WEBVTT - How Advance ‘siphoned’ funds and helped the Liberals lose 0:00:01.360 --> 0:00:09.640 From Schwartz Media. I'm Ruby Jones. This is seven AM. 0:00:09.760 --> 0:00:13.600 As the search to explain the coalition's disastrous election results 0:00:13.600 --> 0:00:18.360 continues inside Liberal campaign headquarters, there's one group being singled out, 0:00:18.680 --> 0:00:22.439 the right wing lobby Advance. Flush with a multimillion dollar 0:00:22.480 --> 0:00:24.440 war chest. Advance promised to. 0:00:24.440 --> 0:00:25.560 Take back the country. 0:00:25.880 --> 0:00:28.840 Yet Labor won seventeen new seats and the Greens vote 0:00:28.920 --> 0:00:32.720 fairly moved. With Advance and the Liberals blaming each other 0:00:32.760 --> 0:00:35.520 for the failure, there are questions about whether the two 0:00:35.600 --> 0:00:39.839 will ever work together again. Today National correspondent for the 0:00:39.840 --> 0:00:44.639 Saturday Paper Jason Katsukus on how Advanced siphoned liberal funds, 0:00:44.840 --> 0:00:55.840 muddied its message and yet is still claiming victory. It's Tuesday, 0:00:56.160 --> 0:01:04.479 June three, Jason. The lobby group Advance, it poured more 0:01:04.520 --> 0:01:06.640 than fifteen million dollars into. 0:01:06.400 --> 0:01:08.639 The election campaign. That's just gone. 0:01:09.160 --> 0:01:12.640 Tell me a bit about the strategy though, and what 0:01:12.840 --> 0:01:16.039 informed the direction that Advance took with its campaign. 0:01:16.520 --> 0:01:20.520 Well, Ruby, I think they had at least a fifteen 0:01:20.560 --> 0:01:24.200 point six million dollar war chest. That's just the money 0:01:24.240 --> 0:01:27.240 that they raised in the last financial year and what 0:01:27.319 --> 0:01:30.600 they raised to spend in the financial year. That we're 0:01:30.640 --> 0:01:33.360 just coming to the end of we don't actually know yet, 0:01:33.520 --> 0:01:37.280 and we won't know that until October when those returns 0:01:37.280 --> 0:01:41.200 are revealed by the Australian Electoral Commission. And I think 0:01:41.360 --> 0:01:44.959 advances strategy was to spend as much of that money 0:01:45.000 --> 0:01:49.840 as they could on a very aggressive campaign that first 0:01:49.880 --> 0:01:52.960 targeted the Australian Greens, and I think we saw a 0:01:53.000 --> 0:01:55.640 lot of that roll out in the second half of 0:01:55.720 --> 0:01:58.960 last year, and then from the beginning of this year 0:01:59.440 --> 0:02:03.200 we saw ants really try to go after the alban 0:02:03.280 --> 0:02:09.720 Ezy government and they built an election campaign around this 0:02:09.840 --> 0:02:13.400 slogan week Woke and sending us broke. 0:02:13.880 --> 0:02:16.320 Right, So tell me more about that campaign. 0:02:16.720 --> 0:02:20.320 So this was a campaign that featured a grainy black 0:02:20.360 --> 0:02:25.120 and white photograph of Anthony Albanesi and the tagline weak, 0:02:25.240 --> 0:02:28.200 woke and sending us broke. I was trying to kind 0:02:28.240 --> 0:02:32.440 of tap into all of those things that I guess 0:02:32.840 --> 0:02:37.280 Advance felt had sort of shone through during the Voice 0:02:37.320 --> 0:02:42.000 referendum campaign, that this was a sign of weakness on 0:02:42.040 --> 0:02:45.520 the part of the Prime minister. He's not displaying this 0:02:45.680 --> 0:02:52.200 kind of red meat conservative strongman type figure. Instead, he's 0:02:52.240 --> 0:02:57.679 caving into this pressure to Advance reconciliation within Indigenous Australians. 0:02:58.240 --> 0:03:00.679 And also you know, it was seen as this very 0:03:00.919 --> 0:03:04.600 kind of woke idea, this idea of an Indigenous voice 0:03:04.680 --> 0:03:08.600 to Parliament. The seniors broke was kind of, I guess, 0:03:08.639 --> 0:03:12.040 an attempt to tap into this cost of living crisis, 0:03:12.080 --> 0:03:15.720 but I felt in a kind of indirect way, it's 0:03:15.760 --> 0:03:20.080 not really clear how the Albinezi government has been sending 0:03:20.120 --> 0:03:22.519 the country broke. Over the last three years. 