Topics: 2016 election results; Medicare scare campaign.

E&OE…

ANDREW BOLT:

Nine months ago a gang of plotters helped Malcolm Turnbull to topple Tony Abbott and become Prime Minister. They escorted the Prime Minister to the Party meeting which voted him the new leader and were all rewarded with jobs in the Ministry. But since then things have gone badly for them. And for some very badly indeed, Peter Hendy and Wyatt Roy on the far left have just lost their seats in big swings, Mal Brough was dumped and then quit Parliament with police investigating him over the Slipper scandal. And Malcolm Turnbull has led the Party to humiliation at the polls and there is now a question mark over his own future. Joining me now is one of those plotters, right behind Turnbull in that picture, Senator Scott Ryan who joins me now. Scott, I have got to appreciate you coming on mate. Because this is not easy for you, you have just heard me slagging off your boss, you’re a conservative and you were a friend until the plot. So, I appreciate you manning up.

SCOTT RYAN:

I am happy to be here.

ANDREW BOLT:

Good on you. Do you regret what you did?

SCOTT RYAN:

No. I always thought it was a very difficult time last September, but I think that even with the disappointing result that this election is, that we are in a political stronger position than we would have otherwise been.

ANDREW BOLT:

Seriously?

SCOTT RYAN:

I genuinely believe that. I think that, and no fault to any particular people – I am not trying to assign blame here – but that in my view that we are in a stronger position now because we had a particular problem with the community not listening to us. I think, after we saw what happened in Queensland, there is an element now with the community if they think there has been a breach of trust that it makes it very difficult for you to persuade them to give you another opportunity.

ANDREW BOLT:

You seriously think people were listening to Malcolm Turnbull in the marginal seats in western Sydney and the rural Queensland that you lost?
SCOTT RYAN:

Let’s be honest about this campaign. 4.7 million people voted for the Coalition, that is 42 per cent of the vote which is pretty much what the polls predicted. 35 per cent of people voted for Labor. That is a higher vote than what we got in 1998 in terms of primary vote. There has been a swing against us, but we are still expecting that we will be able to form government.

ANDREW BOLT:

You will get about 74/75 seats.

SCOTT RYAN:

Yeah, or 76 seats –

ANDREW BOLT:

(interrupts) That is pretty lousy…If I had come to you at the time of the plot and said to you: Scott, if we toppled Abbott we will get this vote magnet Malcolm Turnbull and he will win 74 of the 76 seats we need to win, maybe 75. Would you think that is a great deal, let’s go ahead?

SCOTT RYAN:

Without going through the events of last September, I think they have been recounted. A majority of the Party Room thought the change was necessary.

ANDREW BOLT:

No, no. I am asking you now. In retrospect, I mean you have to judge things how they turn out. Would you have done that given what has happened?

SCOTT RYAN:

I think we were in a uniquely diabolical position last year.

ANDREW BOLT:

You are in a uniquely diabolical position right now. I just wonder, Labor’s Sam Dastyari said that one reason you lost so many seats in western Sydney in particular was that you underestimated how much Abbott was loved there and Turnbull does not seem to have that appeal talking to the more working class, or middle class voters that you needed to convince to hold those seats.

SCOTT RYAN:

Sam would say that wouldn’t he?

ANDREW BOLT:

Not necessarily.

SCOTT RYAN:

I think he would. You have seen the performance of Labor since the weekend. Whereas we have been focussed on letting the AEC count the ballot and saying that we hope to form government. The Labor Party has been engaging in outrageous lies like ‘Malcolm Turnbull is planning an early election’ which is just simply not true.

ANDREW BOLT:

Talking about the outrageous lies, we are now told…and you are right, you are absolutely right, Labor lied about privatising Medicare, you guys privatising Medicare. Completely right. But that wasn’t what cost you the election.
SCOTT RYAN:

There is never a single issue but there are very significant issues. This Medicare issue is important. You would remember back in 1990, the then Liberal opposition spokesperson Peter Shack said, at a press conference before the election, ‘we don’t like Medicare, but we don’t have an alternative’. It was incredibly damaging to the Peacock opposition. Everyone involved in the 1993 election will tell you that Medicare was as big, or nearly as big an issue in our loss as was the GST. Now, when John Howard took over in 1995 he pledged absolute. undying commitment to Medicare. And at no point during that period did John Howard allow Medicare to become an issue. And when it did, he actually made Tony Abbott the Health Minister and directed significant resources to ensuring it wasn’t a political issue. Kevin Rudd couldn’t even run on Medicare in 2007, he ran on state public hospitals. This is what I am saying in hindsight-

ANDREW BOLT:

(interrupts) it is a potent issue, but what I am saying is that your boss had, what was it, three weeks of the campaign , right, an opportunity to (a) persuade people he was serious about Medicare and (b) run a counter-scare campaign or whatever, or fill the vacuum, change the news agenda. He conspicuously failed to do either. The voters didn’t trust him. Why didn’t they trust him?

