Coalition's problems far greater than a terrible campaign

The crushing defeat of the Coalition on Saturday stemmed from its inability to let go of hateful, racist and divisive policies, of which Australia has had enough, writes Dr Victoria Fielding.

AS THE MEDIA rake over the ruins of what has been called the worst Liberal election campaign ever, and the Liberals and Nationals busy themselves repudiating each other’s efforts but never their own, they are all missing the point.

The problem was not the Coalition’s campaign. Blaming the campaign is akin to criticising the colour of the lipstick on the pig. The lipstick is not the problem. The problem is the stinking, toxic, rancid pig-character of the Liberal and National Parties.

Contrastingly, where Labor’s historic victory was contributed to by a successful joint effort between the masterclass campaigning in telling a consistent story premised on Labor’s policy strengths and a united labour movement campaign defensively warning of the risk of outgoing Opposition Leader Peter Dutton, there was more to the victory than a strong strategy.

Indeed, I would argue that Labor won more than an election on Saturday. Labor vanquished a way of doing politics.

Labor victory proves public rejected malicious media falsehoods

Saturday’s electoral mauling of the Coalition was a resounding rejection of media lies and distortions.

All this is not to say that the Liberal campaign was not hopeless, because it was. As I wrote during the campaign, all the way back to former PM John Howard, the Liberals have relied on fear campaigning in elections, winning only when they turn voters against Labor. I was reminded of this tired old strategy when I arrived to volunteer for Labor and was met by a row of hastily designed Liberal posters threatening voters that ‘LABOR WILL TAX YOUR SUPER’.

It did not shock me that the Liberals would use a misleading fear campaign to attack Labor — that is business as usual. But it was surprising that the Liberals had not innovated with a new disinformation-based fear campaign against Labor in 2025, so much so that they had to recycle a 2019 one.

As Laura Tingle argued in her searing post-election analysis, the Liberals and their News Corp cheer squad focused during this election campaign – as per usual – on their grievance politics, their fear campaigning and their culture warring, including ‘anti-immigration sentiment’, attempting ‘to fuel irritation with welcomes to country, suggested the Government had plans to re-prosecute the Voice, spoke about a woke school curriculum and raged about the hate media’.

Tingle points out that Dutton believed he just needed to run another “No” campaign, fueling division, hatred and confusion, and he would sail to victory.

Let’s not delude ourselves, though. Dutton was likely to sail to victory invoking grievance politics, attacking Labor, Greens and Teals, using fear-mongering, and creating division and polarisation. Polls swelled Dutton’s confidence over the past year. He had every reason to come into 2025 feeling certain he could rinse and repeat the “No” campaign.

With his News Corp backers campaigning for him, Dutton went about exploiting cost of living anxiety, stoking racial grievance and division to undermine social unity, and simplistically claiming he could fix everything with a magic wand. Dutton was already moving himself into Kirribilli House.

But then Trump II happened and that changed everything. Even Australians usually disengaged from politics could not ignore the first 100 days of the horrifying Trump circus. The devastating social, economic, democratic and moral consequences of the Trump victory were born from the same political way of doing things the Coalition has relied on for 20 years.

Albo TKOs Dutton as Gina's Libs gush ribands of blue from heartland

Australia has resoundingly voted to retain Labor’s Anthony Albanese as its PM — decimating and demoralising Gina Rinehart and Advance Australia’s Liberal-National Party Coalition in the process.

This fact has been impossible for Australians to unsee. Suddenly Australians are awake – you could even say they are “woke” – to the scary country-altering consequences of electing pigs into power.

The problem Trump created for the Coalition is more than a lipstick dilemma. It was also more than just Dutton himself personally being a wannabe-strongman like Trump. Australians have long memories in politics. Over the last 20 years, they have got to know the vibe of the Coalition very well. They could sense that Trump is king-pig at the end of slippery pigsty-slope inhabited by hard-right populists like Howard, like Abbott, Morrison, Dutton and most of his Liberal National colleagues, particularly since the moderates lost to Teals, or to Liberal factional warring.

When Dutton worked out that his Trump-like politics might be problematic, he made a concerted effort to put away the MAGA hats. This attempt at pivoting was the reason the Coalition’s campaign looked like such a mess. Asking Dutton and his colleagues to hide their MAGA is like asking the Labor Party not to defend Medicare. Dutton tried backflipping from policies, tried to stop talking about nuclear, worked to present a different face.

But ultimately, in the final two weeks, this shapeshifting became too hard and Dutton gave in to his base instincts. He dived back into the culture-warring like a pig in mud with his attacks on welcome to country ceremonies and his preference deal with One Nation. All this did was remind Australians how Trump-like he is.

The point is, the Coalition’s attacking, their fear-mongering, their divisive, polarising, hate-fueled way of doing politics is not a campaign strategy. It is not a decision, it is not a pathway the Coalition chooses. This nasty politicking is their very essence. The Coalition cannot change the way they do politics because they know no other way; a pig is a pig. It cannot suddenly grow wings.

Australia looked to their better selves on Saturday in delivering a powerful, historic victory to Labor. In doing so, they have discarded 20 years of toxic, nasty, abusive politics. The most gratifying part of this victory is that it feels so rare in our global political landscape that bad moral behaviour is met with negative political consequences. First Canada and now Australia give me hope that this equation is finally, and maybe permanently, being corrected.

Australians are asking for a government that solves problems instead of creating them, that brings people together rather than dividing them and that looks to the future rather than always wanting to go back to the past. I am proud of Australia for slaughtering the pig. Labor’s challenge is now to make the most of the pig-free parliament and deliver a better future for everyone.