Election 2016: Malcolm Turnbull threw in millions but cash can’t silence critics

By the end of the Liberal campaign, Malcolm Turnbull’s largesse toward party coffers ran to well over $2m.

The party faithful endure a long night at the Wentworth Hotel in Sydney on July 2, waiting for word on the fate of Malcolm Turnbull and the Liberals.

Gathered with his inner circle at his Sydney harbourside mansion on the night of July 2, Malcolm Turnbull had been Prime Minister for just 9½ months as he watched the numbers come in. Surrounded by his family, staff, Liberal federal director Tony Nutt and pollster Mark Textor, Turnbull had everything riding on the coming hours.

This was an election night he had anticipated since first entering parliament in October 2004, seeking victory in his own right, on his own terms. He had left no stone unturned.

Turnbull had donated huge sums to the Liberal campaign as it struggled to muster the money for a full-tilt advertising blitz. The Australian revealed last week that he had made a $1 million ­donation. But further investigation has found that even this underestimated Turnbull’s largesse, which ran, by the end, to well over $2m.

In the early weeks of the campaign, he had watched his party’s poll numbers shoot up when money was poured into marginal seats. But the advertising effort had been forced to “go dark” for two or three days in the middle of June. Whenever funding thinned out, more seats were in play. More money was needed. Turnbull ­delivered what was required.

At Labor headquarters, direct­or George Wright’s war machine was astonished towards the later part of the campaign to see a sudden spray of expensive Coalition advertising.

Labor admen speculated the Liberals were sometimes spending $1m a night. “Why don’t you ask Turnbull if he’s put his hand in his own pocket,” Wright told one journalist.

A Liberal Party spokesman would neither confirm nor deny Turnbull’s donations to the party, saying only that all financial transactions including donations would be disclosed in accordance with the electoral act.

In the end, Turnbull won: by a nose, by a small majority, by the skin of his teeth — and with a 3.27 per cent two-party-preferred swing to Labor. Thirteen seats were lost. It was not the grand procession back to power that Turnbull had lusted for.

And it was not enough to mute critics of the campaign who had ­silently seethed throughout — frustrated by everything from the strategy to the secrecy. Recrimin­ations started to flow.

Today, the election strategy will be pored over by those Coal­ition colleagues who survived, with Nutt and Textor on hand to assist the Prime Minister field what are expected to be some searching questions.

During the campaign, state ­divisions of the party, ­responsible for fielding and ­supporting MPs, had complained about lack of information. Some felt they were not trusted by campaign HQ. They could get no detail on individual seat polling from Nutt. The best they could get, one party official fumed later, was: “Oh, that seat needs a bit more work.”

Each morning at 7.30, state ­directors conducted a phone hook-up with Nutt and deputy ­director John Burston. These state directors reported back to their state presidents. This fuelled more concerns. Nutt did not seem interested in anyone else’s opinions, they reported. Input was curbed, they claimed. They wanted to know about the polling but could get nowhere. The polling was tightly held. What Nutt got from Textor, he shared with Turnbull.

Tempers simmered for weeks until some state presidents sought a meeting with federal president Richard Alston.

That meeting, finally held by phone on Friday, June 24, saw complaints about the style and ­direction of the campaign, the perceived secrecy of the Canberra HQ and an overall lack of consultation. “Where were the negative ads, the attacks on Shorten?” they wanted to know. “Why hadn’t they bashed Labor’s head in over Medicare?”

Sure, all the positive TV ads had been recast to contain a Medicare “guarantee” but to frustrated machine men around the country it was too little, too late. The main heft of fighting Bill Shorten on Medicare had been left to Turnbull, who swore until he was hoarse that Medicare was safe.

Everyone knew that it was too late to change direction anyway; the ads were made, the bunting on the booths done. The ship had sailed. Rumours swirled around the state divisions that neither Alston nor treasurer Andrew ­Burnes could extract information ­either. But donors wanted to know how the party was travelling.

Finding donations was an uphill battle. Textor was known to be complaining that there was not enough money to run advertising in sensitive areas. Some donors, who might have given $500,000 in the past, gave $50,000. Some people who attended one major fundraising dinner never paid up at all. Some promised $25,000 and gave $5000. The banks were said to have closed shop, not willing to give to Labor (with its threats of a royal commission), not willing to give to one side and not the other. In the end, everyone missed out.