SCOTT RYAN:

On the Medicare  issue, this is important and I am saying this with hindsight I didn’t say this at the time, so I am not saying that I had some sort of wisdom. But in hindsight, starting in 2014 and then again over the last year  we let Medicare become a partisan issue. And now with the fragmentation of the media, and with Labor and the unions’ ability to campaign strongly as they have every day since 2014, we didn’t realise that walking away from the co-payment, as we did in 2015, meant that Medicare wasn’t an issue –

ANDREW BOLT:

(interrupts) you guys had nine months of government to sort this out.

SCOTT RYAN:

And there was still an issue, which again I am saying with hindsight, the rebate freeze, the lie about privatisation – I think we didn’t take a lesson out of John Howard’s playbook which was: never let Medicare be an issue in a campaign.

ANDREW BOLT:

But, the point being, the Medicare scare filled a vacuum. You didn’t have a counter-scare, the carbon tax for one. You didn’t run hard on Bill Shorten’s union ties, the corrupt unions that deal with Labor etc, the $40,000 that an employer gave him. You didn’t do any of that.

SCOTT RYAN:

My colleague, Michaelia Cash, she had a debate at the Press Club about the ABCC. We ran very strongly on that at the start of the campaign, it was a long campaign, there were advertisements on it.

ANDREW BOLT:

I can’t recall, point me to where, for example, the $40,000 that a builder gave Bill Shorten to help him get into Parliament, when did Malcolm Turnbull mention that in the 8 week campaign?

SCOTT RYAN:

I can’t attest to what anyone mentioned on every occasion.

ANDREW BOLT:

I will tell you…never. Never.

SCOTT RYAN:

Michaelia Cash was prosecuting this, and then, when we had the issue, particularly here in Victoria, on the union takeover of the Country Fire Authority, that was a key focus of the campaign.

ANDREW BOLT:

My basic point is this. You went from February miles ahead, you entered the lection dead even or behind. And now you are saying it was just the MediScare at the last bit that cost you the government. Surely, Malcolm Turnbull should be judged over the nine months. And there are so many aspects to this loss, I wonder why he is only focussing on Medicare and implying that it was the legacy of Tony Abbott, as you’re doing now, that cost the government –

SCOTT RYAN:

(interrupts) I’m not blaming anyone, I’m saying –

ANDREW BOLT:

(interrupts) Tony Abbott’s being a scapegoat and everybody knows that.

SCOTT RYAN:

I am not doing that Andrew. I’m saying every member of the Coalition including myself, none of us saw that Medicare was once again a partisan issue. Now John Howard made sure that never happened. We let it happen –

ANDREW BOLT:

(interrupts) But there are so many building blocks to this defeat. It was the presidential style campaign, it was the Nationals –

SCOTT RYAN:

(interrupts) All campaigns are presidential now –

ANDREW BOLT:

(interrupts) The report to the Nationals that’s been given to them, the assessment of the campaign. The Nationals went up, you went down, and they’re saying hey listen, you didn’t do your own scare campaign, whether it’s carbon tax, whether it’s unions, you didn’t campaign aggressively. Andrew Hastie, the Liberal MP in Perth was saying today, your retail game was shocking. No-one knew what being innovative and nimble and all that and how that referred to people struggling to pay their bills.

SCOTT RYAN:

And there will be an appropriate time after the election is determined to have a frank conversation within the party and a review of the campaign, we do that all the time. No campaign is perfect. All campaigns are presidential, they have been as long as I can remember politics and I’ve been in the Liberal party for 26 years. That’s been a constant criticism –

ANDREW BOLT:

(interrupts) Not this presidential where you actually had candidates, some in Queensland, I know one in Victoria that were taking off the letterhead you guys were sending out of the Turnbull Coalition team, saying – because there was a fight back from the locals here, not the Turnbull Coalition team, it is the Liberal and National party.

 

SCOTT RYAN:

In 2001 and 2004, I personally remember when I was a party official, a volunteer, that people criticised that it was too presidential, and there was no Liberal logo and it was all about John Howard. Now I think that was actually – I don’t criticise that at all, but that’s been a criticism of campaigns for a long time. Allowing people to tailor the letter head they use, I mean that’s not a reflection of campaign strategic problem, that’s allowing campaigns to tailor what they need.

ANDREW BOLT:

Well I’m just struck again, you say time will come for post-mortems, but out of all of that you’ve only singled out one thing, MediScare, which is being sheeted home to Tony Abbot –

SCOTT RYAN:

(interrupts) I’m not doing that.

ANDREW BOLT:

Well you’ve raised it, but I mean your Leader’s raised it, your Deputy Leader’s raised it. I’m just wondering why they are singling out the one thing they can point to Tony Abbott. They’re not talking about the 7 months that Malcolm Turnbull spent waffling, they’re not talking about his broken promises on super, or whatever or you know the GST that he was maybe going to raise or maybe not. Those things cost you.

