The Surprise Party: How the Coalition Went from Chaos to Comeback

By Aaron Patrick

In this gripping behind-the-scenes account, acclaimed journalist Aaron Patrick examines how the Coalition came back from the brink, and what that means for Australia.

Disunity is said to be death in politics – but not for Scott Morrison’s Liberal Party. The Surprise Party tells how Morrison and his team took their chance and won a remarkable victory.

Patrick interviews key insiders to reveal the turning points and the cunning schemes. What did Shorten’s Labor get so wrong? How good is Morrison at plotting? When did the Coalition realise they might win? And is chaos behind them now, or is there more to come?

This is the pacy story of how politics was turned on its head – several times.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Black Inc. Books
• Release date: Nov 18, 2019
• ISBN: 9781743821237

Aaron Patrick

Aaron Patrick is the Senior Correspondent at the Australian Financial Review, based in Sydney, and has written for the New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal. He is the author of three books on Australian politics: Downfall, Credlin and Co., and The Surprise Party. He is also an ex-Young Labor president and associate of Bill Shorten.

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Prologue

Scott John Morrison held his head up and stretched out his arm, swaying slightly, exhibiting a sense of peace that suggested the singing in the Horizon Church had summoned the Lord himself. On Easter Sunday in 2019, under a sky so clear it verged on the Biblical, Australia’s fifth prime minister in six years had brazenly permitted himself to be recorded worshipping the supreme being. The hundreds of other worshippers within the auditorium in Sutherland paid no heed to the political deity in their midst. They didn’t need to see Morrison to know that he was there; the television cameras trained on their venerated parishioner were enough. They formed a kind of halo around the prime minister, whose very presence was a powerful legitimising force for a young and self-conscious church.

Like the better-known Hillsong church, Horizon is a member of the fast-growing Australian Christian Churches movement, where a literal interpretation of the Bible and peppy Christian songs provide righteousness and family fun every Sunday morning. The churches’ weirdest belief – and there’s stiff competition – is that speaking in an unintelligible gush of words demonstrates that the Holy Spirit inhabits a person’s soul.

Morrison’s presence wasn’t an affectation. The fifty-year-old had attended Christian camps since he met his future wife at one as a teenager. To the surprise of the media intruders, they had been welcomed in by the church’s married pastors, Alison and Brad Bonhomme, to watch Morrison and wife, Jenny, sing and pray. The political demigod did not object to their intrusive presence, for he had a message for the unblinking eye of the cameras to convey to a nation wary of overt religious belief: this is who I am.

Australia’s rigorous, if sometimes sacrilegious, democracy had been governed by Protestants, Catholics, agnostics and atheists ever since the days of its first prime minister, Edmund Barton, who conversed in Latin with Pope Leo XIII in 1902. But never before had an evangelical Christian – a fellow traveller of deep conservatives like Billy Graham, Jerry Falwell and Mike Pence – attained the highest office of state. Even the most spiritual of prime ministers – Alfred Deakin, who actually participated in seances – declined to invoke the Lord’s name as frequently as the policeman’s son from working-class Sydney.

Morrison’s calling, so it seemed that day at Horizon, was to unite the Liberal Party’s tribes and lead a fatalistic Coalition to an honourable defeat in the nation’s forty-sixth general election, just under four weeks away. Few in his own party, let alone those engaged in politics more broadly, believed Morrison could beat a Labor opposition so confident that it had proposed one of the most detailed plans for government in Australian history. Morrison had offered his political body to the Liberal Party, and it expected him to be sacrificed on the cross of an electoral loss.

The opposition leader, Bill Shorten, expressed an unwavering certainty that he would vanquish the Coalition government – right up to the day voters finally repudiated his 2052 days at the head of the Australian Labor Party. The once great organisation would emerge from his leadership broken and demoralised.

