Joe Hildebrand: Why Labor voters in Kooyong need to vote for Josh Frydenberg

With Albo poised to win the election, Labor supporters in Australia’s southeast need to “do the unthinkable” — and vote Liberal, writes Joe Hildebrand.

Joe Hildebrand

4 min read

May 15, 2022 - 2:00AM

Frydenberg to make ‘big decision’ if he loses his seat

OPINION

Across Australia next Saturday millions of Labor voters are set to deliver the ALP its first majority government in more than a decade.

But tucked away in the southeast corner of the country is a small group of Labor supporters who can do even more for their party.

The only catch is they would have to do it by voting Liberal.

Not with their first preference of course — that would be sacrilegious — but simply by voting 1 for Labor and then putting the Liberal candidate anywhere ahead of a candidate who poses an even greater threat to the ALP’s future.

These would-be saviours are the Labor burghers of Kooyong, a much marginalised minority group who have never before been in a position to make their vote count but they sure as hell are now.

Their sitting MP is of course the Liberal Treasurer Josh Frydenberg, for whom a vote in normal circumstances would be anathema to any true believer. But these circumstances are anything but normal.

Independent candidate Monique Ryan at a pre-polling centre in Melbourne. Picture: William West/AFP

As someone with deep Labor sympathies myself I know this is a difficult argument to make but it is also an incredibly important one — if you live in Kooyong, and you love the Labor Party, it is vital you give your preference to Frydenberg over Monique Ryan.

This is not because there is anything necessarily wrong with Ryan herself, but the flow-on effect of Frydenberg being unseated could prove disastrous for the ALP within even a few short years.

The first and most fundamental thing is that Frydenberg is the presumptive heir to the Liberal leadership should the Coalition lose the election, an outcome which is all but certain.

If Frydenberg is gone then the Liberal leadership will almost certainly go to Peter Dutton, a man whom I have no problem with — he is personally very nice — but whom I suspect few Labor supporters want to see as the alternative Prime Minister.

Even were Dutton to lose his own seat of Dickson — which is often predicted but never happens — the next most likely candidate would be Energy and Emissions Reduction Minister Angus Taylor, also on the Liberals’ hard right. Again, this is an outcome I suspect few on the supposedly pro-climate side of politics would celebrate.

Still, some thinking two steps in advance might see this as a good thing. I have heard it said this would make the Liberals unelectable. But think just one or two more steps in advance and the outcome is very different.

Should either man become leader the party will obviously lurch to the right whereas under Frydenberg — who actually put together Malcolm Turnbull’s own climate and energy policy — it would move back towards the centre. This, one would think, would be a positive for anyone genuinely concerned about climate change.

Federal Treasurer and Member for Kooyong Josh Frydenberg launches his campaign. Picture: Ian Currie

But let us assume that the high-rollers think it’s worth the risk for wiping out the Libs. Wrong. In fact there is every chance it would make them even more electable, and a far greater threat to Labor.

Without moderate leadership, and without having to worry about any moderate urban seats that the teals have taken over, the Coalition would be free to pursue the sort of populist momentum that has been seized by One Nation and the United Australia Party.

Voters attracted to these and other maverick parties would flock back to the LNP with their first or second preferences in the critical outer suburban and regional seats where elections are won and lost.

In other words we would see the Australian equivalent of the Tea Party movement that took over the US Republican Party that ended up sweeping Donald Trump to power.

But don’t take my word for it — this is what those on the right of the Liberal Party are actively campaigning for.

Tony Abbott’s former chief-of-staff Peta Credlin — who, whatever your politics, is one of the sharpest political minds in the country — openly stated this in The Australian just this week.

“The biggest risk to the government is not losing one or two wealthy seats to the green-left but losing quiet Australians to conservative splinter parties, with their ill-disciplined preference flows, that don’t try to sit on both sides of the political fence.”

Donald Trump at a 2020 campaign rally in Tucson, Arizona. Picture: Mandel Ngan/AFP

The real battle, Credlin wrote, was in “the marginal outer-metropolitan and regional seats that largely determine who forms government”.

And with economic indicators heading the way they are the incoming government will have very restless and disaffected voters in those electorates to deal with. Whoever is opposition leader could be prime minister a lot sooner than people think.

It is also a little known fact that between 30 and 40 per cent of One Nation and UAP preferences typically flow to Labor in such seats. If a more muscular and working-class oriented Coalition takes those votes it could change future election outcomes forever.

Labor elder statesman Joel Fitzgibbon warned of this when he witnessed blue-collar voters turning to One Nation in his seat of Hunter and declared the ALP was in “structural decline”.

To the party’s great credit it has heeded this warning and shifted back to mainstream middle and working-class values. This is why Labor will win next Saturday but it is only one Trump away from another existential crisis.

And the only people who have the power to stop this are the Labor voters of Kooyong, who can push the Coalition back to the centre and keep the contest for government there as well.