on saturday the nation's voters delivered their verdict on the morrison government hello and welcome to australia votes could be apache result we could see seats changing hands all over the board this is a very difficult picture to pull apart at the moment again it doesn't.
Look like the opinion polls today how would you describe what you're seeing there in this once liberal heartland uh well it's a teal bath and uh i've got a feeling that's gonna get worse before it gets worse north sydney is another one of the seats which i'm my brain's burning a little bit i'm sorry.
This wasn't merely a rejection of the coalition the dominance of the two main parties was shattered safe liberal seat two-term incumbent independent you'd have to say we're heading towards a labour government tonight i've spoken to the leader of the opposition and the incoming prime.
Minister anthony albanese and i've congratulated him on his election victory this evening please welcome to the stage the man set to be the 31st prime minister of australia and i say to my fellow australians thank you for this extraordinary honour tonight the australian people have voted.
For change good thanks thanks for doing this no worries got hawaii written on it before the election four corners recruited a group of undecided voters down the barrel to give us their insights into the contenders.
It's just a bit of political theater i'm tired of him i'm tired of looking at him actually we went back to them throughout the campaign the people are angry with certain things which the government has been doing or has not been doing there are a lot of complex issues that need to be tackled.
But instead a lot of the on-air time and what we see circulating around the media is the gaffes and the pokes at each other now they make their final call and we hear from political insiders who unpack the strategy tactics and motivations of this hard-fought campaign they've wall-gamed really well they were.
Well across their brief they were ready they had key lines ready to go if you're not living in the marginal electorate you are seeing a very different election campaign to everyone else it's going to get messy it's going to get ugly it's going to get dirty you're going to see all sorts of accusations finger-pointing.
Buckets of political excrement poured on people tonight on four corners we go beyond the gaffs and gotchas and look at the crucial moments of the 2022 election the ones that mattered most to voters we joined both campaigns as they traverse the nation and analyze what worked what went wrong.
And how we got here i call the treasurer tonight as we gather when the treasurer josh freidenberg took to his feet to deliver his fourth budget he presented a plan for the coalition's return to power mr speaker.
This is not a time to change course this is a time to stick to our plan that was for me the starters gun of the campaign it didn't frighten anyone the market didn't sort of panic one way or another so it didn't unsettle the electorate so they were probably quite pleased with.
That did it score any major punches no did it distract people from some of the brutality that's going on at the moment in politics for a couple hours yes only until nine o'clock of course when we had the um the vivarenti wells um uh contribution he is adept at running with the foxes.
And hunting with the hounds lacking the moral compass and having no conscience his actions conflict with his portrayal as a man of faith he has used his so-called faith as a marketing advantage after being dropped down the coalition's senate ticket conchetta ferravanti wells chose budget night to savage the prime minister putting scott morrison's.
Character front and center by now you might be getting the picture that morrison is not interested in the rules based order it is his way or the highway an autocrat a bully who has no moral compass this is not a prime minister for the people.
He's also he is a bully and i back the senator up completely with that my first thoughts were oh my gosh not again and it's wow it's that it leaves a bit of a an issue with credibility and trust with the with the pm in my view.
Character is means a lot to me as far as who i'm going to vote for because that means integrity and honesty if you haven't got that then then you're not going to get my vote when you see this lack of discipline in parties at these incredibly critical.
Times it shows um if you like um a weakness and tiredness it's almost like it's a dying government at the moment and the party needs to be reinvigorated that's what you're relying on get out of your way okay this is what you said when you got.
Elected last time we're going to help all those people that worked all their lives paid their taxes and those that have a go will get a go correct well i've had a go mate i've worked all my life right okay i paid my taxes people are angry with certain things which the government has been.
Doing or has not been doing and that is coming out very clearly in this campaign after the elections they will not reach out to the people at all they will not come to the pubs they will not intermingle with normal peers so this is the chance for normal people to get back to them and to voice their concerns about the community.
I'll put you on the spot on the first question who's going to win i've always thought the coalition had a really good chance because the the election the six-week election would define the opposition leader in a way that the government hadn't been able to do in.
