PM’s down but don’t count him out yet

The PM has been roundly humiliated, but conservatives are always in the fight, even when appearances suggest otherwise.

There is little doubt Scott Morrison is up against it to return to power after the May election. Picture: NCA Newswire/Gary Ramage

Don’t write off Scott Morrison just yet.

Yes, the government is trailing 44 to 56 per cent on the two-party vote according to the polls and the Prime Minister’s personal numbers have headed south dramatically. When a leader’s net satisfaction rating plummets well below that of the opposition leader – and they are neck and neck on the better prime minister ratings – the incumbent leader is no longer a positive drag on their party’s vote. That makes playing catch-up much more difficult.

Yes, Morrison’s colleagues have lined up to describe him variously as a “fraud”, a “liar”, a “hypocrite”, a “horrible, horrible person” and even a “complete psycho”. And on Thursday it was revealed that Morrison was rolled in cabinet last Monday, on a political judgment call no less. The cabinet humiliation in turn was leaked to the media, a sure sign of instability at the top.

None of this bodes well for the election. Just for starters, Labor will use the colourful descriptions of Morrison in campaign advertisements and polling booth paraphernalia. The comments by former NSW premier Gladys Bere­jiklian labelling Morrison more interested in politics than people’s lives will be especially damaging in seats affected by the Black Summer bushfires.

But writing off Morrison would be a mistake. He has come from behind to win before, and the evidence from the past tells us that when conservatives lose elections they lose them only narrowly. They are always in the fight, even when appearances suggest otherwise. With a little more than three months to go until polling day this election is still up for grabs.

Don’t forget, Labor has openly won its way into government federally only three times since World War II. That is an appalling record of failure. Anthony Albanese has been on the wrong side of almost every internal Labor leadership showdown he has been involved with during his political career. As a member of the Left, failure is second nature. He jokes about it as a practical problem but a sign that unlike so many modern politicians at least he stands for something even if that stand results in defeat.

The government will launch a vicious scare campaign against the man they call Albo, a nickname he grew up with, unlike the calculated decision in recent years to manufacture ScoMo as the Prime Minister’s nickname of choice. (For the record, PVO was my schoolboy nickname.)

The recently launched campaign targeting Albo attempts to lampoon him as unprepared for the rigours of being prime minister, seemingly forgetting that he has served as deputy prime minister and was a long-term leader of the house and infrastructure minister for the duration of the Rudd and Gillard years – including during the post-global financial crisis reconstruction phase. Infrastructure spending and decision-making will be a key issue as we come out of the pandemic.

But facts don’t always matter in politics or political advertising, and the Coalition will likely score points with voters when it raises concerns about Albo’s capacity to manage the economy. His economic degree from one of Australia’s top universities will count for little. Labor has lost the economic debate ever since it walked away from the record of micro-economic achievement during the Hawke and Keating years after its heavy 1996 defeat.

The Coalition is the preferred economic managers, and the election in May is timed to follow an early budget and the post-budget sales pitch. It’s likely the economy will become the central issue.

Morrison is damaged but Josh Frydenberg remains an electoral asset. He’ll take the lead selling the budget to soften the government with voters before the official campaign begins. After which Morrison will move front and centre and seek to do to Albo what he did to Bill Shorten in 2019: come from behind to pull off a miracle.

To be sure, it will be harder this time, but Morrison doesn’t deserve to be written off.

This election will be fascinating on so many levels. State by state differences are hard to calculate. Will border restrictions in Western Australia still exist? Either way, will voters emulate what happens at state level around the country or arbitrage by voting differently federally?

We have a state election in South Australia next month. Queensland is dominated by wall-to-wall Liberal National Party-held seats, and the old adage is that whichever party holds Queensland forms government. Once upon a time there was a view Morrison could win as many as a half-dozen seats off Labor in NSW alone, his home state. That now looks unlikely. Does that cost him re-election?

Strategists on both sides of the major party divide believe if an election were held this weekend Labor would win somewhere between 80 and 82 seats. While that would see the party form majority government, it still represents only a six-seat majority, smaller than you might have expected. Larger (just) than Gough Whitlam’s 1972 win, but smaller than Kevin Rudd’s eight-seat majority. Few inside Labor believe Albo has the popularity of a Whitlam or a Rudd in their time, notwithstanding his compelling back­story. What effect does that have?

In the time until polling day, the Coalition’s first task is to find a way to take away Labor’s majority. Losing to a Labor minority government is better for the future than losing to a Labor majority government not beholden to the crossbench. Turning around six seats between now and polling day doesn’t sound that hard. Not given the low ebb the government is at, or considering the fertile ground the budget is likely to shift the focus to. It’s all upside surely?

The harder equation for the Coalition is finding the remaining seats needed to claw back into contention in the virtual tallyroom. This calculation is made harder courtesy of the difficulties inner-city Liberals are facing staving off independent challenges.

Even if none of these seats is lost to independents, which looks increasingly less likely, the financial effort alone retaining them represents a resource allocation opportunity cost in key marginal contests against Labor.

There is little doubt Morrison is up against it to return to power after the May election. But he’s a long way from out of the fight. The betting markets, for example, are exaggerated in the odds they’re offering. We know Morrison is a good campaigner: on message and in synch with party headquarters. This will count for something if the contest becomes a seat-by-seat dogfight.

Peter van Onselen is the political editor at the Ten Network and a professor of politics and public policy at the University of Western Australia and Griffith University.