Tory Shepherd: If PM pulls off a win, stop scapegoat bleating

ANALYSIS: THERE’s so much finger-pointing going on right now, someone’s going to sprain something.

• Relive the day’s national counting

THERE’S so much finger-pointing going on right now, someone’s going to sprain something.

If you look at the current election results, even if you assume that the Coalition will be a winner, there is no winner.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull may well scrape home with a majority in his own right. Phew! But that is not going to silence the critics who thought he would romp home. And that he has fallen short. That scraping means there’ll be scapegoating.

The first scapegoat Mr Turnbull identified — and the one that was clearly the focus of talking points handed out to his senior ministers — was Medicare. That was the baseless-but-possibly-effective-war Opposition Leader Bill Shorten waged on the suggestion the Coalition would privatise Medicare.

Behind that specific accusation, when you talk to MPs, is an admission that Labor outcampaigned the Coalition. And they did. They were slick, organised, on message. Yeah, they played dirty. But they all do.

Most of all, Labor was fighting in each electorate, each state, and at a national level. The Coalition tried for a higher purpose. Some Liberal MPs would like to blame Medicare alone, but the truth is that was just one cog.

Some have questioned whether the whole $50 billion Future Submarines deal was worth it, considering the swing.

Two points: There are sound policy reasons for that decision — look it up.

And if you think that didn’t help the Liberals in SA, consider what would have happened if they had decided to buy the fleet from offshore, partly build it offshore, or only get eight. Industry Minister Christopher Pyne would likely not have been out yesterday morning showing more front than Brighton. He called the election for the Coalition.

If the Coalition had failed to commit to all that submarine and shipbuilding work in SA he would have been fighting to keep a fraction of that front on side.

There was a conflagration of issues that sent people one way or the other, or to the third way — the Nick Xenophon Team or Pauline Hanson’s One Nation.

Mr Turnbull has to manage the divisions within his own party. And he has to set himself better against the Labor Party.

Instead of looking for scapegoats, the Coalition needs to realise this is a scrapheap, and it will take a while — and wile — to come out on top in the longer term.

Originally published as Tory Shepherd: If PM pulls off a win, stop scapegoat bleating