The lead-up to the election once you get into the campaign it's head-to-head i think albo's in front now if albo has a strong campaign i think he'll be prime minister i think if he has a mediocre campaign or a poor campaign i think scott morrison will retain the prime ministership.
You always have setbacks now you always have imperfect information i mean things are tough as the campaign proper began the coalition's tv advertising was ready to go portraying a kinder more reflective prime minister there's pandemic there is now war the rhetoric there was for me a lot of.
It was on what we've done not what we're doing which you know you come through a pandemic and you expect a little bit of that i guess but the big message for me is economy 40 000 people are alive in australia today because of the way we manage the pandemic well i thought in that ad he actually came through more likeable than i've seen him for a long.
Time interesting they scan back and show his wedding ring what was that about was that some sort of i don't know what was that for look i think that was a fantastic piece of political um theatre i thought it was really well delivered and i think that um they.
You know had obviously researched it and pulled it um within an inch of its life the only thing that i thought was um stuck to me a little bit was they focused on that wedding ring and that just they held it i think just a little bit too long australians deserve a prime minister who shows up who takes responsibility and.
Who works with people labor's campaign ad sprooked anthony albanese's credentials challenging the coalition refrain that he was weak on the economy i'm anthony albanese graduating in economics at sydney uni and serving six years as infrastructure minister taught me what makes our economy tick and i will make it okay see for me that's a.
Great campaign ad because they're telling us what they're going to do the only thing i would pick out of that is him introducing himself is that too late in the game to be introducing who he is shouldn't we already know that that's who he is.
Just as the campaign kicked off anthony albanese had a shocker national unemployment rate at the moment is uh i think it's 5.4 sorry i i'm not sure where it is yeah mr albanese i'm not sure what it is mr albanese mr albanese.
What do you think well even i knew that i'm not a politician but i'm across that and i knew it was four percent so that's pretty unforgivable that that's not a game changer for me that's not going to make me turn around and say well no i don't want to vote for him because he couldn't get the numbers correct thanks.
Very much thank you you would have been able to detect the jaws hitting the floor from about 150 starvers on the richter scale in in technical political terms it would have been a sphincter loosening moment for the campaign director uh look it was um hand on face emoji um.
Sort of you know yelled i think it was so disappointing was it played exactly into the um into the coalition's narrative you know weakness on economy and and those sorts of matters it literally it was the worst possible error that could have happened at that time in contrast to his rival scott morrison.
Proved yet again he was adept at batting away tricky questions like his failure to create a federal anti-corruption body integrity commission are you committing to it well you asked me about priorities and i'll talk about what my priorities are jobs jobs.
Jobs jobs and jobs that's what my priority is he was his answer jobs jobs jobs jobs jobs he just didn't answer the question he's done this all along for months on end trying to ask him someone asked him a direct question and he'll just deflect it.
at the end of the first week of the campaign it seemed like anthony albanese couldn't take a trick the man amazing.
we've come here for entertainment we didn't pay for political propaganda up on stage so i think that was a fail on that part uh to be perfectly honest with you actually i was a little bit disappointed i i thought that the crowd could have been a little bit.
More respectful as to to who he is and to what he's doing the next morning as the media boarded the albanese bus the first polls of the campaign showed labor's primary vote slipping riley yeah adam everyone seems to have their poker face on that's for sure but it seems that the.
Mood is a little bit solemn anthony albanese this pole is not looking good for him or for the opposition with labour taking aim at the coalition over climate change and its response to natural disasters the team steered a course to a street of flood-damaged homes.
and on floods we saw again a political response rather than a human response rather than looking at people who are going through a really tough time and saying what can we do to help the labour team are trying to get people to look back think about the things that have gone wrong that morrison he didn't.
Hold a hose or he didn't get the vaccine roll out right or he didn't get the rats right you know they want people to look at that and actually get you know galvanize that they won't reward that while a rattled anthony albanese wanted to talk about floods the journalists on the campaign trail had other ideas.
Hammering him on the detail of his health policy do you not know how many nurses you need these won't be run by the government the charge is that you're not across the detail mr albany thanks very much 99 of what you're doing in a political.
