Reading the chin-stroking commentary from News Corp over the last 48 hours on what caused such a catastrophic defeat for their political allies is a lot like watching the burglar who, having broken in and trashed a house, complains loudly about what a mess the inhabitants live in.
News Corp, and the editors it employs to run its political campaigns, owns a very great deal of this disaster. And the sooner it accepts that — of course, it won’t — the sooner its friends in the Liberal Party can get back to being politically relevant.
What the Liberal Party itself needs to understand is that News Corp is a foreign-owned communications business, with its own agenda of fostering hatred, resentment and division in order to sell advertising and subscriptions. Its alliance with the Liberals is in pursuit of those goals — not in pursuit of good policy. Its best interests are those of the Murdochs and other shareholders that are paramount to News Corp’s business model (which, let us remember, pays not a single cent of tax in Australia), not those of Australians.
That’s why News Corp will always encourage the Liberals to pursue policies that punch downward, that divide and alienate, that are about culture wars targeting minorities. We can complain about the toxic effects of fostering division and resentment, but in the words of that eminent statesman, Michael Corleone, it’s not personal, Sonny, it’s strictly business.
That means that any Liberal who wants to be in the business of unifying Australians (News Corp is always bleating about policies that are “divisive” but strangely silent on the benefits of bringing Australians together) will automatically face pushback from News Corp. And any failure to aggressively pursue culture wars will be regarded as evidence of weakness — not because culture wars work politically, but because they fire up Sky News’, The Australian’s and the News Corp tabloids’ angry, old, white audiences.
But that’s only the start of the way News Corp undermines the Liberals’ capacity to engage meaningfully with the electorate. The company and its pundits have a wildly inflated self-belief in their understanding of ordinary Australians. Its editors, journalists and commentators are even whiter and older than those of other media outlets (myself included). They are every bit the chattering class elitists they rail at, living in wealthy suburbs and enjoying above-average incomes or, in the case of executives, wildly inflated salaries. They have no understanding of the lot of ordinary working Australians, especially in the outer suburbs of our cities, which are good only for car crash and crime stories, and especially not Australians from migrant or non-English-speaking backgrounds.
Result: the policies, priorities and tactics they believe the Liberals should pursue only reflect the interests of those of their affluent background, not of people living in the real world. They’re people who actually think sitting through a Welcome to Country is an outrageous infringement of their rights that should be centre-stage in an election campaign, rather than the cost of living or economic precarity.
As a foreign-controlled company, News Corp is also a vector for foreign political ideas. In particular, it is a conduit for ideas from the United States’ deeply toxic and polarised political environment, including conspiracy theories and culture war obsessions. The story of the now decades-long climate denialism of the Liberal Party is only explicable in terms of News Corp’s relentless denialism and importation of the tactics of fossil fuel companies. The war on “woke” is a Made In USA fabrication imported here by News Corp. So too the ongoing assault on trans people. Conspiracy theories about election tampering — still being peddled by the Coalition on the weekend — and elite cabals plotting to destroy the country are all funnelled into Australia via News Corp.
And as more than just Crikey are now pointing out, News Corp ensures that Liberal leaders and frontbenchers are permanently enfeebled when it comes to selling policies. News Corp creates a bubble in which every Liberal policy is brilliant, every announcement or tactic is a masterstroke, in which no Liberal leader can ever put a foot wrong. Only after an election defeat does the mask temporarily come off, and its pundits and journalists reveal what a shambolic, incompetent show they were advertising all along.
That bubble lends a false sense of confidence to Liberals: not only are they in touch with real Australians rather than just another elite vested interest, but their arguments are strong, and will hold up to scrutiny — something that News Corp reserves, by and large, for Labor and the teals.
For hard evidence, look at the striking failure of News Corp’s campaign to demonise Labor as antisemitic. Since October 2023, News Corp has been portraying the Albanese government as, at best, lackadaisical about the growing threat of antisemitism and, at worst, an active enabler of it. Peter Dutton gleefully ran exactly the same line. Both Dutton and News Corp tried to peddle conspiracy theories about the Dural non-bomb. Both portrayed the government as doing nothing about violence against Jewish schools and residences.
How did that work out? Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus enjoyed a 5%+ swing in Isaacs. Josh Burns got a 3% swing in Macnamara, where the Greens and Liberals both went backwards. In contrast, Liberal Julian Leeser in Sydney’s Berowra suffered a nearly 6% swing against him, and his seat is now very marginal. After the campaign of lies and conspiracy theories from News Corp and the Liberals about Labor’s purported antisemitism, and how only Dutton would protect Australian Jews, it’s a staggering result.
If News Corp wants the Liberals to keep losing, the answer is simple: keep on doing what you’re doing. Keep on pushing the Liberals toward culture wars and elite obsessions that are only aimed at stoking division. Keep on attacking any Liberals who dare to pursue centrist or evidence-based policies. Keep on telling the Liberals they know what working Australians really want. Keep on spreading far-right conspiracy theories. And keep on making sure the Liberals enter election contests woefully unprepared for the most basic scrutiny.
Will News Corp ever learn its lesson?
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Politics editor
Bernard Keane is Crikey’s politics editor. Before that he was Crikey’s Canberra press gallery correspondent, covering politics, national security and economics. Got a tip? Contact him securely on Signal at @Bernard_Keane.66.
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