May 5, 2025 • 50 mins
Peta provides some perspective on Labor's historic election win, the Liberals begin the search for a new leader. Plus, Kos Samaras on why many of the pollsters were so far off the mark.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Peter Krandland live on Sky News Australia.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Good evening, welcome to the program. Well, it was a
seismic election result over the weekend that most pollsters did
not predict and of course huge ramifications too for the
Liberal Party. Counting continues tonight. I'll get you the latest
in those numbers and speculation two swirling around a new
Liberal leader. I'll give you my thoughts on what happened
over the last six weeks in a moment, here's what's
(00:28):
coming up. Re Elected PM Anthony el Wheneasy returns to
work following that landslide victory, will break down the result
and discuss what three more years of labor means for
the future of our country. Andrew Hasty tonight reportedly ruling
himself out of the Liberal leadership. A speculation continues around
Angus Taylor, Dan Tien and Susan Lee as the shell
(00:48):
shop coalition scrambles to figure out what went wrong. Former
coalition Treasurer Peter Costello says it was a lack of
a bold economic agenda at fault. As the coalition campaign
comes un fierce attack. Labor ahead in the polls going
into election day, but no one predicted they'd win such
a decisive majority. Redbridge Polster Cos Samaras will explain why
(01:12):
the pollsters were so far off, and as I search
for a new Liberal leader, well, that's work is underway.
The Australians editor at Large Paul Kelly warns the party
that it's facing an identity crisis.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
The only way they can get out of this is
to go back to the drawing board and revise the
fundamentals of the party from top to bottom.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
That's going to be very hard, but first bear with me.
It's been a long campaign, not just the official thirty
three days, so I am going to give you a
considered response to the weekend's big win for the Prime Minister.
Certainly not the result I was hoping for, and I
suspect most of you either. My hope was that the
elector would punish a pool government that had broken promises,
(01:57):
let them down and made their lives more different despite
legitimate misgivings they might have had about the opposition, maybe
not enough to win, but enough to make the chance
of winning in a three years time more likely than not.
But that's not what happened electorally. There's been a wipeout
more so for the Liberals than the Nationals, and I'll
(02:18):
get to that in a moment. And Labor under our
Albanzy has broken records, with alban Ezi now the only
third Labor leader in its one hundred and twenty year
history to win two terms of government after GoF Whitlam
and Bob Hawk. Now, on the numbers as they stand tonight,
Labor holds eighty seven seats in the House, thirteen seats
(02:39):
still undecided. Even now, that's better than Kevin Rud's Kevin
oh seven landslide win of eighty three of eighty three seats,
better than Hawk's eighty two seats, but it's still a
long way short of Howard's ninety four seat win in
nineteen ninety six or Abbott's landslide of ninety seats in
twenty five thirteen. The commentators are pointing out that what's
(03:02):
remarkable here about this win is that it is a
second term win, and a win of such magnitude. And
they're right, that's why they say. On the numbers as
they stand, coalition looks like it's out for two terms.
But let's add some perspective here. In two thousand and four,
(03:23):
Howard was neck and neck with Labour's Mark Latham for
much of that campaign. Now I remember it well. It
was my husband's first effort as Howard's federal campaign director,
and in the end Howard won eighty seven seats, almost
what Albanezy has won over the weekend. That was at
Howard's third election. I think that stands as some sort
(03:43):
of record. Even still, there was a whopping primary vote
forty six point seven percent to the Coalition, and he
won a rare Senate majority as well. Now people then
said Labor was out for a generation. Three years later, though,
it was the coal thrown out of office, rud in
the lodge, and Howard famously losing his own seat. So
(04:07):
hear me on this. In politics, it's never as good
as it seems, and it's never as bad as it seems.
And if you don't keep your feet on the ground,
if you start to believe your own bs, or you're
in a hiding to nothing. As Churchill famously said, success
is not permanent, failure is not fatal. So sure, there's
much to learn from Saturday Night. But if you're a
(04:27):
conservative like me, we can't fall into the trap of
letting the left right our obituary as I try and
bury us because the reality is a lot more nuanced
than the headlines. So let's have some perspective on what's
happened here and let's now pull apart what went wrong
and where to now for the opposition. First up, as
(04:48):
I said, Albaneze's win is historic and it's emphatic. He
deserves congratulations, as I said on air on Saturday night,
because if you underestimate, you're opinot or deny the legitimacy
of a big then you can sign yourself to opposition
for a very long time. As we can see from
state Liberal to do this on a regular basis across
(05:09):
the country. Butson, this is a big bart. There are
some important points that need to be understood because the
seat count is deceptive. Right now, Albanesi has picked up
some eighty seven seats of a primary vote of around
thirty four point seven percent. Now that primary vote might
still bounce around a little as county continues, but that's
(05:30):
basically where it is. So a thirty four point seven
percent primary and he's got a pickup of eighty seven seats. Now,
by contrast, the next best win, as I said by labor,
was right in two thousand and seven, and there keven
oh seven picked up eighty three seats on a primary
of forty three point four percent. Forty three point four percent,
(05:54):
Now that's massive, and it's a difference of about ten
percentage points on primary for about the same number of
seats between Rudd and Albanesi. Indeed, if I take a
look at twenty sixteen, Bill Shortened there lost out to
Malcolm Turnbull, but he had a primary vote then of
thirty four point seventy three percent, and he lost, and
(06:15):
yet denied as the healing alban easy as a labor legend.
His primary sits on thirty four point seventy nine. Now
that's a difference of point zero six of a percent
between Shorten's loss and Albanese's triumph point zero six of
a percent. And yet Shortened then claim sixty nine seats.
(06:36):
Tonight Albanese's got eighty seven. Maybe more so, how does
that happen? The key here is obviously the flow of
pet preferences and the fact that there are way more
players on the left of politics now, some being declared
on the left like the Greens, some who pretend they're
not on the left but are like the Teals who
finnel preferences in a very disciplined way to Labor. Now,
(06:59):
this is very much what happened in the recent New
k election where Kirstarmer's Labor Party painted the map in red,
but of a very low vote share of the national vote.
And this is what happened here in Australia on the weekend. Indeed,
look at this, Look at the national vote here and
sheer numerical terms, you've got four point six two million
(07:19):
Australias who voted Labor and four point two three million
who voted for the Coalition. Now that's a difference of
just some three hundred and ninety one thousand votes. But
thanks to where they all fell and the preference flows tonight,
Labor out of that hall has got eighty seven seats
and the Coalition hasn't even bagged forty. See what I
(07:41):
mean here about perspective turnout too, Well, that's worth mentioning.
Twenty twenty two Australia had the lowest voter turned out
since the First World War of eighty nine point eighty
two percent of the electric Right now, according to the
AEC's website, it turnouts tracking at seventy seven percent. So
to put that too into perspective, that's a massive drop.
(08:03):
That says voter engagement in our elections is falling fast.
See this is why you need perspective and analyzing election results.
You've got to know how to read the numbers because
in the end, for all the spin, the numbers are key,
Which brings me to the other things that need to
invention tonight. About Labour's win, Yes, the labor lies were
(08:24):
a big part of it, and the handouts, the hundreds
of billions of dollars spent buying the support of voters,
the lie and the buy I call it, but it
would be a big mistake to make that everything. Now,
it was something, but it was not everything. That's because
of loss of this magnitude can't be put down to
(08:46):
just one reason. You don't lose like this without it
being a failure across multiple fronts. Now, that's not to
say that the reasons won't be weighted differently, because they
will be. Some things will have made more of any
pack than others. But in the end, there's rarely a
silver bullet for a win, and similarly rarely won for
(09:07):
a loss. What we do know is that Peter Dutton
was unpopular, deeply unpopular. Now that's been known for some time,
years in fact, so it's on the Liberal Party's head
that they didn't do more to tackle this. It's not
like they haven't had unpopular leaders in the past. Howard
and have It two key examples, but both of them
(09:27):
won landslide elections, more seats to both than Labor has
ever won in any election in history. So you can
reframe perceptions, you can disrupt and then remake the narrative.
You can do it. And yet they didn't do this
for Dutton. When they tried, it was too late, and
(09:47):
they squandered his remaining core equities of strength and predictability
with policy backflips and a whole lot of fence sitting
on issues where a clear line should have come quickly
and simply. But as unpopular as Darton might have been,
let's not now gloss over the fact that he had
Labor on the ropes just a couple of months ago.
(10:08):
If you look at this polling trend graph, no fall
of the line that this was all Dutton's fault because
he had Labor beaten only a couple of months ago,
but then came the official campaign, and that's where those
lines swap over dramatically and pull apart in Labour's favor.
Now there's no easy way to say this. The Liberals
(10:31):
ran a bad campaign. It was a shocker. And I
say here the Liberals very deliberately because I want to
largely exclude the Nationals for reasons I'll explain a little later.
Now it hurts to say this because a lot of
the people I know in the campaign team, in the
Liberal Party and with the leader I've worked with closely
in elections where we have won. Now, almost across the board,
(10:55):
the Liberal Party campaign was found wanting poor ads, ran
way too late, no real negative campaign to speak of,
a failure to tackle the character hits against the leader,
completely flat footed on Labour's lies around things such as medicare.
Now they knew that would come at them. Previous experience
told them medi Scare would come at them. Criticisms too,
(11:18):
about the use of the polling company Freshwater and their
lack of nuse. I had lines that the Polsters were
briefing out regurgitated back to me recently by someone who
appears on this network. I said they were completely fanciful
the Freshwater lines but didn't make numerical sense. If you
know how to read polling, well that's been proven right. Unfortunately,
(11:38):
you can replace a polster, but only after the damage
has been done. Another area of real damage was policy,
or the lack of it. This was a Liberal Party
campaign full of the sugarheit of announcements, but without the
substantive policies that underpin them. Where were the documents, Where
were the proper costings, Where were things properly socialized months
(12:00):
and months earlier so that people had a chance to
digest them, understand them, know how the policies would help them.
And sure the campaign team, the staff as I mentioned before,
or they were blame hereshore. But ultimately policy comes down
to the work of the shadow ministry and if they
don't do the work, if the MPs don't do the work,
(12:22):
then you end up with the result we got on
Saturday night. Getting policy out early and having it founded
on your party's values deeply written in your DNA, well
that is critical to winning voters over because you then
build on your core equities with voters for the coalition. Obviously,
that's economic management, it's national security. It's also how you
(12:42):
deny your opponents stability to turn your policy announcements into
a scare campaign, because believe me, if you announce things
late and half baked and on the run that scare campaign,
it almost rights itself, especially when Labor's got a team
of media mates and a hold new industry trea of
these online influences to push out that scare campaign, which
(13:04):
then brings me to communications or lack of them in
this case, lack of communication skill. The Coalition failed here too. Yes,
Labour told lies. Yes the PM flashed his Medicare card
every day to sell that lie, but the Liberals did
very little to counter rap them. When they tried, it
was too late. Because the Coalition matched almost all of
(13:26):
Labour's spending, it was impossible for Labor to say that
the Libs would, as an example, cut health directly. So
instead Labor built a straw man to do that, and
they used Dutton's nuclear power plan. The cost of his
nuclear power plan, they said was six hundred billion. It
was never six hundred billion dollars. That was completely made up.
