Don’t protest too much, Howard warns wavering Libs of Wentworth

When John Howard hit Wentworth, it was the master of sidewalk retail politics showing the apprentice how it’s done.

Master and apprentice: former prime minister John Howard with Liberals candidate Dave Sharma in Wentworth yesterday. Picture: Dylan Robinson

His gait is a little more stooped, his eyes a tad watery, but when John Howard joined Liberal candidate for Wentworth Dave Sharma on the campaign trail yesterday, it was the absolute master of sidewalk retail politics showing the young apprentice how it’s done.

The former prime minister confidently grabbed hand after hand in a walkabout in Sydney’s Double Bay in the electorate, talking drought, small business, cricket or whatever else would do the trick with each voter, and never failed to introduce the com­paratively tongue-tied Sharma and sing the diplomat-turned-­businessman’s praises.

“We want to keep people economically secure, that’s why this man is the right man in Wentworth,” he told shop assistant ­Adelle Perry at jewellery store Alinka.

At a press conference, a strong-voiced Howard boomed out a clear message to wavering traditional Liberals in the normally blue-ribbon seat who might be thinking of leaving the fold on this occasion to show their displeasure over the ousting of former local member Malcolm Turnbull: “Please don’t romance the idea you can have a protest vote and it won’t have any consequences.”

If enough Liberals did so tomorrow, thinking other Liberals would get Sharma over the line, it might backfire. That, he said, would present a vision of political catastrophe.

The loss of Wentworth would “rob” the government of a parliamentary majority and destabilise it, inculcate a sense of defeat that would carry through to the general election and result in a “left wing, union-led, Shorten Labor government” that would axe retirees’ dividend imputation income and introduce “savage new taxes”.

Sharma didn’t really say much at the presser; his most charismatic line was: “It’s going to be a very close by-election.”

While both Howard and Sharma condemned a phony email sent out by an anonymous person that falsely stated independent candidate Kerryn Phelps had the AIDS virus, had pulled out of the race and had urged her followers to vote for the Liberal candidate, Sharma said: “I repudiate this email entirely and thoroughly.”

When asked, he said he would support the investigation the Phelps camp wants authorities to launch.

Howard said “I think it is disgusting, I think it is repugnant”, and went a step further, saying it would be an outrage if anyone even suggested that the email was concocted by the Liberal Party. As the clock runs down to a by-election that polls suggest is likely to see an extraordinary upset in which prominent general practitioner Phelps overturns the near-18 per cent margin Turnbull enjoyed at the last election, his absence from the campaign and failure to support Sharma rang loud through the electorate.

It’s the biggest single line being pushed by Phelps, who at a pre-poll venue in Paddington yesterday stood with a near life-size cardboard figure of Turnbull with the words “Where’s Malcolm?”

Phelps told journalists she was “excited” and “pleased” Turnbull had enigmatically tweeted a “like” for a post from a Phelps supporter that mentioned the poster, before he undid the like within a few ­minutes.

Wentworth, Phelps said yesterday, was having a by-election “because a prime minister was removed for no rational reason”.

That sentiment led to the one bit of awkwardness on yesterday’s walkabout when Howard shook the hand of social worker Gavin Raichman, who said he was a traditional Liberal but would not be voting for Sharma because Scott Morrison had not explained “why he knifed Malcolm Turnbull in the back”.

Howard, who would have encountered hundreds of such sticky situations, used the two-phase ­tactic: try to turn the voter around, and if that fails, disengage.

The former prime minister tried to persuade Raichman that Morrison had supported Turnbull, but the partyroom called on the vote and the former member for Wentworth would have wanted him to transfer his vote to Sharma “because he is a good man”.

But when Raichman continued to remonstrate, Howard moved the caravan on, parting with the words “you have worked this out”.

Howard will turn 80 in July and he will have been out of office for 12 years, after losing the general election and his own seat in 2007.

But he still drew huge smiles from pretty much everyone, and has enormous brand recognition.

“Good onya, Johnny!” one man shouted with a big grin from the passenger seat of a passing vehicle.

When Howard and Sharma encountered delivery man Kevin Mullage with his trolley, Mullage did not want to take a selfie with Sharma, or a selfie with Howard and Sharma; he wanted a selfie just of him with Howard. “That’s our prime minister,” Mullage told The Australian afterwards.

Asked what she made of Howard being wheeled out, Phelps said: “The Liberals have been acting in desperation for some time now.”

If the Liberals’ latest internal polls are right and Phelps leads 55 per cent to 45 per cent on a two-party-preferred basis, she will win on an eclectic mix of left, centre and right-wing policies. “That’s the mark of an independent,” she said yesterday.