A story of Australia's 2010 federal election

[PeterB]

Isn’t politics fun, children?

I think Winston Churchill said something about democracy being the worst form of government, apart from all the others. Well, we’re getting a bit of an experience of how democracy Aussie-style can catch us out occasionally, and be interesting, and I thought people elsewhere might like to read a bit about it.

We voted in a general election last Saturday, and we still don’t know who will form government. Usually these things are decided within a few hours, but this time the results fell in such a way that neither major party has a majority – a hung parliament. This last happened in Australia in 1940.

The Australian Labor Party, the ALP, won the last election in 2007, with Kevin Rudd as the Prime Minister. This put the Liberal Party and National Party coalition into opposition for the first time in 11 years. Rudd promised a lot, and delivered a lot too. But then it all fell apart, and in doing so showed the sordid side of internal ALP politics.

At the start of 2010, Rudd was still almost as popular as PM as he’d been at the election, and the ALP had a strong lead in the opinion polls. The Liberals had just chosen their third party leader since the election, and were split on the issue of climate change. The ALP were almost unbackable favourites to win an election some time in the year.

[PeterB]

About as popular as {insert cliche here}

Then inside six months came a series of policy stumbles: a government subsidised home insulation program was tied to the deaths of four workers and over a hundred house fires; a school infrastructure program was shown to have wasted millions of taxpayers dollars; the government shelved for three years its proposed Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS), despite Rudd previously describing climate change as a “…great moral challenge…” And then he decided to impose a “super profits tax” on mining companies, announcing the decision *before* consulting with the affected companies. He also failed badly in that how the tax worked was never explained, making it easy for mining companies to run a scare campaign.

Now the ALP is a strongly factional party, and the main faction is the Right Wing, dominated by union bosses. Rudd, by contrast, belonged to no faction. His power came from his popularity with the general public – while he was personally popular, the factions were happy to leave him in charge. But after these policy failings his popularity fell, and polling commissioned privately by the faction leaders convinced them that the ALP would lose the federal election if they were led by Rudd.

Literally overnight Rudd’s position collapsed. The first news that his own party was moving against him came at 7pm one night. By 10am the following day, Julia Gillard was Prime Minister.

[PeterB]

Now is the time for Julia Gillard to come to the aid of the party

Gillard, our first female PM, quickly moved on three issues – the mining tax, the CPRS and illegal immigration. Yet, despite her reputation as an intelligent and incisive left winger in the party, her response to these issues came across as unthinking, reactive and distinctly right wing. The rate of the mining tax was reduced, in return for an increase in company tax rates (meaning the large mining companies’ profits are subsidised by businesses of all sizes). The CPRS would be debated by a “citizens assembly” of 150 randomly chosen Australians (when we already have an assembly of 150 Australians called the House of Representatives to do this). And the solution for illegal immigration would be setting up a processing centre in a neighbouring country, like East Timor (which the Timorese Government rejected).

Having cleared the decks, as she put it, she then called a general election (which had to be held by the end of the year anyway).

Now the Australian public is fairly accommodating of new governments – since 1931, every new Federal government has been won its next election at least, in every case with a reduced majority. Seeing as the ALP had won power in 2007, pretty much everyone expected them to win again now, even if with a reduced majority. At the start of the campaign, the ALP had a small but solid lead in opinion polls, and as the pundits were quick to point out, whichever party led in the polls at the start of the campaign always won the election. And pundits are never wrong, are they...

[PeterB]

…and on the right we have...

The Liberal Party leader, Tony Abbott, has always presented as a man’s man – he’s a volunteer bushfire fighter, a volunteer lifeguard (hence his frequent depiction wearing red Speedos) and regular participant in triathlons (his police bodyguards must hate having to get up to join him on his 5am bike rides in Canberra winters). But he’s a social conservative, and often speaks without thinking, usually to say something which offends a lot of women. The ALP almost certainly expected him to make some vote-costing gaffe during the election campaign.

He wanted three televised leaders debates. Gillard only wanted one. Gillard got her way, and so we had the insipid affair which had to be brought forward by an hour because of the "Masterchef" final.

[PeterB]

She said what?

Then it all went wrong for the ALP. A senior political journalist asked Gillard about allegations that she’d initially agreed to give Rudd a few months to restore his leadership, then gone back on that agreement once she knew she had the numbers in the party room to overthrow Rudd. Then came the allegation that she’d opposed an increase in the Aged Pension and the introduction of a paid maternity leave scheme. All of a sudden, this intelligent, incisive, principled left winger came across as a sordid, ambitious opportunist. And the opinion polls reflected it. For the first time, the Liberal-National coalition took the lead in the opinion polls. There were also rumours that some ALP figures had placed large bets for the ALP to lose the election.

The source of the leaks was never determined, but it almost certainly came either from Rudd, one of his staff, or one of his supporters. They, of course, all denied it, and we know they'd never lie...