(13:47):
It came from a Labor linked lobby group with connections
to Simon Holmes of Court. But that didn't matter. Labour
used the six hundred billion dollar figure to make a
connection in voters' minds that if Dutton's nuclear plan cost
that much, then the money had to come from somewhere,
hence that deadly line he cuts you pay. And yet
(14:08):
until I raise that figure here about three and a
bit weeks ago and wrote about it in The Australian,
this whole six hundred billion dollar lie was never challenged
by the Liberals. Now that's just one example. There are many.
It's not unlike my fight over the secret agenda of
the Ulus statement. That was the Voice. I mean, it
was a hardcore, twenty six page document of demands. It
(14:30):
wasn't a small one page invitation that the PM tried
to claim. Now that too was nowhere until that I
exposed it. You ran with it, you voted against it,
and we turned the Voice campaign around. In the end,
it comes down to this, and you've heard me say
it time and time again. You will lose one hundred
(14:50):
percent of the fights you are not in. You will
lose one hundred percent of the fights you are not in.
This is exactly what happened on Saturday night. The Liberals
were not in the fight in any sense, not in
the policy work, not in the negative campaigning, the rapid
rebuttal of labor lies, not in the picture value day today,
(15:13):
not in message simplicity, not in the way they put
their key players like just Enterprise and Andrew Hasty in
the freezer. Now why we'll never know. To be a
first term government, you have to go hard, you have
to go early, and you must keep the contest simple.
When Abbott almost toppled Gillard in twenty ten after just
(15:35):
eight months in the job, he didn't have three years
that the coalition had. He did it by creating a
contest with labor. He did not let labor frame the contest.
He framed it. And as he fought every day, he
fought as if his political life depended on it, because
he knew it did, and knew that if he didn't
take labor down, Turnbull was ready to come back at him.
(15:58):
And even when Abbott eventually one government in a landslide,
Turnbull undermined him anyway. And that's something that dozens of
people have said to me over the weekend that the
start of the Liberal Party slide into trouble started when
we junked what we stood for and broke the hearts
of so many of our base moving from Abbot to Turnbull.
(16:20):
So where to now? The Liberals must have a review
and it must do more than gathered dust on the
shelf like the last one. They must regroup and start
doing the work from day one. Not think that labor
will be the ebb its way out of office. They
must work out who they are, what they stand for,
(16:40):
and who they represent now. The case in point here
is the National Party. They have weathered almost all of
the hits in recent years, where the Liberals have not.
Voters know and understand what the National Party stands for. Yes,
their demographics have stayed more stable than the Libs. But
when you buy their box off the shelf, take it
(17:01):
home and you open it, you get what you bought.
Not so the Liberals who've been all over the shop
since the carpet bag. A Turnbull up end of the party,
broke the heart of the base and then was punted
for his failures. To my mind, the best summation of
what Liberal Party stands for is still that of Mensies
and his plea that the Liberal Party must represent the
(17:23):
forgotten middle class off Australia, not those of the boardrooms,
not those with plenty of money in their pockets, but
those in the everyday suburbs, running a small business or
working hard to raise their families, that want government to
be big enough to do all the things they can't
do for themselves, but as small as possible, but believe
in the individual over the state, that want to be
(17:45):
able to keep as much as they can of what
they earn, and are distrustful of government trying to tell
them how to live their lives or curtail their freedom.
The job of an opposition is not to be a
weak echo of a bad government, as Tony Aba is
to say. It's to be strong and decisive and a
clear alternative now for Australia's sake. That is what we
(18:11):
must hope for now. Lots to get into tonight. I
have got a cracker jack show of analysts coming up.
Let's go now though for the headlines. Sky News political
reporter Riven.
Speaker 4 (18:26):
Spargo inside Parliament's House, the Prime Minister is turning his
attention to the government's second term. Anthony Abernezi returned to
work this morning as he prepares to choose his front bench.
The factional makeup of the ministry could change with more
labor MPs.
Speaker 5 (18:43):
The hard work will continue today. My government has been
an orderly government. We have worked hard, We've had effective ministers.
Speaker 4 (18:52):
The Prime Minister claims passing legislation to cut student debt
by twenty percent is his priority once Parliament returns. The
Liberal Party is searching for a new leadership team as
it attempts to build back from defeat.
Speaker 6 (19:05):
We need to our best people forward if we are
to reclaim the center.
Speaker 4 (19:11):
Susan Lee has taken the reins of the Liberal Party
ahead of the leadership contest. The Prime Minister is refusing
to say if he will soon visit the United States.
Donald Trump congratulated Anthony Albernesi during a phone call this
morning discussing tariffs in the Orchis Agreement. The Prime Minister
labeled the conversation warm and positive.
Speaker 5 (19:32):
We'll make appropriate announcements. My first international visit will be
just like last time. My first bilateral was to Indonesia.
Speaker 4 (19:41):
Anthony Abernesi is set to attend the G seven leaders
meeting in Canada next month.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
All right, boat counting is still underway. I want to
give you an update now, So let's bring in our
chief election analyst, Tom Connell. Tom I got to say,
terrific effort on Saturday night. Not the result I was
hoping for, but you were called it beautifully and kept
us across all the detail. I want to get an
update now if I can on the state of the House, please.
Speaker 7 (20:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 8 (20:07):
So at the moment, eighty six confirm for Labor there
are fifteen slap for grabs.
Speaker 7 (20:11):
I think the big stories are from here. Look, there
are quite a few opportunities for Labor to.
Speaker 8 (20:14):
Win a few and get up to ninety even that
would probably be about their benchmark from here. But the
question will be what can the coalition get up to
if they're rebuilding, you know, what are you rebuilding from?
And then as well, look at Climate two hundred and
their four seats. There are two seriously in doubt for them.
At least, there are three possibilities for them to win,
but all really tight. And the Greens for now, for
(20:35):
now are on zero. They're probably going to end up
for one or two. There's nothing certain right down. That's
why we haven't called. And if we look as well,
I'll just give a quick look at some of the
seats still up for grabs. You can see some of
these very tight margins Bullwinkle, this new seat Labor notionally holds.
It's zero point zero five percent up Goldstein as well, Longman,
Bradfield and Couyong. So these are probably all battles we're
(20:56):
relatively familiar with. Why we still have a lot of
outstanding seats at this stage because these are the contests
where not being being fought between an Independent and Labor
label with a big swing against that there Bendigo is
Labor and the Nationals.
Speaker 7 (21:09):
Menzies as well as something we're probably going to see.
Speaker 8 (21:12):
The Liberal Party lose to the Labor Party, and then
again Freemantle versus Independent and Monash is a really messy
contest with nobody with a particularly high vote. So there's
still quite a number of seats undeclared at this stage
because some of these contests are basically brand new ones.
Peter are waiting for some of the three Canada preferred
and two candidate referred counts to actually progress.
Speaker 2 (21:35):
Some I've watched it and looked closely at the AAC
and obviously listened to you two as well. The seat
of Melbourne Adam Band, Goldstein and Couyoon. They looked like
they were staying with the incumbents, income postals, and more
pre pole numbers. It's not looking like that though, Tom
(21:56):
what canon tell us that those threets specifically.
Speaker 7 (22:00):
Really interritting contest.
Speaker 8 (22:01):
Let's go to all of them right now, going into
Melbourne first of all, the seat of Melbourne itself. Now,
don't worry about this fourteen point three percent margin.
Speaker 7 (22:10):
It's not real.
Speaker 8 (22:10):
Why because the count done so far on two candidate
preferred is only four point eight percent and.
Speaker 7 (22:15):
It's postal ballots.
Speaker 8 (22:17):
We've reset things to just go actual numbers now because
that's the way we usually are at this stage of
the count. But this is just postal ballot where we
are more interested in this primary vote. You can see
the five point six percent margin for the Greens, a
swing against Adam Bann, and a big swing towards the
Labor Party on these numbers. With the preference flow're seeing
so far, this is bad news for Adam Ban.
Speaker 7 (22:37):
It's going to be quite close.
Speaker 8 (22:39):
We need to see those some of how those preference
distributions are going with you on the day vote. He's
going to be heard a bit further by postal ballots
out there.
Speaker 7 (22:46):
But Melbourne has.
Speaker 8 (22:47):
A lot of absent and declaration pre pole, which might
bring it back.
Speaker 7 (22:50):
So best guess on this right now.
Speaker 8 (22:52):
Honestly, it's basically a coin toss because we just don't
have enough further information.
Speaker 7 (22:56):
Where we are seeing the picture.
Speaker 8 (22:58):
Emerge a little bit more. So, let's go to the
southeast here and the seat of Goldstein. You can see
here we still have for the moment Zoe Daniel in
lead by ninety five votes.
Speaker 7 (23:08):
That's all.
Speaker 8 (23:08):
So this is the two party preferred. You can see
right now, she's in the lead by those ninety five votes.
The issue right now for Zoey Daniel, and there was
victory claimed should point out on Saturday night, the issue
is the postal vote that's coming in right now. Nearly
ten thousand votes are in. That's about half as our
best guess. We know how many applications have been put
out there. I think you'll get another ten maybe a
(23:30):
bit more than that ten thousand postal votes. On the
ten thousand so far, Tim Wilson has a lead in
those votes of three thousand. In other words, that keeps happening,
he ends up with the lead of three thousand. Zoe
Daniel won't be able to make that back on the
absent and other votes left over. So I just want
to see one more batch going that strongly, and I'll
say Zoe Daniel doesn't really have a path there. In Goldstein,
(23:51):
cou Yong is a tighter situation in terms of the
votes to come.
Speaker 7 (23:55):
Let's go in here and find cou Yong.
Speaker 8 (23:57):
So here we can see it's a similar story Peter,
but closer margins. So the lead for Monique Ryan is bigger,
much bigger than Zoe Daniels of a lead there of
about fourteen hundred votes.
Speaker 7 (24:07):
Again, the enemy for her at the moment is this
postal vote.
Speaker 8 (24:11):
So we go in here and we see the way
the postal is flowing so far, and we can see
the lead she has in the postal so far is
about twenty four hundred. So remember that lead fourteen hundred.
We think this is about half of the postal counted again,
maybe even a little bit more. If the postals keep
flowing at that rate and she gets those twenty four
hundred again, she ends up with a lead of about
(24:33):
a thousand. I think that would be too much for
Monique Ryan. She'll get some back on those absence, but
if the postal rate slows down a little.
Speaker 7 (24:39):
Bit, then it could just be too close to call.
Speaker 8 (24:41):
We could be talking about fifty votes between these two
at the end, So we need to see that next batch.
We'll see when it comes in, and also see how
the absent votes are going. If they're not going towards
Menique Ryan, she's in a lot of trouble.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
Thank you, Tom. We'll leave there. I'll catch up with
you tomorrow night if I can about the Senate because
that's getting very interesting as well. Well, let's bring you
my panel now for their expert analysis. Sky News political
contributor Chris Yulman and National Editor Australian Dennis Shanahan. Gentlemen,
thank you Dennis. In your column today and the Olds,
she said that Albanese is now arguably in the strongest
position of any labor leader since Federation. I made some points.
