WHILE the Nationals improved from 15 to 16 MPs at this year’s federal election, the Liberals lost 15 seats in the House of Representatives as Labor almost snatched an unlikely win.
Nationals deputy-leader Fiona Nash said her party’s strong election performance, in contrast to their Coalition partners in government, was driven by, “the fact we ran a typical grass roots campaign”.
“We were talking up and down the main streets of regional towns, we were talking to people in the pubs and we were talking to people in their small businesses about the things that mattered to them,” she said.
“I think I did 26,000 kilometres and 50-something electorate visits as we literally just went town to town.
“When we were talking about what the government was doing, we were very much talking to people locally.
“The old phrase ‘think local, vote National’, it really came to the fore and we just did a traditional grass roots campaign.”
In contrast, Senator Nash said Labor’s resurgence was based on its controversial “Mediscare campaign” that involved spreading misinformation through various mediums about privatising Medicare.
She said it was “incredibly sad” for an election to be conducted where a political party’s fortunes, “hinged on a lie and lying to the Australian people”.
“That’s something people are very, very concerned about – I know I am,” she said.
“It’s no way to campaign and to be terrifying older people that Medicare was going to go, I just think it’s awful.”
Senator Nash said another political lesson of the 2016 election campaign that she was also “very sad about” was the media’s propensity to look for the negative and down side of issues being reported.
“I’m not being particularly critical of any one individual or entity across the media but I think it’s really sad that we’ve got to this point where they’re only trying to look for that ‘gotcha moment’ and the negative thing,” she said.
“I think it’s a really sad thing for Australia and that we’re not talking more positively about what is a really lucky country.”
Senator Nash conceded media outlets are often limited by time or space requirements to tell stories about complex political and policy issues, like the potential privatisation of Medicare.
But she said that wasn’t the case during this year’s election campaign because “we weren’t actually privatising Medicare - it was that simple”.
“I think there are issues that do get complicated and trying to explain them simply to people through the media can sometimes get a bit challenging but this one was very simple,” she said.
“We weren’t ever going to be privatising Medicare and that’s what was so frustrating in seeing that scare campaign run by the Labor party.”
Asked if there were any similarities between the US and Australian elections this year, in terms of the media’s interaction with politics and voters’ choices, Senator Nash conceded there some parallels but said the two political systems offered, “a very different circumstance.”
But she said people in both countries wanted to see politicians being more genuine.
“It’s not that politicians aren’t being genuine, but there seems to be a move from people to want to be able to connect with somebody they feel is real and a real person and politician,” she said.
Senator Nash said Donald Trump’s shock election win was an example of democracy at work in the US but would not be drawn on whether he’d make a good or bad leader in future.
“That’s what the people chose and that’s what they got,” she said.
“I’m not going to talk about hypotheticals of how the president-elect will perform when he hasn’t even taken up the position of president yet but I’m sure we’ll continue to have a very good working relationship between Australia and the United States.”