Who is the quiet Australian that elected the Liberal Party back to government?
Writing for The Saturday Paper in April 2017,
Mike Seccombe gave us a hint of the disappointment Bill Shorten and Labor would suffer two years later. “[N]ever tell voters they’ve got it good. Speak NOT to their economic reality but to their economic illusions”. This is a lesson Shorten might’ve learned in an interview with Melbourne’s Neil Mitchell on 3AW around the same time in which the interviewer tried to tie Shorten down on just what defined rich.
Who are the Coalition’s quiet Australians?
Are they drawn to Scomo’s circle by the gentle lilt of his “I love Stralia”? Do celebrations like Barnaby Joyce’s on election night, “Sucked in you suckers”, send them into a meditative trance? You can see them in their slippers quietly shuffling out to pick up the morning paper. Perhaps, they get there early to “catch it on the full” and avoid the thud of a hurled Tele or Herald Sun disturbing their quiet neighbours. If they’re retired, it’s probably off to the library where a publicly funded Financial Review let’s them check up on their Telstra or Westpac shares. If they’re workers, it’s always the quiet carriage or SmoothFM just loud enough to conceal the hum of the car that they have worked so hard to pay off in stoic silence.