There can be little doubt that one man’s vanity — or insanity — project looks set to rob Scott Morrison of what would have been a historic victory at the weekend.
The NSW Nationals leader and Deputy Premier, John Barilaro, made no secret of his desire for the seat of Eden-Monaro to remain in Labor hands.
He actively campaigned for this very outcome, having effectively endorsed Labor candidate Kristy McBain.
Gobsmacked senior Liberals say they have never seen anything like it. And the Prime Minister has every right to be filthy.
The Liberal Party didn’t have high expectations of pulling off a one-in-100-year by-election victory but it held out hopes in the final week of campaigning.
And the results prove that they were right to be hopeful.
But for an act of political bastardry by Barilaro, whose motives need little explanation, Eden-Monaro would probably be back in Coalition hands.
While Labor leader Anthony Albanese can claim an “ugly victory”, he should take little comfort from the result. The swing against Labor, both on primary vote and the two-party-preferred, should be of deep concern for the Opposition Leader.
If this result reflects Labor’s grand plan to win the next federal election, things aren’t looking too good.
Labor has kept the seat — with the caveat that there are still a couple of thousand postal votes to be counted — because of a kooky coalition of preferences from the fringes of the left and the right but also from the Nationals.
There were obvious reasons the federal Nationals did not want to run a candidate, all of which have been confirmed by the result. They went backwards and contributed to a Liberal loss with a 20 per cent flow of preferences to Labor.
Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack’s impotence as federal Nationals leader has again been exposed through his inability to stop Barilaro running riot through the entire campaign.
As if his leadership wasn’t already in strife.
The Deputy NSW Premier’s shenanigans, and public encouragement to put Labor ahead of the Liberals is as inexplicable as his self-indulgent carry-on over his decision to denominate himself as the Nationals candidate in the first place.
Yet his contribution to this result goes much further.
He is equally culpable for the rise of the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers party in his own backyard — the state seat of Monaro — having done nothing to try to prevent it. That a fringe party based on conservative ideology preferenced Labor was just another quirk of a by-election that fielded 14 candidates, many from the outer reaches of space.
Morrison will be buoyed by the swing to the Liberals, considering by-elections normally swing against the government, but the Liberal campaign was nobbled from the start.
If the final result comes down to a few hundred votes in Labor’s favour, which it appears it will, Barilaro could rightly be held as singularly responsible for denying the Prime Minister the win and the federal government another seat in a tightly contested parliament.
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