The second morning after

A second thread for discussion of the post-election aftermath, as the Coalition waits to see if it will make it to a parliamentary majority, and Labor licks it wounds and prepared to choose a new leader.

I had a paywalled piece in Crikey yesterday giving my immediate post-result impressions, which offered observations such as the following:

Unexpected as all this was, the underlying dynamic is not new, and should be especially familiar to those whose memories extend to Mark Latham’s defeat at the hands of John Howard in 2004. Then as now, the northern Tasmanian seats of Bass and Braddon flipped from Labor to Liberal, with forestry policy providing the catalyst on that occasion, and Labor performed poorly in the outer suburbs, reflected in yesterday’s defeat in Lindsay and its failure to win crucial seats on the fringes of the four largest cities. There were also swings to Labor against the trend in wealthy city seats, attributed in 2004 to the non-economic issues of the Iraq war and asylum seekers, and touted at the time as the “doctors’ wives” effect.

So far as this blog is concerned though, other engagements have prevented me giving the post-election aftermath the full attention it deserves. I will endeavour to rectify that later today, so stay tuned. In the meantime, here is a thread for discussion of the situation. Note also the post below this one, dedicated to updates and discussion on progress in the late count.

Author: William Bowe

William Bowe is a Perth-based election analyst and occasional teacher of political science. His blog, The Poll Bludger, has existed in one form or another since 2004, and is one of the most heavily trafficked websites on Australian politics.

1,403 comments on “The second morning after”

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  1. This Bill Shorten guy that nobody ever liked.
    He did OK in 2016 against a gravitas merchant brought in specifically to take him out, & who was given the boot when that didn’t happen.
    Must be more to it than that.
    I thought the wombat bit was pretty good, not so the rest of it.

  3. ltep:

    In my view, given the events of the last decade, I think it’s impossible to say with any certainty that any political leader’s tenure is 100% safe.

    Let’s see how Scotty and his C-Team perform in dealing with the parliament and in particular the Senate before declaring his leadership safe. Three years is a very long time in politics today.

  5. Hopefully labor can go back to just sitting back and letting the incompetence, corruption and toxic personalities of the LNP do their work for them, along with senate inquiry hearings where Wong eviscerated them. There’s a raft of questions to ask about lack of due process in grants being awarded before funding rounds opened and without the recipient appling for funds, as well as the whole adani groundwater approval ‘process’. Labor needs to get Price, Cash, Joyce, etc into the limelight at every opportunity to bring on the buyers remorse.

    I still expect to wake up to find this is a bad dream.

  6. I never knew John Button said that about Shorten. It makes more sense now that on the day Button died, Psephos felt the need to sneeringly comment here about his “perpetually overrated career”.

  7. Redlands Mowerman @ #1149 Monday, May 20th, 2019 – 8:36 pm

    Labor wasn’t merely confident they would win. They felt they were a shoe-in, a mere formality. They had won the election months out and were already planning their office renovations, their celebration parties, the photo ops, the victory laps, the speeches…..their place in history!

    This party, this leader, was Gough, and Bob, and Kevin and Julia, and the true believers.
    And in this over-confidence, they became so cock-sure of themselves that they were announcing taxes galore, anyone who made ‘too-much’ would be hit. They identified what they thought were easy targets and announced, we’re coming after you. People surely thought, “if that’s what they’re admitting to now, imagine what’s hidden away.”

    The left is busily flailing around trying to find someone, or something to blame. It was negativity, it was Murdoch, it was coal, it was Facebook.
    What it was, was an unpopular leader, a born to lead mindset, and a lack of understanding the electorate because it is now a party of the comfortable, well-fed, inner city left elite.

    Blather is your friend, blatherer.

  9. Looks like Alan Jones will feature in this 4Corners report. I wonder if Piers will make a cameo appearance?

  10. The last comment I’ll make on Bill Shorten, he did achieve a 5% increase in his primary vote in his own seat which due to the redistribution was a more middle to high income area than it was on its previous boundaries, not bad for a Collingwood supporter in an Essendon dominated area.

  11. Bernard Keane
    @BernardKeane

    “Appeasement” is a highly loaded term. But there’s no doubt the ABC under current management is a cowed organisation so scared of upsetting the government it has tied itself in knots trying to avoid offence.

  12. I just hope ABC viewers get to see real crap on their screens.

    Bring back Monkey! (The low budget Japanese series, not the other monkey).

