Tag: australian politics

Game of Thrones-style twist few Australians saw coming

Posted on by Martin Newman

It was the classic Game of Thrones twist that hooked millions of people around the world.

Author George R.R. Martin was adept at building up a character, dropping them in a life threatening situation, offering hope they would escape, then withdrawing it – bloodily.

It happened in the very first episode when Bran was pushed from the tower and continued on its merry way through the execution of Ned Stark, the red wedding and the murder of Jon Snow.

But without Martin’s books as a guide the last two series have been more Lord of the Rings – predicatable and shockless – with the final episode seeming little more than a set-up for a sequel.

The real Game of Thrones moment, the gut-churning twist, the realisation of loss and betrayal Australian fans had sought from the show, came instead on Saturday night – in real life.

As incumbent PM Scott Morrison carried the field in the 2019 federal election, millions of voters anticipating a Labor win looked on in horror.

With bad result after bad piling up around him, quickly and brutally Bill Shorten’s run at leading the country slid inexorably into the abyss.

The celebrations of gleeful Coalition voters felt as painful as watching Robb Stark’s headless body paraded around on horseback. The King of the North.

Shorten, the king of the working class, was just as dead – politically.

In the lead up to the election, it had misleadingly seemed as though everything had gone right for Labor and Bill.

A usually reliable measure of preferences, the leaders’ debates had been twice won by Shorten, clearly.

Even a story suggesting he was misusing his mother’s memory backfired, turning into a ball ache for the Liberals.

Most deaths are regarded as untimely, but the passing of widely-revered former PM Bob Hawke was the opposite. It was incredibly timely. And it seemed to augur success for Labor.

With Paul Keating, Hawke had come out two weeks before to endorse Shorten and a Labor ascendency.

But while Bob’s death wiped a number of anti-Shorten stories off the front pages of the next day’s papers, it may also have acted as a reminder to voters how underwhelming the Labor leader was compared to the greats of the past.

The Coalition had its own moments of luck. An egg aimed at the PM hit but did not break. For God-fearing Morrison, the unexpected recipient of the leadership after Peter Dutton’s failed tilt, it was another miracle, ahead of his ‘miracle win’.

But despite an uncomfortably narrow two per cent lead in the two party preference vote, the media almost unanimously predicted a Labor victory.

Post-election it then turned around to unanimously blame the pollsters rather than its own analysis for getting it wrong. A repeat of the Trump victory. Of Brexit. Of Gladys.

The media has grown fond of asking this question: Can polls be trusted?

Unfortunately, what has been repeatedly revealed is the mainstream media’s inability to analyse accurately.

It’s nothing unusual, factoring in protest voters and those who haven’t thought about it hard yet, that a two per cent poll lead can evaporate or be reversed. That’s all John Hewson had when he went into the ’93 election as favourite and got thumped by Conservative Australia, not prepared to cast their votes for the GST.

An insider in the Liberals’ campaign team told me it had been a source of constant incredulity within the party how wrong the media’s interpretation had been over the past few weeks.

“We focused on 10 key seats in every state, winning those,” she said. “The strategy was clear and we knew the polls were misleading. We were still strong in the first party preferred vote and our own polling showed that seat by seat we could win. Although, we believed by only a narrow margin.”

She added: “We couldn’t understand the single-focus of most of the media on the national poll trend. They just didn’t look beyond it. Nor did they listen.”

So Scott “The Accidental PM” Morrison, now has a genuine mandate to roll out his policies, while fans of fantasy adventures are reminded life provides enough of its own bitter pills to swallow.

Picture: Street art in Melbourne

Sex, lies & politics: The Peta Credlin – Tony Abbott ‘affair’

Posted on by Martin Newman

So were Tony Abbott and Peta Credlin at it?

The evidence ranged against them, one or two perceived moments of tenderness mostly not associated with a work relationship, a head rested on a shoulder, protective outbursts from the PM.

The rumour mills were so over-extended NSW Liberal MP Concetta Fierravanti-Wells felt the need to deliver an ultimatum to Abbott to deal with it.

“Politics is about perceptions,” she told him bluntly.

But should perceptions be enough to cost someone their job? And once it’s ‘out’ must the rumour-mongers be sated.

The question of sacking the Prime Minister’s chief of staff is a moot point now of course, but the ongoing damage to her career legacy is very much alive.

In the final days of the Abbott government, in the lead-up to that last brutal push to unseat him, it was not Abbott who was the target of the plotters.

He’d been given a walloping in the previous failed coup over the knighthood awarded to Prince Philip, weathered it and came back with an improved poll standing.

But when laying the groundwork for another go, it was Credlin who was identified as both the easier mark and the most effective means of undermining the PM.

She had directed his career from, at times, abject ineptitude in opposition to a decisive, commanding, if no-less controversial, presence in politics. He needed her there to govern.

The attacks on Credlin were almost nonsensical – an insult to the public intellect.

She was accused of having “too-high a profile” and the prime minister’s refusal to sack her for it was painted as being blinkered and an indication of internal rot.

Credlin was Abbott’s perceived Achilles heel –hurting her would leave him weaker.

Stubbornly, loyally he stuck by her. “Do you really think my chief of staff would be under this kind of criticism if her name was Peter?” he asked.

It was a good point.

In the UK, the close relationship between Tony Blair and his bullying mouthpiece Alastair Campbell didn’t produce calls for him to resign or be sacked. They too had a cosily iron grip on the agenda that left even the Treasurer on the outer. But Campbell was regarded as too dangerous to take on – a formidably strong lieutenant to the PM.

Credlin’s was a different story – she was a woman.

A seasoned political backroom operator she’d built a reputation in the Howard government as an astute strategist working for a number of MPs, then in opposition as top aide to Liberal leaders Brendan Nelson, Malcolm Turnbull and Abbott.

She had paid her dues many times over, and yet there have been fewer more transparent or malicious whispering campaigns carried out in politics than that on Credlin during the short reign of Tony Abbott.

The rumours about the pair had been the subject of gossip throughout politics and the media, but had never been aired publically until this week.

Privately Credlin was painted as a Delilah figure. She had her hooks in him, siren-like, fouling his judgment and poisoning his leadership.

I use that biblical comparison because the narrative of the scheming, manipulative women has been around for thousands of years. And it is routinely trotted out when critics can’t make conventional headway. See The Tragedy of Othello, Shakespeare knew it too.

In Australia we saw it with the jibes at Julia Gillard’s husband’s sexuality, and by association her own.

There is no question Credlin came to be widely disliked within the party and the control she exerted over the PM’s diary became a sticking point for many.

But the malignant undermining, the creeping, unsubstantiated sniggering at the morals of the government, went beyond all professional criticism.

I doubt there was any affair. This is politics and she was solely a means to get at Abbott.