SCOTT RYAN:

There’s no evidence when you look at where the superannuation changes were going to negatively affect people, there’s no evidence that they cost us votes, in those particular seats.

ANDREW BOLT:

(inaudible) …a number of Liberal donors to close their wallet. You know that, you know those Liberals who wouldn’t hand out flyers for you.

SCOTT RYAN:

(inaudible) I was referring to the electoral outcome. Now Malcolm Turnbull made the comment last week and I think when he was on a program on the ABC, that if he had his time again he might have conducted the tax debate slightly differently. I thought it was a way to try and take the public into our confidence to say this is why I’m thinking about this, this is why I’ve chosen not to do it. That applied to the GST –

ANDREW BOLT:

(interrupts) This was your advice?

 

SCOTT RYAN:

No I’m simply saying Andrew that you have to learn from everything you’ve done. Now the Liberal party has lost many elections over Medicare. ’87, ’90, ’93, John Howard made sure it was never an issue –

ANDREW BOLT:

(interrupts) Now here you go back to Medicare.

SCOTT RYAN:

No I’m saying it was a significant issue in the last –

ANDREW BOLT:

(interrupts) You were 53 to 47 or even 54 to 46 ahead in the polls back in February and you guys just chucked it all in the wind.

SCOTT RYAN:

I look at the primary vote. 42 percent of people voted for the Coalition at this election. That’s the key marker. The two-party preferred issue is something that the polls have to assess; it’s not easy to determine. We dropped a few points earlier this year and that’s where we ended up.

ANDREW BOLT:

A few? A lot.

SCOTT RYAN:

Well we went from 45 to 42.

ANDREW BOLT:

You went down and then you bucked a little bit during the campaign. But I’m saying you entered behind and if you’re looking for what might have gone wrong, I don’t know why you focussed on the end of the campaign and not the nine months before.

SCOTT RYAN:

I think it was one of the most significant issues and I don’t think anyone –

ANDREW BOLT:

(interrupts) Yeah but that’s what I’m saying, you’re only picking the one where you think you can shoot it home to Tony Abbott.

SCOTT RYAN:

Well my colleagues told me it was the most – I’m not doing that. It’s a learning that everyone in the Coalition needs to look at.

ANDREW BOLT:

Does Malcolm Turnbull have no blame at all in this? Malcolm Turnbull himself.

SCOTT RYAN:

He took responsibility at the press conference.

ANDREW BOLT:

No, no. I’m talking about did he do anything wrong. Can you identify one thing that he did wrong?

SCOTT RYAN:

Well one of the things I’ll do is I haven’t assigned personal responsibility to any decision I don’t like. I’m not going to do it on camera and I haven’t done that. Now I’ve said that’s something the whole Coalition needs to own.

ANDREW BOLT:

He says I take responsibility, but he cannot think of a single thing he’s done wrong and in fact he says that it was a great campaign. Powerful, he says, powerful.

SCOTT RYAN:

What you need to do when you’re reflecting on an election campaign is, no matter the result, is actually take some time. You don’t conduct a serious reflection and a complete analysis at a press conference two days later.

ANDREW BOLT:

Except if you can nail Tony Abbott.

SCOTT RYAN:

I think that’s unfair.

ANDREW BOLT:

If you fall short of 76 seats I think you’re looking like you’ll get 74 seats which is one short of even, maybe 75. Very unlikely that you’ll get 76, but you might, you might get lucky in which case you don’t need to rely on anyone. Andrew Hastie and other conservatives say they don’t trust Malcolm Turnbull to make any deals with Independents to prop himself up because you’ll need one or two. And he says backbenchers like him must be consulted first. Take it to the party meeting. Do you agree?

SCOTT RYAN:

Well there’s always a party room meeting after an election in the Liberal party – technically we need to re-endorse the Leadership and I imagine when the election results come clear, and it wouldn’t surprise if someone discussed these issues there. Well the results will be clear at that point.

ANDREW BOLT:

Would you prefer it to the party room meeting, to say this is the deal we’ll make?

SCOTT RYAN:

I didn’t necessarily agree with that approach. I think that we – we’ve traditionally granted our leaders, no matter who they are, some discretion as we did in 2010 with Tony Abbot when he was negotiating with the cross-benchers, so I think that we need to ensure that we give them the freedom that’s necessary.

ANDREW BOLT:

It’s more a question of trust, they don’t trust him. But listen Scott, it’s, and I appreciate again you coming in here because I know it’s hard, you know we were friends. Have you paid a price, do you think, for what you did?

SCOTT RYAN:

Yeah I lost some friends. It wasn’t – I never said it was an easy thing to do to vote the way I did.

ANDREW BOLT:

And you would do it again?

SCOTT RYAN:

In politics you have to make difficult decisions and I thought it was in the national interest, as I do now, to stop Bill Shorten becoming Prime Minister.

ANDREW BOLT:

Scott Ryan, thank you so much for coming on.

SCOTT RYAN:

Thanks Andrew.

(ENDS)