Trump’s road map is guiding the Liberals to a destination still unknown

The core issues during the US presidential election were the cost of living, immigration, abortion and the character of the candidates. These same issues – intractable, incendiary and dispiriting – will also figure here in the next federal election, which threatens to be as close, as unpredictable, and as divisive.

When combined with a sharp campaign, the potency of those issues – plus youth crime – was shown last month in Queensland, where the expected landslide for the LNP failed to materialise.

Illustration by Dionne Gain

When the campaign began, Labor faced a wipeout. It calculated it would retain 14 or 15 seats. Now it could be 36, including the Greens seat of South Brisbane.

Sentiment shifted significantly at the beginning of the second week after Katter’s Australian Party leader, Robbie Katter, pledged to repeal abortion laws. Labor’s nimble campaign had ads running by the end of that week on TV, YouTube and Meta, reminding voters that the LNP leader David Crisafulli had voted against decriminalising abortion in 2018. They warned women their health rights were under threat. State and federal Labor campaigners have no doubt Queenslanders heeded the warning.

Peter Dutton has now, belatedly, recognised and acknowledged the danger it poses to him.

Abortion was not the only issue in Queensland, but it was a big one, intensified by Crisafulli’s record and poor handling. Labor believes it helped save inner-city seats and others such as Springwood, Pine Rivers, Gaven, Mansfield and Bundaberg. They also believe it could have a similar effect federally. So do a significant number of Liberals.

The LNP’s efforts to dismiss it as a scare campaign fell flat. For good reason. It sounded real. It still does.

Katter’s pledge followed United Australia Party senator Ralph Babet’s unsuccessful attempt to get late-term abortion on the agenda in the federal Senate. Babet’s gambit was defeated 32 votes to 18.

Only four opposition senators, all Liberals, were brave enough to vote against it: Simon Birmingham, Andrew Bragg, Jane Hume and Maria Kovacic. All four, particularly Kovacic, who spoke against Babet’s motion, were subjected to industrial-scale vitriol on social media, spurred on by right-wing pontificators.

Then, the South Australian parliament defeated by a single vote a Liberal frontbencher’s motion to change laws in the state to ban late-term abortions.

Soon after, just days out from the Queensland poll, federal Coalition Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price told this masthead she favoured restrictions on abortion. Progressive Liberals inside and outside parliament went into meltdown.

Former Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce backed Price. LNP senator Matt Canavan cautioned against prosecuting the issue “through the heat of an election campaign”. Canavan has co-sponsored the Human Rights (Children Born Alive Protection) Bill 2022 with Liberal South Australian senator Alex Antic to compel medical staff to treat babies “born alive” after termination.

Price was quickly shut down by Senator Hume and Deputy Opposition Leader Sussan Ley, with Dutton’s silent approval.

Dutton argued on ABC’s AM before Queensland went to the polls that abortion did not shift votes. On Sky, he accused Labor of using it as a scare campaign to distract from its failures.

Some MPs wanted him to shut down the debate with a definitive declaration that there would be no changes to abortion laws, not the feeble “we have no plans” that Crisaffuli tried. Dutton sought to do that on Tuesday, warning his party room that the issue had cost votes in Queensland. He cautioned MPs not to talk about what was essentially a state issue.

Liberal senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price’s recent comments on abortion have created a headache for Opposition Leader Peter Dutton.Credit: Dan Peled

Brushing it away as a matter for the states will also not work.

In 1979, an ambitious young federal National Party MP, Stephen Lusher, moved to deny Medicare benefits for abortions. The all-male House of Representatives voted it down after moderate Liberals mobilised against it.

Although their tactics were as brutal then as they are now, the religious right did not have the level of influence in the Coalition that they do today.

Federal Liberal MPs remain fearful that the most fervent opponents of abortion, including their own colleagues – spurred by their desire to rid the party of the few remaining moderates and emboldened by the success of their brethren in the US – could even light the match before the election, defying Dutton’s admonition and endangering their chances of winning.

Even if they do stay quiet, that does not mean others will. In Queensland, Katter has said he plans to “test” the parliament, initially on late-term abortions.

Federally, Finance Minister Katy Gallagher taunted Dutton to prove he is serious by ordering Antic and Canavan to withdraw their bill, which has been on the notice paper since November 2022. Canavan says he won’t. Antic responded to my question by saying, “It’s not your business”, and that any discussion on policy would be with Dutton, not this masthead.

Regardless, the Senate – prompted by a motion from Labor or any other senator – has the power to vote to have it removed. Then Dutton will have to convince voters he will hold back his pro-life MPs if he wins.

The despicable Donald Trump has provided a formula for success built on lies, misogyny, undermining institutions and dividing people. His influence on the practices and psyche of the Australian body politic has been profound and malignant.

Dutton has followed Trump in blurring the line between legal and illegal immigrants. He described international students as “the modern version of the boat arrivals”. He has questioned the integrity of respected institutions, including the Australian Electoral Commission during the Voice referendum, the CSIRO on the prospect of nuclear power, and ASIO on visas for Palestinians.

Labor’s task now is to show Dutton would make life worse, not better. The problem is, the person who has to make that case (outside of the advertising campaign) is Anthony Albanese, who has repeatedly shown lately not that he is of bad character – but that his judgment cannot be trusted.

Niki Savva is a regular columnist and author of The Road to Ruin, Plots and Prayers and Bulldozed, the trilogy chronicling nine years of Coalition rule.

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