Extract from ABC News
Analysis
Scott Morrison has always needed Gladys Berejiklian more than she's needed him.
As a freshly installed Prime Minister facing what many thought was an unwinnable election, he flung himself onto her election party coat-tails as the then-NSW premier pulled off an unexpected victory in 2019.
He would pull her close again a year later as the nation plunged into the unknown depths of the coronavirus pandemic, fresh from Morrison having having been singed from both a Hawaiian holiday as the nation burned and the sports rorts scandal.
Leveraging Berejiklian's personal popularity with punters has always been politically opportunistic, made more interesting by the fact that from many accounts the two could barely stand each other.
Enter Warringah. It had been a safe Liberal seat for decades in the hands of Tony Abbott — and a desperate Morrison was keen to see it brought back into the fold.
But this wasn't about getting a new job for a person he often tells the media is a close friend. The PM's now-failed bid to get Berejiklian to Canberra had a much more selfish goal: keeping his own job.
Backing Berejiklian to win back a seat
Irrespective of the allegations and the merits of them, Berejiklian lost her job as premier because of a scandal with an integrity commission.
Matters of integrity have long haunted the federal government and her candidacy would have played well into the criticism long-levelled at the Coalition that it had failed to create a federal version of the body that cost Berejiklian her job, despite having pledged to do so more than a thousand days ago.
Federal Liberals were convinced that should Berejiklian have contested Warringah, the seat Abbott lost to independent Zali Steggall, she would have won.
The upside of a Berejiklian victory was far greater than any downside her candidacy might bring, those behind the idea thought.
She certainly wouldn't be the first member of federal politics elected to office despite facing accusations about their conduct.
Politics always comes down to numbers
For Morrison, this was a simple calculation.
Politics, after all, is all about maths, and numbers drive all the decisions politicians make.
Morrison starts his re-election bid notionally with 76 of the 151 seats in the Lower House — a hair's breadth of a majority.
Labor starts with 69 seats, having been gifted a new seat being created in Melbourne's north-western suburbs.
It's little wonder independents are feeling emboldened at the prospect of playing kingmaker after next year's poll.
The added trouble for Morrison are fears that Western Australians are waiting with baseball bats, fresh in their memory the PM's initial efforts to fight the state's hard border.
Victoria is also a problem. Sources across the political divide expect the Melbourne seat of Chisholm, held by another trailblazing Liberal called Gladys, will be moving to Labor's camp next year.
It's why Morrison is on the hunt for seats in NSW, a state seen as much friendlier to the Coalition — and why he's so forcefully backing politicians he's previously locked horns with.
It wasn't that long ago that the former NSW state minister Andrew Constance was giving the PM a towelling after an ill-judged visit to a bushfire ravaged community in early 2020.
But all is forgiven now Constance has set his sights on a federal Labor-held seat, having received Morrison's full-throated endorsement.
Seeking a political marriage of convenience
Even if Morrison doesn't personally like her, why wouldn't he want Berejiklian in his ranks?
She won an election few expected she would, she won praise from her state for her handling of deadly bushfires and the COVID-19 pandemic.
Earning that political capital is what helped her ride out scandals that hit her leadership in recent years.
Being
a woman doesn't hurt either — especially in a party where the words
gender and equity can't be read in the same sentence with a straight
face.
He was seeking a political marriage of convenience, nuptials that would have offered him much more upside than her.
Let's not forget, just months ago his prime ministerial office and her premier office were openly leaking against each other, despite being of the same political persuasion.
It didn't even matter, it seems, that her integrity remained in question, with the state ICAC far from releasing its judgement.
Many Liberals are convinced the public has already cast its judgement, irrespective of the facts, that Berejiklian was brought down by a dodgy boyfriend and an over-zealous corruption watchdog.
But in order to benefit from a high-profile candidate, that person needs to become an actual candidate.
Berejiklian's refusal to heed to Morrison's pressure was undoubtedly embarrassing for the Prime Minister but also laid bare, yet again, their differences.
Liberals they both might be, but alike they're certainly not.
Morrison is high-profile in all ways imaginable. If he's not squeezing himself into a race car at Bathurst, he's posting photos of the chicken coop he's building or the curry he's cooking for "Jenny and the girls".
He's keen to be seen as the daggy dad, the everyman you'd find in the suburbs across the country.
Berejiklian, meanwhile, is more demure. She built a brand on being smart and bookish, an aunty figure who gets on with the job without fuss or fanfare.
Her privacy was a virtue and, at times, used as a political tool.
The nature of her relationship wasn't corrupt, she insisted, but she'd simply "stuffed up" in her choice of boyfriend, suggesting most women had endured a dud bloke at some point in their life.
It was ultimately this privacy that cost her a job she loved.
So it was likely never a wise tactic for the PM to seize the bully pulpit to try to publicly force her into running.
Independents causing Coalition grief
The biggest winner from the botched Gladys-for-Canberra push is likely the incumbent, Zali Steggall.
But she might be the only independent to benefit from it.
One school of thought suggests it helps moderate Liberals, under threat from cashed up independents. The last thing the vulnerable Liberals want is a campaign focused on a federal anti-corruption body.
There is a common thread in the independents making waves across the country.
They want greater action on climate change, more transparency and accountability in public office and greater female representation in Canberra.
Even if they don't win, their campaigns have already proved successful.
They have diverted previous campaign resources that would otherwise never see the light of day in safe Liberal seats.
They've forced politicians like Treasurer Josh Frydenberg to sandbag at home, rather than campaigning and fundraising in marginal seats the Coalition hopes to win.
Every dollar spent saving a seat is a dollar not spent on the new ones the Coalition need to win to stay in government.
Labor channelling Olympian in pursuit of electoral gold
Steggall skied into national notoriety with a bronze medal-winning performance at the Winter Olympics 23 years ago.
But it's other Winter Olympian that Labor politicians are privately comparing themselves to as they approach the election.
The new year will bring with it an election and the 20th anniversary of Steven Bradbury's unlikely gold medal.
Labor finds itself in a similar position to Bradbury, upright on its skates coming into the final stretch.
Morrison's skates have been wobbling in recent months.
But he's yet to topple, and that leaves the election, unlike Bradbury's race, far from over.
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