Borders and budgets: floating Morrison’s boat

Border security and the budget could turn the tables on Labor’s lead.

In question time yesterday, Prime Minister Scott Morrison continued to attack Labor on the twin issues of border protection and the economy. Picture: AAP

The changes to border protection laws last week are not going to win Scott Morrison the federal election, they haven’t destroyed Bill Shorten’s chances of becoming prime minister, and they are not grounds for a ballot before May.

Yes, Labor and the Opposition Leader have damaged themselves and the Prime Minister is exploiting it to the full.

But there is an ill-considered rush to declare that the changes to offshore-processing are Morrison’s opportunity for a John Howard-like “Tampa moment”, to make flawed comparisons to ­Shorten’s “Mediscare” campaign in the 2016 election and to demand an election be called before the ­budget.

Rushed analysis and heated rhetorical claims ignore the hard facts that no one issue wins an election, myths often emerge about ­political recoveries, and scare campaigns do not succeed in ­isolation.

What’s more, the “governing parties” — as they are increasingly called to differentiate between the major parties, the minor parties and the plethora of single-issue ­independents — are again below clear election-winning levels of primary vote support three months out from an election.

There is no doubt the Coalition has been boosted by Labor’s dilution of ministerial discretion in bringing asylum-seekers from Nauru and Manus Island after they sought to come to Australia illegally by boat. Although the Nine polling revealed on Sunday night is exaggerated by a two-month gap between the previous poll, Labor’s support clearly has fallen and the Coalition’s is up.

Newspoll surveys, published exclusively in The Australian, have shown a two-point drop in Labor’s primary vote support since ­December — before the border protection debate was revived — and a two-point rise for the ­Coalition.

According to the Nine polling — taken from the end of last week and over the weekend after several days of media concentration on the so-called medivac bill in which the ALP allied with the Greens and independents — Labor’s primary vote fell four percentage points from 37 per cent to 33 per cent and the Coalition’s rose from 36 per cent to 38 per cent. The Greens were steady on 13 per cent and “others” rose from 15 per cent to 17 per cent.

Apart from deflating the argument that Australian attitudes to border protection in 2019 are different from what they were in 2001, when the Howard government “drew a line” against illegal boat arrivals, the Nine poll defies claims Labor would gain from its “compassionate border protection” policies, which do away with key elements to the suite of necessary deterrents introduced by previous Labor and Coalition governments.

Individual seats will all have different reactions to the border protection debate, but on a national basis it is clear the Morrison government is benefiting from its perceived strength on national security and picking up vital primary votes to make it competitive.

But claims that Morrison is now in the same position as Howard in 2001, when he turned back the Tampa — with Labor endorsement — and benefited from a five-point jump in primary-vote support in Newspoll, from 40 per cent to 45 per cent, ignore the reality of Howard’s campaign before and after August 2001.

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In March 2001, Liberal support was at its lowest in the history of Newspoll and Howard determined to lift the Coalition’s primary vote from an unwinnable 35 per cent by using the budget and economic management. By the end of August his government had drawn equal to the ALP on 40 per cent primary vote.

After the Tampa became a public issue the Coalition’s support jumped from 40 per cent to 45 per cent — but Labor’s remained virtually unchanged on 39 per cent. Howard got his jump mostly from minor parties and “others”.

It was two weeks later, after the September 11 terror attacks on New York and Washington, that the Coalition’s primary vote surged a further five points to 50 per cent at the cost of Labor, down to 35 per cent, as national security became dominant.

Howard was able to convert the Tampa turnback into a winning lead because he had used the economy, tax breaks and help for seniors in the May budget to put the Coalition in a truly competitive position.

In 2019, three months from an election, Morrison is still leading a Coalition in its longest, lowest run of primary vote support, which began years ago under Malcolm Turnbull. A much longer slump than Howard’s in 2001.

Indeed, Morrison’s position is almost the opposite of Howard’s in 2001 — the Coalition is now in a position to take advantage of delivering a budget surplus and concentrating on the economy after being put into a competitive position by border protection and ­national security.

Comparisons with Howard’s “Tampa election” also ignore the fact that in March 2001 the total primary vote in Newspoll for Democrats, Greens, One Nation and others was 17 per cent, including 4 per cent for the “others”. At the November election the figures for the minor parties were virtually unchanged; Howard had captured his extra support from the ALP to push his primary vote well beyond 40 per cent.

Now, Morrison and Shorten both have primary votes under 40 per cent and face a total vote for minor parties and others of 24 per cent in Newspoll, including 10 per cent for “others”.

In modern times only one of the governing parties — Bob Hawke’s ALP in 1990, with a primary vote of 39.4 per cent — has been able to win a majority of seats with less than 40 per cent of the primary vote.