0:03:22.320 --> 0:03:25.680 The Bedfool government has wasted millions of dollars funding what's 0:03:25.880 --> 0:03:31.000 projects like decolonizing breastfeeding and anti racist dentist curriculum and 0:03:31.040 --> 0:03:32.720 a drag show beside. 0:03:32.280 --> 0:03:37.280 This, authorized by sanderbook Advanced Australia Camera. 0:03:37.600 --> 0:03:40.160 They did put a lot of money behind this campaign. 0:03:40.240 --> 0:03:44.240 They poured about one point seven million dollars into just 0:03:44.360 --> 0:03:48.920 advertising on Google and Meta alone during the actual election campaign. 0:03:49.600 --> 0:03:54.880 How much the national advertising television advertising campaign cost with 0:03:55.000 --> 0:03:56.880 the billboards that went with it in a lot of 0:03:56.920 --> 0:04:00.000 electorates around the country, we don't yet know how much 0:04:00.120 --> 0:04:03.640 much that cost, but I would guess it was in 0:04:03.680 --> 0:04:07.600 the order of many millions of dollars. They declared that 0:04:07.640 --> 0:04:11.560 they would ask the Albanesi government and crush the Australian 0:04:11.600 --> 0:04:14.920 Greens and it didn't turn out that way. 0:04:15.640 --> 0:04:18.280 No, it didn't. And you mentioned the referendum. 0:04:18.360 --> 0:04:22.200 Advance obviously had a lot of success with its campaigning 0:04:22.520 --> 0:04:25.880 for the no vote there, which then informed the way 0:04:25.920 --> 0:04:29.800 to approach this election. So why didn't it work this 0:04:30.040 --> 0:04:33.680 time around? Where did Advance's campaign go wrong? Why were 0:04:33.680 --> 0:04:36.080 they not able to influence voters in the same way. 0:04:36.400 --> 0:04:40.320 Well, this is a great question and the answer wasn't 0:04:40.320 --> 0:04:44.120 immediately obvious to me. I guess if you just look 0:04:44.160 --> 0:04:48.839 at what happened, maybe gained seventeen seats, which is certainly 0:04:48.880 --> 0:04:51.599 not asking the Albanesi government. It was the I think 0:04:51.640 --> 0:04:54.520 the best ever result for the Australian Labor Party at 0:04:54.520 --> 0:04:58.640 a federal election going back to the beginning of federation. 0:04:59.200 --> 0:05:02.080 They really didn't make that much difference with the Greens either. 0:05:02.560 --> 0:05:06.320 The National Greens vote dipped by a minuscule point zero 0:05:06.360 --> 0:05:08.560 five percent, So I don't think you could say that 0:05:08.800 --> 0:05:12.440 Advance had any impact on either of the two parties 0:05:12.720 --> 0:05:16.400 that it was targeting. Now, I did speak to a 0:05:16.440 --> 0:05:20.680 few experts about this. Andrea Carson is Professor of Political 0:05:20.720 --> 0:05:25.160 Communication at Latrope University. She's the lead author of a 0:05:25.320 --> 0:05:28.839 report produced by Latrop University that looked at the referendum 0:05:29.279 --> 0:05:33.240 that was titled Influences and Messages, and a big part 0:05:33.240 --> 0:05:36.479 of that report was the impact that Advance had on 0:05:36.560 --> 0:05:40.279 the No campaign. But I think, according to Andrea Carson, 0:05:40.520 --> 0:05:43.200 the big difference is that a referendum is just a 0:05:43.240 --> 0:05:47.599 binary question. It's yes or no, and a lot of 0:05:47.640 --> 0:05:52.280 people had doubts about the Voice for different reasons. Even 0:05:52.320 --> 0:05:55.400 though it was something that was put forward by the 0:05:55.400 --> 0:05:59.960 Albanezy government. Opposing the referendum didn't mean that you oppose 0:06:00.440 --> 0:06:01.920 the Albenzy government itself. 0:06:02.120 --> 0:06:07.760 So it's advanced confused potential No voters with potential coalition voters, 0:06:07.800 --> 0:06:10.159 assuming they would be one and the same, and they weren't. 0:06:10.240 --> 0:06:10.719 That's right. 