From the newsrooms of the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. This is the morning edition. I'm Samantha Cylinder Morris. It's Tuesday, May 6th. The knives have been out for Angus Taylor for a while. Former opposition leader Peter Dutton was forced to defend the shadow treasurer in June last year after one of his own Liberal frontbenchers attacked him with accusations
that he was incompetent. And now, in the wake of the coalition's election bloodbath, many of his colleagues are not just lobbying their own accusations that Taylor is perhaps the main reason they lost, but they're spilling the beans to our reporters today. Foreign Affairs and national security correspondent Matthew Nord and federal politics reporter Natassia Chrysanthos. Give us an inside look at when coalition MPs realised that their campaign
had gone off the rails. Welcome to you both. Okay, Taz, I'm going to start with you because I want you to take us back to the start of the election campaign, the end of March. You've written about what was happening within Peter Dutton's camp. You know, now we know there was a complete overconfidence there. But can you take us inside the room, like what was going on back at the start?
So if we go back to the final, final day of Parliament, which was two days after the budget and a day before the election was called.
The Prime Minister has. The Prime Minister has caused a lot of pain to Australian families over the last three years? Will the Prime Minister join with me in cutting the price of petrol and diesel to save? You had this.
Very recent tightening in the polls. So I think you started to see signs of confidence, I suppose, from both sides.
I wonder, I wonder if I wonder if when he sat there, members on my when he sat there and reintroduced in organization in 2014, I wonder.
I wonder what hadn't really happened at that point was that kind of quite steady week by week decline in the coalition standing? You know, as we as we wrote in the piece, you had some coalition MPs saying we can pick up 18 seats. Um, so feeling pretty good about their chances.
Okay. And then even back in late January, Matt, there was one prominent sign that perhaps some Liberal senators were really feeling too cocky. So tell me about that.
Yes. Now, this is something that at some stage in opposition, you would have to get around to if you thought you had a chance of victory. But, uh, this is being reflected on by several people in the coalition that at the very first shadow Cabinet meeting of the year. This was on the agenda was for the coalition frontbenchers to do what are called statements of expectations. This is what you would deliver to the public service if you win.
To set out your priorities. The fact this was being discussed then is seen as a sign that expectations had got completely out of control of victory. Coalition frontbenchers were talking about the public service chiefs that they might want to depose and appoint their own people. So it shows that at this time, it feels like a long time ago. At the start of the year, there was a very different vibe that there was a feeling that they could win.
And yeah, there was a bit of hubris starting to creep in.
And at this time, the coalition is soaring in the polls and an insider told you that, you know, the party room was getting reassurance that the policy work had been done right. So they were going to have a clear economic vision about what they'd be selling to their electorates, right?
Yeah. So MPs have said this is what they were being told. And even in in the public commentary, um, that was coming from the frontbench and opposition leader Peter Dutton at the end of last year, um, with nuclear, for example, it was like, oh, we've got the stuff ready to go. We're just waiting for the right time. They've done all these other things, for example, blocking student caps. They were assuring everyone that we have our own student
cap policy ready to go. And every time the question was when, when, when the kind of line you'd hear from Dutton was, well, you know, why would we come out with stuff when Labor's doing such a good job of stuffing things up for themselves? We're just going to let the wheels fall off labour and we'll come in with our stuff when we need to.
And this was a big difference between the two campaigns, the two sides of politics. Looking back to the start of the year, the coalition began the start of the year with their policy offering being a taxpayer subsidies for business lunches, which is a really minor policy that actually proved a very easy to ridicule and wasn't going at
the heart of voters worries about cost of living. Whereas the Prime Minister and Labour, they kicked off the year with a big focus on health and Medicare and getting down what you paid to go to the doctor, it was much more substantial. The coalition had a very threadbare policy offering then, and it was clear at the time that that wasn't very useful. And with hindsight now, you can see that they were focusing on the wrong things.
And Matt and Taz, you you know, you've really given us an inside look into when coalition MPs started to realise, oh my God, the wheels are about to fall off here, so take us inside that.
Well, no one expected the result to be as bad as it was. Even in the few days before the election, MPs who were very disappointed with what the coalition had come up with were telling me they were thinking perhaps they could get say into the mid 60s in the number of seats. Now they're currently in the low 40s, which is a huge difference. And that goes to the terrible internal polling that the party was getting, which seems to be even worse than the published polling that we
were producing in the media, which was pretty accurate. You usually hear that the polling political parties get is way more accurate, and if you could only see the special magical polling we're seeing, you'd understand. And in fact, it turned out to be even worse. But what we saw was this policy making process got even worse throughout the campaign. Uh, you know, and in the days leading up to it,
Dutton's big announcement on a domestic gas reservation policy. This was only done in the couple of days leading up to his big budget reply Speech.
