Interview with Hamish MacDonald on ABC Sydney Mornings

‍Subjects: Election result, Liberal Party leadership, nuclear and economic policies

E&OE………

Hamish Macdonald

Senator Andrew Bragg, Samantha Maiden. Very good morning to you both.

Samantha Maiden

Good morning.

Senator Bragg

Hamish, good morning.

Samantha Maiden

Good morning to Malcolm Turnbull, who's in another dimension, not for the first time.

Hamish Macdonald

A few people have texted in already saying he must be enjoying a sip of whatever wine he's drinking wherever he is. Andrew Bragg, your initial reflection on the whole thing?

Senator Bragg

Well, I think overall, we weren't successful on arguing an economic case. I don't think we took the advantages that we could have taken in terms of Labor's economic failings. For our own part, we didn't have an ambitious enough economic programme.

Hamish Macdonald

What should your economic programme look like going forward? What was the problem with what you were offering?

Senator Bragg

Well, I mean, firstly, we should have exposed the fact that Labor had spent three years being a government for vested interests for the unions and co. We should have prosecuted the unrealized gains issue. From our own point of view, we should have done more to support investment and small business in the society that we live in. We should have had more to say about tax. I think we could have done more on promoting this concept of deregulation to help unlock investment in our economy, because the economy is pretty anaemic under these guys. So I think we could have done a lot of those sorts of things.

Hamish MacDonald

But Andrew, on that, we had you on the airwaves a number of times, offered you lots of opportunities to deliver those sorts of messages. If that's what you really believe, I mean, I pushed you on some of the economic policies, things like the excise on saying you'd vote to repeal a tax cut after the election. I mean, you swung in behind those policies.

Senator Bragg

Well, you can blame the campaign, but ultimately, I think that's a fool's errand. I think ultimately, you've got three years in each term, and we didn't do enough of the heavy lifting to have a good product for the campaign. In the end, we were left with a few rats and mice economic policies, and we should have had a much more substantial and ambitious programme.

Hamish MacDonald

Sam Maiden, what was the reason that that was where they ended up?

Samantha Maiden

Well, I think that Senator Bragg makes a very good point in that it's always interesting to do post-mortems of the campaign, and I've done one myself this morning on news.com - you can go and read about their polling problems. But the fish does rot from the head. And so the problems, usually in these situations, they start with the Leader, they start with the Leader's office, the policy formulation, and the policy formulation is really central to that. So I mean, I'd be very interested in what Mr. Bragg has to say about these reports, for example, that there was a lot of chaos and confusion, that they didn't actually come upon that plan to offer a short term $1,200 one-off tax cut to low and middle income earners until very late in the piece, that was almost a reaction to the budget. The idea that people in the Liberal Party wanted Peter Dutton to back this idea of indexation of tax thresholds, but then he panicked, squibbed, and didn't do it, and then rolled it out in The Australian a few days later as a think piece idea, some unspecified time in the future. Is that what was going on, Andrew?

Senator Bragg

Well, I wasn't super close to the day-to-day in the campaign, but clearly, the chaos surrounding the announcement of these last minute relatively minor policies, I think, is no substitute for the long term work that's required. I mean, Opposition is a slog. You've got to do the work yourself. You've got no department. You've got no other bureaucrats to support you. And so it's a slog. You've got to do the work over the full three year period.

Hamish MacDonald

Andrew, getting a lot of response to all of this already this morning. But I think consistently people saying things like, and this is just one example, 'will the Libs ever learn? Stop blaming Labor - look at your own'. I've heard Jacinta Price over the weekend blaming the media. I'm reading in the papers this morning, people blaming the pollsters. What about the...

Senator Bragg

Well, I’m not doing that, I'm not blaming Labor or any of those people. I'm saying that there are deficiencies in our own side, and we have to work on them. I'm not in any way engaging. I think it's ridiculous to blame others for our own failings. But also, we should be honest that this is a bad government, and we should have done a better job in pointing out their failings. Their obsession with running the country for the unions, their terrible tax policies like unrealized gains. I mean, these were all opportunities for us to have prosecuted, which we should have made more of.

Hamish Macdonald

Do you think, bluntly, the Australian...

Senator Bragg

I can't be more honest.

Hamish MacDonald

Do you think the Australian public just doesn't see it the way you do? Is that the truth of it? I mean, they've handed a resounding victory to Labor, even with the policies you've described.

Senator Bragg

Look, we know that Australians are hurting because of the government's bad economic policies, but we didn't do enough to win their trust, and we respect the result. Now what we have is an opportunity to rebuild and to recapture that centre ground. We need to do that with economic policy because we are definitely the best economic managers We're not going to run the economy for any vested interest like the CFMEU. We'll run it for the ordinary Australian, the small business owner or the family. We have a huge amount of work to do now.

Hamish MacDonald

Sam Maiden, who's emerging as the likely Opposition Leader at this point?