0:06:10.800 --> 0:06:13.880 They assumed that everyone that voted no would carry that 0:06:13.960 --> 0:06:17.720 no vote forward and vote against the Albenzi government when 0:06:17.760 --> 0:06:21.640 the federal election campaign, and they built that campaign against 0:06:21.680 --> 0:06:24.359 the Greens and the Labor government very much around the 0:06:24.360 --> 0:06:28.200 same themes that they used during the Voice campaign. They 0:06:28.240 --> 0:06:31.119 even had the Prime Minister in a yes T shirt 0:06:31.120 --> 0:06:35.240 on those weak work and sending us broke billboards, and 0:06:35.320 --> 0:06:38.719 every chance they got they tried to reference the Voice campaign. 0:06:39.240 --> 0:06:41.159 But the point is, I suppose that none of that 0:06:41.320 --> 0:06:42.159 shifted votes. 0:06:42.360 --> 0:06:45.720 That's right. They tried to really keep the Voice in 0:06:46.120 --> 0:06:49.480 the minds of voters, but they didn't really shift any 0:06:49.560 --> 0:06:52.359 votes by doing that. So you have to wonder just 0:06:52.480 --> 0:06:56.840 how effective they were in opposing the referendum. Yes, they 0:06:56.920 --> 0:06:59.560 got a great result there, but I don't think any 0:06:59.640 --> 0:07:03.880 of the tactics or the campaign strategies they used were really, 0:07:04.240 --> 0:07:08.400 in the end that innovative. It's pretty easy to oppose 0:07:08.400 --> 0:07:12.760 a referendum. Only eight referendums have succeeded in the time 0:07:12.880 --> 0:07:16.320 since federation, and it was just probably a simple case 0:07:16.360 --> 0:07:19.120 that voters didn't understand it, they didn't really like the 0:07:19.160 --> 0:07:22.840 idea of what the Voice represented, and they in the 0:07:22.920 --> 0:07:25.120 end they voted against it. But when it comes to 0:07:25.200 --> 0:07:28.240 a federal election, there's a lot more at stake, and 0:07:28.280 --> 0:07:31.440 it seemed that Advance weren't able to convert that success 0:07:31.480 --> 0:07:35.400 they'd had in the referendum into the federal election campaign. 0:07:39.440 --> 0:07:51.040 So can Advance survive this? That's after the break, Jason. 0:07:51.320 --> 0:07:54.600 As the election campaign unfolded, we saw senior members of 0:07:54.640 --> 0:07:58.440 the Coalition use Advance as lines of attack on Albneasy 0:07:58.560 --> 0:07:59.600 and the Labor Party. 0:08:00.040 --> 0:08:02.480 We're starting to see people saying, you know. 0:08:02.480 --> 0:08:06.840 What, this Prime minister, he's weak, he's woke, and he's 0:08:06.840 --> 0:08:11.440 sending us broke, as Advance is making very clear. Since 0:08:11.520 --> 0:08:14.560 their loss, You've been speaking to people inside the Liberal parties. 0:08:14.640 --> 0:08:17.360 So how are they now reflecting on the campaign that 0:08:17.480 --> 0:08:19.840 Advance ran and what it meant for them. 0:08:19.960 --> 0:08:22.440 I think there's a lot of frustration inside the Liberal 0:08:22.520 --> 0:08:27.360 Party when it comes to groups like Advance, because the 0:08:27.400 --> 0:08:30.880 Liberal Party feels or believes that a lot of the 0:08:30.920 --> 0:08:34.480 money that went to Advance was money that could have 0:08:34.520 --> 0:08:37.439 gone to the Liberal Party. That one person I spoke 0:08:37.480 --> 0:08:42.240 to said that precious resources were siphoned away by Advance 0:08:42.480 --> 0:08:45.520 from the Liberal Party. This is money that might otherwise 0:08:45.559 --> 0:08:48.959 have given the Liberal Party a better chance of getting 0:08:49.000 --> 0:08:53.640 its message through to voters. Other Liberal Party strategists that 0:08:53.679 --> 0:08:56.280 I spoke to said that they could not point to 0:08:56.320 --> 0:08:59.680 a single message put out by Advance that worked with 0:08:59.800 --> 0:09:03.400 un sided voters, and that the ads that Advance ran 0:09:04.040 --> 0:09:07.160 also reinforced the perception that the Liberal Party was joined 0:09:07.160 --> 0:09:10.320 at the hip to Donald Trump, that that very kind 0:09:10.360 --> 0:09:14.600 of Trump vibe that Advance put into its campaign messaging 0:09:15.200 --> 0:09:19.520 ended up giving right leaning voters permission to kind of 0:09:19.600 --> 0:09:23.839 bypass the Liberal Party altogether and go straight for One 0:09:23.960 --> 0:09:27.760 Nation or the even more right wing trumpet of Patriots Party, 0:09:28.400 --> 0:09:32.240 and that many of those voters didn't even preference the 0:09:32.240 --> 0:09:35.560 Liberal Party, that they ended up preferencing the Labor Party. 