Office and in the campaign is really actually trying to influence the questions not have the right answer and i actually said if you want to know how a campaign's going don't listen to what the politicians are saying listen to the questions that are getting asked because that will tell you where the momentum of the campaign is.
After a terrible first week anthony albanese's campaign seemed at risk of slipping away the next day he picked himself up and came out fighting well i've been underestimated my whole life my whole life has been one way but i haven't got a leg up uh i've fought for everything that i've.
Got you can't get away from the fact that voters are still struggling to find reasons to elect you how are you going to deal with that how are you going to give them reasons when they say they don't know who you are or what you'll do when you become prime minister of a reason right here.
Right here this is about the future this is about what the government denies big difference between myself and my opponent my opponent is running on fear and scare thanks very much good evening and welcome to the sky news career mail people's forum coming to you.
Live from the gaba i didn't watch the debate i have to admit i have never watched a debate i don't think it's useful productive it's just a bit of political theater hello i have a four-year-old autistic son in their first debate both men were keen to show their human side but the prime.
Minister's efforts to empathize with the mother of an autistic boy backfired the prime minister yeah well thank you catherine what's your son's name ethan ethan he's four i can't i i've jenny and i've been blessed we've got two children that don't haven't had to go through that to say that oh well.
I'm blessed that i didn't have disabled children that's dreadful i'm sure he did i'm certain he didn't mean that in my mind i feel like he didn't mean that but look he said it didn't he i think there would definitely times in the debate that um mr albanese really had it over mr morrison.
And i think i have learnt more about him after watching the debate just to get it you know more of an idea about who he is and what he stands for the day after the debate anthony albanese tested positive to covert and had to go into isolation anthony albanese in iso how are you feeling good.
Afternoon fran well i've had better days a lot of i think when the story of this campaign's written that the week that anthony albanese covert is probably going to be considered the most significant and important event in the whole campaign because to me during that week somehow that's that's where the momentum begin began to shift.
And it was a momentum driven mostly by what scott morrison was doing and who scott morrison is not what the labor party and what not what the labor party was doing and who anthony anthony albanese is and that's why that that forced isolation was such an important hinge moment in the campaign.
Thanks very much marin and it's great to be here defence is traditionally one of the coalition's strong points but a shock deal between china and the solomon islands turned this notion on its head on mr morrison's watch we have a security pact in the pacific for the first time in australia's history since world war ii.
And that has demonstrably made australia the region they're secure and australians they're secure yes because obviously i'm of chinese descent but at the same time with all the talk and the tension going on with the ukraine russian war and talks about you know china potentially ramping up it from a military perspective and with this being.
Quite close to home given that they could establish a naval base um this is something that is quite close to home that's something that i feel could have been handled or at least taken more seriously by our government the other safe zone for the coalition is usually the economy.
But now there's trouble there too wages were flat and the cost of living was soaring with inflation now running at 5.1 but jumping to a 20-year high is not what was expected so it was very pretty surprising to me the thing is that inflation is people might not understand the economics of inflation and interest.
Rates and the reserve bank and all you know it gets a little bit too hard but they do know that when they go to the supermarket things cost more cost of living has made the economy front and center of this campaign from now to election this will be the focus this is not a time to roll the dice.
On fake independence a weak labour leader and the chaos of a hung parliament are there any questions treasurer josh freidenberg had more to defend than the economy his own inner melbourne seat was under threat from one of the teal independents challenging moderate liberal mps.
Yes you know it's a big challenge for the government these independents for a number of reasons one is they're keeping some of their best performers like josh freidenberg keeping them in the seat because they've got to win that seat but the other area is that these women are talking about cost of living they're talking.
About climate change they're talking about key issues which women are wanting to hear and wanting to vote on the campaign advertising had a familiar negative refrain that's not my job that's not my job it's not my job to do that.
Voters were presented with a flawed prime minister and an opposition leader not up to the job it won't be easy under albinisi i am warming towards elbow rather than scott morrison simply because he seems to be a little bit more like.