Samantha Maiden

Well, it looks like it's going to be Angus Taylor, which is pretty interesting, because Angus Taylor was at the centre of the economic team that Mr. Bragg has just been offering some observations on. There's a suggestion that he's teaming up in some way with Jane Hume, who's a potential candidate as Leader of the Senate. She, of course, had a pretty rough and wild campaign between the work from home backflip, the accusing the Labor Party of having Chinese spies on voting booths. It was then weaponized by Penny Wong in WeChat ads, and ads on social media targeting Chinese voters, suggesting to them that the Liberal Party was questioning their loyalty to Australia. So I think there's no really great option. Susan Ley is obviously interested, but no one seems to think that they're going to give her a go. So, it looks like they're going to put back in charge the guy that presided over their economic strategy, which clearly people have some problems about. And it's just a very interesting question, I think, of whether, separately to that, whether the Liberal Party needs to move on a little bit from these culture war issues. That seems to be a bit of a suggestion. Some people, like Peta Credlin, have suggested they should be doing more culture war stuff.

Hamish MacDonald

Let me just get Andrew Bragg's take on that. Culture wars, things like Welcome to Country or acknowledgement of country, the ABC's the hate media. Do you think that all worked in your favour?

Senator Bragg

No. Would you like me to elaborate?

Hamish MacDonald

Yes.

Senator Bragg

Well, I think the issue is to do with the dual nationals, the Indigenous issues, the Chinese-Australian issues, the work from home, and all those things I think were very unhelpful and very damaging. Australia is a diverse country, and we need to understand exactly the people that we are seeking to represent.

Hamish MacDonald

Would you like to draw a line under the culture wars stuff, the 'war on woke', calling everyone that disagrees with or questions Liberal Party policy 'woke'? Do you want to draw a line under that stuff?

Senator Bragg

I seriously don't like this idea that just because we disagree with one another, that I have to impute your motives. I hate that. We have to definitely draw a line under that approach. It's divisive, it's not constructive. But as I say, the salvation for the Liberal Party is to go back to our core equity, which is to make sure that we can lead the nation on economic management. I'm confident that we have the ability to going forward, of course...

Hamish MacDonald

Are you confident that Angus Taylor...

Senator Bragg

You don't want to get distracted.

Hamish MacDonald

Are you confident that Angus Taylor could do that? Isn't he the guy that drove all of these economic policies you've just said were not correct?

Senator Bragg

Well, I don't think you'd be expecting me to weigh into the leadership issues today. We're talking to colleagues at the moment.

Hamish MacDonald

So, I mean, you're open to the idea of Angus Taylor leading the party?

Senator Bragg

I don't think you would expect me to give you comments on leadership questions today because we are in the middle of talking about that with colleagues, and that's a matter for colleagues to debate right now, and at some stage, that will be resolved.

Hamish MacDonald

Sam Maiden, obviously, all of this discussion somewhat belies the reality that Anthony Albanese had a pretty good campaign. There's few criticisms of it. In many ways, he's a different Prime Minister, isn't he, to what he was in his first term? Could you articulate what the different, the Albo Mark II is?

Samantha Maiden

Well, look, I think sometimes in life and in politics, when you get a bit roughed up, when you get a bit kicked around, hopefully you learn something. It appears that he did learn something from the '22 election campaign, which was like Peter Dutton, this time around, was his first campaign. It is bruising. It is a full-on experience for a political leader. It's like nothing else. It's not like meandering around during the rest of the term when you're popping into a few interviews on 2GB. It's a different beast. And also the Prime Minister appears to have learnt something from the Voice outcome. So, not perfect. Obviously, the government has made mistakes. Very good campaign. And I think that a lot of the credit for that has to go to the ALP Secretary, Paul Erickson. They really took control of the campaign, and to some extent, parts of the Leader's office, they were telling the Leader's office, 'you will release this policy at this point. These are the messages for today'. Anthony Albanese followed the script, and he had a great relationship with Paul Erickson, and it worked. Just on that, you talk about culture wars. The one thing I would caution is the Labor Party basically ran a culture war in this election, and it was a culture war about Medicare. He talked about the cultural values of Medicare and why he thought it was important. Obviously, the Liberal Party can say there was a scare campaign mixed into there as well, but it was very effective. Values are always going to be important in politics. It's a question, I think, of whether the values, culture war debate that the Liberal Party running is one for this generation of voters, or whether it's one for a generation of voters who voted for John Howard, who are now a much smaller proportion of the population in Australia. They have to find a new way of connecting with younger voters, female voters, and find their way through.

Hamish MacDonald

We got to get moving, but very briefly, Andrew Bragg. Nuclear energy, is that policy dead and buried as far as you're concerned?

Senator Bragg

All these things need to be reviewed, Hamish, as you know, and there'll be a process to do that. But I think the idea of removing the prohibition, I think, should be pretty uncontroversial. The question of ongoing government involvement is then the real question for the Liberal Party.

Hamish MacDonald

Andrew Bragg, Sam Maiden, thank you very much.

[Ends]

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