Speaker 1: From Schwartz Media. I'm Ruby Jones. This is seven am.
Speaker 1: When Scott Morrison lost the last election, it was the
Speaker 1: worst result for the Liberal Party in seventy years. The
Speaker 1: cities deserted them as they lost ground in every state
Speaker 1: except Queensland. It seemed inevitable that it would take at
Speaker 1: least two terms in opposition to turn their fortunes around,
Speaker 1: and Peter Dutton planned to start by wooing the bush
Speaker 1: and the suburbs, with the cities seeming too far gone.
Speaker 1: But that's all changed. Peter Dutton now sees a path
Speaker 1: to majority rule at the next election and is eyeing
Speaker 1: up the inner city seats. He thinks we'll get him there.
Speaker 1: Today Senior reporter at the Saturday Paper, Rick Morton on
Speaker 1: the surprising electorate Stutton hopes to win and whether he
Speaker 1: can do so while sticking with his hardline conservatism. It's Thursday,
Speaker 1: January twenty three. So Rick, for the last week you've
Speaker 1: been looking into whether the Coalition under Peter Dutton could
Speaker 1: actually win the upcoming election. So after speaking to people,
Speaker 1: after doing this deep dive, how's it looking.
Speaker 2: I think Peter Dutton thinks that they're in a much
Speaker 2: better position than anyone in the coalitions that they might
Speaker 2: be even a year ago. I think he can win.
Speaker 2: It's far more likely that it would be a minority government,
Speaker 2: or they'd be in a position as a coalition to
Speaker 2: negotiate for a minority government. But the calculus is still
Speaker 2: very messy and they still need quite a few seats
Speaker 2: to get into that position.
Speaker 1: The coalition would need to win back eighteen seats as
Speaker 1: well as keeping the ones that they have at the moment.
Speaker 1: So tell me how they're thinking about that and where
Speaker 1: Dutton thinks that he might have the best chance of
Speaker 1: winning votes.
Speaker 2: One of the things that has become clear in the
Speaker 2: last six months at least is that Dunton himself thinks
Speaker 2: that there's been a big shift in Victoria, which is
Speaker 2: a state that the Liberals have briviously not been doing
Speaker 2: very well in and has typically been a bit of
Speaker 2: a kind of albatross around their neck. He chose to
Speaker 2: soft launch his election campaign in Mount Laverley, you know,
Speaker 2: kind of relatively in a suburban Melbourne seat, last Sunday
Speaker 2: on the twelfth January.
Speaker 3: Well, my friends, is great to be back in Victoria.
Speaker 3: Thank you very much for being here today. I want
Speaker 3: to repeat what I've said before on many occasions at
Speaker 3: the Liberal Party at a state and federal level is
Speaker 3: back in town.
Speaker 2: It's in the federal electorate of Chisholm, which is a
Speaker 2: marginal seat, and the margin has actually is currently held
Speaker 2: by Labor. The margin has nominally been halved to now
Speaker 2: just three and a bit percent after electoral boundary redivisions,
Speaker 2: so it's become kind of even more winnable if you like,
Speaker 2: for someone like Peter Dutton, but it's still a pretty
Speaker 2: kind of relatively progressive suburban seat, not yes in the
Speaker 2: Voice referendum, and Peter Dutton, you will notice when you're
Speaker 2: listening to what he's saying, he's not actually moderating his
Speaker 2: retric particularly about aborageal affairs.
Speaker 3: We will start with a full audit into spending on
Speaker 3: indigenous programs and Indigenous communities, and in indigenous communities where
Speaker 3: drugs and alcohol are prevalent, we will reintroduce the casualist
Speaker 3: debit card for working age welfare is.
Speaker 2: Suits, which to inside is evident interesting point because he
Speaker 2: thinks he's got a chance in those seats, regardless of
Speaker 2: what we were to think of as the previous kind
Speaker 2: of demographics of those electrics. But you know if you
Speaker 2: listen to what he's saying. He gave an interview with
Speaker 2: Neil Mitchell on Neil Mitchell Podcast in September last year
Speaker 2: where you know, in Dunton's own words, he said that.
Speaker 4: In Victoria good swings and seats to us here and
Speaker 4: seats on the radar that we hadn't expected to be
Speaker 4: on the radar at this point in the cycle. There's
Speaker 4: no election this weekend, so it's a moot point. But
Speaker 4: there is a lot of encouragement for us in Victoria,
Speaker 4: a lot of encourage encouragement for us in New South
Speaker 4: Wales and in WI. I think he's coming back to
Speaker 4: us off for pretty low base.
