Post-Dunkley, an early federal election must look tempting to Labor

It was Saturday night, and on my TV there was a parade of fantasies going on, raucous, crazed celebration, and my God the costumes! Where did they get those? But after a while, I stopped watching the Dunkley by-election coverage and switched to the Mardi Gras. Boom boom.

I would challenge even the most hardcore pseph-head to have done otherwise. Three weeks of hard campaigning — which saw the far-right lobbying group Advance pour in a reported $350,000, an army of blue-and-red-windcheatered Libs and Laboristas and keffiyeh-clad Victorian Socialists descend on the coast, the sinister ads of Advance’s “truth trucks” skulking around the place — and Labor retained the seat with a swing against of 3.55%, which is more or less the standard by-election swing in an Australian election, averaged over a very long time.

There wasn’t even a significant shift in booth results. The Labor-dominated booths in the seat’s centre and north, from Frankston to Seaford, went to Labor, but less so; the Liberal seats in the south around Mt Eliza went blue, but a bit more so. What Peter Dutton and the right were looking for — an inversion of support, with booths in places of new build like Carrum Downs going blue — simply didn’t happen. 

Nevertheless, it wasn’t Aston. Remember those heady days? The 3.55% swing in Dunkley gave both sides enough for a narrative of success. Labor can say, well, it won the damn thing, it’s still its seat, and its primary vote held and was greater than the Libs, 41% to 39%. The Libs ran with a slightly more tendentious line, spruiked by leaders at the televised non-victory party, held at some venue with a name I presume like Palmz or Bayside Chill. Senator Jane Hume rah-rahed the crowd by celebrating hard work, etc, and basically accusing Labor of sending thuggish unionists around to intimidate Liberal volunteers, an assertion she should be made to justify. But she was just the warm-up act for deputy leader Sussan Ley.

One of the unintended consequences of the relatively recent practice of TV coverage of by-elections is that the crazy-brave speech you have to give to volunteers then becomes a national speech. Sussan did not disappoint. In an all-white outfit so shiny it was making the TV vision shimmer, Ley leyed it out: “If this result was repeated across the nation in an election, Labor would lose 11 seats and we would be in government!” she said to cheers. It was both politically and numerically inaccurate, but that goes with this with Sussan.

Though nothing could top failed Liberal candidate Nathan Conroy’s announcement in his speech that he and his wife were expecting. Awwwwwww. “I don’t know how I found the time to do it, but I did it!’ Conroy joked in his Irish brogue, as his wife, standing beside him, reduced to the status of passive broodmare, looked on loyally. How’s that gender gap going, Libs?

What was the reason for the Liberals’ disappointing result? Let’s go to the ABC panel, comprising Laborista Kos Samaras and ex-Liberal Tony Barry, the co-owners of polling firm Redbridge, which is an interesting way for the ABC to handle diversity, and by “interesting” I mean a travesty of the charter. Samaras noted that the hard-right Advance sinister style hadn’t worked at all, and Barry said it was due to the “ballbags” in the Liberal state office. (This caused a brief gravity wave, as every viewer in the country sat up startled. The thing is Tony, and I say this as one of the tribe, if you’re a bald, very white, very heavyset man who has, that morning, decided to shave only 40% of your stubble, I wouldn’t raise, in anyone’s mind, scrotal visions.)

Still, as a Liberal, Barry looked in pain and despair, and I was there for it. He knew, as we all did, that this result shows how stuffed the Libs are in Victoria, Sweden-Massachusetts of the South, under Dutton. The Libs’ enhanced primary vote was in part due to One Nation and the United Australia Party sitting this one ou. Meanwhile the Advance strategy — those sinister truck ads in black, white and red, with a graphic style reminiscent of Mussolini, parked next to a Thirsty Camel bottleshop or the Kananook Citizens Advice Bureau — was the product of the alienated obsessives who run that organisation, and might well have driven some votes back to Labor.

The day after, Tim Wilson and Jason Fa(i)linski had a joint, pre-cooked op-ed in the Fin online, arguing that the result in some old light-blue areas indicated that the Libs could take on the teals, by which they meant that because eight self-funded retirees in Mt Eliza had got so pissed off about the cost of rich tea biscuits that they had switched back, Kooyong could be got back. Nuh-uh. 

Too many variables, not enough info, as always. What role was played by the rejigged stage three tax cuts, designed for this event — “Labor spent $107 billion on this by-election” one grandee noted — compared to the emotional charge of former member Peta Murphy’s death and her anointed successor Jodie Belyea? Was the Greens’ poor showing — down 4% — due to conflict over Israel-Palestine, a lacklustre local campaign, the Victorian Socialists’ first outing there? Who knows?

It is all a march in circles, with tinsel and glitter, a nerd’s Mardi Gras, but one thing is undeniable: the Liberals’ “to the suburbs” strategy did not succeed, especially with Ley’s buy-in to dark politics with that now notorious tweet dog-whistling all the way down the Frankston beach. They have no clear strategy going ahead to an election, which Labor must be a little tempted to run sooner rather than later. 

What are your thoughts on the Dunkley result? Let us know by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.