’ve been involved in election campaigns for two decades now and I’ve never seen an uncosted policy, let alone one with an estimated impact worth billions.

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Yet it all might have been very different for Shorten if two dogged young journalists hadn’t got on his media bus last week. For years, a compliant Canberra press gallery have put very little pressure on Labor.

The Liberals too, gave them a “get out of jail for free” card when they rolled a first term PM, and installed a “Labor-lite” Liberal as leader. In 2016, Malcolm Turnbull campaigned like a dilettante, and as a result, lost 14 seats, allowing Labor to skate through.

Many of Labor’s policies from the last election have been recycled again, most without any updated financials, and that’s where the problems began, ending Shorten’s dream media run.

Last week, for four days on the trot, a persistent young journalist, Jonathan Lea, did what very few more senior (and arguably more credentialed) journalists have been able, or willing to do, and that’s ask the Opposition Leader tough questions, and keep it up.

Bill Shorten giving a hot cross bun to Channel 10's Jonathan Lea after visiting the Salvation Army's Lighthouse Cafe in Melbourne. Picture: Kym Smith

As rarely happens enough in today’s 24/7 media, Lea had clearly read the available policy documents, spotted the discrepancies and asked smart and pointed questions.

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He wasn’t rude, he just did what good journalists used to do and in doing so, he exposed Shorten’s woeful grasp of the detail and Labor’s arrogant lack of budget work.

Questions from James O’Doherty, my colleague at Sky News, also put Shorten under pressure when he promised, if elected, he wouldn’t make changes to superannuation only later, forced into an embarrassing admission that he’s already got $34 billion dollars of changes on the table. OK, no more after this whack, is what he meant he say.

As much as momentum looks to be with the Coalition after this strong start, supporters should not underestimate the magnitude of Scott Morrison’s task. Not only must a minority government win seats just to hold on, but it has to fight not only Labor, but the Greens (Labor’s defacto partner), the unions (Labor’s industrial arm), and GetUp! (the Left’s “faux community” arm) as well.

Bill Shorten might be Mr Short-On Detail but it’s the Coalition who are still short on seats.

Watch Peta Credlin on Sky News, weeknights from 6pm.