Speaker 2: Now if you look at Redbridge poling now there are
Speaker 2: nominally Labor linked research polling firm and they reckon in
Speaker 2: the last quarterly snapshot at the end of last year
Speaker 2: that the L and P were pretty well placed to
Speaker 2: pick up at least nine seats from Labor, not just
Speaker 2: in Melbourne but in Sydney too. We're talking Gilmore Patterson, Bedelong, Ashton,
Speaker 2: Robertson and MacArthur Lyones, Lingiari in the Northern Territory and Bullwinkle,
Speaker 2: which is unimportant to our purposes here, but a great
Speaker 2: name for a seat, okay.
Speaker 1: And as you say, these are kind of metropolitan seats
Speaker 1: that are not necessarily where you might think that Dutton
Speaker 1: and his message would resonate. But clearly he thinks that
Speaker 1: he has a chance for taking some of them from Labor.
Speaker 1: What about the Teals? Rick, are the coalition hoping to
Speaker 1: win some of those seats back as well?
Speaker 2: They're not giving up on the Teal seats. Now there's
Speaker 2: this apparently unerligned group called Australians for Prosperity. Now they're
Speaker 2: not really underligned because their executive director is a former
Speaker 2: federal MP for the Liberal National Party in the seat
Speaker 2: of Ryan and they're essentially running attack campaigns against every
Speaker 2: element of politics, Labor, the Greens, the Teals and in
Speaker 2: fact their biggest thunder certainly last year in the Queensland
Speaker 2: election was Cole Australia, who, according to the Queensland Electoral
Speaker 2: Commission returns, provided them with seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
Speaker 2: I was still going to one Liberal MP who suggested
Speaker 2: that the Australians for Prosperity group is affiliated with the LMP,
Speaker 2: but not quite enough that you could actually pin it
Speaker 2: down on anyone, and so there's this idea that they've
Speaker 2: got Plauds wild deniability. Now they've been running ads, betner ads,
Speaker 2: to the billboards, et cetera, specifically in Teal seats, with
Speaker 2: a focus on Manique grinding Kujong and a Leegori spender
Speaker 2: in at Worth.
Speaker 5: The federalation has yet to be called, but already I
Speaker 5: and a number of my independent COI leagues have been
Speaker 5: subjected by the Liberal Party and their friends in various
Speaker 5: lobby groups to misleading information campaigns. We're talking about some
Speaker 5: really nasty big billboards and an attack pamphlet which was
Speaker 5: distributed to every person in Quong a couple of weeks ago.
Speaker 2: By Dutton's own reckoning. Their strategy seems to be to
Speaker 2: at least paint the Teals as some kind of fringe
Speaker 2: hippie group like the Greens in their eyes.
Speaker 6: Since the last election, Teal independent MPs have voted most
Speaker 6: often with the Greens, followed by Labor, and so.
Speaker 2: They're essentially trying to paint what they think is a
Speaker 2: likely scenario that Labor will have to form some kind
Speaker 2: of minority government with.
Speaker 6: The teals the next election will be close, with many
Speaker 6: commentators predicting a hung parliament. Are Labour Greens teals minority government,
Speaker 6: don't risk it authorized.
Speaker 2: Alboy would rather chew off his left foot, I think
Speaker 2: than former might already government with the Greens. That's certainly
Speaker 2: the prevailing view within Labor and certainly the l ANDP
Speaker 2: think that's so they're going pretty hard on the tills
Speaker 2: as a perhaps a two term strategy in that sense
Speaker 2: where you know they might not necessarily win back all
Speaker 2: the Till seats they want this time around, but they're
Speaker 2: going to make life hard for them. And of course,
Speaker 2: talking to TiAl MPs at the moment, they say that
Speaker 2: it's already a market change from twenty twenty two when
Speaker 2: things were not easy but better, and things are much
Speaker 2: harder this time around, they're telling me because things are
Speaker 2: already very.
Speaker 1: Toxic after the break. Howeveryone else in the LNP feels
Speaker 1: about Dutton's divisive election strategy. So Rick, you've been looking
Speaker 1: into the Liberal parties electoral calculations ahead of the next election,
Speaker 1: and as well as needing to take seats from Labor
Speaker 1: and the Tills, they all also have to hold on
Speaker 1: to the seats that they currently have. So can we
Speaker 1: talk a bit about the seat of Bradfield in North Sydney.
