LOOKS LIKE BILL WASN’T KILLED
LABOR’S big wins in Saturday’s by-elections have left Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull stripped naked. “Of course, it’s a test between the leaders of the parties,” he said shortly before the Liberals got smashed in all five of Saturday’s contests. Five lost out of five, so Turnbull now stands naked of excuses as his government heads to a massive defeat at the next election.
He is also naked of strategies now, given that the Liberals banked everything on Saturday on their much-hyped Kill Bill strategy — personal attacks on Labor leader Bill Shorten — when it’s clear that voters prefer to murder Malcolm.
Make no mistake: these results will shock the Liberals, for all their excusemaking about no government winning seats from the Opposition in 98 years. In fact, the government thought it would win at least one and probably two seats on Saturday — Braddon in Tasmania or Longman in Queensland. But more shocking for its MPs is the humiliating extent of their defeat in Longman.
The government was thrashed — losing by about 45 per cent to Labor’s 55 per cent — in what was a knife-edge marginal seat in Brisbane’s outer suburbs. The 4 per cent swing it suffered would cost it at least eight other Coalition seats in Queensland alone if repeated at the federal election. Even worse, the Coalition’s primary vote collapsed to a devastating 29 per cent on latest counting, when two elections ago it was 44.8 per cent. The Coalition’s base has fled since Turnbull took over, much to One Nation.
The Coalition’s loss in Braddon was less emphatic — 48 per cent to Labor’s 52 — but four months ago, the Liberals got a 60 per cent vote in that same area in the state election. Where did all those Liberals go?
Then there was the Liberals’ crash in Mayo, in South Australia. They did even worse this time against independent Rebekha Sharkie with nice Georgina Downer as their candidate than they did with the scandal-plagued Jamie Briggs.
How much longer can Turnbull’s media mates — let alone his MPs — avoid what has been obvious for more than a year.
Turnbull is a dud. He seems disconnected from voters — unable to give them policies they want, explained in words they understand.
Even when he thinks he understands what most bothers voters, he offers spin rather than solutions.
Remember him pretending this month he’d cut immigration, when in fact he’d added 260,000 newcomers in just the past financial year?
Remember how he promised to cut your soaring electricity prices with a National Energy Guarantee, which is actually a global-warming scheme that the experts say may not cut prices at all? None of Turnbull’s spin or tactics are working, nor are they likely to.
Yet all this year, Turnbull somehow convinced many Liberal MPs and media commentators that it didn’t matter that every single poll for 20 months now has his government behind Labor. No, his team insisted, what really counted was that Turnbull was more popular personally than Shorten — a line that gratified the Prime Minister’s huge ego.
So why did so much of the media fall for it? Because they’d got bored with the truth — that the Liberals under Turnbull were toast? Because they feared the return of a truly conservative Liberal leader in Tony Abbott?
Whatever, many signed up for Turnbull’s Kill Bill strategy, setting Shorten one test after another they seemed sure this loser would fail.
First, they said Shorten was sure to lose the Batman by-election in March to the Greens. But he didn’t.
Then they said Shorten would be destroyed by Turnbull’s May Budget, with its promised tax cuts. He wasn’t.
Then they said he’d be dragged as leader by the more popular — because untested — Anthony Albanese? That sure won’t happen now.
Before these by-elections, it was the same story, as the government relied again on its Kill Bill strategy, hoping more to inspire fear of their opponent than faith in themselves.,
Its billboards in Braddon featured Shorten’s face and the slogan: “Bad for Braddon.” Newspaper ads had Shorten’s face with that of Labor candidate Justine Keay and the warning: “Keay = Shorten.”
And it failed again. Nor did One Nation switching it preferences from Labor to the Liberals save Turnbull.
Shorten is just too smart and nimble for him, and has big-spending plans that most voters prefer and which he’s far better at selling.
Before these by-elections, the media talk was whether Shorten could survive the results. Now the question is: should Turnbull?
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