Venom

by David Crowe

  Labor national secretary Noah Carroll had prepared for this by meeting Facebook before the campaign began to discuss ways to stamp out false claims once they emerged. Labor approached the social media company again when the falsehoods spread, but the party felt the response was slow and inadequate. It had to fight fire with fire by paying for advertising that would promote links to stories that debunked the claims. Labor was wary of making a noise about the problem in the national media, out of concern that escalating the issue would only accelerate the spread of the falsehoods.

  A more obvious danger came from parts of the traditional media. Just as Turnbull had blamed News Corp for campaigning against him, now Shorten saw it as an opponent. Shorten took an uncompromising position towards News Corp and its executive chairman, Rupert Murdoch. A manager from the Australian arm of the company had spoken to Shorten’s staff months earlier about setting up a time for the Labor leader to meet the media proprietor, but Shorten turned the offer down, a departure from the practice of former leaders including Kevin Rudd. When the ABC revealed this rejection, Shorten added a barb. ‘My real conversation is not with the rich and powerful in this country,’ he said.14 Sure of himself and what he stood for, Shorten took the calculated risk of treating the Murdoch media empire with disregard, or even disdain.

  The full force of the News Corp onslaught came in the last ten days of the campaign, when the Daily Telegraph raised the highly personal subject of Shorten’s mother, Ann. The front page headline, ‘Mother of Invention’, claimed the Labor leader had shown ‘slipperiness on detail’ when speaking on the ABC’s Q&A program about the sacrifices his mother had made in being a teacher for most of her life when she aspired to becoming a lawyer. Central to the report was the suggestion that Shorten had misled the audience by not mentioning his mother’s career as a lawyer later in her life. Yet Shorten had spoken at other times of her brief period in the law, which she could only study after her two sons had left school.

  The report was an extraordinary over-reach on a subject usually quarantined from the hard politics of an election campaign. It was also wrong — and not only about Ann Shorten. On a deeper level it showed a complete lack of awareness of the sacrifices made by many women of an earlier generation who had the brains for careers they could not pursue. Voters who wondered about the man behind the politician had their answer on the day the story appeared, when Shorten held the most compelling press conference of his campaign — a moment when his voice choked and his eyes welled up at the memory of his mother’s unrealised ambitions.

  Shorten had made a conscious decision to confront News Corp, or any other media company, if he felt its coverage was unfair. Shorten and his senior shadow ministers, including Plibersek, followed this by raising questions about whether Murdoch’s companies paid their fair share of tax and whether media could abuse their market power. ‘Not everyone in News Corp is the same, but some days they should just put that they’re a political party, they should put “written and authorised” on their front page,’ Shorten said.15 ’ News Corp Australia executive chairman Michael Miller later defended the coverage and criticised Labor for its ‘fairly coordinated effort’ to battle the company rather than the government.16

  Clive Palmer was another disruptive force for the Labor campaign. The mining magnate had seen his Palmer United Party disintegrate after he had entered the lower house for a single term in 2013, but he poured cash into a new entity, the United Australia Party, using royalties from a mining deal with Chinese companies. By the end of the campaign, the UAP had spent at least $53.6 million compared to the $14.5 million spent by the Liberals and $13.3 million by Labor, according to research company Nielsen.17 And the tone of Palmer’s campaign was overwhelmingly critical of Shorten. What had begun as a blitz of newspaper and television advertisements about Palmer policies turned into a negative campaign against Labor.

  Shorten and his closest advisers felt they could tough out this confrontation with the media and attack from Palmer because they had an edge over Morrison in the polls. The Labor track polling of twenty target seats was conducted by YouGov Galaxy, the same firm running the Newspoll surveys published in The Australian, and it showed Labor was within reach of victory. Labor fell behind in the middle of the campaign and was weakest in Queensland, but recovered as polling day neared. By the last week of the campaign, Shorten was being told there was a swing towards Labor in Western Australia. Labor began the campaign with 69 seats and was confident of winning the new seat of Fraser in western Melbourne. In the final days, the results showed it was in a strong position in Boothby, Corangamite, Chisholm, Dunkley, Gilmore, Hasluck, La Trobe, Reid, Stirling and Swan. It might not win all these seats from the Coalition, but it believed it could secure enough to claim 76 seats and a majority.

  The Labor campaign went into mourning on the Thursday before election day, when Bob Hawke died in his sleep at the age of 89. His wife, Blanche d’Alpuget, announced the news shortly after 7.30 p.m. and Shorten made a statement in Sydney at 8.30 p.m. as well as arranging to visit d’Alpuget the next day. The news came only one day after Hawke had released an open letter praising Shorten for his ‘political courage’ and policy ideas. Hawke’s letter was aimed at the Coalition’s key weakness: disunity. ‘As I said repeatedly when I was prime minister’, he wrote, ‘if you can’t govern yourselves, you can’t govern the country’.