(25:18):
This one's an interesting one. His percentage of primary vote
share visa vie where Bill Shorten was when he lost
in twenty sixteen, is a point zero six percent better off,
but is obviously one is one in a landslide. He's
got all those seats. As Tom just said, there could
get to ninety. What happens now for labor because he's
(25:39):
got an enormous opportunity and very little cover. If he
can't turn things around for how people feel about cost
of living, or he has an economic misstep, he can't
claim he hasn't got the wherewithal in the Parliament to
do what he needs to do.
Speaker 6 (25:56):
Certainly, and this is a it is in this win
for Anti Alberanosi. It is because of preferences. But that's
the system we have, and that's the system we've always had,
and so what we have is a historic victory for
Anti Albernozi. He could be looking at two terms. I know,
(26:19):
you know, you don't want to get ahead of yourself,
but it is clearly a very big win for Labor. Now,
of course in the House, this means that not only
do they have an absolute majority in the House, but
it takes out the Greens. It may be that the
Greens are taken out completely, but also the issue of
(26:42):
independence and no question of minority government. So in the
House of Representatives, Antony Albernozi has complete control and as
you say, he can introduce what he wants, he can
get whatever he wants past, there's no issues on procedural matters.
He is in control of the House of Representatives. He's
(27:04):
still got an issue in the Senate. Now we've seen
Adam Bant today, who may lose his leadership of the Greens,
saying that the Greens are now the sole balance of
power in the Senate, and he's saying that this will
ensure the most progressive Senate we've seen, and he will
(27:25):
demand deals from Labor on a range of things. I
think this one thing that Anthony Albernez and Adam Bant
and the new legal leader of the Liberal Party, whoever
that is, should consider, and that is that the Greens
are not the second largest single block in the Senate.
(27:47):
The coalition is. And just like John Howard did in
the early days of the Hawk and Keating government when
they put forward useful, essential changes on microeconomic reform and
economic reform, John Howard built his credibility on economic management
(28:09):
from opposition and ensured that Labor got through that great
economic reform. So I think there is an opportunity here
for both the Prime Minister and the potential leader of
the Liberal Party to actually block the Greens out and
ensure that Australia gets decent middle of the ground reform.
Speaker 2 (28:34):
All right, let's just go to that point about Liberal leader,
I could confirm now from Andrew Hasty's office that he
will not be putting his hand up for the leadership.
Chris Yellman. I made the point of my editorial there's
rarely a silver bullet for a win. There's really a
silver bullet reason for a loss. Where do Liberal Party go?
Speaker 7 (28:51):
Now, well, whoever's.
Speaker 3 (28:54):
Got this job has got the hardest job in politics. Again,
we used to always say that about the leader of
the opposition, and then the prime minister's job saying become
much harder than the leader of the opposition. I think
now we can certainly say that's whoever leads the Liberal
Party next is in some ways on a hiding to nothing.
And I saw all the figures that you put up,
and I do appreciate all of that. But let's look
at where the Liberal Party starts from. The Liberal Party
(29:16):
starts at a primary vote of thirty percent, so that's
the coalition. They have never been in that position before.
Their starting point for the next election is about forty seats.
They're thirty six seats away almost doubling that number in
order to get back into government, and there'll be a
lot of bruised and battered people, and they'll all have
different ideas.
Speaker 2 (29:35):
About how this party should go.
Speaker 3 (29:36):
Should they be conservative liberal, should they be liberal conservative?
All those policy fights lie ahead of the leader. So
now it's not Andrew Hasty that it boils down to
Susan Lee, Dan Ten or Angus Taylor. A lot of
people are angry at Angus Taylor. They believe the reason
that they didn't have an economic plan, which Peter Costello
pointed to, was because of Angus Taylor.
Speaker 7 (29:55):
So if he gets the job, he gets it.
Speaker 3 (29:56):
Without any real authority and a difficult job at That's
and Lee of course will think that she should be
running the party. She might say that Julie Bishop didn't
get her chance. It's time for a woman to run
the Liberal Party. But whoever gets this job is in
an extraordinarily difficult position.
Speaker 7 (30:12):
This party has to be remade, route and branch.
Speaker 3 (30:16):
And that's not just the federal party, it's all of
the states as well. It's functionally dead in Western Australia,
South Australia, Victoria, it's in administration in New South Wales.
How do you start a comeback from there?
Speaker 2 (30:30):
That is the point I made on Saturday A night
two Chris, I grow with you. I think the architecture
of the Liberal Party is not as modern as it
needs to be to fight a modern war against the left,
because they're fighting an enemy that's not just or an
opponent that's not just the Labor Party. It's multi factor
and it's well resourced, as we can see there with
the tills, and it also is very disciplined. And as
(30:51):
preference flows in a preferential voting system, that is the
only game in town. As you can see, the differential
between Labor voting Liberal bloat was less than four one
hundred thousand votes, but the difference in the Parliament is
basically half the chamber and more.
Speaker 3 (31:07):
Yeah, and part of that too is that And look
at the effect of the Teals and if you want
to see them in a politically historical sense, one of
the Liberals mentioned this to me, think of them as
the DLP. It's not like the Greens to the Labor Party.
Those preferences flow back what the Teals do. They're a
political party that have been set up precisely to stop
the Liberal Party from ever regaining power again, and they're
(31:28):
doing that very effectively. So the number that was missing
there before is there's another four million people, and those
four million people are voting away from the Labor and
Liberal parties. But there's one particular party and that is
the Teals that has been specifically designed to weaponize keeping
the Liberal Party out of power.
Speaker 7 (31:46):
That is a big problem.
Speaker 2 (31:50):
You are not wrong. Let's go just quickly to the government. Obviously,
you know everyone's exhausted at the end of a campaign, Dennis.
But I'll tell you what, when you win, you can
find energy to get down to Canberra, to get back
in the offices and start the work of government. We
saw that today from the Prime Minister and his team.
We know, of course on the labor side, he doesn't
get to pick the personnel in his cabinet. That gets
(32:11):
chosen by the factions he divies up the portfolios. Surely
he's got to move somewhere like Bowa And I mean,
where are you hearing things might move, Dennis?
Speaker 6 (32:21):
Oh well, look, I think what we have to remember
is that the Prime Minister does have to the labor
prime minister does have to take the candidates selected by
the fashions. However, somebody like Bob Hawk and now Alberan
as in the strength that they have they can actually
call in the factional leaders and say, now, look, we
(32:43):
don't want any silliness here, and there's a couple of
people I'd like to see promoted, so that there's a
reasonable conversation before that's picked. Now, the Prime Minister during
the campaign has cemented in all of his senior people,
Richard Miles's Deputy and Defense Minister, Penny Wong, Don Farrell,
(33:06):
Jim Chalmers as a Treasurer and Katie Gallagher as Finance.
So he's done all of that already. The peak of
the labor leadership is in place. Now what they are
going to have to do is adjust some of the numbers.
First of all, I think Anthony Albanezi wants to see
greater representation for Western Australia. State representation very important, so
(33:31):
he wants to see more from Western Australia. On the
selection of female candid there has to be another female
ministerial member. That probably means that given that the Left
is now in control not only on national executive at
the conference and in the caucus now for the first time,
(33:53):
there has to be more places for the Left, another
place for a women woman. And so what we're actually
looking at is the potential for some long standing labor
right male minister to be asked to step aside in
the interests of a factional state and gender balance. Now,
(34:16):
I wouldn't want to suggest that that's going to be
Chris Bowen. I see that you have, but I think
this is a real challenge for the Prime Minister. He
wants to bring in new people like Andrew Charlton, the
Member for Paramatter, very good economist. He's trying to bring
new blood in, which is understandable. I think at this
(34:36):
stage it's too early to say he's going to dump anyone,
even Tanya Plibosek.
Speaker 2 (34:44):
My point on bow is I think it needs to
change portfolios absolutely. I think the factions will be the
ones who make the call and whether he survives into
the ministry got to leave their gents amount of time.
I could talk to you all night, but I'll come
back at this again, thank you. I will make the
point there. The reason why you can't keep enlarging the
ministry despite all those extra seats is the ministry is
capped under an active parliament at thirty MPs only or
(35:06):
like the break Costa Mars. Why are the posters get
it so so wrong and we'll get back to the
Liberal Party after the break. Welcome back. You had another
election where many of the published polls were a long
way off the final result and the Liberal Party wipe
out across urban Australia. How on earth do they call
this back? Expert? Polster Redbridge director Kosta Mars joins me, Now, well,
(35:30):
you guys weren't so far off the ultimate decision, but
plenty of other posters were way off the mark cause,
particularly when it came to those final numbers on Saturday night.
Why was this the case?
Speaker 9 (35:41):
I think it's really misreading that other vote and I
think it get close to six million people went from
the other major parties or thereabouts by the time everything
is counted. And if you don't actually read that part
of Australia correctly when you are surveying, you're going to
misread the two party preferred.
Speaker 2 (36:00):
What about the story today that the liber Party Polster
had predicated or put into their preference flows the underlying
numbers coming out of the Voice referendum. I just thought
that was crackers. But you're the professional. What did you think?
Speaker 9 (36:13):
Yeah, I wouldn't have used that to wait the numbers
absolutely not the referendum is one thing. Voting for the
next government of Australia's is a totally different matter and
people have a totally different emotional response to it.
Speaker 2 (36:29):
So what happened in the end, you think that the
biggest reason for these sorts of numbers we saw was
that big soft vote sat there and sat there into
the last minute and broke almost overwhelming overwhelmingly to Labor.
Speaker 7 (36:44):
Was that it.
Speaker 9 (36:45):
Yeah, So in our case eats Track, we did a
bit of an elsis to work out who did the
coalition lose over a period of eight weeks, and there
are largely people in their forties and fifties who were
renting and had a mortgage in the ottosoburbs and regions
of this country. And then we did a bit of
a further analysis and try to work out where they're
preferencing and we found it pretty early on they'll go
(37:07):
on to Labor. So that bleed was pretty horrific for
the coalition. So that's I think that was actually was
the death nail for the coalition in a lot of
seats that hemorrhaging over a period of eight weeks and
then the preference is going to Labor.
Speaker 2 (37:25):
I went through this at the top of the show Man.
If you look at Labour's priory vote visit Vee, where
they were, say, even when short and lost in twenty sixteen,
it's about the same, Right, that's a dramatic deterioration, even
if the seat count is obviously vastly improved. And then
you've got the turnout. I mean, from World War One
until the twenty twenty two election, we've never dropped below
(37:47):
ninety percent of turnout. We look like we're at seventy
seven percent or they're about this election, so growing disengagement
from voters. I mean, these are deep issues, the structural
issues with the two major parties. I think the only
bright light out of the weekend was it looks like
we might be past peak green if that's possible.
Speaker 9 (38:08):
Yeah, that's right. I mean, look, the major party boat
combined is still obviously heading in the one direction that's
called self and that other vote is now the king
and queen maker of future parliaments, and whoever wins them
over in future elections will be forming government. And that's
(38:28):
I think, you know, not a civil bullet for another
two major parties has got to seal a bullet for
that it was lucky this time. Next time it could
be a little bit more tricky.
