Polling suggests that Scott Morrison, rather than making up ground on Anthony Albanese and Labor, is starting to drift further behind. He has less than a fortnight to reverse that trend, lift the Coalition’s vote, and hope preferences from long-time Coalition supporter Clive Palmer can offset a stronger Labor vote.
But as Cam Wilson noted yesterday, Morrison’s reputation as a formidable campaigner (partly the result of defeating a big-target Labor in 2019, part media manufacture) is taking a battering as he struggles to shift voter sentiment. Morrison himself is a big part of the problem: he’s now a known quantity with voters, and voters, especially women, don’t like what they see.
But the Coalition’s campaign tactics have also been dramatically less successful. The Morrison campaign, carefully prepared in advance with help from right-wing strategist and Lynton Crosby protégé Isaac Levido, has incorporated successful elements from other right-wing campaigns, drawing from the Republicans in the US and from Boris Johnson in the UK (Levido was a key Tory strategist in 2019), as well as from Morrison’s own “miracle” 2019 win.
The campaign’s key elements are:
- Micro-targeted pork-barrelling for marginal seats
- Culture war campaigns to distract and provoke outrage from the left
- Coordination with the right-wing media and News Corp to deliver attack lines
- Demonisation of opponents and their policies.
But:
Demonisation of opponents has been dramatically less successful, mainly because Labor has learnt its lesson — or re-learnt John Hewson’s lesson — and given Morrison far less material to work with. Labor has instead taken a lesson from Kevin Rudd’s 2007 campaign and narrowed its differences to a few key areas — climate change, integrity, cost of living, housing.
Morrison has tried to drum up scare campaigns there — accusing Labor of a stealth carbon tax, saying a federal ICAC would be a “kangaroo court”, warning Help to Buy would see the government own your home — but each has failed to resonate or, in the case of a federal ICAC, merely highlighted Morrison’s own failure.
Attempts to demonise Albanese himself have fallen flat. The original attempt to paint him as a left-wing ogre (as one eminent Liberal said, “They’re trying to make people scared of Albo when he’s about as scary as the family golden retriever”) was replaced with an attempt to portray him as weak. His personal approval numbers have only improved since.
Coordination with the Murdoch political party and select journalists in media outlets is crucial to the Morrison campaign, as it is to the UK Tories and the Republicans. In 2019, a Sky News journalist was specifically tasked with disrupting Bill Shorten’s media conferences by yelling questions at him about the cost of his climate policies. It was the Prime Minister’s Office this time that began feeding journalists “gotcha” questions for Albanese, either directly or via compliant editors (the reason so many journalists read these questions from their phones isn’t always poor memory).
News Corp’s campaigning for Morrison and the beleaguered Josh Frydenberg has been even more blatant in 2022 than during previous elections. But the “gotcha” moments were overdone and themselves became the story, as has the extent of media bias against Labor and independents, especially at the ABC. The old line that political staffers should never become the story also applies to journalists, but they’ve brought into plain sight the role of the media in distorting election narratives.
Culture warring has been by far the most successful part of Morrison’s campaign, and particularly his use of the transphobic comments of his handpicked Warringah candidate Katherine Deves. It’s a bold strategy — essentially to gift Warringah to Zali Steggall, but with the aim of signalling to more socially conservative voters in outer suburbs and regional communities that he supports her transphobia.
The status of trans people is not a vote shifter on a large scale, but is designed to convey that Morrison is aligned with the mores of particular communities. Strategists on both sides say Morrison’s support of Deves has played well. There are two problems, however — one is that the kind of people likely to nod along when Morrison backs Deves may well already vote for him, and Deves may help inflict a grisly toll on moderate Liberals — Trent Zimmerman in North Sydney, Jason Falinski in Mackellar and Dave Sharma in Wentworth.
Morrison’s other culture war front — on religious discrimination legislation, which he tried to ramp up over the weekend — has been less successful. This is because Liberal MPs and senators have readily emerged to say they will again cross the floor to vote against it, and because — unusually — Morrison has been given a rough time by journalists demanding to know when he would legislate to protect children from being expelled from schools for their sexuality.
Micro-targeted pork-barrelling, despite being of dubious political benefit, has become a crucial part of the conservative campaign arsenal. In the UK, for example, the Johnson government is using multibillion-pound slush funds to relentlessly pork-barrel targeted electorates (though it didn’t help Johnson in the most recent council elections). But greater awareness of the cynical tactic thanks to Bridget McKenzie’s rorting and Alan Tudge’s bungled car parks, and a growing belief that this represents corruption, appear to have mitigated its effectiveness. In NSW, Premier Dominic Perrottet is now making a virtue of reforming NSW’s grant processes — much abused by his predecessor — to curb the practice.