  14. Australian election did get some mention in the US. With note being taken of Labor’s climate change policy being rejected, and what it means to the Dems for 2020.

  15. You would not bet the rent money on the judgement of our resident vulgarian from the Central Coast:

    C@tmomma says:
    Thursday, May 16, 2019 at 6:41 am
    Civil war in the Liberal and National parties is a good thing and needs to happen. As I wrote yesterday, what we are seeing is the last dying days of the Howard and Costello era.

    Howard and Costello went too far with Workchoices and got turfed. This lot have gone too far with Robodebt, Cash for Mates and MPs and extreme vote buying with the Public Purse. So they need to get turfed too and government needs to go back to what it’s supposed to be about. Us.

  16. dave @ #1143 Monday, May 20th, 2019 – 6:30 pm

    Dan Gulberry @ #1134 Monday, May 20th, 2019 – 8:16 pm

    dave,

    A put option is a bet on the market (or a particular company’s shares) going down.

    A call option is a bet on the upside.

    Duh – you’re correct of course. My bad.

    Apart from that – what I said goes.

    Sob 🙁

    No worries. What I posted was not so much correcting you, more correcting it for accuracy’s sake on behalf of other readers.

    Or as Jimmy McGill might say, “Saul Goodman”.

    😉

  17. This 4Corners report is awesome. What a hit job voters in Warringah perpetrated on Abbott!

    And not living in Warringah, I still feel connected to all of this, having seen it play out on Insta via the Vote Tony Out mob and Zali Steggall.

  18. On the AEC site 4000 odd votes across 4 or 5 seats was the difference between winning & losing government. Labor needs to keep things in perspective & be confident.

  19. I suddenly feel an inexplicable urge to repeat my plea to lurkers:
    PLEASE POST MORE OFTEN.

    Yes, especially all the tradies from Western Sydney who don’t understand that Labor’s policies that invest in people will grow the economy more so than tax cuts for the rich. Or the blue collar workers from Queensland who don’t realise that there are more jobs in windmills than there are in coal mines.

    Lets please talk to them!

  20. Chinda63 says:
    Monday, May 20, 2019 at 7:42 pm
    For the life of me, I don’t understand why ALP policies in non-economic areas – such as health, education, foreign affairs, indigenous affairs and particularly the environment – should not have been prosecuted by the relevant shadow ministers.

    A series of TV ads featuring Tanya Plibersek, Penny Wong, Mark Butler, Pat Dodson etc spruiking their respective policy areas would have highlighted the depth of talent in the ALP team, as well as contrasting the ScoMo “one man band” for the shallow, pathetic ad-man routine it was.

    Labor’s problem was that they did not get clear air in the media. The ABC news bulletins always related Labor policy through a Liberal lens eg Scott Morrison says that Labor’s policy will damage . . . .

    When propaganda is effective the audience doesn’t know what they are not being told.

    I was disgusted at the 7 pages of Clive Palmer ads in the newspaper on Friday but I didn’t think anyone believed them and I didn’t read them. More fool me

    I saw the AEC ads on Twitter to verify the validity of what you were reading. Only today have I realised that Facebook was littered with Labor’s Death Tax.

    When I was handing out How To Votes many people refused all How To Votes, saying “I have got this on my phone” so I wondered what they were reading

  21. Abc management and staff with their inoffensive, mild scrutiny of coalition promises and statements just guaranteed themselves another round of funding cuts.
    Give yourselves an uppercut team.
    You may have been cowed before, now you’re disembowelled.

  22. billie

    Not just prosecuted by the Ministers but sold by the Ministers in shopping malls for years prior to the election.

  23. There’s always a lot of projection built into estimations of politicians. They are seen to embody all kinds of ills and virtues. Most of this is just rubbish. It is just silhouette. Shorten had his run and everyone is piling on. He accepted a poisoned chalice and from it he did drink. He’s but a historical footnote already.

    Now Albo has stepped up. I pity him. He will be traduced in the same way that every LOTO is traduced. I’ve met him. He’s easy to like. He’s a softy and a smoothy. He’s a bit of a philosopher. He’s clever, funny and wise. He’s cool in the way that Sydney is always going to be cool. He’s a natural. But none of this will mean much. He will be defiled and ill used and then he will be incinerated. We have no respect for those that seek to lead until it’s too late. I sincerely hope I’m wrong.

