By James Moylan
The LNP still don’t believe they lost the election. The post-election narrative they are now selling to anyone who will listen is all about how everything was on track for an overwhelming LNP triumph, until the nasty and deceitful ALP began lying their heads off about Medicare. Then the stupid public went and believed them!
The LNP politicians and their block-headed followers all really do seem to think that the election was ‘stolen’. The genesis of this narrative can be found in Turnbull’s punch-drunk speech on election night. In this ‘speech’ Turnbull accidentally let all of Australia in on the discussion he’d been having over his dinner table as the results had come flooding in. (I urge everyone to revisit this “speech“. It is most revealing.)
Turnbull commenced by assuring everyone that the DD election was necessary. That the LNP were ethically pure and so were ideologically driven to embark on the course of action that they had adopted – regardless of what the public might think. They really had no option but to call an election.
“It was not a political tactic. It was not designed to remove senators or get a new senate because new senators are better than old senators, or whatever. It was simply this: we need to restore the rule of law to the construction industry.” The LNP had to hold the election. They had been compelled to do so.
“We could have just walked away and said it was all too hard and we weren’t committed to our principles of cleaning up the construction industry and ensuring the rule of law applied: we could have done that.”
But “at the moment the CFMEU has over a hundred officials before the courts on more than a thousand charges of breaching industrial law or agreements.” So the LNP simply had to call an election. After all the very fabric of our society was at stake.
This went down well with his emotionally overwrought blue-blooded audience. They cheered this wonderful new understanding. The true magnitude of the disservice that Australia had done to them all was becoming apparent. Then after two more minutes of disjointed bitching about how evil the CFMEU and the Union movement are Turnbull claimed a narrow victory despite the evil that had been perpetrated against the ruling class.
Remember, at the time of this speech, after midnight on the night of the election, Turnbull was “still fairly confident” that he would be “able to form a majority government” and he announced as much.
Yet it was a victory that had been achieved despite his opponents constantly dragging the campaign into the gutter. The Liberal party had offered to the Australian public the uplands of secure and calm economic management. Yet the public had been the victim of “a scare campaign so dishonest but yet in some quarters so effective that [the ALP] boasted about how skilfully they’d lied and how effectively they had deceived.”
So the narrative was declared. The problem was not with the message but rather with the campaign itself. The ALP Mediscare lie upset voters. GetUp imported hundreds of smelly leftie infiltrators into otherwise pure blue suburbs. The CFMEU bankrolled an evil advertising campaign. The Unions funnelled rivers of tainted cash to the ALP. Then the damned idiot voting public were all duped by a scare campaign. So unfair.
Consider Julie Bishop’s first pasty faced outing since the poll on the 7.30 Report last night. Looking shell-shocked the Liberal stalwart refused to give any ground on their policies. It was all down to dishonesty and trickery. She repeated the same ‘we was robbed’ story we have heard coming from all quarters of the LNP. When Leigh Sales was incredulous that the Deputy PM, like members of the Labor Party, could possibly posses such a cloth-ear regarding the actual concerns of the voting public, Julie Bishop explained that the voting public had simply got it all wrong:
JULIE BISHOP: Well, Leigh, I believed that, for example, our message on backing small business, on creating more job opportunities, on growing our economy, was resonating, particularly in those weeks leading up to the final two critical weeks.
And on the ground, out and about, people were responding very positively and I felt that we were winning the campaign. We were listening, we were responding.
People were concerned about jobs, particularly in the face of the global economic uncertainty. And so I believed our message was right.
But then it must have been right, because Labor switched their campaign overnight. They abandoned their higher taxes, their higher deficits and debt policies. The CFA – the volunteer firefighter matter – was clearly biting in Victoria. And suddenly they abandoned their whole platform and started on the Medicare scare campaign. We can go into that in more detail.
But it was a complete switch and then two weeks of unrelenting, ferocious campaigning to save Medicare, when everybody knew that Medicare was not going to be privatised. In fact, might I say, in a rather devastating interview that you had with Bill Shorten, he was exposed as having concocted it. There was no evidence to say it.
So the voting public were misled – despite the best efforts of both the politicians and the press – they simply bought an evil scare campaign hook line and sinker. The LNP were selling Gods-own-truth and the Labor Party were peddling lies and deceit yet the voters bought the lie. So unfair.
That the polls barely budged during the whole of the campaign period, and that the final result closely reflected what the polls had been saying all during the election campaign, is only one of many unfortunate realities that seem blindingly apparent to all of the voting public yet remain invisible to both the press and the politicians.
So the voting public is obviously at fault. The press and the pollies all agree: The damned ungrateful idiot peasants just can’t seem to recognise a ‘lie’ when it is right in front of their faces! Fools!
In fact it is becoming ever more apparent that the voting public are simply not sophisticated enough to fully understand the consequences of their thoughts and actions when it comes to electing who should lead them. Look at the angst we have caused Mr Turnbull, Mrs Bishop, and all of our caring and deeply empathetic leaders! We have betrayed them utterly.
So on behalf of the voting public I would like to take this opportunity to apologise to the LNP for being so unworthy of your pure intentions and your wonderful campaign and so hurting your feelings.
Now if you have finished with your tantrums please piss off into the pages of history and let some people with a grasp of reality take your place.