The last week and a half of the Morrison campaign will be a fascinating test of the agility of his team. Can they refine and sharpen their four key tactics to start delivering better results? Or do they shift gear and try something different, reaching outside the Murdoch-Johnson-Trump-Morrison playbook for another tactic? Victory isn’t out of reach yet, but people are already voting in their tens of thousands. Change can’t come soon enough.
If it was common knowledge that Morrison was using the slimy services of Lynton Crosby, and people were well aware of just what an antidemocratic arsehole that bloke and his ilk are, the LNP support would dive a lot further.
Wish your work was mainstream Bernard, but well done anyway – I will share the hell out of it on Twitter and FB as usual, as will many others fighting the good fight.
Would the majority of voters even know or care who Crosby is or what he does? Bear in mind also a good proportion of the population, if they knew, would applaud his influence.
When President Macron stated “I know he is a liar ” he echoed the feelings of many Australians who now ask Mr Morrison when are you telling the truth ?
Maybe Morrison is willing to sacrifice affluent, well-educated inner-city seats in order to remake the Liberal Party as an outer-suburban, Trumpian populist party, closely aligned with the religious Right. In Wentworth and North Sydney, there is said to be murmuring about the “boganisation” of the Liberal Party. But in a close election, they can’t afford to be giving away some of the old jewels in the Tory tiara.
As for pork-barrelling – yes, it is huge, blatant, and shameless. But once the electorate has been made as cynical as it is now, they may be prepared to trouser the bribes and vote Morrison out anyway. No-one needs to feel grateful for being bribed with their own money.
Great point. Murdoch has been focusing on the Teal Independents, perhaps knowing(?) full well that the outer ‘burbs will be crucial instead.
Something for Murdoch to laugh about if Morrison gets back in, that the inner city “elites” who reject both of them, aren’t less important than the bogans in the outer ‘burbs.
Liberal Party federal vice-president Teena McQueen let that cat out of the bag: “with a couple of lefties gone we can get back to our core philosophy”.
Yep I do think the strategy is to take the Libs further to the right and be rid of the moderates. This will excite the base, but good luck using this as a political strategy in a centrist country with compulsory voting
Yes. And also preferential voting, rather than the toxic First Past the Post system they have in most US and UK electorates which effectively rules out the emergence of any third parties or coalitions of convenience – ‘vote for Ralph Nader and get the Republican, not the Democrat’.
In AU as a wavering urban Liberal wet, you can vote for a Teal Independent and still take insurance with a Tory second preference: conscience salved, you have not personally supported those further left, but the nice Lib who couldn’t restrain the reactionary urges in their own party is voted out.
Certainly starting to look like a Trump clone
I accept that this is factual. But it is not ‘fascinating’. It is disgusting. I am fed up with the characterisation of Morrison as a ‘genius’ campaigner. It seems that involves and ability to lie, smirk, avoid questioning on accountability, run irrelevant diversionary tactics, engage in corrupt conspiracy with the media etc. That is not genius, It is the personification of the destruction of democracy and decent society in the pursuit of power for the sake of having power.
That most of the media is not reporting these outrages makes those organisations complicit in the destruction of democracy and decent society as David Hardaker has correctly identified.
The COALition could abandon such grubby tactics – if only due to failure – and try campaigning on their principled achievements in governing.
It would not take long…
You forgot Bernard that the Palmer/Hanson factor comes into play also.
THe L/NP as much as they cry Christian Right Wing values do deals with the devil to help them over the line!
Palmer preferences won’t help the Liberals much in electorates like Wentworth, in fact the message they send there may be counter-productive.
But outer suburbs that might otherwise vote Labor could vote Palmer.
For all the focus on the glamorous Teal Independents, the less fabulous outer ‘burbs might anoint Morrison as PM again through Palmer’s preferences.
Labor should run a (social media?) campaign telling voters that Palmer wants to play them for “fools”, making them think their LNP preferences don’t really matter, when they could very well decide the election.
Palmer is expected to get the most votes in safe Labor seats. Regrettable but unlikely to shift the election, though it might plausibly affect the composition of the Senate.
Hope so, this Palmer should be shown the door and no one vote for him, but they will.
Same as Hypocrite Hanson, there are a lot of ppl out there who think the aforementioned and latter are some kinda saviours.
President Macron made the statement ” I know he is a liar ” .That statement is understood by Australian voters this time around . At the last election, the ‘Miracle ” win was purchased by fossil fuel preference votes .Fossil fuels now stink
With climate change no longer a myth and the stench of corruption around the Morrison minority government with the Nats and CP led by Barnaby the real power brokers. I hope the voters have had enough of the pentecostal snake oil salesmen .