You and me a little bit more of the ordinary australian look it's uh the jury's still out you know i i'm a i'm a liberal voter but i think the current leader is a liar and a bully and has issues with women how can i vote there with that's really.
Tough but i don't think the opposition is strong enough i'm concerned about the economy i think the campaign at this stage can go either way quite quite frankly it reminds me a lot of the 2004 campaign where there was a high degree of undecided voters going into the last.
Week of the campaign and their hesitations crystallized around mark latham's handshake of john howard and suddenly their hesitations were realised into a vote i think that process of cognitising deciding who they're going to vote for has really begun in earnest now they're making very.
Sophisticated decisions but not decisions based on what's your kind of what's in your press release or what's in your big policy document they're reacting to small things what did i feel what what emotion did it create in me when i saw you kind of at an australia day or a ceremony or when you walked into a bunch of protesters and you.
Weren't expecting them they're making very sophisticated layered decisions the prime minister's energy for campaigning seemed boundless from a multicultural meet and greet to tea and sympathy with pensioners there are many things that are uncertain at the moment.
To a quick game of pull scott morrison's maxim seem to be if you work hard enough things will eventually break your way what they're really doing is everything is controlled and everything is about what they need to win and hold certain.
Seats so if you're not living in a marginal electorate you are seeing a very different election campaign to everyone else in addition to that we're announcing today 23 million dollars for e-safety schools package it seems so far that this campaign has been about small.
Issues small ideas small announcements where are the big policies that will give this the vast amount of undecided voters a reason to vote for you as opposed to just not voting for labor i couldn't disagree with you more i really couldn't owning a home paying for medicines that you need.
An economy which has brought unemployment down to four percent keeping apprentices in their jobs and getting the skills training that they need australians being able to save for their retirement these are not small issues on the same day the alp launched its.
Campaign in perth the coalition held a rally of its own in a made-for-television moment designed to energize the party faithful for foreign no blues fest booze here this invitation only crowd had been fired up.
it's great to be here with greater western sydney how good how good how good how good so there was one person here out of her comfort zone the prime minister's hand-picked candidate for the seat of.
Warringah catherine caused a media storm over her offensive commentary about transgender people and her push to exclude them from women's sports yeah look really really hurtful things comments yes i appreciate she's deleted.
Those comments but look it's a very sensitive issue i think it was very very inappropriate and very i guess offensive to a lot of people i myself know a transgender person and she's absolutely lovely but would i want that person playing in a sport against my daughter.
Maybe maybe not there is a difference in the abilities but catherine deeves had been placed in the front row where there was no easy if we could ask you a escape questions do you stand by your comments that you've made in recent times and in the past.
Outside the smoke and noise and heat of of the debate that's going on in the in the papers there's a lot of people right across australia that have some sympathy to that view look this is a branding exercise the way the liberal party have let this run is because they think it serves their brand well and where their brand may be taking in water is the.
Competition from the right so whether it's one nation whether it's the clive palmers whether it's the christian groups what they've done through this act letting this discussion and this um activity run and not shutting her down is to signal to these groups i've got your back and you know i have the i share your conservative views and.
Conservative concerns tonight the end of record low interest rates the rba then came the news the coalition was dreading at the worst possible time the small interest rate rise grabbed the attention of the nation the emergency low cash rate has been raised by a quarter of a percentage.
Point to .35 costs are rising wages are flat and interest rates are going up a prime minister who falls back every day on his economic credentials who criticizes the opposition leader for economic illiteracy now finds the economy his greatest threat good afternoon joined by the treasurer.
Australians have been preparing for this and as a result the bank has has decided to increase the cash rate by 25 basis points australians have been preparing for this for some time a surprise but not to be unexpected i don't think either political party whoever would have been in power at the.
Time would have had much control over what the reserve bank has gone ahead and done well when i bought my first house i think i was paying about 14 or 15 so um you know i think they've had it pretty good for a very long time the challenge for both sides and particularly for the coalition has to.
Get has been to get voters to look through the initial shock of a rate rise to the the issue of who's better to manage the economy a press pack on a quest for another gotcha anthony albanese had another stumble what are the six points shot right.