Australians didn’t know it as Morrison worshipped that day in an unconventional church, but they were being led by the most underestimated politician since John Howard. His suburban style and overt religious faith would tap into two politically potent currents of Australian society. Three steps forward in his history suggested a man with an exceptional talent for self-advancement. In 2007 Morrison had manoeuvred himself into a safe seat despite the almost universal opposition of local party members; he had then used a bitter leadership change to glide into the second-most powerful job in government; and finally he had replaced the prime minister without initiating a leadership challenge. In his short time as leader, he had demonstrated an adroitness in managing the fractious Liberal Party that exceeded that of his troubled three predecessors, Malcolm Turnbull, Tony Abbott and Brendan Nelson. Now, as he faced the toughest test of all, few believed he would triumph.

Morrison’s and Shorten’s contrasting personas explain a lot, but not all, of the 2019 election result. Morrison’s anti-intellectual style and Pentecostal religion were regarded by many Australians as unusual but not inauthentic. Shorten’s self-publicity machine had carried him from Union Leader With an MBA to Opposition Leader in six tumultuous years. He may have been Australia’s most overestimated politician since Kevin Rudd. Shorten’s belief system appeared mutable. His religion, class and ideology were flexible, depending on the situation. A privileged man who loved being a member of the elite became a class warrior who told Australians not to ‘doff your cap to people from the big end of town’.

Eleven years earlier, Labor had held power federally and in every state and territory. It could claim to be one of the most successful centre-left parties in the world, and was fulfilling its promise to create a fairer, more tolerant society. By the time Shorten led federal Labor to its third consecutive election loss, on 18 May 2019, his party had been expelled from power in three states where it had once been immovable: New South Wales, South Australia and Tasmania. Federally, the party had held power for just twenty-two of the previous seventy years.

Labor campaigned on what would once have been regarded as the proudest tradition of ambitious policy reform. Shorten promised big investments in health, education and training, to be funded by tax increases on the wealthy. Labor planned to phase out the property tax breaks that had turned many Australians in landlords, and to transform the energy industry from coal and gas to wind and solar. Morrison offered Australians less taxation, a slightly smaller government and no new restrictions on civil liberties or economic freedoms. Given the choice between democratic socialism or the free market with a generous safety net, Australians surprised the political, business, academic and media elites. They voted for Morrison.

The Coalition won the 2019 election in part because of Liberal Party infighting so severe that its emboldened opponent overreached. The power struggle within the government between Tony Abbott and Malcolm Turnbull, and then between Turnbull and Peter Dutton, was fuelled by unreliable opinion polls that promised an easy Labor victory. Seduced by their expectations of success, Shorten and his team became overly ambitious. At the time, the Coalition was too distracted to effectively attack the big political targets proposed by Shorten. When the Liberals, almost by chance, elected a leader who could unify the party and prosecute a coherent attack, Shorten didn’t have the time or political space to moderate his vulnerable policy platform. He was caught in an accidental trap.

The contest between Morrison and Shorten marked a rare historical event: a turning point in politics where power didn’t change hands. The election forced Australia to reassess its values. It is not the country many thought it was. For better or worse, Australians chose capitalism over paternalism. They rejected bold cuts to greenhouse-gas emissions, they rejected a bigger state and they rejected greater regulation of business. Australians demonstrated that they are more cautious and conservative than many of their political leaders. The ramifications, political and social, will be felt for years.

This book tells the story of this remarkable era, which redefined Australia.

1

Christmas in Kirribilli

Who could blame him? Malcolm Turnbull was in an ebullient mood. Australia’s twenty-ninth prime minister, just a couple of months into the job, laughed and joked as he mingled with leading figures from business, the arts and the media for Christmas drinks at Kirribilli House, the neat government residence resting above a cliff on the north shore of beautiful Sydney Harbour. ‘There’s never been a better time to be in Kirribilli,’ he quipped to the audience, who laughed at the slightly audacious take on Turnbull’s own fresh but vague slogan, ‘There’s never been a better time to be an Australian.’

Turnbull radiated optimism. The room, full of power, could feel it. Many Australians could too. The removal of the conservative and divisive Tony Abbott had lifted the national mood. Four changes of prime minister in just over four years since mid-2010, when the manic Kevin Rudd was fired by his Labor colleagues before he could fight a second election, had demoralised a country that hadn’t experienced such serious political turbulence since Gough Whitlam’s 1975 dismissal. Turnbull’s ascension had brought political stability and, some said under their breadth, maturity to the office of prime minister. The business community was relieved, the public service pleased and cultural leaders thrilled.

