The next election was never going to be a walkover for the Coalition, despite Labor’s own divisions and uninspiring leadership. After all, it’s a third-term government with a razor-thin majority and an unfavourable redistribution that started the pandemic much better than it’s finishing.
For the past 18 months, the government’s fiercest critics have tended to be its most diehard supporters, dismayed at the casual way the party of personal freedom and budget responsibility has run up the biggest-ever peacetime debt and deficit, and connived at absolutely unprecedented curbs on daily life – all arguably necessary, but still hard for lifelong Liberals to swallow.
Only now, some of them have had enough. The defection last week of party-democracy advocate John Ruddick to the revived Liberal Democrats, while no big deal, was a portent of more to come; and so it was, with the announcement that former Howard government MP Ross Cameron could head the LibDems’ NSW Senate ticket. Because both men are hardly household names and have a tendency to go over the top, Liberal insiders say they are not concerned, despite their considerable following among rank-and-file members in NSW
But the resignation of former Queensland premier Campbell Newman, Liberal Party royalty as the son of two former federal ministers, is an altogether different matter.
As a two-term lord mayor of Brisbane and party trustee as well, Newman is a household name; and, while he was dumped as premier after just one term, that was for poor PR rather than for any particular failings in government. If he runs for the Senate, either as a LibDem or as a Liberal independent, he could readily win close to the 14 per cent needed for a quota. And at least while the defectors are making trouble for the Morrison government, they’ll get a soft run from their ideological foes in the media and be a distraction for the Coalition frontbench, wanting clear oxygen to get its campaign messaging out.
The main thing wrong with Newman’s resignation statement – that the party had “failed to stand up for our core values of fiscal responsibility, smaller government, support for small business, the elimination of red tape, and the defence of free speech and liberty”, and that keeping people safe and keeping people free was “not mutually exclusive even in a pandemic” – was that it should have been delivered to the Liberal National Party’s state council, as a reminder to LNP MPs of the principles that should guide them, rather than a justification for ratting on the party. Still, there would have been plenty of members with whom it struck a chord. Most won’t quit but many could vote for him in a spirit of rebellion and disillusionment, with fewer booth workers and donors for the LNP members in the House of Representatives whose survival is essential if the government is to win.
On the left, the political impact of a splinter party like the Greens, which tends to recruit from previously disengaged voters, has been to push Labor further to the left without directly damaging Labor’s electoral prospects as the votes routinely return via disciplined preference flows. Splinter parties on the right, though, tend to recruit from among the Liberal Party’s base of conservative activists so their impact is to make the Libs less conservative while, paradoxically, leaking preferences to Labor as former Liberals punish the party, they argue, that’s let them down.
It was a 22 per cent One Nation vote (with the Coalition down 18 per cent and Labor down 4 per cent), and preferences spraying, that brought down the Borbidge government in Queensland in 1997; and a 10 per cent One Nation vote (with the Coalition down 11 per cent), and preferences spraying, that brought down the Court government in Western Australia in 2001. With an 8 per cent vote (and the Coalition down 8 per cent and preferences spraying) One Nation almost destroyed the Howard government in 1998 too, even though it was arguably our most conservative government ever. But note to self-styled “Modern Liberals”, the new branding for left-leaning Liberal moderates: Howard didn’t win One Nation voters back by attacking them as “deplorables” or “extremists” but by finding ways to address their concerns.
When former South Australian senator Cory Bernardi split from the Liberals in 2018, he took a lot of party members with him but failed to win a seat because he never really explained how he intended to be different from his old party.
The lesson of recent history is that when Liberal governments move to the left, they’re less likely to pick up votes from Labor than to bleed votes to the right, which they then can’t rely on getting back via preferences. By vacating the field and running with minor parties, former Coalition conservatives just give left-leaning Liberals a stronger policy voice in the party room and further entrench the disconnect between the parliamentary party and traditional supporters. Those conservatives that walk rarely get elected so it’s always been my argument that you’re more likely to influence the Liberals to stand by their principles from inside the party and going toe to toe with the moderates than by “crying in the wilderness” outside.
If the defection of right-wing Liberals tends to make the remnant party more left-wing, the defection of right-wing members likewise tends to make Labor more left-wing. Ironically, the defection to the conservative Family First party of two former South Australian Labor ministers, Jack Snelling and Tom Kenyon, could also mean that right-wing voters end up delivering left-wing government as neither of them are likely to support a formal allocation of preferences to the Liberals.
The basic problem is that except when running against Bill Shorten’s new taxes and climate alarmism, Scott Morrison has never given the Liberal base much to cheer. And just being anti-Labor will be much harder next time as Labor adopts a “small target” strategy, junking new taxes and playing down its differences with the government over climate.
The worry for Scott Morrison has to be that the Newman defection could become the tip of an iceberg of discontent. There is though, a relatively easy way to bring the base back; that’s to throw some red meat to cultural conservatives. Why not start by vetoing the incorrigibly politically correct draft national curriculum and moving to end the legislative ban on nuclear power? Remember Ronald Reagan’s plea to the Republican Party for a platform that was “a banner of bold, unmistakeable colours with no pale pastel shades”. A sound lesson for these times.
Peta Credlin is the host of Credlin on Sky News, 6pm weeknights.
More Coverage
Stubborn Winter clouds state’s future as party games continue
It’s game on in Tasmania, with both major party leaders flagging they can form government after the election of a hung parliament. The Greens’ offer of a ‘conversation with Labor means nothing can be ruled out.
Biggest drag on our nation is ineptitude of government
After my experience of governments for more almost four decades, having always tried to work with government from the non-government side, I have to confess to being an unbeliever.
The pandemic isn’t just stressing out people who can’t work, can’t travel and can’t meet others. It’s also putting pressure on political parties, which this week have started to crack in ways that will make the Morrison government’s electoral task even harder.