  Shorten cancelled plans to campaign in Brisbane and scaled back the intensity of his campaign, focusing on moments to remember Hawke. In a frenzied contrast, Morrison flew to Queensland before travelling to Tasmania and home to Sydney in the final two days. Only some voters would have noticed the intensity of his campaign, yet some Liberals believed it showed Australians that Morrison was hungry for the job. For all the talk of a late swing to the government, however, the results from early voting centres tended to show Labor had fallen behind when the early votes were cast.18

  Labor’s most formidable opponent in living memory, John Howard, believed Morrison had out-campaigned Shorten and won the vital contest between two leaders in an era when party loyalty was far less important than in the past.

  ‘I think there were two things that worked very much in his favour,’ Howard said.19 ‘One was the growing implications from Labor’s tax increases and the implausibility of describing anybody affected by them as the big end of town. That was a huge mistake. And the other thing was that, during the campaign, the personal comparison between Morrison and Shorten worked hugely in Morrison’s favour. At a time when tribal support for the two major sides of politics is less intense than it used to be, I think the strengths and weaknesses of the leaders become even more apparent.’

  Howard, who had led the Liberal Party to four election victories over Labor, believed Shorten put himself at odds with Labor history when he joined the public debate over the remarks by a footballer, Israel Folau, that gay people would go to hell. ‘I don’t want to overstate it but I think the religious freedom issue hurt Labor,’ Howard said. ‘When you think of the history of the Labor Party and how it used to be dominated heavily by its Irish Catholic roots, I just thought their indifference on that issue hurt them. They didn’t seem to care whether they offended people or not.’

  When the final results came in, they showed a small but telling increase in support for the Coalition. After preferences, the Coalition vote rose from 50.4 per cent at the 2016 election to 51.5 per cent in 2019. This meant 7.3 million voters had backed Morrison and his party when given the choice between the two sides, while 6.9 million had chosen Labor. The danger for Labor was in the slide in support from voters who gave the party their first preference in the lower house. At 33.3 per cent, its primary vote returned to the level seen when Abbott defeated the party in 2013. The primary vote for the Coalition parties was 41.4 per cent. Both major parties were more vulnerable than in decades past, but there was no doubt which side was weaker.

  The Coalition began the campaign with 74 seats and came close to failure. It regained Ch
isholm and Wentworth and snared Bass, Braddon, Herbert, Lindsay and Longman from Labor. But it also lost Warringah to an independent and Corangamite, Dunkley and Gilmore to Labor. This was not a victory ‘made in Queensland’ or any other state because the government only survived on its gains in Tasmania and New South Wales and its ability to hold ground in Victoria and Western Australia. It held power with 77 seats.

  Labor would have years to consider how and why it lost. One fact was painful and contentious: voters swung against the party in parts of its heartland, like western Sydney, where Chris Bowen suffered a swing against him. The results from individual booths in marginal seats suggested the swing against Labor was greater in some areas with lower incomes. The reasons for these results were a matter of conjecture and argument: changing demographics, scare campaigns, the prospect of a tax cut, a dislike of Shorten or an affinity for Morrison and his Christian belief. What could not be disputed was the swing. Yet Labor gained support in wealthier electorates like Bradfield and North Sydney, or Goldstein in the more comfortable suburbs of Melbourne. Shorten won voters he did not need in safe Liberal seats. His appeal on issues such as climate change did not rally enough voters to his side across the country.

  Shorten was the subject of intense criticism in some quarters of the mainstream media and social media, as well as from Palmer’s advertising and the Coalition’s relentless negative campaign. Yet this was not enough to explain Labor’s failure to vanquish a government so riven by conflict.

  The Labor agenda galvanised the party’s base but could not convince enough Australians in a disengaged electorate. This sweeping progressive agenda, summed up by the estimate of $387 billion in higher taxes, made too many enemies with its scale and complexity. The comparison with the 1993 election campaign, when the Liberals lost with the ‘Fightback!’ reform plan including a consumption tax, was inevitable. ‘I’ve never seen an election campaign where an opposition went in creating as many constituencies of enemies,’ said John Wanna, the Sir John Bunting Chair of Public Administration at the Australian National University.20

  As election night neared, Shorten suffered the curse that had troubled Turnbull three years earlier. A majority of Australians went to the 2016 election with a strong sense that Turnbull would win. In a survey days before the polls closed, 60 per cent said Turnbull would prevail and only 17 per cent thought Shorten would win.21 Three years later, the final Ipsos survey found 55 per cent of respondents expected Labor to win the election while only 32 per cent said the same of the Coalition.22 Shorten was the favourite. Morrison was the underdog.

  Labor campaigners gathered at a hotel in Essendon Fields, on the grounds of Melbourne’s old airport, for what they expected to be a celebration on election night. Hundreds drifted in to the Hyatt Place function room at six o’clock to see a vast television screen carrying an ABC broadcast that worried the room as the counting began. By seven o’clock there was enough confidence in the published opinion polls, including exit polls, to keep spirits high even when there was no sign of the powerful swing to Shorten that so many had expected. Cheers went up when Abbott was defeated and Zali Steggall emerged as the new independent member for Warringah. But this was not enough when a Labor victory was so obviously slipping away.

