The Chaser Report - The Liberals Win* Dunkley By-Election

Episode Date: March 4, 2024

In a devastating loss to Labor, the Liberal Party did not win the by-election for the seat of Dunkley... or did they? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Chaser Report is recorded on Gatigal Land. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to The Chaser Report with Dom and Charles. And Charles, we are a day late to this, I know, because of our production schedule. But let me be not the first, but probably the most important commentator. To congratulate the coalition on their victory in the Dunkley by-election. It was a resounding win for Peter Dutton and his team. And I honestly think this is the beginning of the end for Anthony Albanese.

I'd be very upset if I was him. Well, as Susan Lee said on ABC Radio the day after the victory, it's green shoots, Dom, it's green shoots. It may in fact be the most marginal seat in the state, and there were some real green shoots, I think, for the Liberal Party there. Her ability to read The Moon of the Nation is unparalleled. Here's what she tweeted on the night. The people of Dunkley have sent Anthony Albanese a strong message

and it's not happy birthday. It was the PM's birthday. Sorry, Alba, bad day for you. It's do something. about the cost of living crisis. A swing of this size at the next election would see a swing 11 seats from Labor. This is a terrible result for the Prime Minister, Charles.

So there's now a lib in Dunkley is there, Dom. So who won the seat? Yeah, who's the new Libby for Dunkley? I'll just check during the ads. I can't remember the name of the Liberal candidate who's going to win. Thank you for your patience. Your call is important.

Can't take being on hold anymore. FIS is 100% online, so you can make the switch in minutes. Mobile plans start at $15 a month. Certain conditions apply. Details at FIS.C. Yeah, Charles, it looks as though the winner was actually Labor's Jody Belier. Labor? Hang on, but every single lid said that Dutton had a resounding victory at the week.

I don't understand. Oh, it was. It was a resounding victory. Within the confines of what it is to succeed as a lib, losing election is actually defined as winning. I'd call that a really good sign for the Liberals. I think the Liberals have their tails up this morning. I think Peter Dutton can take a lot out of this. This is a game on.

Overall, it was a very, very good outcome for the Liberal Party. It's a very solid position for our party to move forward to the next federal election here in Victoria. It was a victory over the concert. of winning and losing as a victor over maths. And it's not Dutton's first, if you remember his initial attempt to become opposition leader. Maths is nois, a strong

point. But look, Susan Lee is absolutely right. Sort of three or so percent swing to the coalition. Very, very good news. Very, very good news. Unless you reflect on the fact that it came from one nation and Parmy United Party, United Australia Party seats.

They got about 3% in the last federal election. So what's happened is all those people have voted for the Libs. Because my understanding is that the Labor primary vote in Dunkley went up, right? Well, which is very bad news for Labor. It went up. Very bad news. Very bad news for Labor.

But because we're in the Southern Hemisphere, that means it went down. Isn't that how it works? So, look, maths aside, it was a great evening for the coalition and it shows that the suburban strategy is working. It shows that if you wanted to show that, Charles. This is what I've gathered from how you spin a by-election. You basically come in with a theory,

and then whatever happens on the night, you just say that your theory is true. It confirms your theory. Look, I actually support letting Libs think this represents a resounding victory. Like, for me, it indicates going in the right direction. You know, they don't need to change course. They don't need to do anything. It shouldn't be panicked stations. Just keep doing what you're doing.

And definitely don't think about the teal seats, right? Did you hear the theory last week, the best strategy for Wentworth? Did you hear this? To get Allegra Spender to rejoin the Liberal Party? That's what they thought was going to happen. happen. A woman who's spent her entire political career basically distancing herself from the party that her father ran for back in the day. So is the idea that the way to win till seats is to sort of run race-fee, race-mongering, fear-bating elections in other suburban seats? So essentially

just running false racist screeds will sort of suddenly all the teals will go, oh my God, that's the way we vibe now. Now, hang on, we've got to be clear on this, Charles. Let's be factual. The coalition would never run a race-based campaign. That's not something that they would ever do. It's not how they roll. You know, you know this, Charles. You know that the Liberals would not run a racist campaign. They'd get advanced Australia to do it.

