Political dynamic shifts away from Labor

If Scott Morrison can break out of the Canberra bubble he might follow the path of Donald Trump.

Scott Morrison, bottom, and Opposition Leader Bill Shorten, top, during Thursday’s long-running question time. Picture: Getty Images

Through a fog of parliamentary tactics, fevered rhetoric and frenzied pre-election positioning, the political dynamic has shifted in Scott Morrison’s direction.

It is too early, and the political landscape too complex, to say Labor has lost its clear electoral advantage, but Bill Shorten is on the defensive at the end of the first week of parliament in the election year.

What is indisputable in federal politics now is that the Coalition is prepared to use all the parliamentary tools it has to counter Labor’s previous tactical superiority; the Prime Minister is confident and up for a fight; the Opposition Leader is under pressure for the first time in more than a year; Labor has gambled on changing its border protection policy; Labor’s free run on contentious business and investor policies has ended; the Coalition is divided on energy policy; and both the major parties are below the critical level of 40 per cent primary vote three months out from the election.

Crucially, the Coalition is still behind in all polls and, most importantly, is behind in the seat count that determines government after Liberal losses and defections to the independents and unfavourable electorate redistributions.

So, Shorten is still favoured to win the May election and is showing no signs of panic. While avoiding talking about border protection as much as possible, Shorten tried to get what benefit he could from Labor’s change of heart, declaring: “In 2019, this is a government who’s run out of offering Australians hope. They just want to rule by fear and by slogans. They should be ashamed of themselves for luring people to Australia by somehow implying that this government hasn’t got strong borders.”

This is despite the government moving on to its preferred home ground of border protection and national security as Morrison brushes off suggestions it should go to an election before delivering a surplus in the budget on April 2 and the opportunity to offer incentives to voters frustrated by stagnant wages growth.

Morrison, too, is remaining steadfast and calm, although desperate, in the face of parliamentary chaos, a historic legislative defeat in the House of Representatives and a disruptive coalition of Greens, independents and Labor in both the Senate and the lower house. Even to the point of ignoring Greens senator and disability spokesman Jordon Steele-John heckling and swearing at him and Speaker Tony Smith while a guest in the House of Representatives.

As annoying and irritating as it may be, if Morrison’s populist campaign can burst through the “Canberra bubble” of media elites, political minutiae, social media fights and noisy activists, there is a chance that he will reach disaffected, disenfranchised and disenchanted voters just as Donald Trump appealed to voters with his promise to “drain the Washington swamp”.

At the resumption of parliament this week, Morrison was portrayed as facing two potentially fatal setbacks at the hands of the Labor-Greens-independents alliance — being defeated on the floor of parliament over border protection policy and having to recall parliament for an extra two weeks to debate the findings of the banking royal commission.

On the first, Morrison turned the historic loss on its head, exploiting Labor’s shambolic handling of the dilution of ministerial power on border protection by embracing the lost vote as a demonstration of “mettle” and “conviction” while accusing Shorten of weakness and being untrustworthy.

After the loss Morrison said: “I made it very clear that the Liberal and National parties would not be budging when it came to the issue of border protection in this country. We have had to clean up this mess twice. The Labor Party, when they have the opportunity, only break what has been fixed and they have been demonstrating that again tonight in the parliament.

“Less than 24 hours ago, I warned Australia that Bill Shorten would make Australia weaker and the Labor Party would weaken our border protection. That they could not be trusted to do the right thing to secure Australia. Within 24 hours, Bill Shorten and the Labor Party have proved me absolutely right.”

On the second issue of extra sittings, with the ALP desperate to shift the focus from border protection and on to the banking royal commission, Morrison again dead-batted the issue and was able to rely this time on enough independents not supporting a stunt that would have cost millions of dollars.

Morrison turned what was a humiliating parliamentary loss for the Coalition into a revival of fortune and a test of Shorten’s leadership by converting a rushed Labor tactical error in December into a potential strategic advantage.

“Votes will come and votes will go, they do not trouble me. Where we will always stand and what the Australian people can always trust us to do is to have the mettle to ensure the integrity of our border protection framework,” Morrison said.

“Bill Shorten and the Labor Party demonstrated tonight that they have no such mettle. That they will easily compromise these things and they will be blown about by the winds of whatever may push them one way or the other.”

Labor was forced on to the strategic defensive over border and national security and unable to use parliamentary tactics — such as another Greens-inspired stunt on a royal commission into abuse of the disabled — to shift the debate from the Coalition’s long-term strengths of security and economic management.

It is essential here to separate the tactics from the strategy before any real assessment of what impact this week of parliament — and the next, with all the hoopla and hyper-analysis — will have on voters’ attitudes going into the election.

It is also necessary to acknowledge both leaders are attempting to send essentially conflicting messages to different parts of the electorate, geographically and demographically, in defining humane treatment, national security and economic prosperity.

The Labor Left elder Anthony Albanese typically seeks to exploit the tactics in parliament and turn them into a strategic advantage about the Coalition’s inability to govern.

“This is a government that is incapable of governing. They can’t run the parliament, they don’t have a positive agenda and yesterday we saw the extraordinary circumstance whereby the government had the longest question time since federation in order to stop itself from having to vote,” Albanese said yesterday.

But this doesn’t hide that Labor joined emotionally driven independents and the Greens to water down ministerial powers on deciding who can come to Australia for medical treatment in an attempt to appeal to the compassionate voters of 2019 while pretending nothing had changed to appeal to the 2001 voters who wanted security.

For the moment, the debate on how to handle asylum-seekers will consolidate the Coalition’s base and perhaps attract back disaffected Liberals now supporting One Nation and others. This could be the real long-term positive for Morrison out of Labor’s short-term setback and lift Coalition primary support above 40 per cent before the election.

The ALP’s potential advantage is to get back Greens voters or at least stop Labor voters moving over to the Greens, but Shorten’s risk is that conservative Labor voters will be drawn to the Coalition, as they were under John Howard in 2001 and 2004.

The outcome of the election is not as clear cut as national two-party preferred polls suggest because of low primary votes and high levels of support for smaller parties and independents, particularly in Queensland.

But Morrison’s chances of avoiding a wipeout improved this week because he had a strategic win over a tactical loss.