Labor routs the Coalition as voters reject Dutton’s undercooked offering
- Written by: Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra
In a dramatic parallel, what happened in Canada at the beginning of this week has now been replicated in Australia at the end of the week.
An opposition that a few months ago had looked just possibly on track to dislodge the government, or at least run it close, has bombed spectacularly. Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has lost his Queensland seat of Dickson, as did the Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre in Canada.
Far from being forced into minority government, as most observers had been expecting, Labor has increased its majority, with a substantial swing towards it.
Its strong victory reflects not just the the voters’ judgement that the Coalition was not ready to govern. It was worse than that. People just didn’t rate the Coalition or its offerings.
Multiple factors played into this debacle for the Coalition.
A first-term government historically gets a chance of a second term.
The Trump factor overshadowed this election. It made people feel it was best to stick with the status quo. People also were very suspicious of Dutton, whom they saw (despite disclaimers) as being too like the hardline US president.
After the last election, Dutton was declared by many to be unelectable, and that proved absolutely to be the case, despite what turned out to be a misleading impression when the polls were so bad for Labor.
Even if they’d had a very good campaign, the Coalition would probably not have had a serious chance of winning this election.
But its campaign was woeful. The nuclear policy was a drag and a distraction. Holding back policy until late was a bad call. When the policies came, they were often thin and badly prepared. The ambitious defence policy had no detail. The gas reservation scheme had belated modelling.
The forced backflip on working from home, and the late decision to offer a tax offset, were other examples of disaster in the campaign.
Dutton must wear the main share of the blame. He kept strategy and tactics close to his chest.
But the performance of the opposition frontbench, with a few exceptions, has been woeful. Shadow Treasurer Angus Taylor and finance spokeswoman Jane Hume have been no match for their Labor counterparts Jim Chalmers and Katy Gallagher.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Labor ran a very disciplined campaign. Albanese himself performed much better than he did in 2022.
Labor was helped by an interest rate cut in February and the prospect of another to come later this month.
Albanese transformed himself, or was transformed, from last year to this year.
The cost of living presented a huge hurdle for Labor, but the government was able to point to relief it had given on energy bills, tax and much else. The Coalition had opposed several of Labor’s measures and was left trying to play catch-up at the end.
The Liberal Party now has an enormous task to rebuild. The “target the suburbs” strategy has failed. At the same time, the old inner-city Liberal heartland is deeply teal territory.
Hume said, in an unfortunately colourful comment, on Friday, “You do not read the entrails until you have gutted the chicken”.
The chicken has now been gutted. There will be a much more bitter post mortem than in 2022. The leadership choices are less than optimal for the party: Angus Taylor? Andrew Hastie? Sussan Ley?
An interesting thought: if Josh Frydenberg had held his seat in 2022, and led the Liberal party to this election, would be result have been better? One thing is clear: Frydenberg took the right decision in not recontesting Kooyong, which teal Monique Ryan has held.
Anyway, who would want to lead the Liberals at this moment?