Speaker 2 (38:39):
Christ Jelman makes a point, though, you know, Labor fighting
the Greens at least had an assured preference flow that
came back about eighty percent of the time. The creation
of the Tears under the guise of being sort of
just better healed and more environmentally friendly liberals, well that's
a furfey. They're there to take votes the Liberals and
(39:01):
they funnel them back to the left of politics. So
their only purpose of being is to destroy the Liberal
Party basically and ensure they ever form majority govern again.
I mean, how do you tackle something like that?
Speaker 9 (39:12):
It's hard, right, I mean, it took the Labor Party,
what is it, two decades to recover from the DOP split,
And so Chris's reference about the dop's an excellent analogy
because it's exactly what I think he's facing in the
coalition right now. To regain these electorates will take a
long time because there are some demographic mountains I need
(39:32):
to climb. It's not impossible, and we can see that
in Goldstead that Tim Wilson's about to get elected there.
But it's a long, long road. Ahead and overcoming that
and having to balance that. So, you know, you're a
student of political history, you know how where those seats
were lost for Labor when the DLP split, and they
were particularly geographically located within particular constituencies, they really reliable
(39:58):
and so this is the same problem now for the coalition.
Speaker 2 (40:03):
And of course what you might gain by bending over
in relation to some of these inner city seats, you
will lose out there in the peri urban out of suburbs.
That's the challenge that wasn't there with the DLP. Thank
you cous right after the break that review in twenty
twenty two that said these were the things liberals need
to fix. Well why was that? Why was that review ignored?
(40:23):
And are the Libs just a regional Australia party now,
I mean I don't buy that, but that's Labour's spin.
They won't win back in the urban areas. And well
a bit more on all of that. There's a bloke
in Victoria who won it defied the swing. We're going
to talk to him as to why that happened. All right,
(40:44):
let's bring my panel our Skying News contributing at Gary
Hargraves and One Nation Chief of Staff James Ashby gens.
We know there will be a post mortem for the
coalition and the all parties will certainly do a review,
but the coalitions one has got to be no holes barred,
or it's not worth the the effort. They had one
Gary in twenty twenty two it said they had a
lack of clarity and messaging, a lack of information about
(41:07):
values at a weakness in engaging young voters. Paul campaign organization,
disconnect with urban voters. I know my husband was one
of the people who were doing the review. It's sat
on a shelf. How do we make sure that they're
not going to leave these reviews on the shelf and
they actually do something about it.
Speaker 1 (41:25):
Oh well, I suspect any review that's done and now
we'll probably come up with similar results. So no lessons
learned at all in the last three years, Peter. Look
in the end, the party needs transparency, it needs openness,
it needs to have honesty, and its grassroots membership is
just walking away because it's finding people who are perverting
(41:46):
what the Liberal Party is about. And the Liberal Party
has forgotten to stand for something, It's forgotten to be
authentic and taking nothing away from Peter Dutton at all.
He put energy in, but the trouble was there were
people white adding him all the way through to the media.
And this white ending is coming from people who don't
want to see people like Peter Dutton succeed. They don't
want to see somebody from Queensland succeed.
Speaker 7 (42:07):
If I dare say it like that.
Speaker 1 (42:08):
I mean they don't want to see somebody who's a
conservative conceited succeed. So you know, Peter, there's a lot
of other agendas at play and those people have got
to be outed and routed. You've got to get rid
of them because otherwise the party is in deep, deep peril.
Speaker 2 (42:25):
I will underscore that point because let's not forget at
the end of last year that started this year Peter
Dutton had labor on the ropes before any official campaign
had started. It was only once the official campaign had
started that they went backwards. James, I've got to ask
how one nation ended up. You had high numbers of
polling as support going in just in relation to Tazzy
(42:47):
will Lee Hansen see off Jackie Lamby.
Speaker 10 (42:49):
Do you think, well, there's sixty percent of the way
through the countdown here for the Senate, which still leaves
another forty to go, but this could take up to
four or five weeks.
Speaker 7 (43:00):
Peter. As you know, the postal votes.
Speaker 10 (43:02):
Need two weeks before they're officially closed off and then
they'll start to count them as well. Strangely enough, in Tazzy,
they are a different beasts down here. They like to
vote below the line, primarily primarily because of their hair
Clark system. They're used to voting below the line, so
we have to accept that. Obviously, there's an algorithm that
needs to be implemented because they scan all those Senate
(43:24):
papers and then the algorithm in a couple of weeks time,
when they press the button will determine who wins those seats.
We're not far behind Jackie Lamby. It all comes down
to preferences. But typically what's usually happened here in Tazzy
the Liberal Party have had overflow, meaning they've had more
than two quotas in their vote. This time they're below
two quotas, so there won't be a preference flow from
(43:47):
the Liberals towards one nation in Tazzy.
Speaker 7 (43:50):
So we'll see what happens.
Speaker 10 (43:51):
We'll just have to wait and see.
Speaker 2 (43:55):
We'll like declare I'm one of those widows too. Their
votes are under the line. Anyway, let's go to the
on Saturday night and where too.
Speaker 7 (44:01):
Now.
Speaker 2 (44:02):
I thought it was interesting. It was very industring.
Speaker 9 (44:05):
You know.
Speaker 2 (44:06):
I had a bit of a barnie on Saturday and
night with Senator Murray.
Speaker 7 (44:09):
What who says? You know?
Speaker 2 (44:10):
The Liberal Party's got to stop fighting these culture wars.
Let me read you a quote from Julia Gillard. This
is Julia Gillard in two thousand and three from a
speech she went as she gave to the City Institute.
She said that labor must muscle up for the hard
task of winning the culture war and creating a new
vision for Australia. So if you want to talk about
who started the culture wars, it was labor. There in
(44:33):
black and white from Julia Gillard the voice. It was
part of the Labour's culture war against our constitution. Three
flags behind the PM. That's Labour's culture war against our country. Gary,
I'll tell you what Labour should stop saying. We should
stop fighting the culture wars. I think our problem was
that Dutton. Yes he's a conservative, or was a conservative.
(44:54):
His policy platform was a conservative. I don't think he
took on enough of these culture wars, in my view,
is that fair?
Speaker 1 (45:03):
Absolutely and correct. Peter, Look, the problem is if you
want to be a small target, you might be able
to get away with it and say a Brisbane City
Council election and even a state government election, you might
be able to be a small target. But the small
target strategy always allows the other mob to define you.
So the absence of the authenticity of who you are,
what you believe in, where you want to take the
country to is the problem. And that's what this election
(45:27):
campaign became. Let's follow the idea, the sort of James
McGraw idea of a small target strategy, say nothing, stand
for nothing, just let the other mob, you know, make
mistakes and you should win. That doesn't work at at
a federal election level. People want vision, they want passion,
they want ambition, and you'll get all those under forties
(45:48):
following you if you actually outline the kind of Australia
you want them to inherit. Right now, all they're going
to inherit is them. We never really made that point.
There was no none of that point was made. There
was no proper context built around how power is destroying
everyone's personal economy. We don't live in economy. We live
in a community, and we've got to start talking the
(46:11):
language that makes it very clear that every individual matters,
that values matter, reward for effort matters, and in the
absence of that, they're going to keep losing.
Speaker 2 (46:23):
Someone very shrewd and send me a message, and this
person knows how to win elections, that we spent too
much time telling people they had a cost of living
in crisis, that they were hurting. Well, they know that
we should have spent that time telling them it was
labour's fault. And here's how we're going to fix it.
And I think that person's spot on. I'll leave it there, gents,
got to go. I'm going to speak to someone after
the break. Is a coalition in Unicorn, really one of
(46:45):
the only coalition MPs across the country to hold on
to his seat. It's in an urban area. In fact,
he increased his margin off labor. So how do you
do it? After the break? Hey, I just want to
apply it a caution to the turnout number I gave
you seventy seven percent. It is seventy seven percent right now,
(47:05):
but of course you'll know once postals and other things
come dropping in that may well shift up, but I
suspect it will be lower than the eighty nine point
eight percent I think it was in twenty twenty two.
All right, let's go now to someone casey MP Aaron Violi,
who's one of a handful of Coalition survivors in Victoria.
He's managed to hold on to his seat with fifty
(47:26):
two percent of the vote compared to Labour's candidate Naomi Oakley.
I'm forty seven. Indeed, it would appear that he's not
only survived, but he's had a swing to him. Aaron
Violi joins me. Now he's from Melbourne. It was a
bit of a blood bath in Victoria, if I'm honest here, Aaron,
we thought it would be better. It wasn't. Your set
of case is a ultra marginal, so when you go
(47:48):
down to the wire, but it looks like you've doubled
your margin and as I said, picked up a swing.
Has that surprised you?
Speaker 11 (47:58):
I mean when you see the results across Bitia and
the country, very grateful and humbled to be re elected,
and it looks like you know these numbers matter. Peter
five points fifty two point nine two at the moment,
give me the point nine two. I need to take
the extra But you know, it was a tough night
for the party, and the result locally is looking good
(48:19):
at a third generation local, and I've worked really hard
to get out and about talk to the community, understand
their concerns in the last three years and put forward
some really big local policies around communications, around roads, around
health and with a medicareage and care clinic that my
community needed. So I think that, combined with my local
connections with my family, made a difference. And very fortunate
(48:43):
and humbled to be reindorsed with an increased march and locally,
but understand, and you know, it's been a tough forty
eight hours. Lots of great friends, lots of colleagues, lots
of great candidates here in Victoria and across the country
that we worked really hard as hard as I did,
and didn't get the same results. Bittersweet and tough time
for the Liberal Party. And as you know, lots of
(49:04):
reflection required and lots of reviews, but more importantly, lots
of action that needs to come from those reviews. I
caught you before and couldn't agree more. A review is nice,
but actions from that is what is needed for us
as a party moving forward.
Speaker 2 (49:21):
I think it's show that you worked hard. I think
it's show that you did the work locally. I think
it's showed that you had a long standing connection to
the seat. I just don't think you're buy that. I
bet you have to be of your seat, particularly for
our mob. You know, do you have a view about
the leadership going forward? I mean there's a lot of
speculation tonight it'll be someone like Angus Taylor. Do you
(49:44):
have a view? Do you think it should be Susan Lee?
Do we need a new face? Perhaps?
Speaker 11 (49:49):
Yeah? No, I'm going to respectfully Peter.
Speaker 7 (49:52):
You know, I've got a lot of respect.
Speaker 11 (49:53):
For you, but I'm going to keep my position private.
I think it's so important that we have the internal
discussion and we respect the internal process. I've got a
lot of respect for my colleagues, so I'm going to
keep that to myself. But we just need to make
sure we make the right decision to give hold this
government to account. Because the cost of living challenges from
Friday having disappeared today, so there's a.
Speaker 2 (50:12):
Lot of work we've got to do to be a
credible opposition. Well, congratulations as I said, you're right to
keep your power to drive. I'll leave it there. Congratulations
again to you and all your volunteers. Aaron, thanks for
joining me. All right, that's it for me. This is
a post mortem, will continue for many nights, I suspect,
I though you at home are herding as well as
around the country. But we will here at least hold
(50:34):
the government to account. That's it for me. Andrew bolts
up next.
