Longman by-election: Loss shows LNP has learned nothing

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Trevor Ruthenberg on Friday.

Super Saturday has become a bloodbath for the LNP and a nightmare for Malcolm Turnbull. Four out of five of the by-elections have produced little in the way of surprises.

But the apparent collapse in the LNP primary vote in Longman has been stunning. It was the only seat that mattered today as a bellwether for the next election. There are another five seats in Queensland held by the LNP that are under a two per cent margin.

The message for the Turnbull government is dire. Queensland has abandoned it.

What has become brutally clear from this result is that the government’s political strategy, whatever that is, isn’t working. Nationally it has no strategy to deal with Labor’s anti-business, class war campaign.

And in Queensland, the LNP has no plan and no idea how to deal with Pauline Hanson.

The LNP primary vote in Longman was almost 44.8 per cent at the 2013 election. In 2016, it fell to 39 per cent. It looks likely now, in the final wash up, to be slashed by another 10 point to around 28 per cent.

The candidate Trevor Ruthenberg could not have done more to kill off his own chances. The military medal fiasco cost the LNP votes to be sure. But this alone does not account for a swing of this magnitude which is more than twice the average of by-election swings historically.

The late push by the Catholic schools to campaign against the Government’s school funding cuts for the sector couldn’t have helped.

At the heart of it was a stronger message from Bill Shorten that posed a singular question to voters — did they want better hospitals or bigger banks.

Labor’s campaign against company tax cuts worked. Turnbull’s strategy to expose Labor’s lies didn’t.

What will bolster Shorten’s leadership, which is now surely beyond doubt, is that the leakage of LNP primary votes went not just to One Nation but also to Labor. The LNP’s fate was sealed when the expected increase in preference flows from One Nation didn’t materialise for the LNP.

The story of Longman is a failure by the LNP to come to terms with One Nation. It failed in the Queensland State election and today’s result proves it has learned nothing from the experience.