Subjects: 2016 election result.
E&OE…
Michael Brissenden:
Victorian liberal senator Scott Ryan was one of those who helped propel Malcolm Turnbull into the Prime Minister-ship last September. He believes changing leaders was still the right decision despite last nights’ surprising result. For more analysis on that result I’m joined live in our Sydney studio by Scott Ryan. Senator, good morning.
Scott Ryan:
Good morning Michael.
Michael Brissenden:
Malcolm Turnbull said last night he was confident he could form Government. From this result, where does that confidence come from?
Scott Ryan:
Starting with the ABC website, there are 11 seats listed in doubt, not including Batman. We believe we are ahead in three of them which are Dickson, Gilmore and La Trobe which would take us to 70 seats. And there are eight other seats ranging from currently margins of nine votes in Capricornia, to being behind by a thousand in Herbert. In each of those seats, if we look at the impact of postal votes historically, they will be of assistance to us and in each of those seats it’s very hard to extrapolate. We would expect the postal votes would assist us over the next two weeks of counting. The point that the Prime Minister made last night is that the only prospect for a majority government is really with the Coalition.
Michael Brissenden:
Nonetheless it is an incredibly close result. It’s hardly the ringing endorsement of Malcolm Turnbull’s leadership but you and those that supported him were hoping for when he took over, was it?
Scott Ryan:
Well it is a very close result. What we experienced over the last 72 hours particularly with the media blackout and the advertising blackout, was a union driven campaign that was unprecedented in scope with voters complaining of receiving five or six robo-calls about the lie that was privatizing Medicare. There were the SMS’s that went out which has been the subject of much news commentary. We don’t know where they came from but they purported to be from Medicare. The scale of the Union organised, Labor organised Medicare scare campaign was unprecedented in its scope.
Michael Brissenden:
Nevertheless, stability was the mantra we kept hearing in the last, certainly in the last week of the campaign. That was the call from the Prime Minister to vote for stability. This really is not going to be a stable period in Australian politics is it?
Scott Ryan:
I did realize last night that the last government to be re-elected with a majority was actually 2004 when John Howard won against Mark Latham, and we’ve had changes since then. I think we are, we have a period of volatility in politics but at the same time we have had governments with very small majorities previously and they have been quite stable. My expectation is if we are to proceed as I would hope and expect that we would eke out a majority, that it would be actually quite a functional majority.
Michael Brissenden:
What about on your own side though, internally? How does he control the internal critics?
Scott Ryan:
I think, quite frankly, a slim majority actually serves as a form of self-discipline. It’s no comparison at all to what happened under Julia Gillard where the government was at the mercy of crossbenchers. These are all people who stood for election and supported the Coalition election campaign. I would expect that a majority government, even if it’s slim, that discipline there would be-
(Interrupted)
Michael Brissenden:
Really? We’re already hearing the voices coming from some within the Party criticising the campaign, criticising the way it was run, criticising the way Malcolm Turnbull led it. That’s going to go on isn’t it?
Scott Ryan:
Look, a frank assessment of a campaign that some might willing to deride publicly, I won’t, or even internal debate over policy, I don’t think is instability. I think that’s healthy in democracy. And we shouldn’t compare an independent balance of power situation with the Labor Party where the existence of the government was at risk every day.
Michael Brissenden:
Okay but we have seen in the past, we’ve seen on both sides, when things get tight, when things get tough, and there is a very slim margin for error, that fuels all sorts of resentments and ambition doesn’t it?
Scott Ryan:
I think in Malcolm Turnbull, we’ve got a person, particularly the way he’ has led the Government, the way we conducted the tax debate, there have been no complaints from those in Malcolm’s team about consultation, deliberation and process. I actually think that would be a strength regardless of the size of the majority but it will likely be narrow.
Michael Brissenden:
If you don’t get enough in your own right, do you still rule out doing a deal with any of the minor parties and independents to form a government?
Scott Ryan:
Well, look, as the Prime Minister said, we’re not going to be doing deals, but it is highly likely that we will be able to eke out a majority. We’ve got a couple of weeks of counting ahead of us and if not a majority we would be definitely the largest Party or coalition in Parliament.
Michael Brissenden:
You would do deals?
Scott Ryan:
No, no. The Liberal and National Party, we could legitimately expect it if we didn’t get 76 – and I think we could get a little bit higher than that – we could very easily get the 74 or 75.
Michael Brissenden:
Which means you would need to rely on someone wouldn’t you?
Scott Ryan:
Well there’s a difference between doing deals and relying on the Parliament. There’s a very big difference there. There won’t be a signing ceremony like Julia Gillard and Bob Brown.
Michael Brissenden:
It wouldn’t be a formal relationship?
Scott Ryan:
Look, that’s a matter for the Prime Minister and we’ve got a couple of weeks of counting to go yet.
Michael Brissenden:
Okay. Still there’s quite a lot of criticism on the way the campaign was conducted. Do you think it wasn’t aggressive enough, that you were too complacent?
Scott Ryan:
Honestly I didn’t see complacency in any of my colleagues at all. I saw colleagues working extraordinarily hard. What we saw was an unprecedented lie. This is not an argument we had in the campaign about the impact of company tax or the impact of negative gearing changes. Labor decided to cross the Rubicon and bypass the media and use Unions and tens and hundreds of thousands of calls and direct messages to assert an untruth, a lie that we were going to privatise Medicare and that clearly had some impact.
Michael Brissenden:
All right Scott Ryan, clearly some interesting days ahead. Thanks very much for coming in.
Scott Ryan:
Thanks Michael.
(ENDS)