  24. Sceptic @ #1168 Monday, May 20th, 2019 – 8:57 pm

    On the AEC site 4000 odd votes across 4 or 5 seats was the difference between winning & losing government. Labor needs to keep things in perspective & be confident.

    In particular keep the faith with the 49% or more who tried to get us across the line.

    Wait and see the final washup.

  26. He will be traduced in the same way that every LOTO is traduced.

    You left out the word Labor between ‘every’ and ‘LOTO’.

  27. Are tradies in Western Sydney Labor’s heartland now?
    Tradies are all self employed.

    The Labor heartland is always unionised workforces Today those workforces are more likely to be nurses, teachers, aged care workers, public servants.

    Labor seems to have grasped the new reality with policies to help women rejoin the workforce when their children are young, escape domestic violence

  33. dave
    Labor straight on the front foot… hammer LNP corruption & deceit.
    Speak the truth for equality.. keep after Palmer & Pauleen

  34. briefly

    If Albo becomes leader I hope he manages to get the Labor organisation to realise that good policies is not enough. That you have to go out and beat some sense into ordinary voters.

  37. I was talking to a nurse who said she thought Labor was bringing in too many taxes so she didn’t vote for them. Their inheritance tax was the final straw for her.
    FMD

  38. Not happy that Hinch lost in Victoria.

    Completely shocked by the election result.

    Shorten should have gone small target like Rudd to win but he wasnt popular with the people. Shorten went small target and scare campaign in 2016 and nearly won. He went with a heap of policies this time and lost.

    I really hope Albo takes over as leader. Seems like the most genuine candidate available and a down right decent bloke. Dont agree with all his policies as a centrist/centre-right leaning voter but I feel like he’s right man to take over.

    Shorten was clearly not in the same league as Whitlam, Hawke, or Rudd to be able to win an election from Opposition.

  39. Sceptic says:
    Monday, May 20, 2019 at 8:57 pm
    On the AEC site 4000 odd votes across 4 or 5 seats was the difference between winning & losing government. Labor needs to keep things in perspective & be confident.

    The Lib-Libs and their clones must have spent well over $100 mill to save around 150,000 votes from shifting from the Blue to the Red. That is at least $650 per vote retained.

    They spent big. It worked. Next time they will spend even more if they think they have to. They have a bottomless budget. Labor have to fight the Lib-Libs. They have to fight every other Lib-clone. They have to fight the Lib-Kin. We are the underdogs in every sense.

  40. Billie
    The Labor heartland is always unionised workforces Today those workforces are more likely to be nurses, teachers, aged care workers, public servants.

    Labor needs to cut the CFMEU adrift … boofy blokes only have self interest at heart.

    Labor needs to attract GetUp style support to replace the CFMEU, both for improved intelligence & direct financial support , freely given not forced

  44. Cud Chewer says:
    Monday, May 20, 2019 at 9:06 pm
    briefly

    If Albo becomes leader I hope he manages to get the Labor organisation to realise that good policies is not enough. That you have to go out and beat some sense into ordinary voters.

    CC….the prior problem is that voters do not listen to political parties or politicians, who are generally deeply reviled. The electorate is sullen, disempowered, alienated and resentful….on a good day.

    The Right exacerbate this, quite deliberately. The last thing they want is an engaged and curious electorate. They benefit from repulsion. They drive it.

  45. briefly
    That is at least $650 per vote retained.
    I live in Wentworth our household received 5 Sharmer mail outs per person… all straight in the recycling.

    It’s not all about volume of money

  48. @BSA Bill
    “This Bill Shorten guy that nobody ever liked.”

    @Sceptic
    On the AEC site 4000 odd votes across 4 or 5 seats was the difference between winning & losing government. Labor needs to keep things in perspective & be confident.

    Juxtaposition!

  49. Lars Von Trier @ #1165 Monday, May 20th, 2019 – 8:54 pm

    You would not bet the rent money on the judgement of our resident vulgarian from the Central Coast:

    C@tmomma says:
    Thursday, May 16, 2019 at 6:41 am
    Civil war in the Liberal and National parties is a good thing and needs to happen. As I wrote yesterday, what we are seeing is the last dying days of the Howard and Costello era.

    Howard and Costello went too far with Workchoices and got turfed. This lot have gone too far with Robodebt, Cash for Mates and MPs and extreme vote buying with the Public Purse. So they need to get turfed too and government needs to go back to what it’s supposed to be about. Us.

    Don’t worry, I’ll do the same to you eventually. 🙂

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