And tonight I announce our national gas plan. This plan will prioritise domestic gas supply, address shortfalls and reduce energy prices for Australians. This is all about ensuring Australian gas is for Australians.
The industry was very unhappy about it, very hard to explain to voters they didn't have the modelling on how this would bring anybody's energy prices down. So in the early days of the campaign I was travelling with Peter Dutton and this was what the press pack wanted to know was what's the impact for voters? I don't think it was even a tricky gotcha question. We were trying to find out for our readers what the impact would be, and they didn't have it. And Peter Dutton just kept saying, oh,
we've got it, we'll bring it to you. And it seems that they didn't release it yet because they didn't have it, and they were cooking it up to essentially backfill the policy they'd already announced. We saw this with the very expensive a one year a tax cut which cost $10 billion for a single year of tax relief that was being written in real time the day before the speech, with the numbers being plugged in to the documents. Uh,
and that's not the way policy should be made. So there's going to be a lot of questions to be asked about why it was all so last minute.
To jump in there quickly with the two other examples that to me, really stood out, were on immigration, was, you know, that's one of the areas where the coalition is seen as strongest amongst the public. They had a really solid ground to make that attack against Labour, because Labour did have, uh, immigration numbers blowing out year on year. 18 months earlier, the coalition had started putting out some of its targets, um, or suggestions of where it wanted
migration figures to be. And come the week before the election, they still had no detail about where those cuts were going to come from. And they were they were talking across each other and ruling one visa class out, but then someone else would rule it in. Um, similar with the public servants policy that had been floated, uh, back in August last year. And again, come the costings, the policy and numbers were changing week by week.
I'm also really curious about the exasperation that you've heard from coalition MPs because they've they've told you some stunning things. Tell us what they've told you about how exasperated they've been.
Uh, yes. Yes. MPs are absolutely exasperated. Uh, shadow ministers are talking about they were doing work. They were submitting a policy proposals that went into a void and were never really seen again. I know that the defence policy was being worked up and consulted on at least six months ago, but only materialized with no detail in the
penultimate week of the campaign. We're starting to hear more about the dysfunctional relationships between Peter Dutton and Susan Lay, between Peter Dutton and Angus Taylor, between Peter Dutton and Andrew Hastie. They weren't all on the same page. We're hearing a lot about decision making being held within a very small group in Peter Dutton's office that's been nicknamed
the FM crew to avoid using too crude language. So this wasn't a broad cabinet style process of decision making, and there's a lot of retribution about that, because this isn't the way things are supposed to work.
And on that, I think one coalition MP put it quite aptly in the piece, which is they said we didn't do the work. We haven't had a serious small business or industrial relations policy or tax policy or anything on investment and cutting regulation. We cautiously trusted them at the time, but it became obvious nearer to the campaign that the work was not actually done, and that we believed we could win the election without a proper economic agenda.
Will, this feeds into a question I was really, uh, stuck with after I read your piece, which is why did these insiders actually speak to you? I mean, was it just anger over how badly things went? You know, are they talking behind their colleagues backs because they're hoping for change? Perhaps something else. Matt?
Uh, well, they've been living this for several years, and people want to vent. People want to get things off their chest. People have grievances about their colleagues. You know, people want to point fingers at others. People want to control their narrative. During the campaign itself, everyone's very determined
to stay on message and help the team. And knowing that a piece like this, which is only going to appear the day after and the result is known, people are more comfortable to talk then, and we're seeing it. We're going to see it in the days following the election. People will be speaking out. So, uh, yeah, there's a lot of reason why people want to get things off their chest in the days after such a disastrous result.
Okay. And now we inevitably we've got to talk about shadow treasurer Angus Taylor because, you know, the knives are out for him. So what are members of the coalition saying about him now? I mean, are they placing much of the blame on him for this catastrophic loss?
Yes, this was a big thing that was coming up in the days leading up to Election Day, when it looked like the coalition wouldn't win. Uh, a lot of feedback coming back that the main source of blame should be the coalition's economic team, which simply didn't produce the type of policies that you would expect they'd had three years of opposition to develop policies, and what came out was very threadbare and then done at the last minute. Now there's a lot of back and forth about this.
