Accept the result, now get on with the new job
The victory of the only true independent in this election is a lesson writ large for both the major parties.
Scott Morrison and the Liberals lost the 2022 election. His successor, most likely Peter Dutton, now has to work out what went wrong and what to do to become a viable opposition with any hope of a return to government.
The first thing new Coalition opposition MPs and senators have to accept is that Anthony Albanese and Labor won the election. What’s more, although it’s the slimmest of majorities, Labor can govern in its own right.
A win is a win, and tears, recriminations, claims of a lack of mandate, the lowest primary vote on record or that Labor is only a hybrid government tinged irrevocably teal and green from its independent allies in vanquishing the Coalition are pointless.
Along with the danger of underestimating the new government, a new opposition tends to vent frustration and blame that can tear apart old alliances over leadership and policy. Malcolm Turnbull told Brendan Nelson in 2007 within hours of Nelson being elected that he wasn’t up to the job and ultimately tore him down.
Dutton’s first task, even before receiving an analysis of what went wrong, will be to hold the team together as a centrist and pragmatist facing a government with immense and immediate challenges.
“We aren’t the moderate party. We aren’t the conservative party. We are Liberals. We are the Liberal Party. We believe in families – whatever their composition,” Dutton said as he confirmed his nomination as leader.
“Small and micro businesses. For aspirational, hardworking ‘forgotten people’ across cities, suburbs, regions and in the bush.” The Liberals should not surrender the old heartland seats but also look to the outer suburbs peopled with small businesses, families, tradespeople, sole traders and migrants who have different priorities.
The victory of the only true independent, Dai Le, in the former Labor electorate of Fowler in western Sydney, who campaigned as a small business person, a mother and a refugee, is a lesson writ large for both the major parties.
Languishing in the luxury of what-might-have-been and preparing to fight the next election based on the one that just got away has been a proven recipe for failure in the past 20 years and the only experience of a short term in opposition has been based on a new agenda, a clear eye on where people need to be drawn back and an absence of self-pity.
Labor misread the narrow losses of 1998 and 2016, and lost the ensuing elections, while in 2010 Tony Abbott succeeded after a short time as opposition leader because he offered a clear, strong alternative based on what was happening at the time and how the Rudd-Gillard governments were performing.
Accept the result and get on with your new job is likely to be the first, most basic, advice from the Liberal Party’s chief in post mortem, Brian Loughnane, who is long-time servant of the party, a federal director who has seen it all including a loss, a draw and a win in federal elections after working with various prime ministers and opposition leaders.
Naturally a post mortem has the benefit of hindsight but a hard-headed analysis that just isn’t dumped into the we-told-you-so basket can provide a new leader with powerful arguments for change and an assessment of where losses can be recovered.
Simplistic arguments from Liberals that they need to move to the right or left or that it was all Morrison’s fault are merely echoes of the stupid factional fights that contributed to the Coalition losses and miss the breadth and complexity of the Labor win.
Morrison, as leader, has taken responsibility for the loss and resigned as Liberal leader, as he should and not without reason, but the post mortem will find more challenges for the new Coalition opposition than can simply be blamed on Morrison.
The first assessment will be to look at where the losses occurred and why.
It is of no use for the Liberals to argue they saved Australia during the Covid-19 pandemic in terms of lives and jobs because, while true, people expected governments to do their best and don’t want to linger over the more than two years of lockdowns and border closures. Morrison may have won the policy but he lost the politics. He was also a victim of his own “miracle win” in 2019 and a belief that it could be done again. It was very close in the end.
As prime minister, Morrison was committed to being optimistic, to working with premiers and chief ministers with the long-term aim of successful management of the pandemic, saving 30,000 lives and 700,000 jobs.
But that position allowed Albanese, federal Labor and premiers to paint their own portrait of Morrison as arrogant and uncaring, a turn-off for women, lacking conviction or care and not achieving anything.
The West Australian Liberal losses are testament that pandemic management did not translate into electoral gains.
There was a tendency for Morrison to be prolix, to speak too much and really say nothing at all, or to be dismissive of what he considered superficial or unfounded criticism. He turned away advice to “go negative” against Albanese, who had his own leadership deficits.
It was only in February after John Howard convinced him to point out the Labor leader’s old left past and lack of financial experience that Morrison started to paint Albanese as blackly as Labor had painted him, but by then it was too little too late.
Again, Morrison left it too late to try to ameliorate the image of him as being uncaring, and clumsily described himself as a “bulldozer” who “solved problems” who could change. Well, that didn’t change anyone else’s mind.
Even the only true policy fight that Morrison offered in 2022, what was a popular idea to allow people to access their superannuation for a housing deposit, was unveiled five days before polling day. When asked why he didn’t do it earlier, his response was: “It’s what I did in 2019.”
It is not that Morrison lacked genuine conviction about wanting to do what he could for the nation, that he deserved any of the character assassination or personal abuse, that he had any “problem with women” (indeed he was more popular among female voters than Albanese for a long time) or was insincere. He just lacked political instinct as opposed to political wiles – he tried to do too much because he didn’t trust others and lacked empathy.
Morrison was a hard worker and an indefatigable campaigner but he did not have the warmth of Albanese – who was forgiven for more mistakes and errors than Mark Latham during the campaign and was able to exploit the fifth column of media and teals attacking the prime minister.
But, as for the future, the Coalition needs to establish its own narrative and not accept the glossy, grossly disproportionate triumphalism associated with the wins of the Greens and the so-called teal Climate 200 independents in the inner cities of metropolitan Australia.
The Nationals, unlike the Liberal and Labor parties, did not lose a Nationals-held seat, not one, close as they may have come, but rural and regional Australia retained its Nationals’ representation, even in seats where long-term MPs were retiring. The Nationals under Barnaby Joyce did not campaign on an integrity commission or strengthening climate change emission cuts but on cost-of-living pressures and job security.
Indeed, “rogue” Nationals such as Matt Canavan were calling for a pause in the progress of climate change targets – as Boris Johnson is doing in Britain – in the face of pandemic pressures and war in Europe disrupting world fuel and power supplies.
The ALP’s victory was built largely on gains in inner-city areas, particularly in Western Australia off the back of strong popularity for Labor Premier Mark McGowan, but it suffered swings against it in Tasmania, suburban Melbourne and the Northern Territory.
In Brisbane Labor gained a city seat from the Liberals but lost a seat to the Greens – coincidentally Kevin Rudd’s old seat of Griffith, which added yet another seat of a former prime minister to the lost list with Bennelong, Wentworth and Warringah.
Labor gained seats in inner-western Sydney, no longer really considered the western suburbs, but lost in far western Sydney and most likely on the NSW south coast. Seats it won, including Tangney and Higgins, were not expected and in part a result of the teal independents movement.
Indeed, the teals won as many seats as Labor in Victoria. The highly organised, highly financed and sophisticated movement backed by renewable multi-millionaire, Simon Holmes a Court delivered the fatal blow to Morrison’s government by winning Liberal heartland seats, soaking up Coalition resources and feeding the hostility against Morrison that spread beyond the targeted teal seats.
Entrenched independents at record levels are now part of Australian parliamentary and political reality both for Labor and the Liberals, but the Liberals have to adapt to seeking support from a new generation of forgotten people.
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