Some old hands had other gripes — complaining about the coterie of MPs who gathered around Turnbull, including Scott Ryan and James McGrath: players in the Turnbull siege of Tony Abbott. Did they create a siege mentality in the campaign, too, that pandered to a cult of secrecy?

One senior figure, insulted by the lack of trust, declared last week: “They all thought that if you tell six state directors and they tell six state presidents, some of them might leak something to the ­papers. So you can’t tell them anything because if Abbott finds out he’ll use it against Malcolm.”

In February and March, Turnbull had appeared to be in serious trouble in the public opinion polls. It had not deterred him from thinking about a double dissolution. Confusion over economic strategy — with a GST on, then off, revamped federal-state relations on, then off — added to the malaise. Under Abbott, large swings against the party had been expected — some said in the ­region of 35 seats. Turnbull had replaced this certain death with high expectations — too high in the end — during a brief but heady honeymoon. He then went into freefall before the budget lifted the numbers back to respectability. Turnbull entered the campaign positioned for a tight race.

He would need an agile, fast, ferocious, well-funded campaign. There was no room for namby-pamby strategy and not much room for error. Labor, with the full support of its union guard, was armed and dangerous in a way that would soon become clear. Most of all, Labor had leadership stability after the dire 2010 and 2013 campaigns.

If the Coalition was overwhelmed by surprise at the beginning of Labor’s Medicare scare campaign, there could be no such excuse by the final days. Shorten and the Labor machine had smashed through every barrier with Medicare. When countered by Turnbull, they just came roaring back with more.

The Liberals, financially and strategically outflanked, appeared to have no ­answer other than to appeal to the common decency of the electorate to know a liar when they saw one. The day before the election, one million fake Medicare cards were handed out at railway stations and transport hubs. It was a crude, simple and effective negative campaign tactic: “1. Save bulk billing; 2. Stop Medicare priv­atisation; 3. Keep tests and medi­cines affordable. Put the Liberals last 2/7/2016.”

The ACTU’s plan to distribute the fake Medicare cards was reported by the media on June 30, allowing more than a day for a counter-attack. Yet from Nutt’s campaign headquarters there was none. Labor’s Medicare scare had been under way at full volume for almost three weeks.

There was no biting strategy to frame Shorten as a unionist, and moreover as a unionist who had been targeted in a royal commission. Instead, Shorten was able to frame Turnbull on “trust” by creat­ing a nationwide scare over Medicare, and a linked “breach of trust” over superannuation.

The superannuation “breach of trust” issue roiled large numbers of electorates — but with no active campaign to quarantine or rebut it by either Scott Morrison or Assistant Treasurer Kelly O’Dwyer. And yet, O’Dwyer had long created expectations that she would “stand by” voters on this issue.

Back in 2013, on March 21, she read into Hansard a string of letters from constituents — pleading for support after Labor changes to superannuation rules, including cuts to concessional contributions. “I hear the very deep and real concerns from constituents, who raise this matter with me in a very heartfelt way and who are desperate to know what faces them in retirement,” she said.

O’Dwyer read a letter from a woman identified as Angela: “I am concerned that self-funded retirees are seen as a soft target by this (Labor) government and their hard-earned superannuation savings are considered to be a honey-pot ripe for the picking,” Angela wrote.

O’Dwyer summed up saying: “I say to Angela: I could not have put it any better myself … we on this side have given an undertaking not to fiddle with superannuation … we understand the importance of good and responsible economic management so that the government does not have to put its hands in the pockets of the retirement savings of Australians. It is quite wrong.”

Two days before the election — after a speech at the National Press Club and a briefing from Nutt at campaign headquarters — Turnbull was tense. Seated in the forward cabin of his plane for a quick flight from Canberra to Sydney, Nutt’s warning that the election was too close to call was on his mind: the Coalition’s recovery in the polls had stalled. As he pondered the odds, Turnbull said he had not identified any particular dips or troughs or turning points in the campaign. And he had not focused his mind on Shorten. “No, I stay in my own zone,” he said.

He was philosophical about what he saw as media negativity. “I wouldn’t say I couldn’t care less, but there’s nothing you can do about it … I don’t torment newspaper editors or ring and abuse journalists. Through the research we get a pretty clear idea of what is salient to voters, and there is a disconnect between the genuine interests of voters and the media focus.”

If the campaign finances were on his mind, or questions of what else could have been done, Turnbull did not show it. He was happy to discuss the way Google Docs worked and demonstrate the way he had deployed the technology for speechwriting with his staff — almost a version of crowd-funding with words.

