Federal election 2022: Scott Morrison bets Coalition's future on suburban gambit

Three years later, Tony Abbott's post-poll assessment of his loss in Warringah could be said to have foreshadowed Prime Minister Scott Morrison's election strategy this year.

Unseated in the Sydney northern beaches electorate by independent candidate Zali Steggall, who ran on a platform of climate change action, Abbott spoke of a political realignment happening around the country. Where climate change was a moral issue, the Liberals "did it tough", he said. Not so, where climate change was an economic issue, Abbott reckoned.

"It's clear that in what might be described as 'working seats', we are doing so much better," he said of the Coalition's fortunes in 2019.

"It's also clear that in at least some of what might be described as 'wealthy seats', we are doing it tough, and the green-left is doing better."

Those words echoed resoundingly in Morrison's interview with ABC's 7.30 program on Monday, when he was asked why once-blue ribbon Liberal seats in the inner cities had become vulnerable to independent candidates in 2022.

"As time has gone on, many of these places, I suppose, are less vulnerable to the impacts of the economy than, say, many of the places I've been in this campaign," the Prime Minister said.

"And I think it's important that perhaps some parts of our country may feel they're a bit more insulated from the impacts of that and may be focusing on other issues."

Morrison has barely campaigned in those inner city seats this election, raising speculation he has rolled the dice instead on gaining outer-suburban electorates in the hope of offsetting possible losses in areas such as Wentworth and Goldstein.

His overarching campaign messages - that the Coalition is the better guarantor of a strong economy, has the superior offer for first home buyers trying to break into the housing market, and holds a climate change policy that will not harm jobs - appear pitched firmly at those suburban areas.

One theory abounding among political observers is that the Prime Minister's pitch for the suburbs is part of a carefully calculated strategy to vault the Coalition into a fourth consecutive term.

Some also speculate that even Morrison's decision to select controversial candidate Katherine Deves to run in Warringah was aimed partly at energising the social conservative base in the Liberal party, and winning over voters in less progressive parts of Labor's heartland.

The Prime Minister has repeatedly travelled to western Sydney to spruik one of his "captain's picks", the Coalition's candidate for Parramatta, Maria Kovacic. He senses an opportunity after Labor parachuted in Andrew Charlton, a former economic adviser to Kevin Rudd whose $16 million home is an hour across town in Sydney's plush eastern suburbs.

After announcing a housing policy at the Coalition's campaign launch on Sunday aimed partly at outer suburban voters, Morrison has this week campaigned heavily in suburban areas it hopes to win over with an appeal to "aspirational" voters.

It could all be a crafted plan - and an improbable election victory on Saturday night would only make it appear more so.

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But conversations with Liberal MPs - both conservative and moderate - point more to a patch-up job than a grand Machiavellian strategy in this campaign.

"If it's a choice between a conspiracy and a f--- up, it's definitely a f--- up," one tells The Canberra Times. The fallout from the Liberals' NSW preselection fight has sapped the party of volunteers in some seats, forcing the Prime Minister to campaign heavily in those areas.

University of Canberra professor and political expert Chris Wallace similarly sees the last six weeks as a desperate scramble rather than a grand strategy.

"Morrison has spent most of his time in the least unfriendly electoral territory you could find, the outer suburbs, because the party polling on Morrison as a politician is apparently off-the-scale toxic," she says.

It's not only Morrison's standing with inner-city voters that has appeared to keep him from seats such as Wentworth.

Labor and "teal" independents have zeroed in on his Nationals partner, Barnaby Joyce, in trying to gain traction with disaffected voters. The National party's decision last year to reinstall him as leader may have been instrumental in the Coalition's 2022 election strategy.

Labor leader Anthony Albanese has framed himself as the only candidate seeking an outright majority, arguing Joyce and his acolytes - including climate hardliner Matt Canavan - hold a "veto" over their moderate colleagues.

Independent candidate Monique Ryan, in with a shout of unseating Treasurer Josh Frydenberg in the blue-ribbon seat of Kooyong, has also hammered that message, telling a Sky News debate her opponent was being "held to ransom".

"Mr Frydenberg, because he is a hostage both to Barnaby Joyce but also to his own political ambitions, has not felt himself to be in a position where he could act against the National Party," she said.

One moderate Liberal MP admits that argument is cutting through. His chances are hampered by damage to Morrison's personal brand, but it's the return of the Nationals wildcard which most alarms previously reliable Liberal voters, he says.

"I just wonder if people generally don't like Scott Morrison for a whole variety of reasons - the smirk, the smugness, whatever - but it's the Barnaby stuff that really supercharges it," he says.

But the MP rejects suggestions the Deves controversy was part of a concerted shift from inner cities to suburbia, a strategy he argues would be doomed to failure.

"Australia just doesn't have the population base outside the major cities ... you can't actually give up Climate 200 seats for more conservative [ones]," he says.

"There just aren't the seats there, where you can actually say: you know what, we're going to give up on the cities [and] concentrate on outer suburbs and rural and regional areas.

"It would be ensuring that you're locked out of government for generations to come."

Whether master plan or desperate act of expediency, the Coalition's election strategy could accelerate the drift away from old blue-ribbon territory first apparent in Abbott's 2019 loss of Warringah.

The Liberals will have to decide whether to lean into that trend, or fight against it.