Speaker 1: What does the pre selection that happened there over the weekend,
Speaker 1: what does that tell us?
Speaker 2: Bradfield is fascinating because it used to be the jewel
Speaker 2: in the crown of the Liberal Party, used to be
Speaker 2: the safest Liberal seat in that country, and it's currently
Speaker 2: held by senior I guess you would call them moderate
Speaker 2: faction p Paul Fletcher, former minister in the Morrison and
Speaker 2: Turnbull governments. It was once described to me by people
Speaker 2: within the coalition as the most boring man in Parliament
Speaker 2: and he's retiring now. The Teals have changed the approach
Speaker 2: in a lot of these kind of North and Northwest
Speaker 2: Sydney seats because what used to be an enormous margin
Speaker 2: has been eaten away by very persistent voices. At Bradfield
Speaker 2: Independent candidate nicolete Buller, who has some funding from Plumate
Speaker 2: two hundred.
Speaker 7: People of Bradfield have a choice now between a community
Speaker 7: independent who's local and genuinely working for the people, or
Speaker 7: a party politician who is going to have to vote
Speaker 7: the way that Peter Dutton tells them Every single time.
Speaker 2: People know that and so maybe poor Fletcher read the
Speaker 2: right in the room. Times are changing. He's not contesting
Speaker 2: this seat anymore now. Of course, there was a lot
Speaker 2: of talk about who was going to replace him, and
Speaker 2: the pre selections hadn't been held until the weekend just
Speaker 2: gone and Warren Mundine decided he was going to run
Speaker 2: in Bradfield. He's an anti Voice campaigner, big in the
Speaker 2: No campaign, very affiliated with Advanced Australia and all the
Speaker 2: rest of it.
Speaker 8: The ES campaign is out there every day accusing the
Speaker 8: No campaign of lying, but the S campaign is built
Speaker 8: on a.
Speaker 2: Pack of lies.
Speaker 8: One lie is that Indigenous people don't currently have a voice,
Speaker 8: that Indigenous people aren't listened to in making laws and policies.
Speaker 2: It's the opposite.
Speaker 8: Indigenous Australians have many voices.
Speaker 2: Radfil voted yes in the Voice referendum. They were one
Speaker 2: of the only Liberal seats in that area to do
Speaker 2: so in the metropolitan groups. So on Saturday the Protection
Speaker 2: results were announced and BACKI went to Gazelle Captarian, who's
Speaker 2: a tech executive had a career with Salesforce, which is
Speaker 2: a major winner of government contracts. She was backed by
Speaker 2: the Liberal Deputy Susan lay So Captarian one. Mundane didn't
Speaker 2: get it. No one serious thought he was going to
Speaker 2: get it. It was a crazy choice. I don't know
Speaker 2: who thought that was a good idea, But it does
Speaker 2: tell you that there is still this ideological divide in
Speaker 2: the party when you've got these kind of public displays
Speaker 2: of disunity.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it points to this ongoing eternal tension between the
Speaker 1: Conservatives and the moderates and the party. And I mean,
Speaker 1: how significant do you think it is that the party
Speaker 1: couldn't get the conservative wing of the party couldn't get
Speaker 1: its candidate or a candidate up in this seat. Does
Speaker 1: it say that that perhaps the coalition is less united
Speaker 1: behind Dutton's vision than he might hope.
Speaker 2: It's there's an interesting moral kind of arithmetic going on here,
Speaker 2: I think with a lot of the moderates, I mean
Speaker 2: a lot of moderates are retire and Simon Permingham is retiring,
Speaker 2: not that being a moderate did much for him and
Speaker 2: the last kind of term of parliament, because a lot
Speaker 2: of them have had to kind of fall in lockstep
Speaker 2: behind Peter Dutton. As Peter Dutton has refused to moderate
Speaker 2: his own behavior, which you know he will go out
Speaker 2: and say, look, I'm just being a very fair and
Speaker 2: sensible person. In fact, Neil Mitchell asked him, you know,
Speaker 2: didn't you ever go through a left wing phase at university?
Speaker 2: And Peter Dutton said.
Speaker 4: No, I wasn't never, no, no, no. I was born
Speaker 4: sensible and I've maintained it since then.
