Previous Liberal leaders would not have dared ask the party’s federal executive to steamroll their home division so that they could install preferred candidates in key seats.
Yet, this was the situation reached last Thursday evening by Prime Minister Scott Morrison, which has so infuriated senior Liberals in NSW they now privately threaten to “bring the show down” if there is intervention in the state branch, or if he attempts to impose his candidates without allowing members to vote in preselections, given his surrogates had purportedly stalled or stymied procedures to achieve their objectives.
Senior NSW Liberals have made it clear to the PM to not interfere in the selection of candidates.Credit:Alex Ellinghausen
Morrison’s political position is precarious enough without outright civil war in NSW, yet that is what is brewing in the state where he needs to win seats to win government. The strain, the frustration, showed in Morrison’s behaviour that night, according to those who later recounted events with a mixture of humour and dread.
In between yelling and thumping the table, they say, Morrison felt compelled to remind members of the executive who they were dealing with. “I am the Prime Minister,” he told them. As if they could possibly forget.
He was demanding a unanimous vote for his motion to order the division to endorse the preselections of Trent Zimmerman in North Sydney, Sussan Ley in Farrer and his very good friend, the man he calls “spear-chucker”, Alex Hawke in Mitchell.
The PM has sought to make it clear who is in charge.Credit:Dionne Gain
Instead, after pushback from a number of executive members including former cabinet minister Nick Minchin, the executive passed a unanimous resolution simply requesting the division to please sort out preselections by the end of the month. It had been made clear to Morrison, in case he had forgotten, that it was not the federal executive’s job to instruct state divisions which candidates to install where.
Three sources confirmed Morrison got as good as he gave.
The rebuke effectively reminded the Prime Minister he did not own the Liberal Party, not yet at least, although that could well change if he wins another election. A few of them know and fear that, which is why, ever so quietly, they hope he doesn’t. Win, that is. It capped off another terrible week for Morrison.
Morrison’s Trumpian, extravagant attacks on the opposition over China, which went way beyond the usual weaponising of national security, were dangerous, unprecedented and calculated.
Ignoring warnings from the serving head of ASIO, Mike Burgess, and the former head of ASIO, Dennis Richardson, that he should stop, otherwise he risked damaging the national interest, Morrison continued to bludgeon, as if he was involved in some undeclared macho contest with Peter Dutton to see who could take out the Opposition Leader. He was prepared to lose skin to get the issue up, even though right now, when people are looking for a safe pair of hands, it looked as smart as taking your mask off while welding.
Morrison’s attack on Labor and China looked like an attempt to outdo Peter Dutton.Credit:Alex Ellinghausen
Over in the west on Saturday, where it is eyeing off three seats – Hasluck, Pearce and Swan – Labor was testing the views of swinging voters in focus groups.
Whatever doubts there are about Labor and Anthony Albanese on the economy or tax, their loyalty to the country is not doubted by voters. There was almost universal condemnation of Morrison’s performance. They did not believe Albanese was weak on China. They accused Morrison of running a “desperate scare campaign”. One woman even likened Morrison’s behaviour to “a toddler having a tantrum”. And no, she hadn’t been eavesdropping on Thursday’s executive meeting.
These sentiments, also reflected in The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald’s Resolve poll, showing Labor ahead on the party vote and Morrison’s popularity slipping even further, might not hold over time. They could well soften if war between Russia and Ukraine spills over into a conflict between China and Taiwan.
So far, Morrison’s reckless tactics have tarnished his own credentials rather than Albanese’s with both sides saying they are playing badly for Liberals particularly in seats with high concentrations of Australians of Chinese heritage, including Chisholm in Victoria, and Banks, Reid and Bennelong in NSW.
Chisholm, won by Gladys Liu by only 1100 votes, is the second most marginal federal seat, with 20 per cent of voters identifying as Chinese-Australian. It is as close to being written off by the Liberals as it can be. Liu, the first Chinese-Australian woman to win a lower house seat, is being squeezed by anti-Chinese sentiment on one side and pro-Chinese sentiment on the other.
According to Labor’s research, voters still remember accusations levelled against her that she had links to the Chinese Communist Party, after she admitted that she was a member of a Chinese propaganda unit, and also that her election advertising sneakily used similar colours and typeface as the AEC to urge a vote for her.
Last year she told SBS the government’s handling of relations with China had caused divisions in her electorate. Liberal and Labor insiders know it has worsened. Months ago Liberals held some hope that, with a lot of hard work, they might hold the seat. That is fast disappearing, although they are promising to go all out to tell Chinese Australians they love them, if not their homeland. Ms Liu refused to speak to this columnist, claiming through a spokesman she was too busy with electoral commitments.
In Reid, held by Fiona Martin with a margin of 3.2 per cent, Liberals were predicting she would lose, firstly because she had alienated churches in her electorate by crossing the floor to vote against the government to protect transgender children from discrimination, secondly because Chinese-Australians, making up 18.2 per cent of the electorate, were doing a bit of floor crossing of their own.
In the Strathfield byelection, Labor recorded swings of between 6 and 12 per cent on the 2019 federal election result in booths with high numbers of Australian-Chinese voters, which fall into the Reid electorate.
Given how clever Morrison has been with numbers, the inescapable conclusion is that he has calculated, eventually, his campaign of fear will work in his favour, not because people see him as their protector or their saviour, but because he has become the devil they know.
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