0:09:36.040 --> 0:09:39.359 Another advisor I spoke to said that they believed advances 0:09:39.440 --> 0:09:46.480 messaging probably alienated undecided voters and backfired so comprehensively that 0:09:46.559 --> 0:09:50.160 it cost the coalition seats in Victoria and Queensland. 0:09:50.640 --> 0:09:54.920 Okay, so, according to the Liberals, Advance actually harmed their 0:09:55.040 --> 0:09:58.840 election chants. As I'm sure Advance isn't coppying that though. 0:09:58.880 --> 0:10:00.640 Have you spoken to them? What are they saying. 0:10:00.760 --> 0:10:04.640 Matthew Sheen, who's the executive director of Advance, is a 0:10:04.640 --> 0:10:08.800 pretty elusive character. I did manage to speak to him 0:10:08.800 --> 0:10:11.439 a few times towards the end of last year and 0:10:11.840 --> 0:10:14.120 in the lead up to the federal election this year, 0:10:14.440 --> 0:10:17.000 but none of those conversations were on the record, and 0:10:17.120 --> 0:10:21.319 he didn't really want to speak to us for this story. 0:10:21.840 --> 0:10:25.720 He's a pretty cagey character. He's not accepting any of 0:10:25.760 --> 0:10:28.760 this blame. He did give one interview after the election, 0:10:28.840 --> 0:10:32.760 and that was to Guardian Australia, and in that conversation 0:10:33.040 --> 0:10:37.120 he blamed the poor campaign performance of the Coalition for 0:10:37.160 --> 0:10:40.960 the coalition result. He said Advance could not be blamed 0:10:40.960 --> 0:10:45.360 for that at all, and instead he blamed bedwetting anonymous liberals. 0:10:45.880 --> 0:10:49.720 He insists that the week work sending us broke campaign 0:10:50.440 --> 0:10:53.280 was the only campaign line that did any damage to 0:10:53.320 --> 0:10:56.920 the Labor vote, but seeing as Labour's primary vote went 0:10:57.000 --> 0:11:00.680 up by two point three percent, I think it's difficult 0:11:00.760 --> 0:11:06.400 to see where or how the Advanced campaign made any difference. 0:11:07.679 --> 0:11:10.760 Matthew Sheen has also sent out a lot of emails 0:11:11.040 --> 0:11:15.840 since May third. I guess trying to reassure those supporters 0:11:15.840 --> 0:11:19.760 that they have the Advancers still knows what it's doing, 0:11:19.800 --> 0:11:21.439 and I think a lot of the real point of 0:11:21.480 --> 0:11:25.240 those emails is to keep the fundraising machine operating and 0:11:25.320 --> 0:11:27.960 trying to say to people, will look, we said that 0:11:28.000 --> 0:11:30.920 we'd destroy the Greens and we had some success doing 0:11:30.960 --> 0:11:34.680 that that they lost three of their four Lower House seats. 0:11:35.240 --> 0:11:39.720 But it's difficult again to justify that because in many 0:11:39.760 --> 0:11:43.360 of the seats where the Greens went backwards or even 0:11:43.440 --> 0:11:47.400 lost their seat in Parliament, Advance wasn't even campaigning, especially 0:11:47.679 --> 0:11:50.600 in the seat of Melbourne where the former Greens leader 0:11:50.640 --> 0:11:53.680 Adam Batt did lose his seat and Advance ran no 0:11:53.800 --> 0:11:57.040 advertising at all in Melbourne, So it's difficult to find 0:11:57.080 --> 0:12:00.360 any evidence that Advance made a difference, and so you 0:12:00.400 --> 0:12:03.320 do have to wonder just what is the point of 0:12:03.360 --> 0:12:04.520 this group going forward? 0:12:05.840 --> 0:12:09.480 Yeah, do you get the sense that Advance has now 0:12:10.200 --> 0:12:15.520 squandered its political relevance because it's campaigning was so unsuccessful. 0:12:16.200 --> 0:12:18.240 What do you think its future is as a lobby group. 