Nation on a knife edge one week from election

Fortunes have shifted to and fro and Saturday is too close to call.

Bill Shorten and Scott Morrison before their debate on Wednesday. Picture: Getty Images

After a month of campaigning, three leaders’ debates and endless press conferences and speeches supporting radically different agendas, Scott Morrison and Bill Shorten agree on one thing: this election is too close to call.

Labor is still favourite to win in the polls, betting markets and the situation with seats, given the ­Coalition started from a negative position, but the contest has tightened considerably.

In the absence of a clear national swing to either side and with large chunks of the primary vote, 25 per cent, supporting the minor parties and independents, the election will be decided in 15 to 18 seats around the country.

Given those seats are spread across states and are affected by state issues, local economic pressures, pre-poll voting and individual candidates, the leaders concede the election is line ball.

With only one week of campaigning left, advertising blitzes to come, a large part of the electorate yet to tune in and the tone of the campaign becoming more intense and even more negative, both leaders can see that the Prime Minister has a path to re-election, narrow, difficult and as unlikely as it may be, and perhaps only to minority government.

For the Opposition Leader, there is the knowledge that there is no longer an easy and assured path to an election win for various reasons that have emerged as the campaign has progressed.

A modest but workable major­ity is the optimum outcome for Labor and a minority government or a loss the worst.

For Morrison, elected by his party to lead after the removal of Malcolm Turnbull in August last year and immediately faced with ­fractures of personnel and policy as well as being thrust into minority government, the future was bleak and the Coalition was written off.

His only option was to keep going, ignore distractions, reconnect with disaffected voters, appeal to lost conservative support, make no big promises and offer a small, even austere, agenda based on sound, achievable economic management coming off a successful budget in April.

For Shorten, facing his third prime minister as Labor leader, the big problem was containing expectations so the ALP didn’t look overconfident and arrogant as the polls, which had favoured the opposition for years, improved.

Shorten and Treasury spokesman Chris Bowen were emboldened on their big-target strategy and made a virtue of a high-taxing, big-spending agenda aimed at making the “top end of town” pay for a “fair go for everyone”.

Both leaders have not diverted one bit from their pitch.

Morrison, refusing the siren call to offer something new or a big vision, stuck to small things with immediate impact while Shorten pushed his “real change” no ­matter the cost because there was a bigger price to pay for no change.

Yet there has been no national shift in the electoral mood and what change there has been in the polls since the campaign began has been in the Coalition’s favour.

It is fair to say the Coalition’s simple message on sound economic management and big taxes weighing down the economy has cut through more than Labor’s big-spending, sometimes more than $1 billion a day, approach.

Yet neither message nor leader has delivered a winning momentum and thus the result comes down to fewer than 20 seats in ­places as far apart as Darwin, Townsville and Launceston, often confused by independents and where their preferences will go.

The preference fight is no longer about who gets those precious second bites (the Greens were always locked into Labor and Clive Palmer was always going to lock in with the Coalition); it is now about blackening the name of the major parties by association with the extreme policies of the minor parties. With preferences so vital, Shorten has turned even more negative this week while in the marginal north Queensland seats of Herbert and Leichhardt with attacks on Palmer, declaring the Liberals are paying his bills to workers.

For his part, Morrison has accused the Greens of being a bigger danger to the economy and ­national security than both Palmer and One Nation.

Morrison’s tortuous “path to victory” is dependent on preference sprays from Palmer’s United Australia Party and Pauline Hanson’s One Nation while Shorten’s fortress is Victoria, where Labor can win the election.

As the underdog, written off, derided and mocked, Morrison can take heart from his achievement so far in uniting the Liberals, deciding on a strategy, seeking to connect with middle Australia and campaigning in a far superior manner to both Shorten and Turnbull.

But the advances are still not enough for Morrison, who concedes the closeness of the vote could lead to minority government, and who is campaigning on a platform of “vote 1 Liberal or National” to maximise the primary vote.

Shorten contends that Morrison’s tenure as prime minister of a minority government has been a failure and “chaos”; that Labor will have a mandate for a policy platform that has been on show for years; and, while it is better for the nation to have a Labor government with a clear majority, he is better placed to deal with crossbench MPs and senators.

Morrison told The Weekend Australian in an exclusive interview at Kirribilli House this week that the election was “difficult to predict”. He appealed for support to ensure a Coalition majority and savaged the prospect of a Labor-Greens alliance in the Senate endangering the economy and national security.

When asked how successful he would be in handling minority government, Morrison played down the prospect of not winning outright but played up his ability to govern in minority and get measures through a hostile Senate.

“We don’t know what the composition of the parliament will be yet,” he says. “Recent history makes that very difficult to predict. That’s why we advocate a vote for the Liberal and National parties and not for minor parties or independents or others because we ­obviously think that increases the uncertainty.