Given that they were products of similarly privileged Sydney educations, it was remarkable how deep the philosophical differences between the two men were. Turnbull and Abbott were both Rhodes scholars, members of an elite designation that marked them among the most talented of their generation.

Turnbull had attended Oxford University three years ahead of Abbott. They emerged five decades apart in their vision for Australia. Abbott had immersed himself in the rituals, symbols and history of the British Empire, which formed a kind of surrogate mother for his conservative political beliefs. He embodied the self-belief of Anglo-Saxon culture, which he saw as the foundation of a cohesive multicultural society. His love of the Queen, and the institutional inertia and once glorious empire she represented, was anathema to Turnbull, who drew his inspiration from Wall Street, where the humblest of men could become fabulously wealthy and a great republic financed its global ambitions. Turnbull wanted to create a new Australia – a nation in his own image. An energetic, intelligent, risk-taking country that could be proud of more than just a century-old military defeat, sporting success and expansive beaches. Abbott wanted to preserve an older Australia, a more comfortable nation for him and his followers.

Like his predecessor John Howard, Abbott believed Australia had inherited the best of Britain: an almost incorruptible legal tradition, a robust and responsive parliamentary system, and a social welfare net that avoided extreme poverty while fostering enterprise. Turnbull didn’t disagree; he just wanted Australians to focus on engaging with a rich, wide world, where their natural talents and resourcefulness would, he believed, inevitably succeed. The culture wars that obsessed the conservative media, Abbott’s natural habitat, were petty distractions to the pragmatic Turnbull, who believed in rational and methodical government. When Abbott reintroduced knighthoods on Australia Day in 2015, Turnbull openly mocked him. For Turnbull, the public backlash against restoring an imperial honour was yet more evidence of his superiority over Abbott, intellectually, culturally and politically.

Many Australians shared Turnbull’s view. His appointment as prime minister at the age of sixty-one in September 2015 electrified a nation dismayed by the breakdown of the Abbott government. In a collective surge of optimism, a million wavering Labor and Greens voters shifted to the Coalition, delivering the new prime minister huge political capital. Even though Australians didn’t really believe politicians could improve their lives, they hoped Turnbull might prove them wrong. He personified the best attributes of modern Australia. Urbane, handsome, charming and worldly, Turnbull was as comfortable at the Bondi Surf Bathers Life Saving Club in his bathers as in Goldman Sachs’ Manhattan boardroom in a bespoke suit. He promised the temperament to finally deliver stable government.

Philosophically an economic rationalist and a social moderate, Turnbull’s enlightened centrism was in sync with that of the policy elite, who were eager for him to succeed and willing to help. Abbott had detected an unarticulated hostility towards his own government from the public service, caused by a dislike of his conservative views and his decision to fire two of Canberra’s ablest public servants, Martin Parkinson and Blair Comley. Turnbull, by contrast, was a bureaucrat’s dream politician: a policy wonk who would lap up detailed briefing notes and battle for his department.

Many assumed that Turnbull’s ascension would mark the end of the rapid turnover of prime ministers. He entered office as the most popular leader since the first incarnation of Rudd, who had recorded the highest approval ratings in the history of Australian polling. Many commentators urged Turnbull to capitalise by calling an immediate election, which he could justify by citing a need for a popular mandate. Turnbull demurred. His determination to give the new cabinet time to get policy in place was regarded as proof of his preference for substance over expediency.

In an irony of history, neither Turnbull nor Abbott governed according to their natural inclinations. Abbott’s attempt at budget reform was an immediate political failure. Instead of using the authority of his convincing 2013 election win to implement policies that would have delivered the spending restraint needed to fund popular tax cuts, he consumed precious political capital for no policy gain, inflicting huge damage on the reputation of his treasurer, Joe Hockey, in the process. Expectations for Abbott’s government were so low that he could have moved far more slowly and cost himself little or no political support.