Peter Krandland live on Sky News Australia.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Good evening, welcome to the program. Well, it was a
seismic election result over the weekend that most pollsters did
not predict and of course huge ramifications too for the
Liberal Party. Counting continues tonight. I'll get you the latest
in those numbers and speculation two swirling around a new
Liberal leader. I'll give you my thoughts on what happened
over the last six weeks in a moment, here's what's
(00:28):
coming up. Re Elected PM Anthony el Wheneasy returns to
work following that landslide victory, will break down the result
and discuss what three more years of labor means for
the future of our country. Andrew Hasty tonight reportedly ruling
himself out of the Liberal leadership. A speculation continues around
Angus Taylor, Dan Tien and Susan Lee as the shell
(00:48):
shop coalition scrambles to figure out what went wrong. Former
coalition Treasurer Peter Costello says it was a lack of
a bold economic agenda at fault. As the coalition campaign
comes un fierce attack. Labor ahead in the polls going
into election day, but no one predicted they'd win such
a decisive majority. Redbridge Polster Cos Samaras will explain why
(01:12):
the pollsters were so far off, and as I search
for a new Liberal leader, well, that's work is underway.
The Australians editor at Large Paul Kelly warns the party
that it's facing an identity crisis.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
The only way they can get out of this is
to go back to the drawing board and revise the
fundamentals of the party from top to bottom.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
That's going to be very hard, but first bear with me.
It's been a long campaign, not just the official thirty
three days, so I am going to give you a
considered response to the weekend's big win for the Prime Minister.
Certainly not the result I was hoping for, and I
suspect most of you either. My hope was that the
elector would punish a pool government that had broken promises,
(01:57):
let them down and made their lives more different despite
legitimate misgivings they might have had about the opposition, maybe
not enough to win, but enough to make the chance
of winning in a three years time more likely than not.
But that's not what happened electorally. There's been a wipeout
more so for the Liberals than the Nationals, and I'll
(02:18):
get to that in a moment. And Labor under our
Albanzy has broken records, with alban Ezi now the only
third Labor leader in its one hundred and twenty year
history to win two terms of government after GoF Whitlam
and Bob Hawk. Now, on the numbers as they stand tonight,
Labor holds eighty seven seats in the House, thirteen seats
(02:39):
still undecided. Even now, that's better than Kevin Rud's Kevin
oh seven landslide win of eighty three of eighty three seats,
better than Hawk's eighty two seats, but it's still a
long way short of Howard's ninety four seat win in
nineteen ninety six or Abbott's landslide of ninety seats in
twenty five thirteen. The commentators are pointing out that what's
(03:02):
remarkable here about this win is that it is a
second term win, and a win of such magnitude. And
they're right, that's why they say. On the numbers as
they stand, coalition looks like it's out for two terms.
But let's add some perspective here. In two thousand and four,
(03:23):
Howard was neck and neck with Labour's Mark Latham for
much of that campaign. Now I remember it well. It
was my husband's first effort as Howard's federal campaign director,
and in the end Howard won eighty seven seats, almost
what Albanezy has won over the weekend. That was at
Howard's third election. I think that stands as some sort
(03:43):
of record. Even still, there was a whopping primary vote
forty six point seven percent to the Coalition, and he
won a rare Senate majority as well. Now people then
said Labor was out for a generation. Three years later, though,
it was the coal thrown out of office, rud in
the lodge, and Howard famously losing his own seat. So
(04:07):
hear me on this. In politics, it's never as good
as it seems, and it's never as bad as it seems.
And if you don't keep your feet on the ground,
if you start to believe your own bs, or you're
in a hiding to nothing. As Churchill famously said, success
is not permanent, failure is not fatal. So sure, there's
much to learn from Saturday Night. But if you're a
(04:27):
conservative like me, we can't fall into the trap of
letting the left right our obituary as I try and
bury us because the reality is a lot more nuanced
than the headlines. So let's have some perspective on what's
happened here and let's now pull apart what went wrong
and where to now for the opposition. First up, as
(04:48):
I said, Albaneze's win is historic and it's emphatic. He
deserves congratulations, as I said on air on Saturday night,
because if you underestimate, you're opinot or deny the legitimacy
of a big then you can sign yourself to opposition
for a very long time. As we can see from
state Liberal to do this on a regular basis across
(05:09):
the country. Butson, this is a big bart. There are
some important points that need to be understood because the
seat count is deceptive. Right now, Albanesi has picked up
some eighty seven seats of a primary vote of around
thirty four point seven percent. Now that primary vote might
still bounce around a little as county continues, but that's
(05:30):
basically where it is. So a thirty four point seven
percent primary and he's got a pickup of eighty seven seats. Now,
by contrast, the next best win, as I said by labor,
was right in two thousand and seven, and there keven
oh seven picked up eighty three seats on a primary
of forty three point four percent. Forty three point four percent,
(05:54):
Now that's massive, and it's a difference of about ten
percentage points on primary for about the same number of
seats between Rudd and Albanesi. Indeed, if I take a
look at twenty sixteen, Bill Shortened there lost out to
Malcolm Turnbull, but he had a primary vote then of
thirty four point seventy three percent, and he lost, and
(06:15):
yet denied as the healing alban easy as a labor legend.
His primary sits on thirty four point seventy nine. Now
that's a difference of point zero six of a percent
between Shorten's loss and Albanese's triumph point zero six of
a percent. And yet Shortened then claim sixty nine seats.
(06:36):
Tonight Albanese's got eighty seven. Maybe more so, how does
that happen? The key here is obviously the flow of
pet preferences and the fact that there are way more
players on the left of politics now, some being declared
on the left like the Greens, some who pretend they're
not on the left but are like the Teals who
finnel preferences in a very disciplined way to Labor. Now,
(06:59):
this is very much what happened in the recent New
k election where Kirstarmer's Labor Party painted the map in red,
but of a very low vote share of the national vote.
And this is what happened here in Australia on the weekend. Indeed,
look at this, Look at the national vote here and
sheer numerical terms, you've got four point six two million
(07:19):
Australias who voted Labor and four point two three million
who voted for the Coalition. Now that's a difference of
just some three hundred and ninety one thousand votes. But
thanks to where they all fell and the preference flows tonight,
Labor out of that hall has got eighty seven seats
and the Coalition hasn't even bagged forty. See what I
(07:41):
mean here about perspective turnout too, Well, that's worth mentioning.
Twenty twenty two Australia had the lowest voter turned out
since the First World War of eighty nine point eighty
two percent of the electric Right now, according to the
AEC's website, it turnouts tracking at seventy seven percent. So
to put that too into perspective, that's a massive drop.
(08:03):
That says voter engagement in our elections is falling fast.
See this is why you need perspective and analyzing election results.
You've got to know how to read the numbers because
in the end, for all the spin, the numbers are key,
Which brings me to the other things that need to
invention tonight. About Labour's win, Yes, the labor lies were
(08:24):
a big part of it, and the handouts, the hundreds
of billions of dollars spent buying the support of voters,
the lie and the buy I call it, but it
would be a big mistake to make that everything. Now,
it was something, but it was not everything. That's because
of loss of this magnitude can't be put down to
(08:46):
just one reason. You don't lose like this without it
being a failure across multiple fronts. Now, that's not to
say that the reasons won't be weighted differently, because they
will be. Some things will have made more of any
pack than others. But in the end, there's rarely a
silver bullet for a win, and similarly rarely won for
(09:07):
a loss. What we do know is that Peter Dutton
was unpopular, deeply unpopular. Now that's been known for some time,
years in fact, so it's on the Liberal Party's head
that they didn't do more to tackle this. It's not
like they haven't had unpopular leaders in the past. Howard
and have It two key examples, but both of them
(09:27):
won landslide elections, more seats to both than Labor has
ever won in any election in history. So you can
reframe perceptions, you can disrupt and then remake the narrative.
You can do it. And yet they didn't do this
for Dutton. When they tried, it was too late, and
(09:47):
they squandered his remaining core equities of strength and predictability
with policy backflips and a whole lot of fence sitting
on issues where a clear line should have come quickly
and simply. But as unpopular as Darton might have been,
let's not now gloss over the fact that he had
Labor on the ropes just a couple of months ago.
(10:08):
If you look at this polling trend graph, no fall
of the line that this was all Dutton's fault because
he had Labor beaten only a couple of months ago,
but then came the official campaign, and that's where those
lines swap over dramatically and pull apart in Labour's favor.
Now there's no easy way to say this. The Liberals
(10:31):
ran a bad campaign. It was a shocker. And I
say here the Liberals very deliberately because I want to
largely exclude the Nationals for reasons I'll explain a little later.
Now it hurts to say this because a lot of
the people I know in the campaign team, in the
Liberal Party and with the leader I've worked with closely
in elections where we have won. Now, almost across the board,
(10:55):
the Liberal Party campaign was found wanting poor ads, ran
way too late, no real negative campaign to speak of,
a failure to tackle the character hits against the leader,
completely flat footed on Labour's lies around things such as medicare.
Now they knew that would come at them. Previous experience
told them medi Scare would come at them. Criticisms too,
(11:18):
about the use of the polling company Freshwater and their
lack of nuse. I had lines that the Polsters were
briefing out regurgitated back to me recently by someone who
appears on this network. I said they were completely fanciful
the Freshwater lines but didn't make numerical sense. If you
know how to read polling, well that's been proven right. Unfortunately,
(11:38):
you can replace a polster, but only after the damage
has been done. Another area of real damage was policy,
or the lack of it. This was a Liberal Party
campaign full of the sugarheit of announcements, but without the
substantive policies that underpin them. Where were the documents, Where
were the proper costings, Where were things properly socialized months
(12:00):
and months earlier so that people had a chance to
digest them, understand them, know how the policies would help them.
And sure the campaign team, the staff as I mentioned before,
or they were blame hereshore. But ultimately policy comes down
to the work of the shadow ministry and if they
don't do the work, if the MPs don't do the work,
(12:22):
then you end up with the result we got on
Saturday night. Getting policy out early and having it founded
on your party's values deeply written in your DNA, well
that is critical to winning voters over because you then
build on your core equities with voters for the coalition. Obviously,
that's economic management, it's national security. It's also how you
(12:42):
deny your opponents stability to turn your policy announcements into
a scare campaign, because believe me, if you announce things
late and half baked and on the run that scare campaign,
it almost rights itself, especially when Labor's got a team
of media mates and a hold new industry trea of
these online influences to push out that scare campaign, which
(13:04):
then brings me to communications or lack of them in
this case, lack of communication skill. The Coalition failed here too. Yes,
Labour told lies. Yes the PM flashed his Medicare card
every day to sell that lie, but the Liberals did
very little to counter rap them. When they tried, it
was too late. Because the Coalition matched almost all of
(13:26):
Labour's spending, it was impossible for Labor to say that
the Libs would, as an example, cut health directly. So
instead Labor built a straw man to do that, and
they used Dutton's nuclear power plan. The cost of his
nuclear power plan, they said was six hundred billion. It
was never six hundred billion dollars. That was completely made up.
