In 2001, John Howard faced an unwinnable election, polling as low as 43% in two-party preferred. Petrol prices were through the roof, cost of living was a key issue after the rocky introduction of the GST, and the government’s policy chops were being questioned on many sides.
Sound familiar? Howard even had to deal with a message scandal: a memo from Liberal Party president Shane Stone to Howard, which suggested the government was “mean” and “out of touch”, was leaked to Laurie Oakes.
Morrison faces similarly bad odds and, like Howard, has little on his record to buoy an election campaign. But Howard managed to pull off an 11th-hour turnaround on the back of a national security crisis, and if Morrison wants to do the same, he’ll be looking to Howard’s playbook for a few tricks…
How to win an election in 90 days
Step 1: Capitalise on ‘uncertain times’
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times… or so Morrison wants you to believe. The economy is great, things are good at home, but a foreign threat lurks. In 2001, Howard capitalised on the rescued asylum seekers aboard the MV Tampa to appear tough on border security. He gained two points in the polls as a result.
His stance was brought home when 9/11 happened a month later, and the threat of terrorism made his infamous election pitch irresistible to frightened voters: “We will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come.” This stance gave him a five-point recovery in the polls, just in the nick of time to win the November election.
Morrison is already trying to engage a similar strategy — about the threat posed by China. He repeated Howard’s mantra of these “uncertain times” extensively in Parliament last week, but his attempts to paint Labor as Chinese Communist Party (CCP) sympathisers ranged from tenuous to straight up hypocritical.
Now the unfolding situation in Ukraine will likely provide a redirect for a national security election. The threat of “a new world order” led by allied superpowers Russia and China may provide a more tangible element to Morrison’s pitch.
Step 2: Pull off a stunt
The “children overboard” affair saw immigration minister Philip Ruddock claim on the eve of the election campaign that asylum seekers on a boat off the coast had threatened to throw their children overboard. The claim was later found to be false, and evidence suggested the government knew this before the election. And yet this political stunt sealed the deal for the tough-on-borders strategy.
Desperation could lead to Morrison making a similar play to convince Australia of the threat he is trying to sell.
Step 3: Play the strong man
Howard painted himself as the stronger candidate, more capable of facing up to the international threats than the weak alternative provided by opposition leader Kim Beazley. We’ve already seen this play utilised extensively to discredit Anthony Albanese, and it’s no coincidence that the term “little” was tossed across the floor in Parliament last week, with allusions even made to Albanese’s shorter stature.
Will a national security ploy still work in 2022?
Times are a-changing, and 2022 is a very different world to 2001. Even if Morrison sticks to the playbook and makes it work, there’s no assurances Australia will respond in the same way.
Mark Kenny, a professor at ANU’s Australian Studies Institute and a former journalist, says there are a few key differences between now and then. While Australia is still looking for a strong leader to get us through the hard times, Morrison’s character may have been too damaged for him to be that source of comfort.
“He came in with almost no agenda, other than tax cuts. And we’ve seen a succession of negative stories that reflect poorly on his personal character.”
Kenny also thinks it won’t be as easy a ploy to pull off this time around: “Labor is much more attuned to this now, and is being very careful to remain in lockstep with the government. And that makes it harder for the government to articulate a separate position and to prosecute the argument that Labor is somehow weak on national security.”
Finally, while Morrison will be attempting to capitalise, this situation is still largely unknown. While the world had never seen an event like 9/11 before, the Ukraine crisis has been bubbling away slowly for years.
“Depending on how the situation unfolds, the government is in danger of looking shrill as we saw last week when they risked the bipartisan position on China. But if the situation remains perilous, and if Morrison can get people to link Russia and China together, there’s a possibility of leveraging this politically.”
But whether it works or not, Morrison’s pandemic failures and lack of agenda mean the Coalition might not have much of a choice.
As Kenny puts it, “whether it’s a good strategy or not, it’s almost the only strategy they’ve got left.”
