Wentworth byelection: Kerryn Phelps forces Morrison into minority government

Extract from The Guardian

Wentworth byelection

Voters punish Liberals across blue-ribbon seat, even in rusted-on areas like Vaucluse and Double Bay
• Katharine Murphy: The Wentworth byelection isn’t just a loss for the Liberals. It’s a disaster

Katharine Murphy Political editor

@murpharoo

Sat 20 Oct 2018 21.15 AEDT Last modified on Sun 21 Oct 2018 02.21 AEDT

  Scott Morrison says 'today is a tough day' as Liberals lose Wentworth byelection – video 

The high-profile independent Kerryn Phelps has pulled off a stunning victory in the Sydney seat of Wentworth, crashing through the seat’s 17.7% buffer, and forcing Scott Morrison and the Liberals into minority government.
Phelps claimed victory on Saturday night eight weeks after conservatives rolled the popular former local member, Malcolm Turnbull, triggering a byelection contest that allowed Sydney voters to vent their anger, and strip Morrison of a working majority on the floor of the lower house.
Voters punished the Liberals in all parts of the Wentworth electorate, even in rusted-on areas like Vaucluse and Double Bay, and the protest vote went straight to Phelps rather than to alternatives in the field.

Counting in the byelection contest was still under way on Saturday night, but the swing against the government was over 20%, which is historic for an Australian byelection, and a shocking portent for the Liberals, who will face the voters between now and next May.
The result wasn’t even officially declared before the Labor frontbencher Linda Burney said the country needed an election now rather than next year given Morrison had now lost his parliamentary majority. “This is an unprecedented result for the Liberal party, and I think Mr Morrison needs to think about calling a general election,” she told the ABC.

A jubilant Phelps told a sea of supporters at her victory party in North Bondi: “My friends, we have made history”. She said when she began her campaign for Wentworth, friends told her it was an impossible task, that winning the seat “would be a miracle”.

  Independent Kerryn Phelps wins Wentworth byelection: 'We have made history' – video

Phelps characterised her win as a great moment for Australian democracy, because it would “signal a return of decency, integrity and humanity to the Australian government”.
She said her campaign had sought to engage local constituents about the issues of concern to them “not the issues about survival for a particular political party”, and her objective as a federal representative would be return decency and heart to politics.

Conceding defeat for the Liberal candidate, Dave Sharma, in Double Bay, the prime minister said when he took the Liberal leadership eight weeks ago he knew there would be “tough days and there would be great days”.
Morrison characterised Saturday night as “a tough day” but declared “the great days are coming”.
Morrison said the thumping loss was “on us, the Liberals, not on Dave Sharma” and he pleaded with the party faithful to stay the course with the government through to the next federal election.

“We will stand up for what we believe until the bell rings, and the bell hasn’t rung, Liberals, the bell hasn’t rung,” Morrison said.

“We will take this all the way to the next election”.
A low-key Sharma quipped to supporters he was happy he’d kept his day job – and he paid tribute to Turnbull who had “made a fine contribution as prime minister”.
The Phelps insurgency in Wentworth did not start strongly, but the fortnight leading up to Saturday night’s result was entirely chaotic for the government – with the leaking of the Ruddock review of religious freedoms, a vote in which government senators first agreed it was ‘OK to be white’ before it was struck from the record because of the association of the phrase with white supremacist groups, Morrison’s signal that Australia could follow Donald Trump’s policy on Israel – a putative shift prompting criticism from our nearest neighbour Indonesia and a warning by the spy agency of a potentially violent backlash, and leadership stirrings in the National party.
The Liberal frontbencher Trent Zimmerman, who fronted live election coverage on the ABC, said his party needed to absorb the lessons, avoid changing leaders before it had the opportunity to face the voters, and present a centrist stable face to voters.
The New South Wales Liberal rejected the idea that Morrison should call a snap election. He conceded a hung parliament would increase the degree of difficulty for the government, but Morrison had shown resolve since taking the leadership after the chaos of the spill fortnight.
“The anger that’s there from what happened to Malcolm Turnbull, obviously, is palpable in tonight’s results, but in the period since, Scott Morrison has been given the job of bringing the party back together, that has been going well,” Zimmerman said on Saturday night.

“I think that since that awful week, you have seen the party united and that’s been a positive development.”