(13:47):
It came from a Labor linked lobby group with connections
to Simon Holmes of Court. But that didn't matter. Labour
used the six hundred billion dollar figure to make a
connection in voters' minds that if Dutton's nuclear plan cost
that much, then the money had to come from somewhere,
hence that deadly line he cuts you pay. And yet
(14:08):
until I raise that figure here about three and a
bit weeks ago and wrote about it in The Australian,
this whole six hundred billion dollar lie was never challenged
by the Liberals. Now that's just one example. There are many.
It's not unlike my fight over the secret agenda of
the Ulus statement. That was the Voice. I mean, it
was a hardcore, twenty six page document of demands. It
(14:30):
wasn't a small one page invitation that the PM tried
to claim. Now that too was nowhere until that I
exposed it. You ran with it, you voted against it,
and we turned the Voice campaign around. In the end,
it comes down to this, and you've heard me say
it time and time again. You will lose one hundred
(14:50):
percent of the fights you are not in. You will
lose one hundred percent of the fights you are not in.
This is exactly what happened on Saturday night. The Liberals
were not in the fight in any sense, not in
the policy work, not in the negative campaigning, the rapid
rebuttal of labor lies, not in the picture value day today,
(15:13):
not in message simplicity, not in the way they put
their key players like just Enterprise and Andrew Hasty in
the freezer. Now why we'll never know. To be a
first term government, you have to go hard, you have
to go early, and you must keep the contest simple.
When Abbott almost toppled Gillard in twenty ten after just
(15:35):
eight months in the job, he didn't have three years
that the coalition had. He did it by creating a
contest with labor. He did not let labor frame the contest.
He framed it. And as he fought every day, he
fought as if his political life depended on it, because
he knew it did, and knew that if he didn't
take labor down, Turnbull was ready to come back at him.
(15:58):
And even when Abbott eventually one government in a landslide,
Turnbull undermined him anyway. And that's something that dozens of
people have said to me over the weekend that the
start of the Liberal Party slide into trouble started when
we junked what we stood for and broke the hearts
of so many of our base moving from Abbot to Turnbull.
(16:20):
So where to now? The Liberals must have a review
and it must do more than gathered dust on the
shelf like the last one. They must regroup and start
doing the work from day one. Not think that labor
will be the ebb its way out of office. They
must work out who they are, what they stand for,
(16:40):
and who they represent now. The case in point here
is the National Party. They have weathered almost all of
the hits in recent years, where the Liberals have not.
Voters know and understand what the National Party stands for. Yes,
their demographics have stayed more stable than the Libs. But
when you buy their box off the shelf, take it
(17:01):
home and you open it, you get what you bought.
Not so the Liberals who've been all over the shop
since the carpet bag. A Turnbull up end of the party,
broke the heart of the base and then was punted
for his failures. To my mind, the best summation of
what Liberal Party stands for is still that of Mensies
and his plea that the Liberal Party must represent the
(17:23):
forgotten middle class off Australia, not those of the boardrooms,
not those with plenty of money in their pockets, but
those in the everyday suburbs, running a small business or
working hard to raise their families, that want government to
be big enough to do all the things they can't
do for themselves, but as small as possible, but believe
in the individual over the state, that want to be
(17:45):
able to keep as much as they can of what
they earn, and are distrustful of government trying to tell
them how to live their lives or curtail their freedom.
The job of an opposition is not to be a
weak echo of a bad government, as Tony Aba is
to say. It's to be strong and decisive and a
clear alternative now for Australia's sake. That is what we
(18:11):
must hope for now. Lots to get into tonight. I
have got a cracker jack show of analysts coming up.
Let's go now though for the headlines. Sky News political
reporter Riven.
Speaker 4 (18:26):
Spargo inside Parliament's House, the Prime Minister is turning his
attention to the government's second term. Anthony Abernezi returned to
work this morning as he prepares to choose his front bench.
The factional makeup of the ministry could change with more
labor MPs.
Speaker 5 (18:43):
The hard work will continue today. My government has been
an orderly government. We have worked hard, We've had effective ministers.
Speaker 4 (18:52):
The Prime Minister claims passing legislation to cut student debt
by twenty percent is his priority once Parliament returns. The
Liberal Party is searching for a new leadership team as
it attempts to build back from defeat.
Speaker 6 (19:05):
We need to our best people forward if we are
to reclaim the center.
Speaker 4 (19:11):
Susan Lee has taken the reins of the Liberal Party
ahead of the leadership contest. The Prime Minister is refusing
to say if he will soon visit the United States.
Donald Trump congratulated Anthony Albernesi during a phone call this
morning discussing tariffs in the Orchis Agreement. The Prime Minister
labeled the conversation warm and positive.
Speaker 5 (19:32):
We'll make appropriate announcements. My first international visit will be
just like last time. My first bilateral was to Indonesia.
Speaker 4 (19:41):
Anthony Abernesi is set to attend the G seven leaders
meeting in Canada next month.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
All right, boat counting is still underway. I want to
give you an update now, So let's bring in our
chief election analyst, Tom Connell. Tom I got to say,
terrific effort on Saturday night. Not the result I was
hoping for, but you were called it beautifully and kept
us across all the detail. I want to get an
update now if I can on the state of the House, please.
Speaker 7 (20:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 8 (20:07):
So at the moment, eighty six confirm for Labor there
are fifteen slap for grabs.
Speaker 7 (20:11):
I think the big stories are from here. Look, there
are quite a few opportunities for Labor to.
Speaker 8 (20:14):
Win a few and get up to ninety even that
would probably be about their benchmark from here. But the
question will be what can the coalition get up to
if they're rebuilding, you know, what are you rebuilding from?
And then as well, look at Climate two hundred and
their four seats. There are two seriously in doubt for them.
At least, there are three possibilities for them to win,
but all really tight. And the Greens for now, for
(20:35):
now are on zero. They're probably going to end up
for one or two. There's nothing certain right down. That's
why we haven't called. And if we look as well,
I'll just give a quick look at some of the
seats still up for grabs. You can see some of
these very tight margins Bullwinkle, this new seat Labor notionally holds.
It's zero point zero five percent up Goldstein as well, Longman,
Bradfield and Couyong. So these are probably all battles we're
(20:56):
relatively familiar with. Why we still have a lot of
outstanding seats at this stage because these are the contests
where not being being fought between an Independent and Labor
label with a big swing against that there Bendigo is
Labor and the Nationals.
Speaker 7 (21:09):
Menzies as well as something we're probably going to see.
Speaker 8 (21:12):
The Liberal Party lose to the Labor Party, and then
again Freemantle versus Independent and Monash is a really messy
contest with nobody with a particularly high vote. So there's
still quite a number of seats undeclared at this stage
because some of these contests are basically brand new ones.
Peter are waiting for some of the three Canada preferred
and two candidate referred counts to actually progress.
Speaker 2 (21:35):
Some I've watched it and looked closely at the AAC
and obviously listened to you two as well. The seat
of Melbourne Adam Band, Goldstein and Couyoon. They looked like
they were staying with the incumbents, income postals, and more
pre pole numbers. It's not looking like that though, Tom
(21:56):
what canon tell us that those threets specifically.
Speaker 7 (22:00):
Really interritting contest.
Speaker 8 (22:01):
Let's go to all of them right now, going into
Melbourne first of all, the seat of Melbourne itself. Now,
don't worry about this fourteen point three percent margin.
Speaker 7 (22:10):
It's not real.
Speaker 8 (22:10):
Why because the count done so far on two candidate
preferred is only four point eight percent and.
Speaker 7 (22:15):
It's postal ballots.
Speaker 8 (22:17):
We've reset things to just go actual numbers now because
that's the way we usually are at this stage of
the count. But this is just postal ballot where we
are more interested in this primary vote. You can see
the five point six percent margin for the Greens, a
swing against Adam Bann, and a big swing towards the
Labor Party on these numbers. With the preference flow're seeing
so far, this is bad news for Adam Ban.
Speaker 7 (22:37):
It's going to be quite close.
Speaker 8 (22:39):
We need to see those some of how those preference
distributions are going with you on the day vote. He's
going to be heard a bit further by postal ballots
out there.
Speaker 7 (22:46):
But Melbourne has.
Speaker 8 (22:47):
A lot of absent and declaration pre pole, which might
bring it back.
Speaker 7 (22:50):
So best guess on this right now.
Speaker 8 (22:52):
Honestly, it's basically a coin toss because we just don't
have enough further information.
Speaker 7 (22:56):
Where we are seeing the picture.
Speaker 8 (22:58):
Emerge a little bit more. So, let's go to the
southeast here and the seat of Goldstein. You can see
here we still have for the moment Zoe Daniel in
lead by ninety five votes.
Speaker 7 (23:08):
That's all.
Speaker 8 (23:08):
So this is the two party preferred. You can see
right now, she's in the lead by those ninety five votes.
The issue right now for Zoey Daniel, and there was
victory claimed should point out on Saturday night, the issue
is the postal vote that's coming in right now. Nearly
ten thousand votes are in. That's about half as our
best guess. We know how many applications have been put
out there. I think you'll get another ten maybe a
(23:30):
bit more than that ten thousand postal votes. On the
ten thousand so far, Tim Wilson has a lead in
those votes of three thousand. In other words, that keeps happening,
he ends up with the lead of three thousand. Zoe
Daniel won't be able to make that back on the
absent and other votes left over. So I just want
to see one more batch going that strongly, and I'll
say Zoe Daniel doesn't really have a path there. In Goldstein,
(23:51):
cou Yong is a tighter situation in terms of the
votes to come.
Speaker 7 (23:55):
Let's go in here and find cou Yong.
Speaker 8 (23:57):
So here we can see it's a similar story Peter,
but closer margins. So the lead for Monique Ryan is bigger,
much bigger than Zoe Daniels of a lead there of
about fourteen hundred votes.
Speaker 7 (24:07):
Again, the enemy for her at the moment is this
postal vote.
Speaker 8 (24:11):
So we go in here and we see the way
the postal is flowing so far, and we can see
the lead she has in the postal so far is
about twenty four hundred. So remember that lead fourteen hundred.
We think this is about half of the postal counted again,
maybe even a little bit more. If the postals keep
flowing at that rate and she gets those twenty four
hundred again, she ends up with a lead of about
(24:33):
a thousand. I think that would be too much for
Monique Ryan. She'll get some back on those absence, but
if the postal rate slows down a little.
Speaker 7 (24:39):
Bit, then it could just be too close to call.
Speaker 8 (24:41):
We could be talking about fifty votes between these two
at the end, So we need to see that next batch.
We'll see when it comes in, and also see how
the absent votes are going. If they're not going towards
Menique Ryan, she's in a lot of trouble.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
Thank you, Tom. We'll leave there. I'll catch up with
you tomorrow night if I can about the Senate because
that's getting very interesting as well. Well, let's bring you
my panel now for their expert analysis. Sky News political
contributor Chris Yulman and National Editor Australian Dennis Shanahan. Gentlemen,
thank you Dennis. In your column today and the Olds,
she said that Albanese is now arguably in the strongest
position of any labor leader since Federation. I made some points.
