Election Score At Half Time – The Players, The Stumbles, The Issues

Caroline Overington is associate editor at The Australian and award winning author, most recently of The Last Woman Hanged. Overington has written ten books, including seven works of fiction. Her most recent title, The One Who Got Away, released by HarperCollins in April 2016, is a thriller novel set in California. Between 2012 and 2016, Caroline Overington was associate editor for The Australian Women’s Weekly magazine, before returning to The Australian in 2016. On Tuesday 31 May 2016, mid way through Australia’s long federal election campaign, Caroline Overington joined Aaron Patrick, Deputy Editor, The Australian Financial Review to assess how the major parties and their leaders were progressing.

ELECTION SCORE AT HALF TIME – THE PLAYERS, THE STUMBLES, THE ISSUES

CAROLINE OVERINGTON

Malcolm Turnbull is a man of remarkable personal achievement. He has a successful, 35 year marriage, and healthy, happy children, to whom he is close. He has built several businesses, which have created wealth and employment for countless Australians. He is a millionaire many times over.

He has fought the good fight on issues like freedom of expression. His background is not perhaps as impoverished as he would, occasionally, suggest. In a televised debate on Sunday night, Turnbull seemed hell-bent on making the case that he was the poorest child in all of Vaucluse. When talking about the value of education, he said something about owing everything to Sydney Grammar.

Malcolm went from Grammar to Sydney University, and from there to a Rhodes scholarship. That is not an ordinary background. It is not poverty and disadvantage as most people understand it.

Turnbull is today married to a former Lord Mayor, Lucy, who is a successful businesswoman in her own right. As a couple, they are a wonderful demonstration of what can happen, when you’re lucky enough to be born with no obvious disadvantages in terms of race, gender, disability.

Turnbull has turned that good luck – born with intelligence, born with ability – into an extraordinary life. It’s an inspiring story. We should be very proud of him. At least as proud of him as he is of himself.

And now he is Prime Minister. That, too, is a significant achievement. It’s a goal he’s held since he was in his 30s, and it must have felt magnificent, when he first managed to pull it off.

But now?

Well, now Malcolm’s on track for a new title. A new achievement. One he probably never figured on.

If the polls are correct, and the projected swings translate to votes against the Coalition in the marginals, Malcolm Turnbull is on track to become the worst performed prime minister of the past 10 years. Worse than Julia Gillard. Worse than Kevin Rudd. Is that a big call?

Kevin Rudd was able to get himself elected in 2007. Tony Abbott managed to get himself elected in 2013. Julia Gillard didn’t quite get there … but she at least managed to cobble a coalition of like-minded politicians together, with herself at the helm. Now it’s Turnbull’s turn to try to win an election in his own right. If he can’t, he’ll be the only one in that list who didn’t.

Malcolm Turnbull’s prime ministership has never been confirmed by the electorate. He came to power by gathering together the votes of 53 members of his own party. By convincing them to knife Tony Abbott, and install him instead. And here comes the day of reckoning. What does the public think? We’re about to find out.

In the immediate aftermath of Malcolm Turnbull’s accession to the leadership as PM, there was considerable joy. Malcolm Turnbull enjoyed stratospheric popularity, when he first took over. Advisers, including friendly media commentators, urged him to go to the polls. More than once person said: go early, if you want to win. Go on Valentine’s Day, they said. You’ll walk a path of rose petals back to the Lodge.

Why Turnbull didn’t do that is anyone’s guess. Maybe he thought he was invincible. His approval rating was so spectacularly high, perhaps he thought it could never fall far enough to put the prime ministership at risk. That sometimes comes with the territory. We’re dealing with somebody who has always – always – been in the winner’s circle. The idea that he might lose doesn’t seem to have occurred to him, perhaps because losing in any context doesn’t make much sense to Malcolm Turnbull. His self-belief is something marvellous.

And therein lays the problem. An election campaign is not like a business deal. Running the country is not like running a corporation. Turnbull has succeeded in life and in business because he knows how to wait, how to plot, and when to strike. It’s how he got this job in the first place.

Now he’s got to win a different kind of race. For the first time in his life, he can’t just tell people what to do and watch them do it. He has to win the hearts and minds of millions of voters. He should be good at that. He’s intelligent. He’s charismatic.

So, how is he doing? Better this week than last week. That’s about the best anyone can say.

According to this week’s polls, the Coalition is facing the prospect of losing: 10 seats in NSW,

six in Queensland, three in Western Australia – enough to lose the election.

Satisfaction with Malcolm Turnbull as leader has fallen by 18 points since Christmas … and is now lower than Tony Abbott’s 37 per cent just before the party turned their back on him. So, what has gone wrong?

Three things. One: Some of the slump in Malcolm’s popularity can be traced back to progressive types who are disappointed that he hasn’t done more. These are the people who keep going on about the Real Malcolm. Where is the Real Malcolm? Where is the Malcolm who supports same-sex marriage? Where is the Malcolm who was concerned about climate change? Where is Malcolm, the acceptable conservative?