Speaker 2: So now that's his kind of branding, right. You've got
Speaker 2: the Peter Dutton who obviously deliberately didn't turn up for
Speaker 2: the apology to the Solo generations, later apologize for not
Speaker 2: doing that, but who then comes out just weeks ago
Speaker 2: and says I'm not going to stand in front of
Speaker 2: an aboriginal tyrest threat island a flag. The Overton window
Speaker 2: is shifting on what you can and can't get away
Speaker 2: with in public life. Trump has changed the world. There's
Speaker 2: no doubt that Pitter Dutt has been tying a little
Speaker 2: bit of that here. You know, you've seen him in
Speaker 2: press conferences attacking journalists, particularly from the ABC, and so
Speaker 2: Dutton's approach seems to be that he doesn't need to
Speaker 2: win over every voter in a tail seat or an
Speaker 2: inner city seat. He certainly doesn't need to win over
Speaker 2: the ones who are progressive and would never change. But
Speaker 2: there are enough in the middle who can flip a seat,
Speaker 2: who might actually be like.
Speaker 4: You know what.
Speaker 2: And this seems to be the report I'm getting from
Speaker 2: moderate MPs who are like getting approached in their election
Speaker 2: by their constituents who are saying, well, I do I
Speaker 2: like Australia Day, and I don't want to change the date,
Speaker 2: and no one can tell me not to tell a
Speaker 2: rut Australia Day. Now. I think that's a mean spirited
Speaker 2: kind of approach to things, but it's certainly happening. I
Speaker 2: think you would be a fool to deny that. And
Speaker 2: part of it is that the things are kind of
Speaker 2: forged by degrees and we've been witnessing this shift over
Speaker 2: many years around the world, and Dunton's approach seemed to
Speaker 2: be that there might actually be enough in it to
Speaker 2: flip a few seats.
Speaker 1: And just finally Rick. For the last few months, the
Speaker 1: common thought on this election has been that Labor will prevail,
Speaker 1: but not by much. They will end up having to
Speaker 1: form a minority government. Do you think that that is
Speaker 1: still the most likely outcome or does it seem to
Speaker 1: you like the kind of common wisdom on that is shifting.
Speaker 2: I think there is a prevailing view, certainly even among
Speaker 2: labor supporters, that this federal government has been pretty disappointing,
Speaker 2: even on the things on which they ran. Integrity. The
Speaker 2: National Antiicruption Commission is literally a joke at this point.
Speaker 2: I think, I don't think I'm being unfair in saying that,
Speaker 2: but they can still do the thing where they actually
Speaker 2: point out you know who Peter Dutton is. This guy's
Speaker 2: trying to reinvent himself as his kind of working class hero,
Speaker 2: and he keeps saying, really that he believes the coalition
Speaker 2: of the Party of the working classes these days. He
Speaker 2: might mean that, he might actually believe it, but he's
Speaker 2: also someone who's worth a lot of money and who
Speaker 2: spent more time in property investment than he ever did
Speaker 2: as a cop in Queensland, neither of which are particularly
Speaker 2: progressive pastimes. But if the retric wins, then it doesn't
Speaker 2: matter what the state of play is in terms of
Speaker 2: the facts. The rehetric has won. And I think this election,
Speaker 2: I guess, like all of them, but perhaps the stakes
Speaker 2: are higher will be fought in one on RETRIC because
Speaker 2: there's not a lot of policy details floating around.
Speaker 1: On the other side, Rick, thank you for your time.
Speaker 2: Thanks Ruby, it's always a pleasure.
Speaker 1: Also in the news today, Australian Federal Police say they're
Speaker 1: investigating whether overseas actors have paid local criminals to carry
Speaker 1: out anti Semitic attacks in the country. AFP Commissioner Rhys
Speaker 1: Kershaw says there is intelligence to suggest that Australians may
Speaker 1: have been paid using cryptocurrencies to execute hate crimes domestically.
Speaker 1: And the Foreign Minister, Penny Wong, has had one on
Speaker 1: one talks with newly sworn in US Secretary of State
Speaker 1: Marco Rubio, downplaying concerns about trade sanctions. President Donald Trump
Speaker 1: has already flagged imposing tariffs on Canada and Mexico. The
Speaker 1: Senator Wong says she had positive discussions with her US
Speaker 1: counterpart about trade as well as the Orchist partnership, stating
Speaker 1: our alliance has never been stronger. I'm Ruby Jones. This
Speaker 1: is seven am. See tomorrow.