Malcolm Turnbull has given his government room to move on its unpopular tax cut for Australia’s biggest businesses after losing badly in Saturday’s critical byelection in the Queensland marginal seat of Longman.



While saying he would take the Coalition’s tax cut back to the Senate once federal parliament resumes after the winter recess, the prime minister only committed on Sunday to attempting to secure “a competitive company tax rate” rather than to the specifics of the government’s measure.

Appearing on the ABC for the traditional wash-up after the Super Saturday byelections that returned four Labor members and the Centre Alliance MP Rebekha Sharkie to Canberra, the manager of government business, Christopher Pyne, also conceded that the big business tax cuts were a hard political sell.

“Selling company tax cuts for small and medium enterprises is a lot easier than selling them for larger companies,” Pyne said. He said the government was committed to working with the Senate crossbench in the spring session to try to implement a company tax cut.

While the major party head-to-head was closer in the Tasmanian seat of Braddon, the Liberal National party went backwards in Longman, losing ground to both Labor and One Nation.

Labor used the government’s support for a tax cut for the big banks as a key bit of weaponry in the local campaign, which Susan Lamb won with a positive two-party-preferred swing of nearly 4%.

Turnbull on Sunday attributed Labor’s success in Longman to the opposition’s “strategy of telling outrageous lies” rather than the government’s message not resonating with locals.

The Labor leader, Bill Shorten, told reporters on Sunday he had always been of the view “that giving away billions of dollars of taxpayer money back to the big banks and the multinationals was a shocking idea”.

Shorten predicted that Turnbull would continue to support the big business tax cut even if it were rebuffed in the Senate. He declared the choice for voters was between a party of big business and a “party of everyday Australians”.

The Labor leader said the prime minister would be wise to listen more closely to views from voters. “Wherever I travelled in Australia including Queensland, I found a growing appetite amongst everyday Australians to see more fairness and more equality in Australian society,” he said.

A common sentiment in the electorate at the moment was “everything’s going up except your wages”.

“This economy and this nation is being governed in the interests of the few, not all of us, and what Labor will keep saying until the general election is that we want to make sure that we get quality jobs which are well-paid and regular wage rises, properly funded schools and of course very importantly, properly funded hospitals.

“That’ll be our priority and message to the election and, if Mr Turnbull just thinks that’s all a fairytale, if he thinks that everything’s fine, and he’s just going to keep offering us more of the same – well, then I think he’ll pay an electoral price for that.”

While Labor has been jubilant in public about the results of the Super Saturday contests, experienced players behind the scenes are more reflective.

While the results reinforced the fact that Labor’s core messaging works in some parts of the country, there is also a view that the opposition benefited from miscalculations by the government.

Senior players say the protracted nature of the contests ultimately favoured Labor, which has a stronger field operation and more financial resources than the Coalition.



One strategist characterised the contests in Longman and Braddon as tactical victories – the sum of poor candidate choices by the Liberals in the two seats, Labor’s more aggressive pitch to disaffected voters, and the long campaigns which enabled the party machine to grind out victories in the two marginal seats.

Labor was also relieved by the Liberal party’s decision not to run a candidate in Perth, a decision that allowed the ALP to narrowcast in Braddon and Longman, running messages targeted to appeal to workers in less affluent parts of the country, rather than having to appeal to a broader constituency.

The Queensland result is ominous for the Turnbull government because the state will determine the outcome of the next federal election because of its large number of marginal seats.

Peter Dutton’s electorate of Dickson is adjacent to Longman, and would be picked up by Labor if the outcome on Saturday night were repeated at a general election, which Pyne on Sunday morning suggested would be next May.

Dutton has signalled his long-term ambitions to lead the Liberal party.

Bracing for possible internal blowback because of the poor result, senior Liberals pointed out on Sunday that the home affairs minister had been prominent in the Longman campaign. “Dutton was all over Longman, he had more involvement than any other minister,” one senior government figure noted.