Aussies don’t like radical change, so Libs may win but independents shouldn’t get votes

Australians’ reluctance to gamble on their political leaders might just save Scott Morrison but the real election shock would be if the independents get in.

Australians don’t like radical political change very much.

If we liked radical change, Clive Palmer would be prime minister by the end of this weekend.

It won’t happen, of course, but what’s not to like about a bloke who is such a gambler he rips up hundreds of millions of dollars of his money just to get his face on TV?

Imagine his first budget as prime minister using our money.

Clive has a private jet and a big boat so he must be doing something right. So how hard could it be to run a country when flogging minerals to the Chinese turns you into a billionaire? If only it was that simple.

Australians by their nature are conservative when it comes to choosing their political leaders. In our lifetimes, the only real radical choices have been to elect Gough Whitlam and Kevin Rudd.

Gough was in the right place at the right time, up against a stale old-fashioned Liberal National Coalition.

“It’s Time” sealed the deal; some monster political reforms followed and then ego and hubris brought the house of Gough crashing down. Fun while it lasted, then back to conservative Australia went again.

Anthony Albanese is no Gough and despite what he’d like you to think he’s no Bob Hawke, either.

Is there a national mood for change to Anthony Albanese? Steve Price doesn’t thinks so. Picture: Sam Ruttyn

Like all election predictions, I could be completely wrong — as many political pundits were back in 2019 — but unlike the tidal wave of support for a bloke who turned out to be a complete horror – Kevin Rudd – in 2007, I don’t feel a national mood for change.

Kevin ’07 surely taught us all a lesson. Tossing out the reliable team of John Howard and Peter Costello on that night on November 24 and installing Rudd was a disaster for our country.

Albanese is a quality bloke compared to Rudd but he hasn’t fooled the electorate in the same way Kevin did with his slick campaign of renewal and pop star gatherings to workshop a new Australia.

That election was one of the last to be covered out of the national tally room set up in the Canberra showgrounds. The TV networks would all build elaborate sets complete with green rooms and make-up artists framing the tally board of all the seats as background.

Covering the 2007 election in Canberra for radio I bumped into former Labor Senator Graham Richardson before the count started and asked him for a tip.

He said: “I’ve got no idea, mate, this could go either way”. Richo desperately wanted a Labor win but wasn’t a Rudd fan and, like many, was wary of the old campaigner in Howard.

In the end it turned out to be the largest swing to Labor since 1983, when Bob Hawke stormed into office causing Malcolm Fraser to cry in his concession speech.

Fittingly, it was Hawke on Sky News at 10.29pm in 2007 who was the first commentator/panellist to call the victory for Rudd and Peter Costello 37 minutes later conceded the long run of the Howard government was over.

For the Liberals it was a disaster. Howard lost his seat of Bennelong in Sydney to ex ABC current affairs host Maxine McKew and Rudd claimed victory just after 11pm.

Labor and Kevin ’07 won 83 seats, the Liberals lost a staggering 23 seats and by midnight I was back in the bar at the Park Hyatt in Canberra.

Current PM Scott Morrison is no John Howard but Australians don’t like change and that could save him. Picture: Jason Edwards

There was a sense of inevitability about that loss right through the campaign but when it happened, nobody except Rudd could quite believe it.

Sitting at a table with rising Liberal star Joe Hockey and the Nationals’ Barnaby Joyce and Network Seven’s Andrew O’Keefe we all realised something radical had just happened.

Howard had been such a gigantic figure for more than a decade. The thought of him not only no longer being PM but not even being in the parliament, beaten by someone from the ABC, was hard to compute.

Hockey later described those years in opposition before finally becoming a minister in a Tony Abbott government as the worst times of his life.

To make matters worse, on that weekend in 2007, the heir apparent to Howard, his Treasurer Peter Costello, pulled the pin and left politics altogether, topping off a rare, radical political weekend for Australians.

This weekend doesn’t shape up anything like that. For a start Morrison is safe in his own seat. There is a parallel though for Treasurer Josh Frydenberg, who could be the highest-profile Liberal loser since Tony Abbott.

If Albanese wins it won’t be a shock and Morrison wouldn’t probably do a Costello and volunteer to quit.

Australians and their reluctance to take a gamble on their political leaders just might save the PM and give the Coalition a hard-won fourth term.

What we should all pray for and think about, as our pencil hovers over that ballot, is the damage voting for the climate change independents will do.

Albanese is no Hawke and Morrison is no Howard but surely the Australian public is too smart to foist a gaggle of single issue pretenders on whoever wins?

That would be a radical step too far.

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Australia Today with Steve Price can be heard live from 7am weekdays via the LiSTNR app.