Post-Farrer, Liberals will struggle with awkward questions about their relations with One Nation

No wonder Jim Chalmers was anxious to use every opportunity on Sunday to weigh in on the Liberals’ “bloodbath” in Farrer.

It was extremely good news for a treasurer who is having to explain a budget in which key election promises on taxes will be broken.

The Liberals’ utter disaster provides an ideal “look at them” opportunity for the government to capitalise on.

When Shadow Treasurer Tim Wilson appeared on the ABC for a pre-budget interview on Sunday, he was inevitably peppered with questions about One Nation.

Were the Liberals right or wrong to preference One Nation in over independent Michelle Milthorpe? “Well it was a call that was made and it’s obviously one that you know has delivered a result”, Wilson said, although he went on to argue that another course wouldn’t have made any difference – many people did their own thing with their preferences.

The truth is the horse bolted some time ago in the internal Liberal argument about whether they should or should not preference One Nation. They will do so when they feel it’s to their advantage. For most (albeit not all) Liberals, preferencing One Nation has become a matter of pragmatism rather than morality.

On pragmatic grounds there would have been a case to help Milthorpe rather than One Nation, but the Liberals would have faced a revolt from supporters and didn’t seem galvanised by the dangers of platforming the surging party.

If the Liberals had preferenced Milthorpe, she would have done better but still not won.

Wilson was also pressed on whether he was “open to forming any sort of minority government with One Nation MPs”.

Now that the preference question is no longer a beach head, this issue – despite being one for the distant horizon – will dog the Coalition from now on. It is a sort of reprise of the questions Labor MPs used to face about whether they’d be willing to form government with the Greens.

Wilson’s position was confusing. “My objective is to make sure that the Liberal Party is in a position to govern as strongly as possible. Of course we traditionally form a coalition with the National Party, but it’s up to the Australian people to decide who they want to vote for. But I can tell you quite clearly my objective is to make sure that Liberals beat One Nation candidates.”

The Liberals not only don’t know what they themselves stand for – unsurprisingly, they now don’t know the answer to the related question of how closely, when it came to the point, they’d be willing to embrace One Nation.

Some voters won’t care about the answer to that question. But others, especially in urban areas, will demand to know.

Back at Tuesday’s budget, Chalmers was attempting to mimic escape artist Houdini as he tried to avoid being burned by the fire of broken promises.

His explanation, reiterated in his Sunday Sky News interview, went like this. Before the election the government’s housing policy was focused laser-like on supply. But he had increasingly come to the view “we need to go beyond supply” although supply remained “the main game”.

Given the election was just a year ago, it’s hard to see how this line is credible. Moreover, the perception last term was Chalmers was interested in pursuing changes to negative gearing at some stage, reinforced by the fact that he had treasury undertake some modelling.

It will be even more telling to hear, post-budget, how the prime minister squares his old and new positions on tax changes. But he will be confident he can ride out the politics of the U-turn. After all, he has a huge majority and haven’t critics been calling for him to be bolder and spend political capital?

Of course there is a recent precedent for a budget of broken promises and ambitious reform doing massive harm to a government with a thumping majority – the Abbott-Hockey budget of 2014.

But we are unlikely to see such an outcome from Tuesday’s budget. Politically, Albanese and Chalmers are cleverer than Tony Abbott and Joe Hockey were. The government will lose some paint for breaking its word, but the budget will go out of its way to keep the chassis in solid shape.