Oh, yeah, sorry. But $300,000, they spent in Dunkley. Do they spend $300,000? $300,000. Wow. Basically trying to slam Albo for releasing the crooks. We've talked about this on the podcast before. The crooks that were released.

It was Alba. It was Albao who let them out, wasn't it? It was Albaugh. But he personally went down and he got the key and he just lit the mouth. He smashed the lock. Especially the assassin. Remember the assassin? I'd never forget the assassin.

Very worried about the assassin. Yeah. I mean, he was acting through the high court in a sense, wasn't he? I mean, the high court does what the province says. Yeah, exactly. He rang up the high court. He said overturned that law that we're pretending to want to keep. That you can't just lock people up.

Because it was a very, it was a complex double game because the government was actually before the High Court, actually arguing that the people should stay in jail, but then Albo secretly rang up the High Court and went, no, no, no, actually, that's all just for show. I'm actually somebody who likes murderers and assassins out on the streets. Yeah, that's right. And then as soon as he heard the High Court result, he rushed down to the detention centre in Victoria and just went,

Be free, be free. Fly free, beautiful criminals. Yeah, that's what he said. Yeah. It's pretty extraordinary. So, I mean, a lot of money is going down on this. What do they do from here? So basically the strategy, just to recap Peter Dutton's thinking and what thinking it is,

is that they need to win back the burbs, the heartland, places like Aston, the outer suburbs, because the inner suburbs, they know that they've gone teal. They can't win those ones back. So they need the kind of John Howard battler-type seats. But I don't think Peter Dutton realise it's just how racially diverse those seats are now compared to the Howard days. Look, the problem is you've got to visit out of suburban seats to be able to see that. And as far as I'm aware, did Dutton go down to Dunkley at all? I'm pretty sure.

I think he went down five times during the course of the campaign, but he certainly wasn't there on election day. He wasn't there on election. Which is probably why they got the 3% swing. I mightn't have been as high if Dutton had been there. Thank you for your patience. Your call is important. Can't take being on hold anymore. FIS is 100% online, so you can make the switch in minutes.

Mobile plans start at $15 a month. Certain conditions apply. Details at fizz.ca. The Chaser Report, now with extra whispers. I think also the other thing is a lot of people in those seats rent, right? Cost of living crisis. Well, they were slamming our by breaking his promise. If you're on the side of landlords, if your party is the party of landlords,

like renters know that landlords are, The enemy, don't know. So I'll give you a quote. This is an Advanced Australia ad for a mum from Dunkley by-election. What, 300 grand went on this. They ran this 39 times on Facebook. It cost a living through the roof. Electricity and groceries skyrocketing.

Housing, unaffordable, interest rate smashing families. Thanks, Albo. This is on you. Let's put Labor last. That's what Events Australia were funding. Do you think they just gave the Dunkley voters the shits by like every five seconds they turn on Facebook. There was another ad.

That is the fact that Albo did the whole. stage three tax cuts thing where he gave everyone a tax cut, the coalition didn't want to support initially. I mean, I don't know what advance Australia stance is on that. Are we going to say that was Albo's fault too? The tax cut for everyone playing an elbow. The tax cuts are definitely Albo's fault. I think, oh, so the other thing, I just know is that this morning, they're doing about

a reshuffle in Dutton's shadow cabinet, right? Yeah, yeah. So there's going to be one because apparently, I think various people have left or died or something. I mean, are they going to start with Peter Dutton? No, no, no, Dutton has to do it. Anyway, there's a reshuffle on. It was all being played as, oh, it's just going to be a minor changing of the guards.

Oh, yes, I can see that this is planned. He said it'll be a minimal reshuffle. Yeah, yeah. It's just going to Robert left. It's hard to replace talent like Stuart Robert. You want to take a year to do it. So Dutton's just wanting a minor reshuffle. And you're going, okay, because everything's going well, you're losing by-elections.

The metric that they were used with Dunkley was, well, at least it was higher than 2016. It's actually the best two-party preferred vote that we've seen since 2016, and that was the last time we won the seat. Sure. And it was like, but 2016, like, that was the nadir of the vote in Victoria. Yeah, and if you go back, if you go back to Tadena 9-20s and look at the primary vote, the sheer numbers, there are a lot more people voting liberal now than were voting for the Conservative Party. Well, especially as there wasn't a liberal party back then.

