Even blue-collar Australia is snubbing Shorten
Whatever working class fantasy Bill Shorten is selling, blue-collar Australia isn’t buying, writes Miranda Devine. As Labor watches its long-expected victory fade, it’s clear they’re missing the magic ingredient.
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It didn’t get much notice in a week distracted by the martyrdom of Saint Bill at the hands of evil News Corp.
But the handshake snub Bill Shorten suffered at the hands of workers at a Queensland freight company captured where this election is heading.
The humiliating footage shows Shorten in high-viz strolling up to a worker in similar attire, arm outstretched for a handshake. The worker keeps his hands in his pockets in an unmistakably Australian gesture of rejection.
“Yeah, see ya, mate,” says the worker, walking away. Shorten tries to rescue the situation by pivoting to another worker. Same response.
I observed a similar chilly reception to Shorten from workers at a shipbuilding operation in Fremantle.
MORE FROM MIRANDA DEVINE: Why does the Navy only have a problem with conservatives in politics?
Whatever working class fantasy Shorten is selling, blue-collar Australia isn’t buying.
Expect that vote to turn to Scott Morrison, even if it does so via Clive Palmer.
In key seats such as independent-held Indi in Victoria, Liberal strategists say not only do they detect a swing towards them but, extraordinarily, a trickle of Labor voters saying they can’t vote for Shorten.
In his home state, Morrison is winning the Sydney outer-suburban “Howard battler” seats. In the Labor-held seats of Lindsay, around Penrith, Dobell on the Central Coast and Macquarie, in the west, he is quietly confident.
Gilmore on the south coast looks promising, as does Reid in the inner west, largely thanks to the efforts of unfairly maligned departing MP Craig Laundy, who has put $200,000 of his own money into Fiona Martin’s campaign.
MORE FROM MIRANDA DEVINE: ScoMo’s not letting Shorten skate his way to PM
Tony Abbott is expected to survive in Warringah and there’s a chance of Wentworth returning.
Queensland, where Morrison is infinitely more popular than Turnbull, should pan out neutral, with Labor-held Herbert looking good, and incumbent Cathy O’Toole refusing to back Adani.
In Flynn, around Gladstone, Liberal Ken O’Dowd is predicted to lose but he’s surprised before, as has Bert van Manen in Brisbane’s Forde.
A gift for the Coalition in north Queensland was Bob Brown’s anti-Adani convoy, which only riled locals.
Victoria, of course, is Labor country, with Liberals expecting to lose Dunkley and Chisholm via redistributions. But Sarah Henderson in Corangamite is a 50-50 prospect, a big improvement.
WA and SA are expected to be neutral. Tasmania could deliver one or two Labor seats to Morrison in Bass and Braddon.
In the Northern Territory, Labor-held Solomon in Darwin is in play, and even Outback Lingiari is a wildcard with the impressive Jacinta Price.
MORE FROM MIRANDA DEVINE: Sorry Bill, but we’ve learned from the Kevin ’07 failure
That’s the Coalition’s best-case scenario, to be determined this week.
Labor is seeing its long-expected victory fade, and by last week its hardheads were preparing for the possibility of a net win of just two seats nationally, delivering minority government with the help of Melbourne Green Adam Bandt and Tasmanian independent Andrew Wilkie.
The magic ingredient is Morrison. His “vision” is the same as John Howard’s, he told me on the campaign trail. He wants Australians to feel “comfortable and relaxed”.
“I remember when John said that (and) they laughed at him. He was spot on. It’s still true… people want the same things they always have.
“To live their lives peacefully… according to their own values, to get on with things and not fuss about it too much.
MORE FROM MIRANDA DEVINE: Time for Morrison to use “enough rope”
“Australians just want someone (in charge) who knows what they’re doing so (they) don’t have to think about it.”
No wonder Shorten’s crying https://t.co/4OjXFuA5Nl
— Miranda Devine (@mirandadevine) May 10, 2019
Morrison sees this election as “forcing people off the fence… actually people are understanding there is quite a lot at stake and sitting somewhere in the middle isn’t going to resolve that”.
He has picked up none of the mood for change that saw Kevin Rudd win in 2007 and none of the anger against the government that propelled the Coalition to power in 2013.
The irony is if Morrison wins next weekend he could be as good a prime minister as we’ve ever had.
And he shows the Liberal Party that Mick Jagger was right: you don’t always get what you want but sometimes you get what you need.
We’re replacing the kangaroo with this? What a waste of $10m
What happens when you get a self-serving mining billionaire whose fortune depends on the Chinese Communist Party to help rebrand Australia? A national symbol that looks like a COVID-19 cell, writes Miranda Devine.
Sorry for the scare campaign, the planet is fine
When a climate activist apologised for how environmentalists had misled the public over climate change threats, the fearmongers were not happy, especially when Greta is upping her fight, writes Miranda Devine.