That's not defend and fix the ndis lifting the ndia staffing cap doubling existing funding for advocacy fixing regional access and stopping waste now we did it's to put people at the centre of i think it's just pressure to be honest.
I think a lot of it comes down to the fact that every the the pressure's on him like i would say there's more pressure on him than there is on scott morrison and once you have journos that are that are keen on sort of uh heightening that into the the moments.
They've seen they sense a bit of blood in the water so you you you just have you know a whole range of things that could go wrong well australia is about to decide who will lead us for the next three years but right now with 13 days to go almost a million people tuned in to watch the.
Contenders slug it out in the second debate we didn't the federal government had absolutely no authority over that's uh whatsoever over territories no we didn't over the sale of territory-owned assets of that nature yeah so that was a very electrifying debate it was very confrontational and fiery and.
I was quite surprised to see how you know energetic and amped up uh both uh anthony albanese and scott morrison were so i was a little disappointed to see that they were arguing a bit too hard for us to sometimes make clear sense of what they were saying there was frustration among voters over.
The lack of serious discussion about the issues that mattered to them there are a lot of complex issues that need to be tackled but instead a lot of the on-air time and what we see circulating around the media is the gaffes and the pokes at each other so i think there could be a bit less of that.
And more focus on actual you know hard action plans um policies and how they're going to target things the big issues that i'm concerned about neither of them are really embracing i reckon every country in the in the you know civilized world has moved on far far further than we have on.
Renewable it's it's shocking really the tide seemed to be turning anthony albanese was finally cutting through it's in that white knuckle time where you know i don't know and probably both parties don't know i suppose if you look at the public polling it it generally has.
Anthony albanese in front but we all know public polling and what happened last time so anything can happen and as you'll probably recall 13 of people at the last election made up their mind in the booth so there's still quite a way to go in this election and and it's probably anyone's to win.
From here depending on how the campaign teams perform and the leaders perform it's gonna get messy it's going to get ugly it's going to get dirty you're going to see all sorts of accusations finger-pointing buckets of political excrement poured on people all that sort of stuff.
Particularly i think you know we are heading now i think it's clear there is a very real chance there's going to be a change of government the coalition only have one path to victory now and that is literally to chop albo's head off with some sort of com either overwhelming negative campaign or some major stumble or.
Mistake that they can ram home and increasingly confident anthony albanese made a bold statement in support of a significant increase in the minimum wage you said you don't want people to go backwards does that mean you would support a wage hike of at least 5.1 percent just to keep up with inflation.
Absolutely mr alvin easy showed yesterday that he is a complete loose unit on this stuff he just runs off he just runs off at the mouth i mean it's like he just unzips his head and he just lets everything fall on the table that is no way to run economy because that only leads if you vote labor to having a leader who can.
Make interest rates worse who can make inflation worse if there's going to be inflation well then i think wages should follow suit because how on earth are we going to continue to.
Pay for everything i think giving a number was was a really smart move from my point of view um because it gives gave people some sort of definite idea about people being able to paid a decent wage for the work that they do the economic conversation right now is about cost of living and for the what labor has been able to do is.
Actually demonstrate that they understand that and have a plan for that through their response to the wage increase after months of declaring that voters knew exactly who he was and what he stood for the prime minister announced that he would take a fresh approach.
I can be a bit of a bulldozer when it comes to issues as we go into this next period on the other side of this election i know there are things that are going to have to change with the way i do things cheetah never changes his spots so i don't expect him to change in any way if he has realized this why so late if a.
Person he realizes that he has made some mistake over the years why are you standing at the brink of an election and saying that you will be a changed person going forward give a very warm welcome to the prime minister of australia scott morrison a week before polling day scott morrison.
Needed something big to win over undecided voters and that's why a re-elected coalition government will allow first home buyers to invest a responsible portion of their own superannuation savings into their first home i know my daughter is in that situation she's 28.
She's a hard-working chef in melbourne can't get on the housing ladder you know saves up and saves up and then the goalposts move so you know i i am fully aware of of how it sits with young people and other people but i don't agree with it i just think you're supers for your retirement as of now it has got no i mean there's no.