(25:18):
This one's an interesting one. His percentage of primary vote
share visa vie where Bill Shorten was when he lost
in twenty sixteen, is a point zero six percent better off,
but is obviously one is one in a landslide. He's
got all those seats. As Tom just said, there could
get to ninety. What happens now for labor because he's
(25:39):
got an enormous opportunity and very little cover. If he
can't turn things around for how people feel about cost
of living, or he has an economic misstep, he can't
claim he hasn't got the wherewithal in the Parliament to
do what he needs to do.
Speaker 6 (25:56):
Certainly, and this is a it is in this win
for Anti Alberanosi. It is because of preferences. But that's
the system we have, and that's the system we've always had,
and so what we have is a historic victory for
Anti Albernozi. He could be looking at two terms. I know,
(26:19):
you know, you don't want to get ahead of yourself,
but it is clearly a very big win for Labor. Now,
of course in the House, this means that not only
do they have an absolute majority in the House, but
it takes out the Greens. It may be that the
Greens are taken out completely, but also the issue of
(26:42):
independence and no question of minority government. So in the
House of Representatives, Antony Albernozi has complete control and as
you say, he can introduce what he wants, he can
get whatever he wants past, there's no issues on procedural matters.
He is in control of the House of Representatives. He's
(27:04):
still got an issue in the Senate. Now we've seen
Adam Bant today, who may lose his leadership of the Greens,
saying that the Greens are now the sole balance of
power in the Senate, and he's saying that this will
ensure the most progressive Senate we've seen, and he will
(27:25):
demand deals from Labor on a range of things. I
think this one thing that Anthony Albernez and Adam Bant
and the new legal leader of the Liberal Party, whoever
that is, should consider, and that is that the Greens
are not the second largest single block in the Senate.
(27:47):
The coalition is. And just like John Howard did in
the early days of the Hawk and Keating government when
they put forward useful, essential changes on microeconomic reform and
economic reform, John Howard built his credibility on economic management
(28:09):
from opposition and ensured that Labor got through that great
economic reform. So I think there is an opportunity here
for both the Prime Minister and the potential leader of
the Liberal Party to actually block the Greens out and
ensure that Australia gets decent middle of the ground reform.
Speaker 2 (28:34):
All right, let's just go to that point about Liberal leader,
I could confirm now from Andrew Hasty's office that he
will not be putting his hand up for the leadership.
Chris Yellman. I made the point of my editorial there's
rarely a silver bullet for a win. There's really a
silver bullet reason for a loss. Where do Liberal Party go?
Speaker 7 (28:51):
Now, well, whoever's.
Speaker 3 (28:54):
Got this job has got the hardest job in politics. Again,
we used to always say that about the leader of
the opposition, and then the prime minister's job saying become
much harder than the leader of the opposition. I think
now we can certainly say that's whoever leads the Liberal
Party next is in some ways on a hiding to nothing.
And I saw all the figures that you put up,
and I do appreciate all of that. But let's look
at where the Liberal Party starts from. The Liberal Party
(29:16):
starts at a primary vote of thirty percent, so that's
the coalition. They have never been in that position before.
Their starting point for the next election is about forty seats.
They're thirty six seats away almost doubling that number in
order to get back into government, and there'll be a
lot of bruised and battered people, and they'll all have
different ideas.
Speaker 2 (29:35):
About how this party should go.
Speaker 3 (29:36):
Should they be conservative liberal, should they be liberal conservative?
All those policy fights lie ahead of the leader. So
now it's not Andrew Hasty that it boils down to
Susan Lee, Dan Ten or Angus Taylor. A lot of
people are angry at Angus Taylor. They believe the reason
that they didn't have an economic plan, which Peter Costello
pointed to, was because of Angus Taylor.
Speaker 7 (29:55):
So if he gets the job, he gets it.
Speaker 3 (29:56):
Without any real authority and a difficult job at That's
and Lee of course will think that she should be
running the party. She might say that Julie Bishop didn't
get her chance. It's time for a woman to run
the Liberal Party. But whoever gets this job is in
an extraordinarily difficult position.
Speaker 7 (30:12):
This party has to be remade, route and branch.
Speaker 3 (30:16):
And that's not just the federal party, it's all of
the states as well. It's functionally dead in Western Australia,
South Australia, Victoria, it's in administration in New South Wales.
How do you start a comeback from there?
Speaker 2 (30:30):
That is the point I made on Saturday A night
two Chris, I grow with you. I think the architecture
of the Liberal Party is not as modern as it
needs to be to fight a modern war against the left,
because they're fighting an enemy that's not just or an
opponent that's not just the Labor Party. It's multi factor
and it's well resourced, as we can see there with
the tills, and it also is very disciplined. And as
(30:51):
preference flows in a preferential voting system, that is the
only game in town. As you can see, the differential
between Labor voting Liberal bloat was less than four one
hundred thousand votes, but the difference in the Parliament is
basically half the chamber and more.
Speaker 3 (31:07):
Yeah, and part of that too is that And look
at the effect of the Teals and if you want
to see them in a politically historical sense, one of
the Liberals mentioned this to me, think of them as
the DLP. It's not like the Greens to the Labor Party.
Those preferences flow back what the Teals do. They're a
political party that have been set up precisely to stop
the Liberal Party from ever regaining power again, and they're
(31:28):
doing that very effectively. So the number that was missing
there before is there's another four million people, and those
four million people are voting away from the Labor and
Liberal parties. But there's one particular party and that is
the Teals that has been specifically designed to weaponize keeping
the Liberal Party out of power.
Speaker 7 (31:46):
That is a big problem.
Speaker 2 (31:50):
You are not wrong. Let's go just quickly to the government. Obviously,
you know everyone's exhausted at the end of a campaign, Dennis.
But I'll tell you what, when you win, you can
find energy to get down to Canberra, to get back
in the offices and start the work of government. We
saw that today from the Prime Minister and his team.
We know, of course on the labor side, he doesn't
get to pick the personnel in his cabinet. That gets
(32:11):
chosen by the factions he divies up the portfolios. Surely
he's got to move somewhere like Bowa And I mean,
where are you hearing things might move, Dennis?
Speaker 6 (32:21):
Oh well, look, I think what we have to remember
is that the Prime Minister does have to the labor
prime minister does have to take the candidates selected by
the fashions. However, somebody like Bob Hawk and now Alberan
as in the strength that they have they can actually
call in the factional leaders and say, now, look, we
(32:43):
don't want any silliness here, and there's a couple of
people I'd like to see promoted, so that there's a
reasonable conversation before that's picked. Now, the Prime Minister during
the campaign has cemented in all of his senior people,
Richard Miles's Deputy and Defense Minister, Penny Wong, Don Farrell,
(33:06):
Jim Chalmers as a Treasurer and Katie Gallagher as Finance.
So he's done all of that already. The peak of
the labor leadership is in place. Now what they are
going to have to do is adjust some of the numbers.
First of all, I think Anthony Albanezi wants to see
greater representation for Western Australia. State representation very important, so
(33:31):
he wants to see more from Western Australia. On the
selection of female candid there has to be another female
ministerial member. That probably means that given that the Left
is now in control not only on national executive at
the conference and in the caucus now for the first time,
(33:53):
there has to be more places for the Left, another
place for a women woman. And so what we're actually
looking at is the potential for some long standing labor
right male minister to be asked to step aside in
the interests of a factional state and gender balance. Now,
(34:16):
I wouldn't want to suggest that that's going to be
Chris Bowen. I see that you have, but I think
this is a real challenge for the Prime Minister. He
wants to bring in new people like Andrew Charlton, the
Member for Paramatter, very good economist. He's trying to bring
new blood in, which is understandable. I think at this
(34:36):
stage it's too early to say he's going to dump anyone,
even Tanya Plibosek.
Speaker 2 (34:44):
My point on bow is I think it needs to
change portfolios absolutely. I think the factions will be the
ones who make the call and whether he survives into
the ministry got to leave their gents amount of time.
I could talk to you all night, but I'll come
back at this again, thank you. I will make the
point there. The reason why you can't keep enlarging the
ministry despite all those extra seats is the ministry is
capped under an active parliament at thirty MPs only or
(35:06):
like the break Costa Mars. Why are the posters get
it so so wrong and we'll get back to the
Liberal Party after the break. Welcome back. You had another
election where many of the published polls were a long
way off the final result and the Liberal Party wipe
out across urban Australia. How on earth do they call
this back? Expert? Polster Redbridge director Kosta Mars joins me, Now, well,
(35:30):
you guys weren't so far off the ultimate decision, but
plenty of other posters were way off the mark cause,
particularly when it came to those final numbers on Saturday night.
Why was this the case?
Speaker 9 (35:41):
I think it's really misreading that other vote and I
think it get close to six million people went from
the other major parties or thereabouts by the time everything
is counted. And if you don't actually read that part
of Australia correctly when you are surveying, you're going to
misread the two party preferred.
Speaker 2 (36:00):
What about the story today that the liber Party Polster
had predicated or put into their preference flows the underlying
numbers coming out of the Voice referendum. I just thought
that was crackers. But you're the professional. What did you think?
Speaker 9 (36:13):
Yeah, I wouldn't have used that to wait the numbers
absolutely not the referendum is one thing. Voting for the
next government of Australia's is a totally different matter and
people have a totally different emotional response to it.
Speaker 2 (36:29):
So what happened in the end, you think that the
biggest reason for these sorts of numbers we saw was
that big soft vote sat there and sat there into
the last minute and broke almost overwhelming overwhelmingly to Labor.
Speaker 7 (36:44):
Was that it.
Speaker 9 (36:45):
Yeah, So in our case eats Track, we did a
bit of an elsis to work out who did the
coalition lose over a period of eight weeks, and there
are largely people in their forties and fifties who were
renting and had a mortgage in the ottosoburbs and regions
of this country. And then we did a bit of
a further analysis and try to work out where they're
preferencing and we found it pretty early on they'll go
(37:07):
on to Labor. So that bleed was pretty horrific for
the coalition. So that's I think that was actually was
the death nail for the coalition in a lot of
seats that hemorrhaging over a period of eight weeks and
then the preference is going to Labor.
Speaker 2 (37:25):
I went through this at the top of the show Man.
If you look at Labour's priory vote visit Vee, where
they were, say, even when short and lost in twenty sixteen,
it's about the same, Right, that's a dramatic deterioration, even
if the seat count is obviously vastly improved. And then
you've got the turnout. I mean, from World War One
until the twenty twenty two election, we've never dropped below
(37:47):
ninety percent of turnout. We look like we're at seventy
seven percent or they're about this election, so growing disengagement
from voters. I mean, these are deep issues, the structural
issues with the two major parties. I think the only
bright light out of the weekend was it looks like
we might be past peak green if that's possible.
Speaker 9 (38:08):
Yeah, that's right. I mean, look, the major party boat
combined is still obviously heading in the one direction that's
called self and that other vote is now the king
and queen maker of future parliaments, and whoever wins them
over in future elections will be forming government. And that's
(38:28):
I think, you know, not a civil bullet for another
two major parties has got to seal a bullet for
that it was lucky this time. Next time it could
be a little bit more tricky.