0:12:18.360 --> 0:12:20.600 Well, I think what Advance is trying to do is 0:12:20.679 --> 0:12:24.760 emulate some of these super packs that we see in 0:12:24.800 --> 0:12:29.199 the US. You know, these public action committees that raise 0:12:29.280 --> 0:12:33.679 money and kind of indirectly help candidates that they're aligned with. 0:12:34.280 --> 0:12:36.920 The big difference between Australia and the US is that 0:12:37.440 --> 0:12:40.640 in the US you've got to motivate people or incentivize 0:12:40.679 --> 0:12:43.920 people to actually come out and vote. But in Australia 0:12:43.920 --> 0:12:46.520 we have compulsory voting and so we don't have that trouble. 0:12:47.040 --> 0:12:50.600 And so because we have compulsory voting in Australia, I 0:12:50.640 --> 0:12:53.960 think groups like Advance or get Up on the Left 0:12:54.640 --> 0:12:57.920 just art as effective. Everybody is going to go and vote, 0:12:58.440 --> 0:13:02.800 and you've got to try to influence their choices. An 0:13:02.800 --> 0:13:05.240 Advance doesn't seem to really know how to do that. 0:13:06.040 --> 0:13:09.280 So Jason, given what they're saying about each other. 0:13:09.200 --> 0:13:12.880 Right now, does it seem likely to you that Advance 0:13:12.960 --> 0:13:15.720 and the coalition or at least the Liberal Party will 0:13:15.840 --> 0:13:16.880 work together again. 0:13:17.240 --> 0:13:20.000 I think they will, Ruby because a lot of the 0:13:20.080 --> 0:13:24.120 senior people are at Advance are people like Tony Abbott, 0:13:24.480 --> 0:13:28.840 to Center Namberjimper Price, and I think it's the right 0:13:28.880 --> 0:13:32.720 wing of the Liberal Party is very closely aligned with Advance, 0:13:33.240 --> 0:13:37.560 and so I think that will continue. Advance will stay 0:13:38.080 --> 0:13:41.160 very close to that far right of the Liberal Party. 0:13:41.600 --> 0:13:43.360 But I think what we're also going to see is 0:13:43.480 --> 0:13:46.800 more pushback from the moderate wing of the Liberal Party 0:13:47.200 --> 0:13:50.079 that doesn't really like what Advance is doing and doesn't 0:13:50.120 --> 0:13:53.720 really like what to Center Nampergimper Price is doing either 0:13:54.120 --> 0:13:57.040 or Tony Abbott for that matter. And I think this 0:13:57.200 --> 0:14:00.520 is a fight for control of the Liberal Party. Advances 0:14:00.640 --> 0:14:03.640 on one side of that battle and Liberal moderates are 0:14:03.679 --> 0:14:06.760 on the other side of it. Who wins will probably 0:14:06.800 --> 0:14:10.760 determine what role Advance plays in the next election campaign 0:14:11.040 --> 0:14:14.000 and how closely it remains aligned with the Liberal Party. 0:14:14.160 --> 0:14:18.720 We just don't know yet, Jason, thank you for your time. 0:14:18.960 --> 0:14:21.600 Ruby, it's great to have you back in the chair 0:14:21.680 --> 0:14:22.840 and a pleasure. 0:14:22.520 --> 0:14:24.600 To talk to you well. Thank you, it's great to 0:14:24.600 --> 0:14:25.000 be back. 0:14:32.360 --> 0:14:35.600 Also in the news today, Prime Minister Anthony Alberzi has 0:14:35.640 --> 0:14:39.080 dismissed US Defense Secretary Pete has Geth's request to hike 0:14:39.200 --> 0:14:43.720 defense spending. Pete hag Seth has urged US allies, including Australia, 0:14:43.840 --> 0:14:46.680 to share the burden and lift defense spending to five 0:14:46.720 --> 0:14:50.880 percent of GDP, warning that Beijing is credibly preparing to 0:14:50.960 --> 0:14:54.240 potentially use military force to alter the balance of power 0:14:54.280 --> 0:14:57.720 in the Indo Pacific. But Albanesi said Australia had already 0:14:57.720 --> 0:15:00.800 committed to an additional ten billion dollars int fence across 0:15:00.840 --> 0:15:06.720 the next four years. And Ukraine says it has completed 0:15:06.760 --> 0:15:09.880 its biggest long range attack of the war with Russia 0:15:09.920 --> 0:15:13.000 after using smuggle drones to launch a series of major 0:15:13.000 --> 0:15:17.320 strikes on forty Russian warplanes at four military bases. President 0:15:17.360 --> 0:15:20.640 Blob Mizelenski said one hundred and seventeen drones were used 0:15:20.640 --> 0:15:24.160 in the attacks, which come as Russian and Ukrainian negotiators 0:15:24.200 --> 0:15:27.040 had to Istanbul for a second round of peace talks. 0:15:27.760 --> 0:15:29.720 I'm Ruby Jones. This is seven am. 0:15:29.760 --> 0:15:30.480 Thanks for listening.