Scott Morrison took the ‘goat track’ to victory. There’s still time for Dutton to do the same

With two weeks of the election campaign to go, Labor has reversed its downward slide in the opinion polls, edging back up into what looks like a winning position. But it’s not yet time to break out the Bob Hawke lager. The “soft vote”, which refers to voters who lean one way or another but say they might still change their minds, is enormous, at over 30 per cent of the vote. That’s a lot of people open to persuasion – enough to change the outcome of the election if only a fraction of them can be flipped by one party or the other.

The two leaders on the campaign trail this week. Credit: SMH

Combine that with a healthy dose of campaigners’ optimism, a drug without which political campaign units could never make it through the gruelling non-stop weeks of electioneering, and it becomes clear why Peter Dutton’s team is not yet packing up the corflutes and jelly snakes and calling it set and match to Albanese. The accumulated wisdom of campaign veterans is that elections sometimes defy the polls. Campaigners are constantly looking for the innovation or pivot point which will turn around what seemed like a foregone conclusion.

The 2019 election was one of those times when the campaign outcome contradicted expectations. It’s a wound still raw in Labor ranks. The ALP was so convinced the election was in the bag after two terms of Liberal infighting (the Malcolm Turnbull versus Tony Abbott rancour) that they published the infamously overconfident “we’re ready” photo of their prospective leadership team.

They might have felt ready, but behind the scenes, the Liberal campaign unit had reason to think it could win the contest. Internal party polling, which is rarely released because sharing it would reveal too much by way of strategy, showed that there was a path to victory. A “goat track”, as it has been described. Scott Morrison trod the path carefully, guided by the polls. The campaign was “revolutionary” in its technique, according to a veteran Liberal campaigner.

At the same time, the Libs benefited from a public pivot point. Then treasury-hopeful Chris Bowen told concerned voters that if “you don’t like our policies, don’t vote for us”. Some took him at his word. The result of the election was a surprise. But if it was a “miracle”, as Morrison dubbed it, it was one of those times when God helps those who help themselves.

Scott Morrison at his Horizon Church during the 2019 election campaign.Credit: AAP

Pivot points have long been central to the way campaigners operate – they seek equally to create them and avoid them. The generation of Liberals currently in positions of influence were forever scarred by the 1993 election, when John Hewson tried to replace Paul Keating. Hewson went into the campaign with an extensive manifesto on tax reform called Fightback! which, in addition to the hubristic punctuation mark, included the introduction of a goods and services tax – the GST, as we now know it.

In the course of the campaign, Keating raged at the new tax. As his lines cut through with voters, Hewson parried by exempting fresh food. The pivot point of the campaign was an awkward live-to-air television interview in which Hewson was asked whether a store-bought birthday cake (a prepared food) would be subject to GST. Hewson launched into a wonkish answer which, while accurate, came off as confused. The stumble lives on in popular memory as the moment Hewson lost the election.

The pivot point in 2001 was well-designed framing from the outset. The election took place shortly after the September 11 terrorist attack on the Twin Towers in New York and the Pentagon in Washington. With national security front and centre in voters’ minds, Howard declared that Australia would no longer tolerate asylum seekers bypassing identity controls by arriving in Australia on rickety boats. Howard uttered the famous line that “we will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come”, which still resonates with many voters. Before these events, opposition leader Kim Beazley had been making good headway in the polls. Howard’s words put an end to his hopes.

In the 2004 election, there were two pivot points in favour of the Coalition. The first was a breakthrough against opposition leader Mark Latham’s signature Medicare Gold policy. Back in the days in which the public still understood and cared that national debt is a cost passed from the old to the young, the Coalition was able to prosecute the case that Medicare Gold was “unfunded and unsustainable”.

The Coalition ground down Labor on this policy in the last three weeks of the campaign. And then of course, there was the madness of Mark. When Latham approached Howard and shook his hand with bizarre menace, the image was beamed around the nation, cementing in the public mind the idea that Latham was a loose cannon.

The Labor Party has also landed its share of pivotal moments. The campaign against John Howard’s industrial relations policy reform, dubbed WorkChoices, doesn’t really count as a “moment”, but no doubt contributed to the Liberal Party losing power after nearly 12 years. And in 2016, the “Mediscare” campaign in marginal seats, which culminated in alarmist text messages sent to voters on election day purporting to be from Medicare, nearly swung the result in Labor’s favour.

In hindsight, of course, Mediscare was most pivotal for Shorten, who found himself up against a warier government team at the following election. It was the beginning of the new age of elections, in which the old lore of creating a campaign pivot fused with the poll-driven “goat track” technique of seat-by-seat combat.

Which is where Peter Dutton’s hopes are pinned now. This week he’s chucked ending bracket creep into the mix with energy policy as an idea for long-term prosperity. Defence is also on his radar as his team works hard to create or find an issue that will widen the narrow path which is the modern campaign. We will know after the event if it’s worked.

Parnell Palme McGuinness is managing director at campaigns firm Agenda C. She has done work for the Liberal Party and the German Greens.

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