Julia Gillard lost a government majority in 2010 with a primary vote of 37.6 per cent but negotiated herself into minority government with the support of independents and the Greens.

At that 2010 election, and at every election since, the support for “others” in Newspoll — which does not include minor parties — three months from the election has been at least 8 per cent, which is four to five times the support for “others” at all elections in the previous 40 years.

To hold government Morrison has to garner votes from Labor, One Nation and others, while Shorten, to win government, has to wrest support from the Coalition, Greens and others. Failure to do so could lead to minority government for either side, despite Labor’s lead in the polls.

It is here that the characterisation of Morrison’s attack on the changes to border protection and how it plays out in the public is ­crucial to both sides’ efforts to draw back lost supporters.

Morrison is simply saying Labor changed the laws and can’t be trusted on border protection because it has changed offshore processing protocol, will abandon temporary protection visas and will backflip on turning back boats, just as it did in 2007.

He’s playing to a Coalition strength and appealing to Coalition, One Nation and Labor voters who backed Howard in 2001.

Before the 2007 election, Kevin Rudd explicitly told The Australian in an election pledge that he would turn back boats. After the election Rudd failed to turn back boats. Illegal boat arrivals resumed on an unprecedented scale and 1200 people drowned at sea.

Twelve years later, Shorten’s response to Morrison is to describe the Prime Minister’s reaction as “scaremongering” and as an appeal to people-smugglers, to totally ignore temporary protection visas, and claim nothing has changed with Labor’s legislative amendments from opposition.

In defending Labor’s completely contradictory and illogical position, the Opposition Leader argues that Australians are “different” in 2019. It’s possible now to give up ministerial control on borders and still be tough on security, he argues.

Both claims are demonstrably false.

Yet the idea that Morrison is scaremongering and, paradoxically, is using Shorten’s own scare tactics over Medicare in the 2016 election has taken hold among Coalition critics and supporters.

The wrongheaded rush to compare Morrison’s “scare campaign” on border protection with Shorten’s 2016 “Mediscare” campaign ignores two facts: The changes to offshore processing have happened, they are a fact, and Labor did it; and there was no poll bounce for Labor after Shorten unleashed his claims that the Coalition was going to privatise Medicare.

When Shorten unveiled his Mediscare campaign on June 18, 2016, the Coalition’s primary vote in Newspoll was 41 per cent, Labor’s was 36 per cent and the two-party preferred was 50-50. The following week the Coalition’s primary rose to 43 per cent, Labor’s was unchanged and the two-party-preferred went to 51-49 per cent in the government’s favour.

In the final week of the campaign Labor’s primary fell to 35 per cent, the Coalition’s fell to 42 per cent and “others” rose to 13 per cent.

There is no doubt the Medi­scare campaign had an impact on individual seats and probably helped lose Coalition marginal seats — such as Lindsay in western Sydney — but the national impact was not the same as last week’s border protection changes.

Morrison can point to what Labor did in 2008 and last week as evidence for his claim that Labor “can’t be trusted on border protection” in contrast to Shorten’s hollow Medicare claim.

The “extraordinary dishonesty” of the Mediscare campaign was used as an excuse for the Liberal loss of 14 seats. But many of those seats were lost because of the poor overall campaign and being targeted by unions and GetUp weeks before Shorten even mentioned Medicare two weeks out from the election.

Turnbull claimed on election night, when defeat was still possible and only avoided later by a Nationals seat gain, that there was an unprecedented campaign from the unions, with “the mass ranks of the union movement, and all of their millions of dollars, telling vulnerable Australians that Medicare was going to be privatised or sold, frightening people in their bed and even today, even as voters went to the polls”.

Again Morrison is in a completely different position to both Turnbull and Shorten in 2016: his scare is based on Labor’s actions from opposition in alliance with the Greens and independents, and he has time to extend the ­campaign on trust beyond illegal boat arrivals to the Coalition’s other strength: economic ­management.

Morrison’s line of attack in parliament yesterday was that the Coalition has “delivered 1.2 million jobs, the lowest unemployment rate in seven years and on April 2 will deliver the first budget surplus in more than a decade”.

This is the synergy Morrison is bringing to border protection and the economy: You can’t trust Labor on our borders and you can’t trust Labor with the economy. Rudd promised to turn back the boats and didn’t. His treasurer, Wayne Swan, promised to deliver a budget surplus and didn’t.

Despite Labor’s fervent wish for an early election because the Coalition has “lost control” and the Turnbull-like reasoning to go for an election when a single issue is working in the polls, Morrison is content to take his time and craft his own re-election themes.