Speaker 2 (38:39):
Christ Jelman makes a point, though, you know, Labor fighting
the Greens at least had an assured preference flow that
came back about eighty percent of the time. The creation
of the Tears under the guise of being sort of
just better healed and more environmentally friendly liberals, well that's
a furfey. They're there to take votes the Liberals and
(39:01):
they funnel them back to the left of politics. So
their only purpose of being is to destroy the Liberal
Party basically and ensure they ever form majority govern again.
I mean, how do you tackle something like that?
Speaker 9 (39:12):
It's hard, right, I mean, it took the Labor Party,
what is it, two decades to recover from the DOP split,
And so Chris's reference about the dop's an excellent analogy
because it's exactly what I think he's facing in the
coalition right now. To regain these electorates will take a
long time because there are some demographic mountains I need
(39:32):
to climb. It's not impossible, and we can see that
in Goldstead that Tim Wilson's about to get elected there.
But it's a long, long road. Ahead and overcoming that
and having to balance that. So, you know, you're a
student of political history, you know how where those seats
were lost for Labor when the DLP split, and they
were particularly geographically located within particular constituencies, they really reliable
(39:58):
and so this is the same problem now for the coalition.
Speaker 2 (40:03):
And of course what you might gain by bending over
in relation to some of these inner city seats, you
will lose out there in the peri urban out of suburbs.
That's the challenge that wasn't there with the DLP. Thank
you cous right after the break that review in twenty
twenty two that said these were the things liberals need
to fix. Well why was that? Why was that review ignored?
(40:23):
And are the Libs just a regional Australia party now,
I mean I don't buy that, but that's Labour's spin.
They won't win back in the urban areas. And well
a bit more on all of that. There's a bloke
in Victoria who won it defied the swing. We're going
to talk to him as to why that happened. All right,
(40:44):
let's bring my panel our Skying News contributing at Gary
Hargraves and One Nation Chief of Staff James Ashby gens.
We know there will be a post mortem for the
coalition and the all parties will certainly do a review,
but the coalitions one has got to be no holes barred,
or it's not worth the the effort. They had one
Gary in twenty twenty two it said they had a
lack of clarity and messaging, a lack of information about
(41:07):
values at a weakness in engaging young voters. Paul campaign organization,
disconnect with urban voters. I know my husband was one
of the people who were doing the review. It's sat
on a shelf. How do we make sure that they're
not going to leave these reviews on the shelf and
they actually do something about it.
Speaker 1 (41:25):
Oh well, I suspect any review that's done and now
we'll probably come up with similar results. So no lessons
learned at all in the last three years, Peter. Look
in the end, the party needs transparency, it needs openness,
it needs to have honesty, and its grassroots membership is
just walking away because it's finding people who are perverting
(41:46):
what the Liberal Party is about. And the Liberal Party
has forgotten to stand for something, It's forgotten to be
authentic and taking nothing away from Peter Dutton at all.
He put energy in, but the trouble was there were
people white adding him all the way through to the media.
And this white ending is coming from people who don't
want to see people like Peter Dutton succeed. They don't
want to see somebody from Queensland succeed.
Speaker 7 (42:07):
If I dare say it like that.
Speaker 1 (42:08):
I mean they don't want to see somebody who's a
conservative conceited succeed. So you know, Peter, there's a lot
of other agendas at play and those people have got
to be outed and routed. You've got to get rid
of them because otherwise the party is in deep, deep peril.
Speaker 2 (42:25):
I will underscore that point because let's not forget at
the end of last year that started this year Peter
Dutton had labor on the ropes before any official campaign
had started. It was only once the official campaign had
started that they went backwards. James, I've got to ask
how one nation ended up. You had high numbers of
polling as support going in just in relation to Tazzy
(42:47):
will Lee Hansen see off Jackie Lamby.
Speaker 10 (42:49):
Do you think, well, there's sixty percent of the way
through the countdown here for the Senate, which still leaves
another forty to go, but this could take up to
four or five weeks.
Speaker 7 (43:00):
Peter. As you know, the postal votes.
Speaker 10 (43:02):
Need two weeks before they're officially closed off and then
they'll start to count them as well. Strangely enough, in Tazzy,
they are a different beasts down here. They like to
vote below the line, primarily primarily because of their hair
Clark system. They're used to voting below the line, so
we have to accept that. Obviously, there's an algorithm that
needs to be implemented because they scan all those Senate
(43:24):
papers and then the algorithm in a couple of weeks time,
when they press the button will determine who wins those seats.
We're not far behind Jackie Lamby. It all comes down
to preferences. But typically what's usually happened here in Tazzy
the Liberal Party have had overflow, meaning they've had more
than two quotas in their vote. This time they're below
two quotas, so there won't be a preference flow from
(43:47):
the Liberals towards one nation in Tazzy.
Speaker 7 (43:50):
So we'll see what happens.
Speaker 10 (43:51):
We'll just have to wait and see.
Speaker 2 (43:55):
We'll like declare I'm one of those widows too. Their
votes are under the line. Anyway, let's go to the
on Saturday night and where too.
Speaker 7 (44:01):
Now.
Speaker 2 (44:02):
I thought it was interesting. It was very industring.
Speaker 9 (44:05):
You know.
Speaker 2 (44:06):
I had a bit of a barnie on Saturday and
night with Senator Murray.
Speaker 7 (44:09):
What who says? You know?
Speaker 2 (44:10):
The Liberal Party's got to stop fighting these culture wars.
Let me read you a quote from Julia Gillard. This
is Julia Gillard in two thousand and three from a
speech she went as she gave to the City Institute.
She said that labor must muscle up for the hard
task of winning the culture war and creating a new
vision for Australia. So if you want to talk about
who started the culture wars, it was labor. There in
(44:33):
black and white from Julia Gillard the voice. It was
part of the Labour's culture war against our constitution. Three
flags behind the PM. That's Labour's culture war against our country. Gary,
I'll tell you what Labour should stop saying. We should
stop fighting the culture wars. I think our problem was
that Dutton. Yes he's a conservative, or was a conservative.
(44:54):
His policy platform was a conservative. I don't think he
took on enough of these culture wars, in my view,
is that fair?
Speaker 1 (45:03):
Absolutely and correct. Peter, Look, the problem is if you
want to be a small target, you might be able
to get away with it and say a Brisbane City
Council election and even a state government election, you might
be able to be a small target. But the small
target strategy always allows the other mob to define you.
So the absence of the authenticity of who you are,
what you believe in, where you want to take the
country to is the problem. And that's what this election
(45:27):
campaign became. Let's follow the idea, the sort of James
McGraw idea of a small target strategy, say nothing, stand
for nothing, just let the other mob, you know, make
mistakes and you should win. That doesn't work at at
a federal election level. People want vision, they want passion,
they want ambition, and you'll get all those under forties
(45:48):
following you if you actually outline the kind of Australia
you want them to inherit. Right now, all they're going
to inherit is them. We never really made that point.
There was no none of that point was made. There
was no proper context built around how power is destroying
everyone's personal economy. We don't live in economy. We live
in a community, and we've got to start talking the
(46:11):
language that makes it very clear that every individual matters,
that values matter, reward for effort matters, and in the
absence of that, they're going to keep losing.
Speaker 2 (46:23):
Someone very shrewd and send me a message, and this
person knows how to win elections, that we spent too
much time telling people they had a cost of living
in crisis, that they were hurting. Well, they know that
we should have spent that time telling them it was
labour's fault. And here's how we're going to fix it.
And I think that person's spot on. I'll leave it there, gents,
got to go. I'm going to speak to someone after
the break. Is a coalition in Unicorn, really one of
(46:45):
the only coalition MPs across the country to hold on
to his seat. It's in an urban area. In fact,
he increased his margin off labor. So how do you
do it? After the break? Hey, I just want to
apply it a caution to the turnout number I gave
you seventy seven percent. It is seventy seven percent right now,
(47:05):
but of course you'll know once postals and other things
come dropping in that may well shift up, but I
suspect it will be lower than the eighty nine point
eight percent I think it was in twenty twenty two.
All right, let's go now to someone casey MP Aaron Violi,
who's one of a handful of Coalition survivors in Victoria.
He's managed to hold on to his seat with fifty
(47:26):
two percent of the vote compared to Labour's candidate Naomi Oakley.
I'm forty seven. Indeed, it would appear that he's not
only survived, but he's had a swing to him. Aaron
Violi joins me. Now he's from Melbourne. It was a
bit of a blood bath in Victoria, if I'm honest here, Aaron,
we thought it would be better. It wasn't. Your set
of case is a ultra marginal, so when you go
(47:48):
down to the wire, but it looks like you've doubled
your margin and as I said, picked up a swing.
Has that surprised you?
Speaker 11 (47:58):
I mean when you see the results across Bitia and
the country, very grateful and humbled to be re elected,
and it looks like you know these numbers matter. Peter
five points fifty two point nine two at the moment,
give me the point nine two. I need to take
the extra But you know, it was a tough night
for the party, and the result locally is looking good
(48:19):
at a third generation local, and I've worked really hard
to get out and about talk to the community, understand
their concerns in the last three years and put forward
some really big local policies around communications, around roads, around
health and with a medicareage and care clinic that my
community needed. So I think that, combined with my local
connections with my family, made a difference. And very fortunate
(48:43):
and humbled to be reindorsed with an increased march and locally,
but understand, and you know, it's been a tough forty
eight hours. Lots of great friends, lots of colleagues, lots
of great candidates here in Victoria and across the country
that we worked really hard as hard as I did,
and didn't get the same results. Bittersweet and tough time
for the Liberal Party. And as you know, lots of
(49:04):
reflection required and lots of reviews, but more importantly, lots
of action that needs to come from those reviews. I
caught you before and couldn't agree more. A review is nice,
but actions from that is what is needed for us
as a party moving forward.
Speaker 2 (49:21):
I think it's show that you worked hard. I think
it's show that you did the work locally. I think
it's showed that you had a long standing connection to
the seat. I just don't think you're buy that. I
bet you have to be of your seat, particularly for
our mob. You know, do you have a view about
the leadership going forward? I mean there's a lot of
speculation tonight it'll be someone like Angus Taylor. Do you
(49:44):
have a view? Do you think it should be Susan Lee?
Do we need a new face? Perhaps?
Speaker 11 (49:49):
Yeah? No, I'm going to respectfully Peter.
Speaker 7 (49:52):
You know, I've got a lot of respect.
Speaker 11 (49:53):
For you, but I'm going to keep my position private.
I think it's so important that we have the internal
discussion and we respect the internal process. I've got a
lot of respect for my colleagues, so I'm going to
keep that to myself. But we just need to make
sure we make the right decision to give hold this
government to account. Because the cost of living challenges from
Friday having disappeared today, so there's a.
Speaker 2 (50:12):
Lot of work we've got to do to be a
credible opposition. Well, congratulations as I said, you're right to
keep your power to drive. I'll leave it there. Congratulations
again to you and all your volunteers. Aaron, thanks for
joining me. All right, that's it for me. This is
a post mortem, will continue for many nights, I suspect,
I though you at home are herding as well as
around the country. But we will here at least hold
(50:34):
the government to account. That's it for me. Andrew bolts
up next.
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