Did any of these people ever vote for Malcolm? Maybe in seat of Wentworth, where the Labor candidate, Evan Hughes, is running a fun campaign around the slogan: I Miss Malcolm. Also, Make Point Piper great again.

In real life, it’s not clear how many of these people were ever truly conservative, but their disappointment explains why he’s slipping in the popularity polls. For these people, Malcolm has been a disappointment. A fizzer, if you like.

Perhaps you’ve seen the Fizzer posters. I spoke to the artist. He was never going to vote for the Coalition. But he probably speaks for many. Inspired by Keating, who said of Turnbull, he’s like a cracker on bonfire night. You light him up, there’s a bit of fizz, then nothing.

That’s how those voters, who were once so pleased to see Malcolm in the Lodge – and to see the back of Tony Abbott – feel. They are disappointed, but they shouldn’t be. Malcolm leads a centre right party. He was never going to be the leader they wanted him to be. It’s not realistic. It’s actually naive.

Which brings us to the second point, or at least the second ground of disappointed people.

The DelCons – delusional conservatives, or disillusioned conservatives – don’t like what Turnbull did to get where he is. That’s fine. It was snaky, but now is not the time for a protest vote, and if push comes to shove, will somebody who supports Tony Abbott really vote Green this time?

Probably not. Or not in large numbers.

Much more worrying for the Coalition is the support that has been lost among people known as Tony’s Tradies. This is not necessarily the middle class, because most Australians consider themselves middle class.

Malcolm is losing the middle-ground. The centre. The bulk of voters. People earning an okay income, with a couple of kids … who feel like they’re losing ground. People who aren’t necessarily worried about going broke, or being able to feed the family. But people who are worried about slipping from the middle. Who don’t have much room to move, should things go wrong. Who, in the words of John Howard, no longer feel relaxed and comfortable, but on edge.

Newspoll results reflect deep dis-satisfaction amongst the base. You can’t afford to lose your base.

How has this happened?

To date – and again, he had a better week last week – Turnbull has not handled the campaign at all well, which is intriguing. He was a champion debater at school. He certainly knows how to cajole and persuade. So what’s not working?

A couple of things. First, Malcolm has a tin ear. In week one, he travelled out to western Sydney to talk to a couple who had purchased a house for their one-year old baby, so they could negatively gear it. He seemed to think that was a terrific idea. No Australian child should live without a negatively-geared investment property. That is not a winning strategy.

Also, during the first week, Turnbull visited an artisan bakery, or a craft beer house, and disappeared for lunch to an exclusive, men-only, private club. Craft beer and men’s clubs add up to a candidate so far removed from the lives of ordinary people as to be a caricature.

People want to vote for somebody who understands them. Who understands their concerns, which aren’t, generally speaking, funding their own start-up. Health matters. Education matters. Innovation nation? Not so much.

Point two: The Coalition has scored some own goals, especially when it comes to super. Self-funded retirees are, generally speaking, Coalition voters. Changes to super rocks the base.

Listen to talk back, it’s the sleeper issue. It’s a much bigger issue than negative gearing. People are worried. What do the changes mean? When will they come in? How will they be able to take care of themselves? Nervousness about super can cost the Coalition votes among their core group of supporters: people older than 50.

The super caps have people troubled. Julie Bishop, normally an assured performer, couldn’t explain the Coalition’s policy when asked about it today.

Third point: While Malcolm has to some been a disappointment, Shorten has also improved.

Who predicted that? He has sharpened his answers, and his message. He has lost weight. He looks energetic. He has a plan, as you perhaps heard. He’s about growth, and fairness. He’s about protecting Medicare, and schools. Voters understand that. They may not believe that Labor will ever be able to afford their policies, but they at least understand them.

What is the Coalition’s message? It’s not clear. The Coalition has a card, but it seems unwilling to play it. That card is to remind voters of the turmoil of the Labor years. The deal done by Julia Gillard. The excruciating 17 minute speech by Rob Oakshott. There has been so much turmoil in Canberra this decade that Turnbull is the fifth prime minister in six years. Do we want six prime ministers in seven years?

The Coalition has barely mentioned the possibility of Labor-Green alliance. Greens leader, Di Natale has already said that he’s looking forward to governing with Labor. The Coalition could have seized on that. It’s one more explanation for why Turnbull isn’t doing as well as perhaps he could be doing.

Now it’s getting close to bell time, but there is one more question worth asking: would they be doing better under Tony Abbott? Well, to paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, there’s what we know, and what we don’t know, and what we’ll never know. That is something the Coalition will never know.

But, for sure, Turnbull knows this: if they lose, it will be his crown that slips, and that will be a personal tragedy for a man who wanted that crown, all his life.