Speaker 1: From Schwartz Media. I'm Ruby Jones. This is seven AM.
Speaker 2: As the search to explain the coalition's disastrous election results
Speaker 2: continues inside Liberal campaign headquarters, there's one group being singled out,
Speaker 2: the right wing lobby Advance. Flush with a multimillion dollar
Speaker 2: war chest. Advance promised to.
Speaker 1: Take back the country.
Speaker 2: Yet Labor won seventeen new seats and the Greens vote
Speaker 2: fairly moved. With Advance and the Liberals blaming each other
Speaker 2: for the failure, there are questions about whether the two
Speaker 2: will ever work together again. Today National correspondent for the
Speaker 2: Saturday Paper Jason Katsukus on how Advanced siphoned liberal funds,
Speaker 2: muddied its message and yet is still claiming victory. It's Tuesday,
Speaker 2: June three, Jason. The lobby group Advance, it poured more
Speaker 2: than fifteen million dollars into.
Speaker 1: The election campaign. That's just gone.
Speaker 2: Tell me a bit about the strategy though, and what
Speaker 2: informed the direction that Advance took with its campaign.
Speaker 3: Well, Ruby, I think they had at least a fifteen
Speaker 3: point six million dollar war chest. That's just the money
Speaker 3: that they raised in the last financial year and what
Speaker 3: they raised to spend in the financial year. That we're
Speaker 3: just coming to the end of we don't actually know yet,
Speaker 3: and we won't know that until October when those returns
Speaker 3: are revealed by the Australian Electoral Commission. And I think
Speaker 3: advances strategy was to spend as much of that money
Speaker 3: as they could on a very aggressive campaign that first
Speaker 3: targeted the Australian Greens, and I think we saw a
Speaker 3: lot of that roll out in the second half of
Speaker 3: last year, and then from the beginning of this year
Speaker 3: we saw ants really try to go after the alban
Speaker 3: Ezy government and they built an election campaign around this
Speaker 3: slogan week Woke and sending us broke.
Speaker 1: Right, So tell me more about that campaign.
Speaker 3: So this was a campaign that featured a grainy black
Speaker 3: and white photograph of Anthony Albanesi and the tagline weak,
Speaker 3: woke and sending us broke. I was trying to kind
Speaker 3: of tap into all of those things that I guess
Speaker 3: Advance felt had sort of shone through during the Voice
Speaker 3: referendum campaign, that this was a sign of weakness on
Speaker 3: the part of the Prime minister. He's not displaying this
Speaker 3: kind of red meat conservative strongman type figure. Instead, he's
Speaker 3: caving into this pressure to Advance reconciliation within Indigenous Australians.
Speaker 3: And also you know, it was seen as this very
Speaker 3: kind of woke idea, this idea of an Indigenous voice
Speaker 3: to Parliament. The seniors broke was kind of, I guess,
Speaker 3: an attempt to tap into this cost of living crisis,
Speaker 3: but I felt in a kind of indirect way, it's
Speaker 3: not really clear how the Albinezi government has been sending
Speaker 3: the country broke. Over the last three years.
Speaker 4: The Bedfool government has wasted millions of dollars funding what's
Speaker 4: projects like decolonizing breastfeeding and anti racist dentist curriculum and
Speaker 4: a drag show beside.
Speaker 1: This, authorized by sanderbook Advanced Australia Camera.
Speaker 3: They did put a lot of money behind this campaign.
Speaker 3: They poured about one point seven million dollars into just
Speaker 3: advertising on Google and Meta alone during the actual election campaign.
Speaker 3: How much the national advertising television advertising campaign cost with
Speaker 3: the billboards that went with it in a lot of
Speaker 3: electorates around the country, we don't yet know how much
Speaker 3: much that cost, but I would guess it was in
Speaker 3: the order of many millions of dollars. They declared that
Speaker 3: they would ask the Albanesi government and crush the Australian
Speaker 3: Greens and it didn't turn out that way.
Speaker 1: No, it didn't. And you mentioned the referendum.
Speaker 2: Advance obviously had a lot of success with its campaigning
Speaker 2: for the no vote there, which then informed the way
Speaker 2: to approach this election. So why didn't it work this
Speaker 2: time around? Where did Advance's campaign go wrong? Why were
Speaker 2: they not able to influence voters in the same way.
Speaker 3: Well, this is a great question and the answer wasn't
Speaker 3: immediately obvious to me. I guess if you just look
Speaker 3: at what happened, maybe gained seventeen seats, which is certainly
Speaker 3: not asking the Albanesi government. It was the I think
Speaker 3: the best ever result for the Australian Labor Party at
Speaker 3: a federal election going back to the beginning of federation.
Speaker 3: They really didn't make that much difference with the Greens either.