We're seeing briefing from people close to the shadow treasurer, Angus Taylor, who are talking about some of the great ideas they think they had that never went anywhere. Clearly, there was a dysfunctional relationship between him and Peter Dutton. But throughout opposition, Angus Taylor has struggled to go up against a Jim Chalmers, the treasurer. It's been a running joke in labor about how few questions Angus Taylor asks
of Jim Chalmers in Question Time. We've seen Liberal Senator Hollie Hughes out on Monday morning very critical of Angus Taylor, saying she has concerns about his capability.
I think the fact that the economic narrative was just completely non-existent, I'm not quite sure what he's been doing for three years. There is no tax plan. I think the economic team has significant something.
You were hearing from her colleagues in the lead up to polling day was just the economy is supposed to be a strength for the coalition, but they felt they had very little to sell there, particularly in a long term sense beyond a few temporary one off measures that were going to expire within a year.
And do you reckon it's fair their criticisms of him, or do you think that's just them, you know, trying to shift the blame because, you know, obviously the recriminations are savage now. So do you think this is just protecting their backs or do you think it's fair, especially what Hollie Hughes says. She said that, you know, they had a complete lack of policy and economic narrative and that, you know, she says, I don't know what he's been
doing for three years. Is that fair? That really he just hasn't done much?
It's certainly fair. Based on the results. Now, Angus Taylor and people close to him will tell you that work was being done. It didn't all get through the leader's office. You know, there are conflicting accounts here, but whatever the case, you only need to look at the results, that it wasn't effective. There wasn't good economic policy, and he was the shadow treasurer. And he has to bear a big responsibility for that.
I think as well, since so much of the criticism that had come from Taylor was around tax and Australians are paying too much income tax. So I think one could expect and a voter could expect, given that he's identified this big problem, well, you'd expect some kind of
solution to that. And what we saw at the end of the day was the coalition coming in to raise income taxes, um, by repealing Labor's recent tax cut, which was, as many people have pointed out, a very absurd position for them to be in and probably really hurt their credibility on that issue going into the election.
Well, yeah, it was absolutely bizarre. It was bizarre as it was happening that the Labor Party came out on budget night with pretty modest tax cuts and what everyone in the press gallery expected was. Of course, the coalition would match them and maybe try and outdo them. But no, that wasn't the decision. So Jim Chalmers has said that he couldn't believe they gave them such a political gift. And, you know, this will be a key source of the retribution within the party. And as he was saying, what
a gift it was. I was thinking of his political hero, Paul Keating, who used the phrase getting hit in the arse by a rainbow. And that's really what labor was with decisions like this from the coalition to go to an election promising to raise income tax.
I love that so much. I mean, it's commentary like that. This is why we love politics. But but just to wrap up on Angus Taylor, you know, was he once considered a forerunner to lead the liberals after Dutton? And if so, what are his prospects now?
Well, he's still very much one of the leadership contenders. What everyone within the Liberal Party is saying is we don't have a lot of great choices. They're not very enthused about any of the candidates. So Angus Taylor has a support base. You know, he's he's a factional player. He has numbers within the party. He's been working on that throughout opposition. Uh, Sussan Ley clearly was a bit disconnected from Peter Dutton, as she would present probably a
more moderate face than some of the others. The Liberal Party is struggling with women. She would be a good choice there. You couldn't say. She did a lot during the campaign. And then Dan Tehan, when Taz was talking before about the immigration policy, he had a battle to hold on to his seat and he did win, but he did absolutely no national media during the campaign, which he could have still done while campaigning for a seat to talk about immigration, which was supposed to be a
strength for the coalition. So no one within the party is very excited about any of the candidates, and it's being seen as it's a job, perhaps for someone to do for a few years while they rebuild, and then they can think again about who an actual alternative prime minister would be.
Okay, well, definitely a space to watch. So thank you so much, Natasha and Matt, for your time.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Today's episode of The Morning Edition was produced by Tammy Mills, with technical assistance by Josh towers. Tom McKendrick is our head of audio. To listen to our episodes as soon as they drop, follow the Morning Edition on Apple, Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts. Our newsrooms are powered by subscriptions, so to support independent journalism, visit The Age
or smh.com.au. Subscribe and to stay up to date. Sign up to our Morning Edition newsletter to receive a summary of the day's most important news in your inbox every morning. Links are in the show. Notes. I'm Samantha Selinger. Morris. Thanks for listening.