“Criticisms and prophecies were made about our government; that we wouldn’t get the Australian Building and Construction Commission back, we wouldn’t get the registered organisations laws through, we wouldn’t get the income tax plan through in its full composition and that we wouldn’t get the company tax plan for companies up to $50 million, but we did,” he says.

Shorten can point to the first defeat of a government on legislation on the floor of the house in 90 years over the evacuation of asylum-seekers on Nauru, and he has a long history as a transactional leader and deal-maker. As far as minority government is concerned, he also has the advantage of a more Labor-friendly than ­Coalition-leaning Senate.

So, the possible outcomes for next Saturday, in descending order are: an outright Labor victory; a hung parliament and negotiated minority government; or an outright Coalition victory.

Labor’s clear advantage has eroded as state-by-state and seat-by-seat contests have evolved in recent months as the Coalition primary vote support has improved and Labor’s has fallen.

The Coalition lifted its two-party preferred support to 49 to Labor’s 51 and Morrison’s personal standing has improved as Shorten remained unpopular.

The ALP is showing the pressure of being the long-term favourite and Shorten is faced with losing the unlosable election and becoming Labor’s John Hewson.

In Queensland, where both leaders campaigned in the ­marginal seats yesterday, the pre-election Liberal-National commitment to support the Adani coal development as a symbol of supporting jobs in resources, mining, agriculture, forestry and fishing has worked well.

While Shorten thinks better preparations in Leichhardt this year, such as pre-poll and postal arrangements, will help defeat incumbent LNP MP Warren Entsch, Morrison believes Leichhardt will hold and has hopes of winning back nearby ALP-held Herbert.

Labor says Herbert — won by just 37 votes last time — is too close to call and that other seats in Queensland it hoped to win are slipping away and giving Morrison the chance of a net gain in Queensland.

Likewise, in the Northern Territory, where Labor is suffering from a backlash against the unpopular Gunner Labor government, there is a likelihood of a Coalition gain, at least in metropolitan Darwin.

In Western Australia, again where Labor had hoped to pick up at least one seat, senior Liberals believe they will hold and even add to the Coalition total; and in South Australia both sides assume a “status quo” result with Liberal ­Nicolle Flint holding Boothby and Rebekha Sharkie, the independent, staying in Mayo.

Tasmania, a Liberal free-zone since 2016, is obviously a big chance for the Coalition to win back Bass and Braddon, and there are some Labor fears that disendorsed Liberal, now independent, candidate in Lyons Jessica Whelan could still win a la Hanson in 1996.

Labor will pick up one seat in the ACT after an electoral redistribution that has firmed up the ALP stronghold in the nation’s capital.

In the most populous state, NSW, there are again seats too close to call and even the prospect of neighbouring seats flipping each way in the absence of a national shift in sentiment. The western Sydney seat of Lindsay, which has switched between Labor and Liberals through the years and where Morrison and Shorten have led the campaign, is the most obvious potential gain for the Coalition. There is also the likelihood of Turnbull’s former seat of Wentworth going from independent Kerryn Phelps back to the Liberals through Dave Sharma.

The Coalition could lose Cowper on the far north coast to independent Rob Oakeshott and Sussan Ley is in trouble in Farrer, but other expected Labor gains may not materialise. Labor is already blaming the disastrous NSW Labor state election campaign and the implosion of former leader Michael Daley over Asian immigration for its fall in Sydney, particularly among Chinese ­voters.

All these seats are too close to call but, if everything goes right on the night, Morrison could garner a net seven or eight seats from all these states and wipe out the negative position in which he started.

This leaves Victoria, Shorten’s home state and Labor’s strongest state where Labor Premier Daniel Andrews had a sweeping state election victory and redistribution has officially turned the Liberal seats of Corangamite and Dunkley, based on Frankston, into ­notionally Labor seats and firmly slotted the new seat of Fraser into a safe ALP seat.

Victorians have been the strongest supporters of the progressive policies of Labor and the Greens on refugees and climate change. Liberal MPs fear Coalition support for the Adani mine would cost their seats in Melbourne.

But if the Labor campaign is stalling elsewhere and Morrison makes net gains then Labor, which held 18 of the 37 seats under the old electoral map, which now has 38 seats, may win up to an extra 10 seats from Victoria’s Liberals.

Even allowing for forecast losses in Corangamite, Dunkley, Chisholm, Deakin and Casey, as well as possible wins in Flinders and Higgins, this is a big ask in Shorten’s home state, particularly when the Labor seat of Macnamara is a tight three-way contest between Labor, the Greens and Liberals, and the independent seat of Indi could go back to the Liberals.

There are polls that have shown that even in Corangamite the Liberals’ Sarah Henderson is ahead and in Deakin and Casey the Liberals say they are doing better.

The bottom line remains the election, only six days away, is too close to call as the polls tighten and the call of the card becomes less of a shoo-in for Labor and opens an almost Trumpian path, difficult and unacknowledged, for Morrison to be re-elected if everything falls his way.