Federal election 2016: internal divisions in main parties grow

In mainstream electronic media — on Sky News and ABC 24, Twitter and all the main news websites — week one of campaign 2016 was as fractured as all politics since John Howard’s 2007 loss. Same in the US with the rise of Donald Trump and socialist Bernie Sanders, and in Britain with Labour’s old-style Marxist, Jeremy Corbyn.

The post-global financial crisis, slow-growth, real-income-falling world is polarising and we are not immune, even within our individual parties. The Coalition and Labor can’t even agree on whether we have a deficit problem and if it’s really OK to keep slugging the few who actually pay most of the tax in a country where half the working-age population gets more back in benefits than they pay.

The Australian editorialised many times before the Liberal leadership change last September that Labor was beatable on the same issues that destroyed it in 2013: asylum-seekers, climate change and debt and deficit. The paper argued that Malcolm Turnbull could never be as convincing on these issues as Tony Abbott.

The split between those whom Miranda Devine in The Daily Telegraph christened the Delcons ­(delusional conservatives) and mainstream Coalition voters who just want Labor beaten still rips at the government’s heart. As do asylum-seekers in Labor’s heartland.

The ABC’s Media Watch hit on the Delcons issue on Monday night when it nailed Alan Jones for a soft interview with Labor leader Bill Shorten the previous week.

Abbott’s other main supporter unto death, Andrew Bolt, got ­angrier on his blog as the week progressed. First with Turnbull for appointing a green, Lin Hatfield Dodds, as his deputy secretary for social policy. Then with the woman Abbott said in the 2013 campaign had sex appeal, Fiona Scott. Holding the bellwether western Sydney seat of Lindsay, Scott was asked live in front of Turnbull by Fairfax journalist Heath Aston if she had voted for Abbott or Turnbull in September.

Midweek, Bolt and Jones were unhappy the budget had changed superannuation rules for weal­th­ier Australians. This was partly addressed on Thursday afternoon when The Australian’swebsite broke the story that ­Abbott now supported the superannuation changes. By then Bolt’s blog was upset Turnbull had been named in the Panama Papers in Thursday’s Australian Financial Review.

On the Labor side, the fractures on asylum-seekers widened all week. The candidate for Herbert, Cathy O’Toole, was the subject of blanket television, radio and news website coverage on Tuesday when a photo emerged on Facebook from February of her holding a sign reading “let them stay”.

That morning, The Australian had published a graphic naming seven Labor candidates or retiring members who were at odds with the party on asylum-seekers. By yesterday, that number was more like 19.

On Sky News’ Bolt Report on Tuesday night, Victorian Liberal president Michael Kroger debated Labor defence spokesman Stephen Conroy, and asylum-seekers were the main fare. As they spoke, Labor’s Treasury spokesman, Chris Bowen, was holding the line on the ABC’s 7.30. Bowen and Conroy claimed the issue had been decided at the national conference in Melbourne in July last year and everyone supported the platform.

Unfortunately for Labor, everyone kept dissenting. By Thursday night on Sky News Peter Beattie was admitting Labor had real trouble with refugee policy and candidates like the one for the seat of Melbourne, Sophie Ismail, needed to differentiate themselves from their Greens opponents (Adam Bandt holds the seat) by sticking with party policy.

One hopeful who bought into the Left’s line on boats and got away with it was independent candidate for New England Tony Windsor on The Drum on Monday night. Not sure why we did not hear Deputy PM Barnaby Joyce making hay with that given what the voters in his seat, where he and Windsor are battling to the death, are likely to think about the issue.

Bowen, on Tuesday’s 7.30, also kicked off an ABC mini-theme for the week when he denied Labor’s big-spending plans signalled the party was moving towards the Swedish economic model (very big government social democracy).

By Wednesday night, a gushing Tony Jones was asking Richard Di Natale on Lateline if new Canadian rock star PM Justin Trudeau was his role model. Di Natale of the 12 per cent Greens ­national vote, that is. Oh, and would a Greens government look to introduce the “Scandinavian model”?

Highlighting the raucous partisan divide over net taxpayers and welfare recipients, the story of Duncan Storrar and the crowd-funding campaign set up after his Monday night Q&A appearance blossomed all week. His son Aztec Major told this newspaper’s Caroline Overington for Thursday’s edition that his father was a deadbeat dad with a drug problem and The Australian and The Daily Telegraph yesterday revealed Duncan had convictions for “threats to kill and unlawful assault”. No wonder he has no time to pay tax.

Liberal Democrat senator David Leyonhjelm was prominent on Sky News and ABC 24 all week. He made some good points, too. The double dissolution was likely to increase the number of crossbench senators, with a full Senate election quota falling from 14.3 to 7.7 per cent of the vote in each state. The government could even win the election but not have the numbers in a joint sitting to pass the election-trigger ABCC Bill, he claimed. He told Sky News on Wednesday the media needed to look harder at the voting record of South Australian senator Nick Xenophon, who almost always sided with the Greens. Nick got another chance to accuse the government of failing to have a plan to replace the car industry in an ­interview with Fran Kelly on AM yesterday. Who knew central planning was so big in Adelaide?

Peta Credlin’s Sky News debut on Sunday night was uneventful but the former Abbott chief of staff got better as the week went on, ­despite her “Mr harbourfront mansion” slip on PM Agenda on Thursday. She shone more each day in discussion about on-the-ground electoral tactics.

Best media amusement of the week: as if to confuse the left Twitterati, two prominent News Corp daily tabloids came out with strongly pro-Labor front pages. The Daily Telegraph on Wednesday led page one with “Save our Albo” and the Townsville Bulletin led on a pro-Labor dams plan with the splash head: “Libs don’t give a dam.” Clearly not the work of an evil empire trying to orchestrate a mass anti-Labor vote.

Chris Mitchell is the former editor-in-chief of The Australian.