As the Coalition’s disastrous election result in May was confirmed by another rout in Victoria at the end of November, the analysis of the woes of the Liberal Party in the pages of The Australian has taken on a mournful character.
Today you can find Paul Kelly using the ANU’s regular post-election survey, and Labor’s own post-election review, to declare that the Liberals face an “existential crisis”. The Great Bloviator opines that demographics are against the Liberals, with younger people, women and people with higher education disinclined to vote conservative. (What does it say about you that when people are better educated they’re less likely to support you?)
At least Kelly avoided the sublime idiocy of Nick Cater, who recently decided that the Liberals’ bête noire was single women, especially single women who have babies.
Peta Credlin, unsurprisingly, decided that both losses were because the Liberals weren’t right-wing enough, a line we’ve also heard regularly from Sky News’ after dark zoo of shit-flinging primates. Some credit should go to Gerard Henderson who, back in August, opined that 1) things look bleak for the Liberals, but history shows anything can happen (which is about the most sensible advice anyone could give the Coalition currently), and 2) tried to apportion some blame to former leaders undermining the party, an appraisal that at least has the advantage of novelty. Poor John Gorton, still getting blamed 20 years after his death.
Strangely absent from these analyses is any self-reflection.
No satisfactory discussion of the present state of the Liberal Party is possible without looking at its toxic dependence on News Corp, a company that, by Kelly’s own admission, is aligned with the Coalition.
Why is the Liberal Party seen as the party of climate denialism? Why is it seen as a party hostile to women? Why is it regarded as a party obsessed with culture wars rather than real issues for working households? The answer in each case involves News Corp, and not peripherally, but in a way intrinsic to the current functioning of the Liberals. That’s happened in two ways.
The first is that News Corp — by acting as the in-house media organ of the Liberals, both MPs and members — has shaped what is regarded as acceptable policy within the party, and who is seen as an acceptable leader. News Corp was crucial to the ousting of Malcolm Turnbull in 2018. It has been crucial to attacking any serious climate action. Its own obsession with culture war issues has meant the Liberals felt either emboldened or obliged to prosecute them. And it provided the Liberals, up to and including Scott Morrison, with a parallel universe within which to live and operate, ultimately to their downfall.
In the News Corp universe, climate action was the obsession of a few inner-city soyaccino drinkers, trans people were enemies to be smitten hip and thigh as a first-order matter of public policy, gender and workplace issues were a minority obsession foreign to the experience of ordinary Australian women, and Morrison was a political genius and master tactician. Sadly, May 21 2022 confirmed this parallel universe had minimal overlap with planet earth.
The second is that News Corp is a fundamental part of the Liberals’ campaign strategy, just as it is for the Tories in the UK. News Corp is crucial for amplifying Liberal attacks on Labor, for demonising opponents, and for using its staff to harass the Labor leader on the campaign trail.
This isn’t just a case of fellow travellers working toward shared goals; News Corp’s role is planned and relied upon by the Liberals’ campaign strategists, drawn from the ranks of CIT Group and its alumni.
Again, May 21 2022 showed News Corp struggling to deliver for its partners. As in the Victorian election, its attacks on Labor appeared ineffective, and may have even blunted the impact of more legitimate negative coverage by actual media outlets such as Nine.
The reader searching for a comprehensive account of the current state of the Liberals in News Corp publications will look in vain: the role of News Corp in the disastrous state of the party is never mentioned. Its commentators operate — again, as in a parallel universe — as if they are thoughtful, independent analysts, when they are defeated players whose own performance should be examined along with the politicians now the subject of their commentary.
There’s plenty of blame to go around for why the Liberals are in a mess, and much of it rests with their media partner.
