While prime minister Scott Morrison has spent the past fortnight resurrecting the notorious political wedge of border protection, evidence is mounting that the weapon he is brandishing may be about to malfunction.
After Labor worked with the Greens and once-Liberal independents to evacuate asylum seekers in need of medical attention from Nauru and Manus Islands, the PM jumped on to his own historic defeat as though it were a political life raft.
With the amplification of News Corp and the outlet formally known as Fairfax, medevac was billed as the “three-quel” to 2001’s Tampa and 2013’s Turn Back the Boats, the trifecta of conservative election game-changers.
The polls are now testing that cargo cult. First Newspoll refused to budge, now this week’s Guardian Essential poll has found a similar, though slightly slimmer two-party-preferred figure. But it’s the responses to more detailed questions on the bill that are even more instructive.
The breakdown of responses to our Goldilocks propositions – too hard, too soft or about right – suggests the split that is occurring is at the Liberal base. The vast majority of Labor voters believe the legislation strikes the right balance or does not go far enough. In contrast, more than a third of Liberal voters see the legislation as reasonable and a further 5% want something even more humane.
Given this legislation was conceived by a group of independents who are holding traditionally heartland Liberal seats and espousing traditionally “small l” liberal values, this should hardly surprise.
While it is true the feelings are yet to be tested in the shrill and highly resourced roar of a federal campaign, these numbers suggest that far from destroying Labor, an all-out campaign on boats has the real prospect of further cannibalising the government’s base.
On these figures, expect the PM to do what he does best and saunter on to his next scare: likely to be a vociferous attempt to conflate the series of measures Labor has taken to close tax loopholes with another old standard: Labor is for higher taxes.
Morrison will confect a budget surplus, splash tax cuts around and then attempt to make the election about tax. His only problem is – according to another table in this week’s report – it will again be his base that splits.
When we presented respondents with clear choices between stated ALP policy and some of the so-called “tax cuts” they are being accused of pursuing, there was a clear preference for closing the loopholes with everyone – except Coalition voters who are split right down the middle.
These figures suggest to me that politics of boats and tax has moved on from the Howard years. The mainstream is more progressive, and one-time Liberal voters are finding their values aligned with what they used to regard as the other side of politics.
So while the wedge is undoubtedly on, it’s of a new garden variety – the self-administered atomic wedgie, where the flanks of the victim are painfully separated as the wearer blindly lurches around with his own elastic waistband obscuring his vision.
• Peter Lewis is the executive director of Essential and a Guardian Australia columnist
