Minor resurgence on the Right multiplies Morrison’s woes

In case people have forgotten — the shock result in the 2013 election was the eruption of the Palmer United Party, which won 5.5 per cent of the national vote and 11 per cent of the Queensland vote, a surprise from which new prime minister Tony Abbott never recovered.

The PUP no longer exists, replaced by the United Australia Party, but its performance at the 2013 election constituted a threshold event — it heralded at the moment of Coalition victory a fragmentation on its right flank that damaged the Abbott government and that will damage the Morrison government at next month’s election.

Clive Palmer’s party won three Senate places in 2013 and, from his pivotal position, wrought havoc on Abbott, notably over the 2014-15 budget, mocking any pretence of being an orthodox centre-right minority party. Consider the sequence: after the Palmer party fell apart, Pauline Hanson reappeared at the 2016 election and now both Palmer and Hanson torment the government at the 2019 election.

The Newspoll published on Tuesday showed in the north Queensland seat of Herbert the minority parties polling at 40 per cent and the combined Palmer-Hanson vote at 23 per cent. When Bob Katter’s 10 per cent is added the story is stark — an alarming fragmentation in the north, with the total primary vote of the main parties, the LNP and Labor, reduced to a low of just 60 per cent.

The average Palmer party vote (across one seat each in Queensland, NSW, Western Australia and Victoria) was more than 8 per cent, including 14 per cent in Herbert and 7 per cent even in the western Sydney seat of Lindsay. Palmer does not wage an orthodox campaign or expose himself to the usual twists and turns of campaigning and questioning. His vote derives from an estimated $30 million-plus advertising spend.

That will continue through the campaign. Palmer’s support is a function of money and ads and, therefore, largely impervious to normal politics. He is buying his support. The polls suggest he will win a higher vote than at the 2013 election.

Palmer’s name recognition is huge. That recognition may be for the wrong reasons — his betrayal of workers and his hypocrisy — but the lesson from Donald Trump is the power of a renegade figure attacking the system and feeding off disenchantment. The Coalition needs a deal of sorts with Palmer on preferences but it knows Palmer is no friend of the Coalition — just ask Abbott.

The frightening data point for the Coalition is that in 2013, Palmer preferences split only 54-46 for the government. This confirms what is long established: the breakaway parties on the populist Right, represented by Hanson and Palmer — while they battle against each other — steal votes from the Coalition that are not sufficiently returned via preferences.

In short, they are a populist mach­ine that transfers two-party-preferred votes from the Coalition to Labor. The bigger and uglier they get, the higher their primary vote, the more Labor gains.

The bizarre role of sections of the conservative media in promoting Hanson for the past three years constitutes a net gain for Labor and loss for the Coalition.

The idea of a protest vote in the House of Representatives is a fraud. The preference system means, ultimately, a vote for Labor or the Coalition. When the ABC promoted Palmer before the 2013 election it knew what it was doing.

The Senate is the real protest arena, with a voting system that empowers minor parties. The minor parties fight each other — with Palmer exploiting Hanson’s woes — and fight the majors in their quest to win and then control the crossbench, a factor pivotal to the dysfunction in Australia’s governance.

The centre-right of Australian politics has been plagued by a cultural and structural crisis since the 2013 election. The consequences in 2019 are being played out dramatically in Queensland and Melbourne. Queensland is the epi­centre of right-wing populist parties, the Palmer party, Hanson’s One Nation and Katter’s Australian Party, among others.

They steal votes from the government because it is not right-wing populist enough, while in Melbourne the progressive vote slices into core Liberal support precisely because the government is seen as too crazy right and too populist.

The Coalition cannot hold together its centre-right constituency because Australia is changing as it becomes more diverse in values and interests across locations, generations, faiths, fashions, workplaces and industries. Scott Morrison must appeal to Palmer and One Nation voters in Queensland to stick with his government while appealing to rich, progressive, climate change focused Liberals in once safe Melbourne seats.

Since the 2013 election the chaos, divisions, policy disputes and removal of prime ministers on the Coalition side have been driven by the grassroots chasm that has opened up within the broad centre-right voting base. This has provoked dissension not just over electoral tactics but over the nature of the Liberal Party and its core beliefs.

Among conservatives the party is depicted as too progressive (the argument used to terminate Malcolm Turnbull) while among progressives it is depicted as hopelessly reactionary and needing to purge its conservative troglodytes.

To grasp the electoral ramifications, consider the Newspoll result for the Melbourne seat of Deakin, held by the government — the Liberals are clinging to a 51-49 per cent lead, meaning they should win, but the swing to Labor is more than 5 per cent. The ALP primary vote in Deakin has increased by 9 per cent since 2016.

If the swing were replicated in more marginal seats then the Prime Minister would lose four or five seats. In Melbourne the government is branded as outdated and unsympathetic to Victoria’s more progressive culture, typified by the climate change issue.

Morrison has many critics. But he must be assessed against the difficulty he faces. In a short time as Prime Minister, he has done a remarkable job from a near-impossible position. He has a direct, tough, down-to-earth, friendly campaign style. His position is often misunderstood, sometimes deliberately. While an instinctive conservative, Morrison operates as a centrist: he leads the Liberal Party from the centre.

He knows the problem in governing from the centre — being denounced as not conservative enough or not progressive enough. But the Queensland-Melbourne conundrum means there is no other option.

In truth, most of the positions his critics insist he take would be electoral suicide because they come from one or the other of these entrenched polarities when neither polarity can do the job.

Operating across the centre and taking a strong stand on issues is the only strategy that gives Morrison any hope of reaching his rival constituencies. On the economy he backs the surplus, major tax cuts and strong service delivery in health and education. He champions border protection, the NDIS, strong immigration, multiculturalism, moderate climate change targets, being tough on national security, staying in the Paris Agreement, taxing the banks, sanctioning the energy companies and backing small business.

This is a pragmatic agenda driven by the need to keep the government unified and with distinct offerings for the broad spectrum of Coalition supporters from Queensland to Melbourne. Few people believe it is enough to actually win the election. With the government coming from behind, Bill Shorten remains the favourite.

The Newspoll marginal seat results in this paper on Tuesday showed Morrison’s average lead over Shorten as “better PM” in the four marginals was 21 per cent. This suggests Morrison, in a leadership sense, is out-campaigning Shorten at this point. But there is also another message from the poll — the extent of the structural and cultural political crisis that afflicts the centre-right of politics. That is likely to require a longer-term remedy far beyond this poll.