Or,more accurately,they thought they had the election bagged. So much so theyactively campaigned in Higgins,home to the establishment blue-bloods of Toorak and Malvern,replacing the party’s original candidate with high-profile senior barristerFiona McLeod.
In retrospect the move smacked of hubris of the sort that propels every episode ofSuccession. Even at the time,the spectacle was discombobulating for the likes of me who came of age in an era when real men smoked Marlboros and the workers were the lifeblood of the Labor Party. Was class politics in Australia reallythat last season?
So again,Wilson is probably right when he says:“the more the media focuses on urban electorates the more left-progressives” – Labor and the Greens – “will miscalculate” and miss the economic bread-and-butter issues that matter most to voters in marginal seats.
Labor should be grateful for this sound advice;namely,pay no heedto these blue-ribbon rumbles lest you lose touch with the battlers. Mind you,I’m not sure why Wilson’s offering Labor this sound advice. Why not keep mum and let progressives “miscalculate”?
Wilson also argues that despite their strategy to portray themselves as “Liberal-lite”,the “Voices” are more likely to peel off Greens and Labor voters,“less-so Liberals”. If that’s true he seems rather exercised about a group whose real danger is to the other side. I might gently suggest Wilson reconsider his own strategy because the current one’s confusing,but I know that anxiety can impede clear thinking.
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Liberal incumbents are trying to defuse what they know is a threat. Indeed,Wilson gives the game away in referring to the candidates’ line of being tired of their local MP’s voting record as a “poll-tested phrase”.
So the phrase polls well,huh? Maybe voters in these electorates are indeed tired of the liberal Liberals struggling to exert influence within the Coalition and falling meekly into line.
Personally,I’m uneasy about the prospect of a group of political unknowns emerging as kingmakers,or whatever the gender-neutral equivalent,in a hung parliament. Nothing against the candidates – on the contrary,I have breathless admiration for Daniel’s journalism at the ABC,for instance – it’s simply that having grown up in an era of relative certainties,I look for established boxes into which I can place individual politicians.
All the same,I’m partial to a decent psychodrama,and we have one here. For the Liberals,the “Voices” signify the return-of-the-repressed,of the party’s feminine conscience,if you will,or if you won’t,then let’s say of Malcolm Turnbull’s aura.
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What we’re seeing now is a variation on the “doctors’ wives” motif first encountered in the mid-2000s:this notion of Liberal women in wealthy electorates disaffected because of the party’s stance on social issues. Only now that theme is thankfully redux as disaffected Liberal-presenting women themselves standing for election,some themselves doctors.
All voicing their frustration with the policies eroding the party’s moral core on climate change,on women,on integrity in politics,because whatever their day jobs most women have solid expertise in cleaning up dirt.
We could be in for a cliffhanger.
Julie Szego is a regular columnist.