There was one Liberal campaign party left to go. After voting on Saturday, many of the top dogs at CHQ flew to Sydney. They had booked the ballroom at the Sofitel for Turnbull’s speech and started gathering in the early evening. ­Invited guests, Liberal grandees, donors and media cascaded up the escalators to the free bar and the platters of food. Waiters wandered with trays but, oddly, they seemed at times to ­almost outnumber the guests. The vast ballroom seemed only a quarter full.

By 8.15pm, bored photograph­ers were chatting with bored guests. The TVs offered little except bits of bad news and seats too close to call. Stretches of empty carpet devoid of seats meant most stood or found something to lean against. Perhaps the biggest VIP of all, Anthony Pratt, whose family had splashed money on the Liberal Party for decades, prowled the room for hours. Aside from Richard Alston, the party president, there appeared to be no one ­assigned to look after Pratt.

It struck an odd contrast with the boots-and-all night of September 7, 2013, at the Four Seasons Hotel in Sydney when Abbott claimed a landslide victory. Jam-packed, with all bells and whistles, he had won an extra 16 seats with a swing of 3.53 per cent against Labor. The crowd that night had shouted: “Tony! Tony! Tony!”

July 2, 2016, seemed more like a party to which someone had forgotten to send out the invitations. Desultory VIPs wandered in and out of the VIP room to the food ­tables. Pratt wandered around the edge of the ballroom and back to the food hall, looking for someone to talk to. By halfway through the evening the VIPs were bored with themselves and emerged to hang out with the non-VIPs. Not that there were many of those either.

“Where was Turnbull?’’ everyone wanted to know. He was upstairs, confided one insider, laying a finger conspiratorially along the side of his nose. Hush, it’s a secret.

“Where was Turnbull?’’ VIPs were still asking an hour later. “He must be upstairs with the computers,” someone whispered. Then fresh info swept the room. He was around the corner at 1 Bligh, in his Commonwealth Parliament Offices. In fact, Turnbull was at home in Point Piper.

At 9.30pm, Mark Textor sent an SMS to a friend: “75 LNP, 67 Labor, Green 1, Oths 4, in doubt 5. We win. ALP can’t win.”

At 10.30pm, a buzz of excitement penetrated the gloom cast by the TV sets. John Howard, with wife Janette and daughter Melanie, dressed to the nines, swept up the escalators. The media mobbed Howard, expecting Turnbull. Howard, the pro, was happy to stop for a quick off-the-cuff interview amid waving microphones and cameras.

Turnbull at home had to decide whether to stay or go. What could he say? Something in the region of 30 per cent of the vote was in postal votes and pre-polls.

By 10.38pm the media was ­morose. Banks of cameras waited idle at the rear of the room, while reporters and photographers stared glassy-eyed into phones.

By 11pm, the ballroom was still only 30 per cent full. Tired VIPs were as bored as the press. Some said they would text Turnbull to see what was happening. It was an indication of who was really “in”.

A buzz went around at 11.15pm that Turnbull was on the way. Then another buzz: it was Shorten who was on the way — in Melbourne. Sure enough, the Oppos­ition Leader was soon on TV looking and sounding as though he had won.

If guests had thought the ­arrival of the Howards, the royal family of the Liberal Party, presaged the arrival of Turnbull, they were wrong. The Howards too, were left hanging in the VIP room. Eventually they mingled in the ballroom. At 12.08am, some of Turnbull’s staffers, including Turnbull’s personal photographer — on hand to privately document the PM’s campaign — emerged from the elevator to a mad flash of clicking cameras.

Finally, at 12.23am, Turnbull himself arrived with his family and headed for the stage. He ­commenced an angry not-winning, not-losing, just-blaming speech and called for the police to investigate text messages about Medicare.

If the night had seemed surreal, it now seemed detached from reality. It was a fully Dada event. “I’m advised by my advisers that we’ll get a majority of the vote,” Turnbull told the doubtful crowd.

But in the end Turnbull would win. The pre-polls, the postals, everything would be counted, and the great wave of votes finally swung back his way.

Turnbull was wounded; his authority would be questioned, the experience of those around him debated, and his campaign strategy challenged. Many seats had been lost. Some would call for the blood of the pollster, others would call for the head of Nutt.

But it was Turnbull’s campaign and it was his responsibility.

In the end, he had the one thing that mattered. He was still the Prime Minister.