Quiet Australians heard loud and clear in Coalition election win

The Quiet Australians who voted for Scott Morrison were heard after copping vicious online abuse.

Rachel Bierling, 31, with daughters Helena, 7, and Olivia, 5, in a park in Nundah, Brisbane. The traditional Labor supporter voted Liberal. Picture: Lyndon Mechielsen

Who are the Quiet Australians, the ones who voted for Scott Morrison?

Listening to those spewing forth vitriol online you’d soon form a picture, and it wouldn’t be pretty.

Coalition voters are racist, they’re sexist and they’re so greedy. Look at them, sitting like Scrooges on their big piles of money, watching while the planet burns, refusing to share.

That’s the stereotype. Here’s the reality.

Single mum Rachel Bierling lives in the north Brisbane suburb of Nundah, in Wayne Swan’s old seat of Lilley.

A traditional Labor voter, Ms Bierling, 31, said she and many of her friends voted for the Coalition hoping they would “build a strong economy” for her two daughters.

Describing herself as “poor” — she receives a welfare payment — Ms Bierling said: “My friend said to me, ‘But Labor gives us money.’

“I said, ‘Yeah, but it puts the country in debt, too.’

“If there’s major crises and hospitals start shutting down and schools are affected, I’ll say, ‘Looks like we made a mistake, maybe it’s time for a change,’ ” she said. “But at the moment, it is working.”

Amanda Harrison is a teacher and a mum. She’s married with two children, 13 and 10, and they — her family — are her everything.

She doesn’t always vote Liberal. She takes her time, weighing up the options.

“But it really resonated with me, what Mr Morrison said during the campaign,” she told The ­Australian.

“We want to take care of our kids. We want to help them get good jobs, maybe go to university.

“Labor seemed to be implying we were greedy and selfish for wanting pretty basic things.

“I looked at the Morrison family, and I thought: his family looks like us, a typical Australian family, wanting to get ahead.

“I looked at how I was being ­described, and I looked at my own parents, who worked hard for 30 years, and Bill Shorten was going to punish them, and why? What had they done wrong? Just worked hard, all their lives. And I just thought, no, you can’t do that. But what’s been really interesting this last few days is how many other people there are, just like us. Waking up to look at the vote, I thought: oh, OK, we’re not wrong!

“It is normal to want the things we want. And it felt great.”

Quiet Australians — it’s the name Morrison gave to the ­Coalition’s not-at-all-noisy but rather determined supporters on election night — are often ­appalled by the hatred online, ­especially on Sunday morning.

A sample: “To the many f*& up people who voted for the #LiarFromTheShire … the Coalition are going to have so much more fun wiping their asses with your money.”

Also: “You are the dumbest ­nation on earth giving this pack of liars thieves and cut throats another term.”

And: “The grandchildren of the people that voted for Morrison will be remembered as the people that approved further extinction of our native animals.”

The commentator Jane Caro’s remarks have been reported elsewhere. She referred to voters as “turds” (in The Sydney Morning Herald yesterday, Ms Caro said she’d had too much to drink, and she is now calling for more civility in public life.)

Still, ordinary Australians look at this, and think: OK, you’ve lost me.

Mark Humphery-Jenner is a fin­ance expert, based in Sydney. He’s never been a hardline conservative, having voted Yes in the same-sex marriage plebiscite, for example.

“The specific reason I voted Liberal was because Labor’s policies would attack people who are hardworking and ambitious,” he said.

“Their policy was to attack success. And they are intolerant. Whenever you express an opinion that is positive about a conservative position on something, you are castigated as being racist, homo­phobic.

“They were demonising people, saying, ‘Oh, it’s only the big end of town’, like anyone who might get hurt wasn’t human.”

Ben Vandenberg was one of those whooping with joy as Mr Morrison took the stage on Saturday night. By his own admission, he’s very far from struggling. He’s under 40, he’s a family man, with three kids. He’s got a grape-growing business in Mildura that employs up to 50 people, seasonally.

It’s a big operation, and he’s proud of the work that’s gone into it. “I have been building this business for years. I took a risk and I took out a big loan, and when you’re just starting to get ahead, you’re just starting to see rewards, somebody wants to come and tax you and redistribute my wealth?” he said.

“I created a business. I created jobs. I don’t want to deal with ­people swearing at me, those ­people living in their castles, in the cities, dictating to me.

“I’m sorry, but how people in the cities think, it’s not how everyone thinks. People tell me to worry about climate change. I’m a grape grower. I know about climate. I also know that I could turn off every light in my house and put in candles, and I could ride a donkey to work and it would not make a difference to climate change.”

The Quiet Australians also include voters who aren’t yet wealthy, but hoping to get there.

Tyler Mapstone, 27, voted for the Morrison government.

He grew up on the Sunshine Coast, moved to Adelaide for uni and now works in finance in ­Sydney

“It was a hard decision,” he said, “the last six months, I thought, no, I don’t want more turmoil. But they got it together.

“I’m young, and I wouldn’t mind making some investments one day. I can’t see why you’d punish people for trying hard. A lot of my friends vote Labor and Greens. But my choice is my choice. I don’t feel like I have to justify it.”

Then, too, you can’t talk about the Quiet Australians without talking about the baby boomers.

Lynne Dawson, 68, of Cooroy, Queensland, is a boomer, and “I consider myself a Quiet Australian, because my voice seldom gets heard. Increasingly, I’m less and less quiet.”

She has two adult children, and “four gorgeous granddaughters”, and lives in a pretty village in Queensland, but previously ran a macadamia farm; before that, she had 14 staff in a hairdressing salon in Mt Isa.

“People forget, when you run a business, you’re responsible for your staff, who have to pay their mortgages,” she said.

“They don’t take into account that small business people put their houses and everything on the line, and there’s no guarantee, one week to the next, that you’ll make money.

“The only way to put appren­tices on is to have a successful ­business.

“People want to call us greedy, but — wonderful Australians! — we just weren’t going to cop it.”

Too right: on Saturday, they got up, and in a rather delightful show of independence, ignoring those who presumed to tell them how to think and what to do, they stepped quietly to the cardboard ballot booth, and ticked the box that would deliver a majority for the man who spoke not over but right to them.