  Volunteers wept as they watched their dream of a Labor government fade before their eyes. This was a shattering moment for the true believers who had been so sure this was their chance to change the nation. The setback was a horror to behold because it was not just one defeat. This was the end of a six-year cycle that had begun with Abbott’s emphatic victory in 2013 and the ascension of Shorten to the Labor leadership. Success had been so close in 2016; now it was out of reach again.

  ‘I know that you’re all hurting,’ Shorten said when he took to the stage at 11.30 p.m. ‘I am too.’ He said it had been a tough campaign — and ‘toxic at times’ — but expressed no regret at putting forward a big agenda.

  ‘When the final votes were cast, I wanted to be able to look at myself in the mirror and say there was nothing more that I could have done. No more ideas that we should have expressed,’ he said. There were groans from the room, which was full of supporters from Shorten’s electorate of Maribyrnong, when he announced he would resign as leader.

  Shorten returned to the heart of Melbourne with his closest friends and colleagues to find someone had ordered a bottle of champagne in anticipation of a different future. It was a bitter end to years of struggle.

  Morrison checked the results on an iPad in his study in Kirribilli House as election night began. The early signs of success confirmed the belief he had expressed for months about winning against the odds. Nobody else had been so sure of his chances, so much so that the entire campaign seemed an act of sheer willpower in the face of every obstacle. A political ally and friend, David Gazard, joined the Prime Minister as he contemplated the first results. John Kunkel and Andrew Carswell arrived soon afterwards. Only at 10 p.m. did Morrison and his team leave the official residence to join the Liberal Party leaders and members, including Howard, at the Sofitel Wentworth in the city. It took until after 11 p.m. for Shorten to accept the outcome and call Morrison to concede defeat.

  This was an incredible victory, unbelievable for so many Liberals. Even Abbott, when conceding he had lost Warringah, lauded this ‘stupendous’ result and predicted Morrison would enter the Liberal pantheon forever. Yet the words that defined the outcome were those of Morrison himself when he spoke to the crowd of supporters at midnight, on the same stage where Turnbull had addressed dejected Liberals on election night three years earlier. The difference was not in the number of seats won but in the expectations for each leader.

  Morrison now appeared before a cheering crowd to declare the result was a win for the ‘quiet Australians’ who aspired to work hard and do better in life. Nobody could be sure who these quiet Australians were — by income, suburb, profession or belief — because they could be anybody and everybody. Morrison, the cunning politician and suburban everyman, claimed the victory for a group of supporters only he could define.

  Only now did Morrison come close to admitting this victory — so astonishing and so unlikely — might not have happened at all.

  ‘I have always believed in miracles,’ he declared.

  And that is exactly what it was.

  EPILOGUE

  AUSTRALIANS SHOWED NO GREAT enthusiasm for the politicians they restored to power. By the time the counting ended, a government with a narrow majority had replaced a government with a narrow majority. Morrison claimed 77 of the 151 seats in a slightly expanded House of Representatives, barely different to the tally when Turnbull held power with 76 of 150 seats. One result was hailed a victory for the ages, while the other considered a setback so dire it set off years of discord. Expectations shaped everything. The way the Liberals and Nationals celebrated their tiny majority showed how greatly they had expected annihilation.

  The ruthless pursuit of power seemed to bring its reward. Those who helped Dutton destroy Turnbull claimed vindication, while those who elevated Morrison did the same. The pattern of the past emerged again: just as Labor had clung to power after the removal of Rudd in 2010, and the Liberals did the same after toppling Abbott five years later, so the Liberals now gained a slender but unlikely majority. Perhaps every leadership spill turned the country’s politicians into such figures of derision that no side could gain an emphatic victory. What nobody could know was the election result they might have seen if the governing party had kept its head.

  What everyone could see, however, was the cost of division. The Liberal party room had been a proven failure: it had been unable to deliver the stable government it had promised at the 2016 election and had put its mutual hostilities ahead of the national interest. Why should Australians expect it to change? The mercenary quests of the party room had proven that turmoil brought reward. How could the future hold any peace when the past was so full of poison?

  ‘In violence we forget who we
are,’ wrote Mary McCarthy. This was true of the political violence the Liberals visited upon each other. Two years after winning an election, they had thrown each other into a week of political butchery that defied everything they claimed to stand for — stability, steadiness and conservative management of the nation’s affairs. They forgot who they were — or, at least, who they pretended to be. The miracle was not in Morrison’s political skill, formidable as it was, but in the way so many Australians were ready within eight months to accept, even forgive, this collapse.

  The greatest mistake for this group of politicians would be to absolve themselves of their collective failure. Labor, in turn, faces the challenge of rethinking its agenda under a new leader, Anthony Albanese.

  Australians are asked, again, to take their politicians on trust after a leadership crisis. The Liberals could not learn the lesson from the Labor failure but now promise to learn the lesson from their own. Their assurance rests on one theory and one fact. The theory is that Morrison holds unquestioned authority after winning the election on his own terms. The fact is the change in the Liberal rules to set a higher hurdle for a spill, requiring two-thirds of the party room for the leadership to be declared vacant. Perhaps this will end the cycle. Perhaps it will only give dissenters a more challenging target when fostering unrest.