[PeterB]

Now is the time for the real Julia Gillard to come to the aid of the party

Gillard announced a change of image, talking about the New Julia, one not tied to a script written by her minders, although it’s almost certain she was reading a script freshly written by her minders. But she faced another hurdle – the ALP had nothing positive to campaign with. The government had achieved several notable successes – workplace relations reform, the introduction of paid parental leave, hospital reform, staying out of recession in the face of the Global Financial Crisis – but these were all successes of Rudd’s Prime Ministership, and any reference to these successes would raise the obvious question of why, then, it had been necessary to remove him from power.

And here the ALP’s leadership showed a spectacular lack of forethought. Rudd had been removed on the basis that current polling predicted an ALP defeat. The coup plotters seem not to have considered the possibility that Rudd and the ALP could have recovered in the opinion polls well enough to risk going to an election, and then campaigned strongly on their successes in government to get over the line. Rudd’s removal was tactically brilliant but strategically disastrous.

Suddenly Gillard now wanted two more televised leaders debates. Abbott, perhaps channelling Napoleon (don’t do what your opponent wants you to do, on the sole ground that this is what she wants you to do), refused. He did, however, find time for a public forum, held in a large club in western Sydney. Each leader got time alone with a room full of allegedly undecided voters, facing questions from the audience. Abbott clearly won this encounter, looking far more at ease with the crowd than Gillard, but there were also claims that the audience was stacked with Liberal voters, and that Abbott was questioned far more leniently than Gillard.

[PeterB]

Enter the Fool, stage left

The campaign then took a turn for the bizarre. Former ALP leader Mark Latham was employed as a reporter for the TV show “60 Minutes”. Latham had led the ALP to electoral defeat in 2004, and quit politics soon after. His memoirs, published in 2005, poured scorn on all sides of politics. Like Rudd, Latham had risen in the party outside the traditional lines of power, but heartily despised Rudd as someone who’d habitually leaked stories to journalists purely to undermine Latham’s authority as party leader. One by one, Latham confronted Rudd, Gillard and Abbott, and finished his performance with a piece to camera repeating his earlier assessment of Australian politics and suggesting that Australians vote informally (voting is compulsory in Australia, and Latham was advising people to spoil their ballot papers).

Reporting of the campaign reached its nadir in the last week before the election. Interest in Latham was so high that several networks literally carried live images of him sitting in a café drinking coffee, surrounded by camera crews and journalists.

And after much to-ing and fro-ing, cynically called the Debate About The Debate, Gillard and Abbott faced off for a second public forum, this one in Brisbane. This time Gillard performed much better, and was narrowly judged the winner by the audience. But what was most tragic about the forum was a statement by the moderating journalist that the people in the forum had asked tougher questions than the journalists had through the campaign. This raised the obvious question of why the journalists hadn’t asked those tough questions in the first place...

[PeterB]

It isn’t easy being a journo

This turned the light back on the journalists. There’d been a lot of stuff written and reported, but the quality of the questions and analysis was considered fairly poor. The media seem to have quickly embraced Twitter, but while they were quick to talk, they also appear to have been overly sensitive to criticism, the usual response being something like “Why don’t you try to do better?” The two main responses to this are that many private people do have good quality political blogs, and many people did take the opportunity to respond to journalists with good questions to ask.

The other problem the journalists faced was the controls placed on them by the politicians they travelled with. When they boarded the media bus in the morning they had no idea where they’d be going or what the politician they were chasing would be talking about. When a politician stopped to make some policy announcement, the press briefings wouldn’t be handed out until the start of the announcement, giving journalists little time to study the policy for good questions. And once the good questions started to be asked, the press conference would be wound up. Abbott was almost certainly more at fault here – he’s never bothered to hide his lack of deep reading/understanding of many party policies. He looked particularly shallow when interviewed one-on-one on TV about the Liberal Party’s broadband internet policy, and was quickly forced to admit he’d lose a technical argument with his interviewer. He was also a lot happier in front of the cameras doing something physical – usually running around with kids – than answering questions about trivial matters like mere party policy.

[PeterB]

And we should vote for you why…?

Of course, the other issue was us voters. Sadly, it seems too many of us were more interested in seeing Tony Abbott in the budgie smugglers or asking about Julia Gillard’s earlobes (yes, literally) or whether you should have to pay for tomato sauce on your meat pie, than which party had a better broadband internet policy or paid maternity leave scheme.

But then, it does matter where you live. Pork barrelling is alive and well in Australia. Both parties committed millions of dollars in electoral promises to marginal electorates, but completely ignored safe seats (even those of their own party). While this generated a lot of public cynicism, the obvious response was to tell them to vote for a third party, and help break the electoral duopoly of ALP versus Liberal/National.

Finally we got to election day. One of the pleasant things about democracy in Australia is that we vote on Saturday, and most polling places are suburban primary schools. The schools usually take advantage of elections to hold fund-raising sausage sizzles, so everyone wins. Australia’s other advantage over the USA at least is that federal elections are overseen by a public service agency, meaning that the rules about how elections are held are standard across the country, and meaning that the counting of ballot papers is generally uncontroversial.