Turnbull made the opposite mistake. The prodigal barrister, banker and republican had worked so hard creating an ‘I will change the world’ CV that Australians couldn’t understand why, now that he was finally in power, he didn’t. Turnbull had watched Abbott fail – and surreptitiously greased the fall – and concluded that Abbott and his assertive chief of staff, Peta Credlin, had challenged too many sources of power. As he saw it, the pair had overreached. Turnbull resolved to be more judicious.

The new PM learnt the wrong lesson. His modestly reformist government made no major policy blunders, was internally unified until almost the end, and ruled during a period of prosperity. But Turnbull hadn’t foreseen the consequences of his own skills as an orator. His catchphrase – ‘There has never been a greater time to be an Australian’ – may have been a rhetorical flourish, but it had greater effect on regular Australians than Turnbull anticipated. To them, it was a message of intent. After years of also-rans and failed prophets, the man from Goldman Sachs was going to apply the genius he had used to become rich to solving the problems of government. The nation was going to move forward, politically, culturally and economically. Turnbull was going to be a prime minister celebrated in the history books. Maybe even another John Howard or Bob Hawke; at the very least, a Paul Keating.

Turnbull failed to meet the expectations he had set. In an era of fragmented political allegiances, a partisan media and entrenched interest groups, it would have been difficult for even the cleverest politician to impress the nation, but Turnbull’s cautious approach to government satisfied no one. Economic hawks wanted tax reform, but he was wary of the backlash from raising the goods and services tax. Social conservatives sought greater protections for freedom of speech, but Turnbull was worried they could be used to sow racial and religious discord. Progressives begged Turnbull to deliver a republic, but he feared a split in the Coalition.

When Turnbull did occasionally show bravery, he was given little credit. A plebiscite over same-sex marriage was a perfect expression of Turnbull’s liberal advocacy of individual rights, and recognition of the historical prejudice against the gay community, which had a major presence in his inner-Sydney electorate. Turnbull, though, was resented by many LGBTI men and women for consulting the Australian electorate at all. His decision to accept his predecessor’s arrangement and hold a plebiscite, which would give conservative religious groups a platform from which to attack homosexuality, was perceived as a betrayal, even though the plebiscite passed easily and the result was accepted without rancour by many who had opposed it. Same-sex marriage was legalised on 8 December 2017, two years and three months after Turnbull became prime minister.

By this point, though, the number of Australians who thought Turnbull was doing a good job had halved to 32 per cent. He was as unpopular as Bill Shorten, the perennially out-of-favour Labor leader. The collapse in public support made Turnbull vulnerable to his greatest psychological flaw: a curious indifference to the feelings and egos of others. Turnbull’s powerful personal sense of destiny, which had emerged when he was a star pupil at the elite Sydney Grammar and been solidified by his success as a lawyer and banker, had created a ruthlessness that extended to anyone whom he saw as being in his way. Turnbull regarded the conservative wing of his party not as his internal opponents, but as his enemies.

After Turnbull almost lost the 2016 election, he had held a private meeting with Abbott. The former prime minister put a proposition to his successor. If Turnbull were to agree to three requests, there would be peace in the party. The demands were: retreat from the retroactively increasing superannuation taxes that had stung many Liberal supporters; the promotion of young conservative MPs Michael Sukkar and Zed Seselja to the ministry; and – and this was the big one – the return of one of the self-declared ‘AAAs’ of the Abbott government: Eric Abetz, Kevin Andrews or Abbott himself.

Abbott was desperate to be a minister again, and preferably in cabinet. He resented how quickly John Howard had acquiesced to Turnbull’s re-ascension to the Liberal leadership. Even though Abbott was sometimes referred to in the press as Howard’s ‘love child’, he felt that Howard as prime minister had promoted Turnbull faster, and treated him with more respect. Privately, Abbott wondered if the old man, the son of a petrol station owner, was wowed by Turnbull’s enormous wealth. Abbott would have loved the defence portfolio, according to one of his closest political friends. Not only was Abbott’s blend of male valour, social conservatism and self-improvement a good fit with military culture, the huge department was full of political, administrative and diplomatic challenges that could have kept him occupied for years.

