The eight reasons the Coalition lost the 2022 federal election may have been personified by Scott Morrison, but they were an institutional failure, according to the architect of Labor’s victory.
Labor’s national secretary, Paul Erickson, gave his account of the election win at the National Press Club on Wednesday, broadening the attack from voters’ fatigue with Morrison to the failures of the Coalition team.
Although Labor “won’t be fighting Scott Morrison” at the next election, it will “be up against some of his nastier and more incompetent enablers”, he said – a sledge directed at the current Liberal leader, Peter Dutton.
So why does Labor think it won – and will the Liberals’ problems outlast Morrison’s leadership into Dutton’s reign?
1. Lack of responsibility
The first reason for victory was “a pathological refusal to take responsibility for anything, which comes from their small government mindset”, Erickson said.
He illustrated this with numerous examples, from Morrison’s declaration he didn’t “hold a hose” to his statement to parliament that “his solution to a lack of maternal health services in Yass, which left a woman giving birth by the side of the road on the Barton Highway, was to upgrade the highway”.
2. Poor pandemic management
Erickson accused the federal government of “incompetent management of [its] responsibilities during the pandemic”.
Erickson cited the failure to do “basic due diligence” by ordering a variety of vaccines, arguing “problems with specific vaccines were inevitable”.
“This isn’t the wisdom of hindsight, Chris Bowen pointed out the urgent need to invest in a range of potential vaccines in July 2020. Liberal failure to do so was the context for Morrison saying three times in one day in March 2021 that the vaccine rollout was not a race and it wasn’t a competition. The bungled rollout wasn’t something that happened to the Coalition, it was a direct result of their dangerous complacency.”
Similarly, the Coalition failed to build quarantine facilities, resulting in “leaky hotel quarantine that led to repeated Covid outbreaks”.
3. Attacking the states
Erickson said the government engaged in “cabinet-wide partisan attacks on state and territory governments throughout Covid, which particularly alienated voters in Victoria and Western Australia”.
Erickson argued from Morrison down, the Coalition showed “hubris and mindless partisanship” in attacks against Queensland’s Annastacia Palaszczuk, the Victorian Andrews government’s roadmap out of Covid, and through its support for Clive Palmer’s challenge to the Western Australian border closure.
“No Victorian needs to be reminded of the Liberals’ subsequent attempts to undermine the public health response to the second wave in Melbourne, led by Josh Frydenberg and the lamentable Tim Smith,” he said.
4. The budget
Erickson repeated Labor attack lines about the Coalition’s “incompetent budget management”, including that it racked up “billions of dollars in wasted rorts, and nothing to show for a trillion dollars of debt”.
5. Response to the cost of living crisis
Erickson argued the Coalition response to the cost of living crisis “wasn’t just incompetent, it was incoherent”.
“The Liberals argued that Australia was already enjoying a strong recovery, but only a returned Morrison government could secure that recovery,” he said.
By then claiming “the sky would fall in” over Anthony Albanese’s support for a minimum wage rise in line with inflation it undercut “their campaign assertions about the strength of the recovery”.
6. China – and other regional issues
Erickson accused the Coalition of “incoherent engagement with our allies in our region”.
He cited an “irresponsible and immature” response to the news China would sign a security pact with Solomon Islands, with “assertions that the Chinese Communist party were backing Labor, warmongering rhetoric on Anzac Day, talk of ‘red lines’, and failed attempts to suggest Labor opposes the Aukus arrangement”.
This followed “February’s Manchurian candidate silliness”, when Morrison and then Dutton suggested Labor figures including deputy leader, Richard Marles, were helped by China.
7. Ignoring women’s experiences
Erickson accused the Coalition of “a lack of awareness or interest in women’s experiences across the economy and society”.
Erickson noted all but one of Morrison’s network featured in an Australian Financial Review story in July 2020 were men; the Morrison government ending free childcare mid-pandemic; and the Barton Highway clanger.
After the reckoning in the first quarter of 2021 on workplace bullying, sexual harassment and sexual assault in politics, two of Morrison’s gaffes continued to come up in Labor’s research, according to Erickson: first, that it wasn’t until he considered these issues as a husband and a father that he was able to reflect and listen; and second, that women who marched outside Parliament House were lucky not to be met with bullets.
8. Climate change inaction
Erickson accused the Coalition of “a decades-long failure to take climate change seriously”.
He noted that Barnaby Joyce returned to the Nationals leadership in part due to opposition to net zero emissions by 2050, adding: “In the lead-up to Cop26, the Liberals had to beg the Nationals to let them to commit to net zero. They then released a vacuous pamphlet that maintained Tony Abbott’s 2030 targets.
“I recall some reporting in late 2021 suggesting that the Liberals believed the net zero commitment would see off any threat from climate-orientated independents. And all I can say based on our work was we never saw any evidence that Morrison persuaded anyone in the community of his commitment to the climate, which is hardly surprising given the empty and desperately political nature of where he landed.
Who swung to Labor?
Erickson argued these factors combined to help Labor assemble a broad coalition, including winning full-time workers, Tafe-educated voters, renters and mortgage voters in low-income households earning less than $50,000 a year, and medium-income households between $50,000 and $100,000.
“Some of the biggest swings to Labor were recorded in outer suburban and regional electorates,” he said.
Erickson cited consolidation in Macquarie, Eden-Monaro, Dobell, Dunkley and Corangamite, gains of Robertson, Hasluck and Pearce, and in seats it “didn’t gain but will continue to campaign in and fight for like Flynn and Deakin”.
What of the future?
Erickson argued that “Scott Morrison may have come to personify these failures but they are institutional and collective, not individual”.
“They’re actively prosecuted by senior cabinet ministers and all Coalition leaders including the two men then seen as the only likely successors to Scott Morrison – Josh Frydenberg and Peter Dutton.”
Erickson also commented on the media’s performance in the election, endorsing comments by the Western Australian premier, Mark McGowan, “about some of the dynamics we saw in terms of how the media pack engaged with the opposition leader”.
He said that some behaviour was “beyond the pale” and reminded him of people’s shock and negative reactions to the way journalists spoke to political leaders during the 2020 Covid outbreaks. “I think there’s a lot there to reflect on.”
