Division equates to defeat for the Liberals

Fragmentation of the media is being matched by the fragmentation of politics.

While it is easy to criticise Turnbull for walking away from his seat after losing the prime ministership, he did warn he would do so.

Fragmentation of the media is being matched by the fragmentation of politics. Paul Kelly argued last Wednesday in The Australian that the main political parties were so divided because the nation is more divided. The next day former Liberal staffer Niki Savva asked why some Coalition politicians despised Coalition voters in Wentworth, just because Wentworth is not like other Coalition seats. As she pointed out, there are several safe Coalition seats much like Wentworth across the inner areas of the state capitals. The media lessons from Wentworth depend on the outlet you read, watched or listened to.

For Peter FitzSimons at Fairfax Media or Fran Kelly at ABC’s RN the messages were clear: the nation was crying out for action on climate change, acceptance of the LGBTIQ ­agenda and the removal of refugees from Nauru. They argued conservatives supporting Tony Abbott had destroyed the Coalition’s prospects by ditching a popular prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull. On Sky News, Andrew Bolt, Peta Credlin and Paul Murray heaped blame for the loss on Turnbull, even though he had increased his margin at five previous elections. Turnbull was not a real Liberal and Coalition voters in the seat were not representative of ­Coalition values, they argued.

While it is easy to criticise Turnbull for walking away from his seat after losing the prime ministership, he did warn he would do so. Should he have ­expressed public support for Liberal candidate Dave Sharma? Of course. But such is the polarisation of media and politics that Turnbull would have been blamed for ­involving himself in any way had Sharma lost after public support by Turnbull.

Do Fairfax Media and the ABC really believe a climate-change, gay-rights, asylum-­seeker-support agenda would have saved the Queensland seat of Longman for the Coalition in July, when Pauline Hanson’s One Nation polled 16 per cent and drove the Coalition primary vote down to 29? Conservative commentators are correct when they lampoon the left analysis of Wentworth. Kerryn Phelps did take the seat with such an agenda but this would be poison for Coalition candidates in outer suburban and regional seats.

Conservative columnist ­Mir­anda Devine has criticised the polarised thinking of fellow conservatives in the Coalition and the media for two years. Delcon ­(deluded conservative) thinking was sure to achieve only one ­result: electing Bill Shorten’s Labor Party next May, she wrote on Tuesday.

Many conservative commentators would be shocked by just how left-wing and high-taxing Labor would be in office, but some nevertheless believe a Coalition loss would be an opportunity for the Coalition to purge itself of progressives. They are wrong.

As four-term Liberal prime minister John Howard has said hundreds of times, the Coalition has to be a broad church. It needs to represent the views of businesspeople and highly skilled professionals in the nation’s richest electorates, poor farm labourers in the poorest seats represented by the Nationals, and outer-suburban tradies in the major cities.  Have conservatives really forgotten previous small-L Liberals such as Malcolm Fraser, Andrew Peacock, Ian Macphee and Howard’s own troubles with Petro Georgiou and Judi Moylan over asylum-seekers? Have they really forgotten it was Howard who took a modest emissions-trading system to the 2007 election?

While there is economic sense in parts of the media talking to ever-fragmenting audiences they agree with, politicians need to build broader constituencies than that to win elections. The gulf ­between the traditional views of, say, the NSW Labor Right and Labor’s Victorian Socialist Left is even wider than that between Abbott and Turnbull. How Shorten maintains internal party discipline will determine whether Labor can end the instability that has paralysed politics since 2007.

Kelly reflected on the tribal nature of politics and society. Citing social theorist Francis Fukuyama on the effects of identity politics, he highlighted the difficulty of building a constituency for good government while paying heed to the desire of voters, especially the young, for political recognition of their private ­beliefs and financial support for different identities.

The answer? The economy. Scott Morrison, in his Wentworth concession speech, seemed to pick up the advice of former treasurer Peter Costello that the Coalition needs a stronger economic narrative to bind its constituents.

While the ABC was sceptical, the speech rallied supporters and MPs: “We believe in a fair go for those who have a go. We believe the best form of welfare is a job. We believe it’s every Australian’s duty to make a contribution and not take contributions. And we believe … you don’t raise people up by bringing others down.”

This column has argued Labor is building a potent constituency among government transfer payment recipients, whether through welfare or the tax system, as nearly half the workforce pays no net tax. Like Jeremy Corbyn in Britain and Bernie Sanders in the US, Labor is running on a big government, big union, big welfare and envy agenda. Morrison’s task is to harness aspiration to tear that down.

The election is winnable for both sides. Morrison needs to ­attack Labor on high taxes, high power prices from its 50 per cent renewables target, threats to house prices from the removal of negative gearing, links to trade union corruption, border control and ­increasing ambivalence towards the US alliance. He needs to ignore virtue-signalling by Labor on the rainbow agenda, climate change and asylum-seekers in favour of building a coalition for growth among prosperous inner-city Liberal-electorate professionals, incorporated tradesmen of the outer suburbs once attracted to Howard, and farm owners, rural workers and provincial town business owners.

Shorten will rely on an activist ACTU to harness unhappiness at slow wages growth (a worldwide phenomenon driven by technological change), unionised public sector workers who ­receive benefits through family tax concessions, people on welfare, and the diversity constituency more interested in identity than prosperity.

Shorten has the easier media task. Most of the left media do not question big government and the virtue of high taxes and cultural identity.

Much of the conservative media will continue to drive the Coalition schism between conservative and small-L Liberals, battling over the spoils of defeat.