Loud voices from both extremes give Morrison and Shorten no peace

How can a party govern for the broad centre of the electorate if noisy media minorities are trying to drag it further left or right?

If Labor leader Bill Shorten wins the May election he will inevitably have similar problems to Abbott and Turnbull, writes Chris Mitchell. Picture: AAP

Former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull made headlines on Friday with the highly contestable claim he was deposed last August because he could have won the May election. Less contentious was his assessment of the role of a fracturing media environment in those events.

Turnbull said new media players faced “low barriers to entry”, not needing the elaborate television studios of free-to-air operators or the huge presses and distribution networks of traditional print publishers. New media businesses could target niche audiences of consumers who agree with a particular political positioning, making mainstream political parties’ media strategies more difficult.

How can a party govern for the broad centre of the electorate if noisy media minorities are trying to drag it further left or right?

Politicians, including former Labor leaders, have argued the ABC operates from a position to the left of both the Coalition and ALP. Now parts of the media — and particularly Sky News at night, the Guardian, The Conversation and the New Daily — operate as mouthpieces for factions or as the voice of smaller parties.

The Guardian speaks for the Greens, as does The Conversation on many issues, which is not surprising given it is funded by universities. The New Daily speaks for the trade union movement, which owns the Melbourne-based website. Sky News barracks for the right of the Coalition, as well as for One Nation and Cory Bernardi’s Australian Conservatives.

How should governments react to pressure from narrowly focused news organisations?

This column argued Tony Abbott needed as prime minister in 2013 to cast his media net more widely than the group of conservative journalists who supported him during five years as opposition leader. Using the same logic, I said Malcolm Turnbull needed to appear on Sky News to debate conservative media critics.

Abbott needed to broaden his media appeal towards the centre. Turnbull needed to speak to conservatives and not confine his media relationships to supporters at the ABC and Fairfax.

No Coalition leader will ever be conservative enough for many of the Sky News night-time hosts, who campaign for the abandonment of all action on climate change and for scrapping of most of the nation’s immigration program, working visa intake and student visas. Nor can a Coalition leader be progressive enough for the Guardian, let alone the ABC.

Yet Abbott, Sky News’s preferred conservative leader, committed in 2015 to meet Australia’s emissions reductions obligations under the Paris Accord. Abbott did nothing to cut immigration, student visas or the former 457 working visa, and only spoke about cutting immigration after he went to the back bench. He doubled the annual intake under the refugee program.

Left-wing media gave Abbott no credit for any of the above measures. Nor have they told the truth about Abbott’s role as minister for women, although Sky News has.

Despite sniping by former deputy leader Julie Bishop, there is no evidence Abbott is anti-women. Bishop was his deputy, Peta Credlin his chief of staff and his predecessors back to Malcolm Fraser also effectively held the minister for women portfolio.

Just as Abbott did not receive any credit from Left media, he could never have done everything conservatives asked of him. Neither could Turnbull and nor should Morrison.

The same fortnightly Newspoll used by Turnbull to justify challenging Abbott and then used against Turnbull by Bolt, Credlin and others on Sky News also shows things conservatives don’t want to admit. Australians overwhelmingly accept man-made climate change and want govern­ments to deal with it, even though they also want cheaper power.

John Howard, PM for 12 years, showed how a conservative leader can take action conservatives disapprove of: banning guns and proposing an emissions-trading system at the 2007 election.

But he also shored up his right flank under attack from One Nation by harnessing conservative hostility to self-selecting asylum-seekers. Ironically he knew, as did Bob Hawke before him, that controlling the nation’s borders was essential to maintaining support for a high immigration program.

Howard chose his media wisely. He talked over the left media through talkback radio. He dealt with the popular tabloids rather than the Fairfax papers. But when he needed to he was prepared to appear on the ABC’s 7.30 and argue his case vigorously with then host Kerry O’Brien. On issues of wider appeal he would use Channel 9’s A Current Affair, sometimes for the full program.

If Labor leader Bill Shorten wins the May election he will inevitably have similar problems to Abbott and Turnbull. For the ABC, Fairfax and the Guardian no action by Labor on climate change or asylum-seekers will ever be progressive enough.

The default home for media campaigners such as the Guardian or the ABC’s Fran Kelly and Fairfax’s environment writer Peter Hannam will continue to be the Greens, who have the luxury of maintaining positions supported by only a 10th of the population. Never governing means never having to admit they are wrong.

The Labor-sympathising independents supported by GetUp — Kerryn Phelps, Zali Steggall, Oliver Yates and Julia Banks — are likely, if elected, to turn on Shorten over any rational changes he is forced to make to his climate, asylum-seeker and tax policies.

Such issues could arise quickly. People smugglers will almost certainly test the resolve of a new government. Labor may find it inherits a rapidly weakening economy that will only be hurt by its proposed tax increases. The housing and rental markets may do exactly what they did the last time a Labor government removed negative gearing in the 1980s. The coal unions aligned to the ALP may campaign against a Labor government in support of mining jobs.

Labor could need to ditch some promises, but would then face criticism from all left-wing media, and perhaps even from Sky News, because governments now pay a high price for breaking promises, even if those promises are a danger in changed circumstances.

Morrison’s election task is almost impossible. Should he manage an unlikely win he will face a clamour from the left media to switch to more progressive policies, while Sky News will argue he is the beneficiary of its relentless anti-Turnbull campaign and the party’s subsequent positioning further to the right.

In the event of a loss he or a successor will face a clamour for rejection of action on climate change and a dramatic cut in immigration from Sky News and many of the News Corp tabloids, but criticism from the Left media arguing the Coalition had moved too far right.