Speaker 3: The National Greens vote dipped by a minuscule point zero
Speaker 3: five percent, So I don't think you could say that
Speaker 3: Advance had any impact on either of the two parties
Speaker 3: that it was targeting. Now, I did speak to a
Speaker 3: few experts about this. Andrea Carson is Professor of Political
Speaker 3: Communication at Latrope University. She's the lead author of a
Speaker 3: report produced by Latrop University that looked at the referendum
Speaker 3: that was titled Influences and Messages, and a big part
Speaker 3: of that report was the impact that Advance had on
Speaker 3: the No campaign. But I think, according to Andrea Carson,
Speaker 3: the big difference is that a referendum is just a
Speaker 3: binary question. It's yes or no, and a lot of
Speaker 3: people had doubts about the Voice for different reasons. Even
Speaker 3: though it was something that was put forward by the
Speaker 3: Albanezy government. Opposing the referendum didn't mean that you oppose
Speaker 3: the Albenzy government itself.
Speaker 2: So it's advanced confused potential No voters with potential coalition voters,
Speaker 2: assuming they would be one and the same, and they weren't.
Speaker 4: That's right.
Speaker 3: They assumed that everyone that voted no would carry that
Speaker 3: no vote forward and vote against the Albenzi government when
Speaker 3: the federal election campaign, and they built that campaign against
Speaker 3: the Greens and the Labor government very much around the
Speaker 3: same themes that they used during the Voice campaign. They
Speaker 3: even had the Prime Minister in a yes T shirt
Speaker 3: on those weak work and sending us broke billboards, and
Speaker 3: every chance they got they tried to reference the Voice campaign.
Speaker 1: But the point is, I suppose that none of that
Speaker 1: shifted votes.
Speaker 3: That's right. They tried to really keep the Voice in
Speaker 3: the minds of voters, but they didn't really shift any
Speaker 3: votes by doing that. So you have to wonder just
Speaker 3: how effective they were in opposing the referendum. Yes, they
Speaker 3: got a great result there, but I don't think any
Speaker 3: of the tactics or the campaign strategies they used were really,
Speaker 3: in the end that innovative. It's pretty easy to oppose
Speaker 3: a referendum. Only eight referendums have succeeded in the time
Speaker 3: since federation, and it was just probably a simple case
Speaker 3: that voters didn't understand it, they didn't really like the
Speaker 3: idea of what the Voice represented, and they in the
Speaker 3: end they voted against it. But when it comes to
Speaker 3: a federal election, there's a lot more at stake, and
Speaker 3: it seemed that Advance weren't able to convert that success
Speaker 3: they'd had in the referendum into the federal election campaign.
Speaker 2: So can Advance survive this? That's after the break, Jason.
Speaker 2: As the election campaign unfolded, we saw senior members of
Speaker 2: the Coalition use Advance as lines of attack on Albneasy
Speaker 2: and the Labor Party.
Speaker 1: We're starting to see people saying, you know.
Speaker 2: What, this Prime minister, he's weak, he's woke, and he's
Speaker 2: sending us broke, as Advance is making very clear. Since
Speaker 2: their loss, You've been speaking to people inside the Liberal parties.
Speaker 2: So how are they now reflecting on the campaign that
Speaker 2: Advance ran and what it meant for them.
Speaker 3: I think there's a lot of frustration inside the Liberal
Speaker 3: Party when it comes to groups like Advance, because the
Speaker 3: Liberal Party feels or believes that a lot of the
Speaker 3: money that went to Advance was money that could have
Speaker 3: gone to the Liberal Party. That one person I spoke
Speaker 3: to said that precious resources were siphoned away by Advance
Speaker 3: from the Liberal Party. This is money that might otherwise
Speaker 3: have given the Liberal Party a better chance of getting
Speaker 3: its message through to voters. Other Liberal Party strategists that
Speaker 3: I spoke to said that they could not point to
Speaker 3: a single message put out by Advance that worked with
Speaker 3: un sided voters, and that the ads that Advance ran
Speaker 3: also reinforced the perception that the Liberal Party was joined
Speaker 3: at the hip to Donald Trump, that that very kind
Speaker 3: of Trump vibe that Advance put into its campaign messaging
Speaker 3: ended up giving right leaning voters permission to kind of
Speaker 3: bypass the Liberal Party altogether and go straight for One
Speaker 3: Nation or the even more right wing trumpet of Patriots Party,
Speaker 3: and that many of those voters didn't even preference the
Speaker 3: Liberal Party, that they ended up preferencing the Labor Party.
Speaker 3: Another advisor I spoke to said that they believed advances
Speaker 3: messaging probably alienated undecided voters and backfired so comprehensively that
Speaker 3: it cost the coalition seats in Victoria and Queensland.
Speaker 2: Okay, so, according to the Liberals, Advance actually harmed their
Speaker 2: election chants. As I'm sure Advance isn't coppying that though.
Speaker 1: Have you spoken to them? What are they saying.
Speaker 3: Matthew Sheen, who's the executive director of Advance, is a
Speaker 3: pretty elusive character. I did manage to speak to him
Speaker 3: a few times towards the end of last year and
Speaker 3: in the lead up to the federal election this year,
Speaker 3: but none of those conversations were on the record, and
Speaker 3: he didn't really want to speak to us for this story.
