Where it went wrong for Bill Shorten and the Labor party
Questions are still being asked as to how Labor failed so badly.
With all signs pointing to a Labor victory, many are asking how and where it went wrong.
Bill Shorten’s concession speech tried to motivate supporters on Saturday, but as the results came out, the crowd thinned out.
“We are a resilient and proud movement and we never give up,” he told them.
However, Shorten gave a hint as to where it went wrong.
“The test even beyond victory, which I set myself in the lead-up to this election, was that at 6 pm when the polls closed, when the final votes were cast, I wanted to be able to look at myself in the mirror and say there was nothing more that I could have done,” Mr Shorten said.
“No more ideas that we should have expressed.”
With Labor’s ambitious plans for the country, including negative gearing, a top bracket tax and initiatives for climate change, this could have been what put voters off.
With the big ideas and ambitious policies that were raised by Labor, they failed to win the support in Queensland, NSW and Tasmania.
Practice makes perfect #ausvotes pic.twitter.com/DqO92J234W
— Bill Shorten (@billshortenmp) May 18, 2019
A Labor insider also revealed to news.com.au that booths with voters dominated by those aged 65-plus punished Labor with double-digit swings against the party for Liberal.
ABC journalist Patricia Karveleas said that the PM turned Labor’s strategy into a perfect attack against the party.
“His message was sharp, piercing and he never deviated from the one central claim — that Labor was a high-taxing risk to the economy, and Mr Shorten would take money ‘from your pocket’.
“By contrast, Labor drifted from message to message — it started on health, moved to wages and staggered into climate change.
“Labor took considerable policy risks in this campaign, making itself the big target with a suite of policies which had identifiable and quantifiable losers.”
Labor’s deputy leader Tanya Plibersek conceded that the party’s policy agenda was too big on Insiders.
“Our policy agenda was big and it was bold, and perhaps we didn’t have enough time to explain the benefits of it,” Plibersek explained.
“We had the option of having a whole campaign based on the chaos and disunity of the last six years — the three prime ministers, the three treasurers, the fact they all hate each other,” she said.
“We had a really ambitious policy agenda that deals with the big issues.”