As a former leader who had triumphantly led the Coalition back into government, Abbott felt he was entitled to a senior position. When he’d won the Liberal leadership in 2009, Abbott had placed Turnbull, his predecessor and antagonist, in the shadow cabinet after Turnbull decided to remain in politics. A traditionalist and believer in institutional practice, Abbott valued displays of respect, especially when they were directed towards himself. Turnbull, he felt, owed him a dignified political career that would persist after his removal as prime minister.

As well, there was an important practical component to Abbott’s peace treaty. He was offering Turnbull the opportunity to co-opt the leading conservative politician to his agenda. Politically, Abbott could be very useful to Turnbull. Although an object of ridicule in the liberal media, Abbott was admired in the Murdoch press and on talkback radio, and among the religious and the culturally conservative. Unlike Turnbull, he was a figure of reverence among many of the thousands of men and women who manned polling booths for the Liberal Party every election. Turnbull could have used Abbott to secure his right flank.

The meeting didn’t go well. Unlike Labor leaders, who are bound by a faction-selection system, Liberal prime ministers have discretion over their ministries. Turnbull wouldn’t agree to take Abbott into the government – and wouldn’t explain why, Abbott would later report. If Turnbull wouldn’t take him, he asked, what about one of his conservative friends and allies, Abetz or Andrews? Another no.

Turnbull may have feared the AAAs would use their access to cabinet’s secrets to undermine him. Or maybe his dislike of the conservatives was so great he couldn’t stand to work with them. Either way, Turnbull chose to promote younger ministers, including several women, who were personally loyal.

He didn’t entirely ignore Abbott’s requests. Seselja was made an assistant minister, for social services and multicultural affairs, where he could spend time courting conservative immigrant communities who, like him, opposed same-sex marriage. Sukkar had to wait a few months but got into the ministry as assistant treasurer, where he built relationships with the business community. Turnbull agreed to water down the superannuation tax increases. The conservatives gave him none of the credit for the partial backdown.

After he was removed as leader in 2015, Abbott famously vowed there would be ‘no wrecking, no undermining and no sniping’. He stuck by the promise until the 2016 election, when Turnbull lost fourteen lower-house seats. The election badly weakened Turnbull’s authority. His primary reason for replacing Abbott had been his superior popularity, and he had been out-campaigned by the cunning Shorten. Abbott began a national monologue about the failings of the Turnbull government, which he rationalised by arguing that Turnbull’s refusal to accept his post-election peace offer freed him from his promise to refrain from public criticism. Turnbull was forced to defend himself against two primary opponents: the leader of the Labor Party and the former leader of the Liberal Party. Colleagues, and even friends, were desperate for Abbott to shut up. He ignored them.

Not for the first time, Turnbull had been let down by his ego. He had humiliated Abbott twice over. In victory, Turnbull was too proud, paranoid or vengeful to make peace with his rival. He failed to appreciate that the punishment he inflicted upon Abbott would harden the suspicions about his own leadership held by many conservative MPs. These men and women already felt contemptuously persecuted by those they regarded as the cultural elites, Turnbull’s base. If Turnbull was willing to completely destroy Abbott’s political career, none of them was safe.

In exiling Abbott to the backbench, Turnbull committed an indulgent error of judgement. He set in train events that led to his own removal in a messier fashion two years later. The man almost universally acclaimed as the saviour of the Liberal Party became a symbol of the party’s ineptitude and personal vanity.

2

The Warning

‘Why did we not run on the carbon tax?’ Liberal senator Eric Abetz asked. ‘Why did we not run on union corruption?’

Why indeed. Malcolm Turnbull’s message in the 2016 election campaign – ‘jobs, growth and stable government’ – had failed. The politically naive Turnbull and his wife, Lucy, didn’t want to sully his image, or ape his predecessor’s style, by running a negative campaign. Turnbull had come to power with an optimistically grand, if vague, vision for the nation. He believed he could convince Australians to support him through the power of his words – as long as they demonstrated his eloquence. During the two-month campaign, which Turnbull initiated on 8 May 2016, Coalition political advisers implored Turnbull to hold more press conferences attacking Bill Shorten. Instead, he would offer to give a speech, and would write it himself.

Ironically, Turnbull’s