[PeterB]

And the winner is…

The result of the voting depended greatly on the state. In Queensland, Rudd’s home state, there was a major swing against the ALP. Less so in New South Wales. Victoria swung slightly towards the ALP, and I think the other states and territories had negligible changes. Overall, the ALP had a 5.4% swing against it. But only a third of that went to the Liberals. The other two-thirds went to the Greens, giving them their best result ever. The percentage of informal votes was higher than before, but it seems that while many Australians agreed with Latham’s assessment, they didn’t agree with his response – rather than turning our backs on the electoral process, we chose to vote for other candidates.

Now we have preferential voting in Australia, unlike the UK’s first past the post system. This means that we have to list all our candidates in our electorate in order of preference. If no candidate gets 50% of the vote, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated, and their votes are distributed among the other candidates, depending on the second preferences expressed by the voters. This process is repeated until one of the candidates reaches 50% of the vote for that seat.

In practical terms, Greens preferences strongly flowed to the ALP, and helped add to the post-election confusion.

[PeterB]

Er, the winner is…

As I write, I think one seat still hasn’t been decided. But the likely result is that of the 150 seats in the House of Representatives (where the government is formed), the ALP has 72, the Liberals and Nationals have 73*, the Greens have 1, and there are 4 independents. Now the Greens member has indicated he’ll go with the ALP, while one of the National members has effectively declared himself an independent.

And thanks to the total votes, some interesting positions were stated: the Liberal-National coalition got a higher primary vote than the ALP, so they felt they should get the support of the independents. But as Greens preferences mostly went to the ALP, that gave them the higher two-party-preferred vote, so they felt they should get the independents’ support.

* One of the Liberals' success stories was the election of 20 year old Wyatt Roy. He's the youngest person ever elected to Federal Parliament. And I reckon he's going to have a cracker of a 21st birthday party.

[PeterB]

Who's that guy with the big hat again?

Now the horse-trading has begun, and three of the independents have met with each other and Gillard and Abbott to discuss what each will give to get the support of the independents. Fortunately, these three independents seem to have a broader vision than just seeking benefits for their electorates alone. One is touting parliamentary reform, and all three seem to want the government to spend more money in all of country Australia, rather than just their own backyards. Naturally, both Abbott and Gillard see the wisdom of these suggestions. Abbott even spoke of a “…kinder, gentler polity…” when describing reforms to Parliamentary procedures.

Amusingly, but frustratingly for the ALP, he almost immediately made the gaffe they'd been hoping for in the campaign – but of course too late to affect the vote: one of the independents’ demands was to get the public servants of the Treasury Department to cost the two sides’ policies. Normally this is done before the election, but the Liberals withheld several of their policies following a leak to the media by someone in Treasury. When the independents made their demand, Abbott angrily refused until the leaker was found, calling the leak an act of “…political bastardry…” Kinder and gentler indeed…

Of course, as a leak is irrelevant to the result of the election, everyone’s asking what Abbott’s trying to hide.

Incidentally, the guy with the big hat is Bob Katter. He spent time in the Queensland state parliament before moving to Federal politics. He started out a member of the National Party, but left them because he thought the party was going soft in its coalition with the Liberal Party. Bob's the sort of guy that us southerners think of as the stereotypical outback Queenslander - slow, loud and larger than life. But behind this exterior lurks a mind which is sharper than I think many suspect, and one with a strong sense of injustice on behalf of his electorate. He may behave like a bit of a clown, but his descriptions of the collapse of some parts of rural Australia are heartbreaking.

[PeterB]

My prediction for winner is…

So who will form the next government? My prediction is that Gillard will win the independents’ support and form a minority government. This is based on a single fact: she’s been Prime Minister for only a couple of months. If she doesn’t get to form government, she’ll go down in history as one of Australia’s shortest serving PMs, and I think she considers that so unbearable a possibility that she’d agree to almost anything to avoid that.

Let’s see how accurate I am. And anyway, if I’m wrong, I won’t be any worse than plenty of media pundits.

[Obviousman]

Disagree with one point, Peter - Bob Katter. At the press conference, he openly said he was more concerned about getting what he wants for his electorate rather than the nation as a whole.

BTW - Excellent summary!

[Kiwi]

Thanks for that, Peter, an excellent summary. I had other things on so didn't follow your election very closely, but what I did follow was interesting.

Regarding Julia Gillard,

Aug 28, 2010 9:44:00 GMT -4 PeterB said:

All of a sudden, this intelligent, incisive, principled left winger came across as a sordid, ambitious opportunist.

there is something about her that made me cringe every time I saw her on TV. I don't know exactly what it was, but she seemed to be very egotistic, opinionated, patronising and uptight. Perhaps a tanty-thrower, which apparently Kevin Rudd is, I was surprised to hear.

She reminded me greatly of our first female Prime Minister here in New Zealand, Jenny Shipley, who got into power the same way -- by rolling the existing PM. She visibly simmered all the time and was also a tanty-thrower. Thank God she didn't last because she also made me cringe.

On the other hand, our first elected female Prime Minister, Helen Clark, did an excellent job and was one of our better Prime Ministers, in my opinion. The only (minor) gripe I had about her was that she must have graduated from the John Wayne School of Diction.