It wasn't. So they're doing much better than they did before the foundation of the liberal party. But the interesting thing is keeping Susan Lee. Now, look, I'm sure she brings all manner of great things to the deputy role. But she hasn't exactly had a blinder recently. And in particular, she might want people to check her tweets. So just before the by-election, the day before, she tweeted, if you live in Frankston and you've got a problem with Victorian women being assaulted by foreign criminals,

vote against Labor. If you do not want to see Australian women being assaulted by foreign criminals, vote against Labor, send Labor a message. And this was because an asylum seeker was arrested for sexual assault, Charles. The problem was that it turned out to be a wrongful arrest and nothing had been done wrong. But other than that, the point is, send Labor a message. Yeah, right. I mean, it's so flagrant.

It's not even, it's saying the quiet bit out loud. At least with John Howard, the dog whistle was all, like, inaudible. I mean, you knew what he was saying, but he didn't say, you're going to be. attacked by foreigners. Foreign criminals. I mean, I'm not sure whether she's talking about specifically people who are being convicted who are foreigners, or is it just that all foreigners are criminal? It's really important to specify what your, you know, dog whistling views are, but Charles, it's not working. This is, this is fascinating. I know. What's happened to Australia? Like, we used to be reliably racist. I mean, are we learning that Australians, is it

the fact that Australia is more diverse, so that a lot of people who are listening to this message are actually foreigners and maybe don't like this stuff? I was talking to. a political commentator last night actually and he was saying that they're using 2001 Tampa style tactics right because that was Dutton's heyday right like that's when you know that

they love the boat and the big boat everyone stopped the boats and it was great but 20 years on the electorates are actually a lot more diverse I mean millions of people have come to live here from overseas since then right I mean

and so all these sort of anti-immigre anti-brown people sort of frameworks. Don't work in the electorates that the Libs need. Yeah, and that's true in the outer suburban electorates that they want.

What they need to do, Charles, see, they're doing it the wrong way. They need to pick a racial group that's very, very small and turn everyone against them. That's what they need to do. Exactly. You know, I'm not sure which country,

just a very small island. Maybe now ruins. I reckon gingers. There's only a couple hundred of those. Gingers. That's fantastic. Because you can't, you can't be racist against

white gigs, can you? They're white. The French. The French. The French could work? Absolutely. The French is pretty good because everyone hates French people and you're allowed to hate French people as well.

Is that true? And Allegra Spender would be scandalised. So this is a possible strategy for them going forward. But Charles, that's what we use against the French. The august submarines. Eventually. Oh, wow. Because that's a sore point still.

And the coalition runs on the idea of inviative. evading France. It is pretty extraordinary that we were going to buy French. It was pretty extraordinary that we were going to buy French submarines a couple of decades after the Rainbow Warrior. Were they guaranteed immune to French commandos blowing them up? They knew how to blow up a boat. We saw that first hand.

So the other possibility that comes to mind, Charles, is that Australia is just as racist as ever, but that the coalition is so unpopular that even with the massive surge of race baiting, Like even though they run a very effective campaign, they're still just absolute electoral dog shit. So they're in trouble despite their racist. They got 20% more votes because of the dog whistling. But without that, they would have been, I don't know, like single figures. Does that seem more likely looking for the Australia we know? I think actually that you've actually nailed it.

That's the smartest analysis you'd hear. You wouldn't hear that Michelle Grattan saying that. You wouldn't. You wouldn't hear Michelle. Is that because she's a foreign criminal? I don't know. Maybe she is. Okay.

Look, I think Peter Dutton's got to go back to the drawing board. So do we. No, no, no, Peter Dutton doesn't have to go back to the drawing. Keep going. Keep going along with. Oh, keep going. You're on a winner, Pete. Okay.

Aguirre is from Moe. We're part of the Icona class network. Back with more electoral genius tomorrow. See ya. Thank you for your patience. Your call is important. Can't take being on hold anymore. Fizz is 100% online so you can make the switch in minutes.

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