Election miracle or is it Labor ‘saving the furniture’?
Callum Godde and Allanah Sciberras |
“I’ve always believed in miracles.”
They were the words that famously fell from Scott Morrison’s lips in 2019 as he scored a federal election win for the ages.
After trailing in every opinion poll since becoming prime minister less than nine months earlier, Mr Morrison somehow turned the coalition’s bleak fortunes face about.
It was a victory that shocked the country and not least, himself.
If he is also to win, a Lazarus-like equation of similar proportion would seem to confront new Victorian Premier Ben Carroll.
But changing leaders does not, of course, entitle a government to a resurrection, marketer and market researcher Toby Ralph notes.
“Morrison believed in miracles,” he says.
“Carroll needs voters to believe in competent government, which may be the more ambitious proposition.
“The comparison works up to a point: a new salesman, an unpopular government and very little time,” according to the consultant who has worked on more than 50 elections globally.
“Carroll has to persuade voters that changing the premier amounts to changing the government.
“That’s a significant trick when the letterhead’s the same.”
Since taking over from Jacinta Allan in late July, Mr Carroll has been busy scraping the barnacles off a 12-year Labor regime to clear the decks for the November election.
Notably, the 51-year-old has called a royal commission into Victoria’s scandal-plagued construction sector.
He’s also scrapped a planned statue of predecessor Daniel Andrews and triggered a pothole blitz across the state’s crumbling road network.
His latest pivot this week involved committing to Jack’s Law – granting police powers to wand anyone, anywhere and anytime for knives without a warrant – if Labor is re-elected for a historic fourth term.
The coalition has also pursued the policy, which was pioneered in Queensland and adopted by other states, but the Allan government was opposed to it.
Mr Carroll, who has served in cabinet since 2017, repeatedly replied “I’m the premier” when reporters asked why the government did not act sooner on the measure to combat knife crime.
“Carroll can’t credibly say he wasn’t there,” Mr Ralph says.
“He sat at the cabinet table, not in the visitors’ gallery. He needs to distinguish himself through decisions, not declarations.
“Were I advising Carroll, I’d advise him not to take advice. He presents like a talking points automaton.
“He doesn’t need to become a stand-up comedian. He needs to answer a straight question candidly in a way that suggests the answer occurred to him, rather than a committee.”
Mr Carroll’s strategy to neutralise issues that have dogged Labor is yet to bear fruit, according to the polls.
Resolve Strategic has Labor’s primary vote stuck at 25 per cent, while the party scored a one-point bump from August to 24 per cent in RedBridge Group/Accent Research polling.
Labor risks being wiped out if those numbers hold on election day, says electoral analyst Ben Raue.
“If you talk to someone in the government and they were honest with you, they’d probably say, ‘Look, our goal here is not to win the election … our goal is to save the furniture’,” he tells AAP.
“We can be reasonably confident the polls, at least right now, are on track for a conservative majority with the coalition as the biggest party, probably with a Liberal premier.
“(Potentially) reliant on One Nation or a majority in their own right.”
Mr Raue says Labor is leaking voters in both directions but its pursuit of more “right-wing policies” won’t necessarily stem the bleeding.
“This is the state who voted for Daniel Andrews for a decade,” he says.
“It’s more complicated than just that people want Labor to be more right-wing.
“The problem they have is they’ve suffered a loss of credibility. People don’t trust them. People have had enough of them.
“The leadership change has not really done anything.”
Former Victorian Labor premier Steve Bracks isn’t giving up on his party turning the tide under Mr Carroll, who he met for coffee on Thursday.
“It’s still winnable. It’ll be a very close election,” he says.
“It’s very uncertain given the rise of One Nation and what effect that will have on each seat’s vote.”
Mr Carroll, once an advisor to Mr Bracks, has hit the ground running and is demonstrating his new priorities, his former boss says.
“They’re different to the previous government, different to the Allan and the Andrews government and he’s showing that he’s different by coming up with policies he believes in,” Mr Bracks says.
“There’ll be much more attention on the Liberals’ policy to cut the number of public service and frontline workers.
“That will be a key feature of the campaign going forward, as will the alternative visions for the state.”
A scare campaign about Liberal cuts could work but Labor must explain how it will protect services from its own debt, Mr Ralph cautions.
“Negative campaigning can make voters hesitate about the alternative,” he says.
“Carroll still needs to give them a reason to stay. ‘They might be worse’ is an argument but it’s a miserable vision for Victoria.
“Victoria is at the sad low-expectation stage where voters just want a vaguely credible manager at the pointy end.
“His strongest positive message would be simple: here’s what we got wrong, here’s what I’ve changed and here’s how we’ll repair the finances without gutting services.
“The difficult part is demonstrating credible evidence.”
AAP