As the dust settles on the Wentworth byelection weekend, and despite vote-counting expected to continue, it’s fairly clear that the Liberals are going to be busy licking their wounds for the time being. Friday saw a swell predictions, promotions and prophecies from the Crikey crew — including by Bernard Keane, Margot Saville, William Bowe, and Kishor Napier-Raman — as Australia squared up for the byelection, and readers were right there with us. Here’s what you had to say.
On expectations in Wentworth
Chris Gulland writes: Where are Peter Dutton and Tony Abbott in all this show of solidarity and conviction, surely they are the calibre of politicians that could go on the hustings and demonstrate the love within the Liberal party?
Evil Brian writes: Tim Murray’s got the perfect no-hope candidates job here. He gets to hone his hustings skills in what everybody knows to be an unwinnable apprenticeship role, and can then either contest a winnable marginal or get preselected for a safe ALP seat, or even slide in through the Senate at some stage in the next few years. Either way, he’ll make an excellent addition to the ALP parliamentary team when his time comes.
Roro writes: I don’t understand the thinking behind getting Howard in on the Wentworth campaign. The Liberals/right have wheeled Howard out on a few occasions recently that haven’t exactly turned out well for them. See e.g the anti-marriage equality campaign and the 2018 Mayo byelection. If anything, he represents the economic and political times that have lead us to today, and not in a good way.
Bref writes: I well remember wondering at the last couple of elections when Labor was going to bring out the big guns and some cut-through policies. And here I am again, hoping they’re just keeping their powder dry, but fearing the worst. Where are the nation building policies and plans?
zut alors writes: Note to Bill Shorten: I trust you noticed the proliferation of anti-Adani protesters in the latter days of the Wentworth campaign. Worth thinking about & taking a clear stand. No more mealy-mouthed non-commitments, Bill.
TheRabidHamster writes: Amazingly, the Coalition seems somewhat surprised that they’ve found themselves in this position. It’s almost for them, as if they haven’t on an almost monthly basis since the 2014 budget, totally screwed up the job of governing and aped the worst aspects of the chaos of the RGR years. Not to be undone though, they’ve gone much further in their misadventures than even Rudd could have concocted. The employment figures and the general economic outlook seems to be immune to the performance of this awful mob, which needs to be reflected on when Morrison claims some credit at election time.
Send your comments, corrections, clarifications and cock-ups to boss@crikey.com.au. We reserve the right to edit comments for length and clarity. Please include your full name.
“Were the Liberals the only ones who didn’t see Wentworth coming?”
They did see it coming.
Ironically, they may have seen it coming a bit too much. It will be impossible to prove this, but it could well be that despite the seat polling they dropped to The Unaustralian (remember how bad seat polling has been in Australia recently?) that Sharma was actually slightly ahead with a week to go, only for the Liberals’ panic at a presumed 5 point deficit leading to them scaring the horses as they thrashed around in a panic. If nothing else, the pre-polls and postals are not at all suggestive of the Liberal Party closing the margin with their final week shenanigans, and there’s at least a case for the opposite.
No sympathy for them. Any political party whose reaction to a bad byelection poll is to make foreign policy announcements tuned for the byelection doesn’t deserve to be governing. What happens when a real emergency happens, how will they panic then?
I would dearly love to know whether the embassy fiasco moved any Jewish votes at all.
As a tactic it reminded me a little of the desperate ALP move to remove Gillard at the 11th hour and re-instate the psycho for an election they were sure to lose quite badly.
The hardcore Jewish vote that Morrison was probably hoping to attract with this stupid stunt had already voted before the announcement, as all highly orthodox voters observe the holy sabbath which was the election day itself. Thus, the only people likely to be moved by a embassy location shift in Israel couldn’t vote for it.
It pretty much was yet another LNP own goals.
The safe liberal seat where I live has had the following party-endorsed members- in order – a political academic who found out that it wasn’t as easy as it looked, and was a bit of a dud, then a Trade guy who found his true calling post-politics as a well paid rep. for a major foreign company, and now a nice-enough guy who has not really given any indication that he or his party have good (or any) policies. He does have a knack for getting his photo in the 2-fold insultingly bland “newsletter” issued by his office, and unless he gets moved to an even better-paid government job we may have him until he retires. That is, unless a good independent candidate (say, a drover’s dog) can beat him at the next election. Here’s hoping.