Labor’s ‘ugly’ win but PM’s bigger loss is Cormann

Anthony Albanese’s claim that Labor’s Kristy McBain achieved victory in Eden-Monaro “against the odds’’ stretches the art of spin beyond credulity. A century of political precedent suggested the opposition would hold the seat. It did so while suffering a 3 per cent fall in its primary vote to 36.18 per cent. While the Opposition Leader blamed the fall on the fact there were 14 candidates in the field, that did not account for Liberal candidate Fiona Kotvojs increasing her primary vote by about 1 per cent to 37.78 per cent. Labor scored “an ugly win’’ but a “win all the same’’, as pragmatic frontbencher Joel Fitzgibbon said on Sunday. The primary vote figures underline the problem that caused Labor to lose the past three federal elections. On Saturday, it lost ground in towns such as Queanbeyan, a stronghold of tradies and other blue-collar workers. That trend suggests Mr Albanese faces an uphill battle within his own ranks to rebuild the party’s base among aspirational voters in its traditional heartlands. Interventions like that of former leader Bill Shorten last week, calling for a bigger public sector and reheating the rhetoric voters rejected in May last year, only harm the party’s cause among swinging voters and among Labor’s traditional base. Grievance politics do not resonate with them or their families, who prefer to get ahead under their own steam, not courtesy of other taxpayers and big government. Nor has adversity through the rigours of COVID-19 whetted their appetites, nor those of most Australians, to pay even higher taxes than they face already.

If Saturday’s result is a relief for Mr Albanese in that it takes pressure off his leadership for now, Scott Morrison has good reason to feel irritated. He took the Coalition close to overturning a century-old record. Like Ms McBain, Dr Kotvojs was a strong local candidate who campaigned well. But preferences were a significant problem for her. Or more particularly, the mischief over preferences whipped up by NSW Nationals party leader John Barilaro was a significant problem.

As The Australian revealed, he and his supporters deliberately undermined the Morrison government’s bid to reclaim the prized marginal seat by asking voters to preference Ms McBain over Dr Kotvojs. Mr Barilaro confirmed he had preferenced former Labor MP Mike Kelly ­before Dr Kotvojs in 2019 and had not ruled out a future tilt at the seat. The push among some Nationals to preference Labor over the Liberals, clearing the way for Mr Barilaro, under the Coalition agreement, to stand at the next federal poll, was a prime example of why voters dislike self-serving MPs.

The final count will reveal the full picture. But if, as appears likely, Dr Kotvojs loses by about 2000 votes, and about 30 per cent of National Party candidate Trevor Hicks’s preferences flow to Ms McBain, as Labor and minor party scrutineers claim, Mr Barilaro will face hard questions. These are already being asked by senior Coalition figures, as Yoni Bashan and Rosie Lewis write on Monday. “He’s not a real Nat, just a spoiled brat,” a federal Liberal source said on Sunday. Mr Barilaro’s conduct suggests he has forgotten a lesson writ large on both sides of politics — disunity and disloyalty are the harbingers of grief in politics.

From the perspective of the Prime Minister, however, the more significant loss of the weekend — to take effect at the end of the year — was Finance Minister Mathias Cormann, who announced his retirement from politics. Senator Cormann, 49, has served as Finance Minister since the election of the Abbott government in September 2013. In working with three treasurers, Joe Hockey, Mr Morrison and Josh Frydenberg, he is a pillar of the government and Australia’s longest-serving Finance Minister. His calm air of authority made him an effective force in restraining spending and negotiating with crossbenchers as Senate leader. Senator Cormann’s experience and steady hand will be needed more than ever in the next six months, which will be intensely challenging as the government pares back its economic lifelines and steers the rebuilding of the economy from COVID-19. That could be the most challenging phase, politically, of the pandemic.

It reflects Senator Cormann’s intellect and commitment that he has carved his political career, and mastered one of cabinet’s most complex portfolios, in his fourth language. He learned English in his early 20s, studying in Britain on a scholarship, after being educated in German, French and Flemish — “all of that in Belgium, a country less than half the size of Tasmania and with about half the population of Australia’’, he told the Senate in 2007. The principles he set out in that early speech, “free enterprise, individual freedom, personal responsibility, reward for effort, low taxation, less regulation and incentives for people to stretch themselves and to reach their full potential’’, have served the nation well.

Commuting from Perth to Canberra for 13 years, and with a young family, he has left “nothing on the field’’, as he says. After a “cracker journey’’ and the next six months in which he has much to do, we wish him well in his next challenge.