Logic of why the prices should be so high for the housing and if people can dip into their super then the first home buyers or even other people they will definitely try to go into that and the bubble would go up and up the prices will go and once it bursts everything would be shattered i mean even the people will lose their own.
Superannuation whatever they have for the retirement so i don't think this is a long term effect would be good for this the policy was attractive to people struggling to save a deposit opinion polls showed the coalition narrowing labour's lead if scott morrison remains as prime.
Minister how will he have done it well he will have done it through running a very strong campaign but most importantly he would have done it because he announced a policy in the last week that captured the attention of undecided voters this policy came from research data analysis.
Whose vote did they need to get to win it will be very clever politics whether it's good policies yet to be seen in the final days the master campaigner hit the suburbs to hammer home the message this is what it's all about this is the great aspiration of australians.
Anthony albanese's final pitch workers would be better off under labour if we give them one extra dollar an hour the sky will fall in according to this prime minister and in my view the people who are the lowest wage workers in this economy cannot afford to go backwards for the leaders the last gasp of the.
Campaign was a breathless tour of the nation barnstorming in marginal seats across six states the exhausting final stretch of the path to power let's have a go even before election day these undecided voters had seen enough to make up their minds.
Adam waterspoon voted early for the greens why to put simply i no longer have faith in scott morrison i would go with labor i'm leaning towards the labor party i'm looking more at labor so you're not voting for labor you're voting against the coalition.
That's right yeah i'm more voting against the coalition than for labor i'd say that's correct yes i'm gonna vote greens greens i've been a liberal supporter my whole life and and i want to say that that's not a that's not a mindless liberal voter i i've genuinely in my heart here always.
Thought that that's what's been best for the country that's not what's best for the country right now i i can't see what's going on in the party and their principles and it's hard to get past the leader you know i know it's a i know it's a whole set of people but it is really hard to get past how i feel about scott morrison.
So that's where that one's gone polling day finally arrived there we go was the last of the group of undecided voters to make up his mind.
Okay caleb hi guys how'd you go yeah so voted lever why because i wanted to see a bit of change i think with the recent news around scott morrison and you know he's sort of plummeting popularity and things like that i think i am ready for a change scott morrison admitted himself.
That the way that he dealt with things could be different so after three years you would have expected somebody to you know have already gotten things right i guess so you know if we want something different than get a different government please welcome to the stage the man set.
To be the 31st prime minister of australia six hours after the polls closed anthony albanese took center stage okay thank you friends we have made history tonight.
And tomorrow together we begin the work of building a better future a better future for all australians thank you very much the morning after the election political.
Insiders assessed the massive recalibration of australian politics okay so what happened on saturday uh the people spoke what did they say they said you're not listening so if you won't give us what we need in terms of government and the policies that we want.
We'll make our own decisions and that's what happened we've heard for years that you know the inner city you know our inner city bubble you know latte drinkers etc etc well you know that disdain shown for those people has obviously bitten them on the bum what were women saying in particular.
When we were just talking common sense women were saying hey you know you're not listening to us and the policy settings you know child care aged care women are saying we need to be back in the workforce women are saying and not just women obviously parents are saying my kids my future we've got.
Climate change it's a problem you know there are all of these common sense policies that people were just not listening to and so they activated us anthony albanese now has the nation's top job but the huge third-party vote in this election has unearthed a deep dissatisfaction with the political.
Mainstream well australia's fundamentally been realigned that's what happened on saturday in a way that i don't think anyone could have quite imagined you've had historically low primary votes for both major parties.
Primary votes that would normally never see your form government i think the liberal party is on about 35 primary and and labor has one government with a primary vote of 32 percent um almost 100-year low what is very clear is voters wanted.
Something new and they wanted something different and they demanded that it's very very interesting we look at that independent and minor party vote that is extremely unusual i don't think there's any doubt that that scot the style of politics that scott morrison pursued and his intransigence on those three issues gender climate and integrity was a.
Really a massive accelerant on that process and it's a big and fundamental kind of shift in voting patterns that we haven't seen in australia in a very long time and that's all for this week from four.
Corners until next week good night