Speaker 3: He's a pretty cagey character. He's not accepting any of
Speaker 3: this blame. He did give one interview after the election,
Speaker 3: and that was to Guardian Australia, and in that conversation
Speaker 3: he blamed the poor campaign performance of the Coalition for
Speaker 3: the coalition result. He said Advance could not be blamed
Speaker 3: for that at all, and instead he blamed bedwetting anonymous liberals.
Speaker 3: He insists that the week work sending us broke campaign
Speaker 3: was the only campaign line that did any damage to
Speaker 3: the Labor vote, but seeing as Labour's primary vote went
Speaker 3: up by two point three percent, I think it's difficult
Speaker 3: to see where or how the Advanced campaign made any difference.
Speaker 3: Matthew Sheen has also sent out a lot of emails
Speaker 3: since May third. I guess trying to reassure those supporters
Speaker 3: that they have the Advancers still knows what it's doing,
Speaker 3: and I think a lot of the real point of
Speaker 3: those emails is to keep the fundraising machine operating and
Speaker 3: trying to say to people, will look, we said that
Speaker 3: we'd destroy the Greens and we had some success doing
Speaker 3: that that they lost three of their four Lower House seats.
Speaker 3: But it's difficult again to justify that because in many
Speaker 3: of the seats where the Greens went backwards or even
Speaker 3: lost their seat in Parliament, Advance wasn't even campaigning, especially
Speaker 3: in the seat of Melbourne where the former Greens leader
Speaker 3: Adam Batt did lose his seat and Advance ran no
Speaker 3: advertising at all in Melbourne, So it's difficult to find
Speaker 3: any evidence that Advance made a difference, and so you
Speaker 3: do have to wonder just what is the point of
Speaker 3: this group going forward?
Speaker 2: Yeah, do you get the sense that Advance has now
Speaker 2: squandered its political relevance because it's campaigning was so unsuccessful.
Speaker 2: What do you think its future is as a lobby group.
Speaker 3: Well, I think what Advance is trying to do is
Speaker 3: emulate some of these super packs that we see in
Speaker 3: the US. You know, these public action committees that raise
Speaker 3: money and kind of indirectly help candidates that they're aligned with.
Speaker 3: The big difference between Australia and the US is that
Speaker 3: in the US you've got to motivate people or incentivize
Speaker 3: people to actually come out and vote. But in Australia
Speaker 3: we have compulsory voting and so we don't have that trouble.
Speaker 3: And so because we have compulsory voting in Australia, I
Speaker 3: think groups like Advance or get Up on the Left
Speaker 3: just art as effective. Everybody is going to go and vote,
Speaker 3: and you've got to try to influence their choices. An
Speaker 3: Advance doesn't seem to really know how to do that.
Speaker 1: So Jason, given what they're saying about each other.
Speaker 2: Right now, does it seem likely to you that Advance
Speaker 2: and the coalition or at least the Liberal Party will
Speaker 2: work together again.
Speaker 3: I think they will, Ruby because a lot of the
Speaker 3: senior people are at Advance are people like Tony Abbott,
Speaker 3: to Center Namberjimper Price, and I think it's the right
Speaker 3: wing of the Liberal Party is very closely aligned with Advance,
Speaker 3: and so I think that will continue. Advance will stay
Speaker 3: very close to that far right of the Liberal Party.
Speaker 3: But I think what we're also going to see is
Speaker 3: more pushback from the moderate wing of the Liberal Party
Speaker 3: that doesn't really like what Advance is doing and doesn't
Speaker 3: really like what to Center Nampergimper Price is doing either
Speaker 3: or Tony Abbott for that matter. And I think this
Speaker 3: is a fight for control of the Liberal Party. Advances
Speaker 3: on one side of that battle and Liberal moderates are
Speaker 3: on the other side of it. Who wins will probably
Speaker 3: determine what role Advance plays in the next election campaign
Speaker 3: and how closely it remains aligned with the Liberal Party.
Speaker 1: We just don't know yet, Jason, thank you for your time.
Speaker 3: Ruby, it's great to have you back in the chair
Speaker 3: and a pleasure.
Speaker 1: To talk to you well. Thank you, it's great to
Speaker 1: be back.
Speaker 2: Also in the news today, Prime Minister Anthony Alberzi has
Speaker 2: dismissed US Defense Secretary Pete has Geth's request to hike
Speaker 2: defense spending. Pete hag Seth has urged US allies, including Australia,
Speaker 2: to share the burden and lift defense spending to five
Speaker 2: percent of GDP, warning that Beijing is credibly preparing to
Speaker 2: potentially use military force to alter the balance of power
Speaker 2: in the Indo Pacific. But Albanesi said Australia had already
Speaker 2: committed to an additional ten billion dollars int fence across
Speaker 2: the next four years. And Ukraine says it has completed
Speaker 2: its biggest long range attack of the war with Russia
Speaker 2: after using smuggle drones to launch a series of major
Speaker 2: strikes on forty Russian warplanes at four military bases. President
Speaker 2: Blob Mizelenski said one hundred and seventeen drones were used
Speaker 2: in the attacks, which come as Russian and Ukrainian negotiators
Speaker 2: had to Istanbul for a second round of peace talks.
Speaker 2: I'm Ruby Jones. This is seven am.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening.