What happened in the Victorian election

Steve Bracks’s re-election is a triumph for the pragmatic politics of incremental change, and by saying this I am not damning with faint praise. His win is one of the great ones of Australian politics. To put it in perspective it has to be compared to three similar results - Beattie (Queensland 2001), Wran (NSW 1978) and Bjelke-Petersen (Queensland 1974).

What makes all of these elections significant is that they were second-or-subsequent-election landslides. Normally, if governments win in a landslide, it is at their first attempt, and majorities gradually leak away after that.

And out of the three of these it is really only comparable to Wran’s win, which was the most impressive of the lot. Beattie and Bjelke-Petersen had significant issues that created problems for their opponents. In Beattie’s case, the Opposition was unable to work out how to deal with One Nation; Bjelke-Petersen’s competitive edge was Gough Whitlam’s Federal Government.

But there were no outside influences of that kind helping Wran or Bracks. So, what were the major factors in the size of this win? I have a number of theories, but stress that they are theories. Unfortunately we didn’t have the financial resources to do online focus groups as we did for the Federal election (see On Line Focus Election 2001), but if you’d like to help out for the NSW elections, please email me. Without access to this sort of information, any analysis is almost purely speculation. (But that’s never stopped me before.)

Factor Number 1 – Jeff Kennett

At the last Victorian election, while the rural and regional areas swung heavily against the Kennett government it held its vote very well in metropolitan Melbourne. The Burwood by-election, occasioned by Kennett’s retirement, was entirely different. There was a 10.5 per cent swing against the opposition. Later that year in the Benalla by-election, caused by the resignation of National Party leader Pat McNamara, there was a 7.8 per cent swing. Yet this election, Benalla has been won back from the ALP, and the swing in Burwood was in the vicinity of 3.1 per cent – much less than the statewide swing.

This suggests that Melburnians made up their minds on Kennett about 3 months after the last election, and have not changed them since. So, maybe it was not a Bracks win, but a Kennett loss.

Factor Number 2 – Michael Kroger

What would Punch be without Judy? On election night Kroger was blaming Kennett for the result, not on the basis of similar analysis to that above, but because Kennett had criticised the Liberal Party during the campaign. Anyone who thinks anything negative Kennett might have said about the Liberals could have had a significant effect needs to look at Kennett’s ratings as a radio jock. Why was Kroger making such a far-fetched accusation? Well, it could have been for old time’s sake – the only person stopping Kroger from having complete control of the Victorian Liberal Party over the last decade was Kennett. But it could also have been a guilty conscience speaking.

When you’re at fault it is a standard ploy to try and find someone else to blame, and those of us who are prepared to go on the public record with criticism are the best ones to blame because the tribe see us as traitors. For detailed explorations of this technique see Animal Farm and 1984.

Insiders say that Kroger had his fingers all over the Liberal Party’s campaign, and while the campaign on its own doesn’t explain the entire result, it goes some of the way to doing so. It lacked consistency, and it delivered the wrong message. So completely out of touch with the electorate were the Liberal generals, that at one stage they apparently toyed with the theme – “Remember the Guilty Party – they’re back”.

As it turned out, their last week ran on the theme of industrial relations. This was possibly out of desperation because nothing else was biting, but only the far-right in the Liberal Party thinks this is an important campaign issue (as distinct from just being an important issue). When Liberals talk about industrial relations, the general public thinks about the work treadmill being adjusted up for speed and height simultaneously, or even worse being taken out from under them as they are made redundant. That means it is not a vote winner.

Perhaps this partly explains why there was no swing back in the last week. There should have been. Australians always like to cheer the top-weight horse along, and the Liberals made a very clear pitch for the sympathy vote in the last week. But by this stage they were knackered, not even meeting minimum expectations as a suitable way of telling Bracks not to be too cocky.

Factor Number 3 – Robert Dean

If I’m going to make these factors so personal, how could I leave out the Treasurer who was taken off the roll by the electoral commission? He really doesn’t deserve more than a footnote. I doubt that he changed too many votes directly, but he would have put the Liberal campaign off message for a few days and underlined a perception that the Liberals think they are born to rule and can be as careless as they like. He deserves all, and probably more than, he will get. He was knowingly enrolled at an address where he did not live, and the address where he did live was not in the electorate where he intended to vote. Do that in Queensland and you end up in court for fraud. Could Victorian law be any different?

Factor Number 4 – The Liberal Party

There is something about the Liberal brand these days – it just isn’t selling like it used to. Only at a federal level is the Liberal Party dominant, but this is only a recent, and possibly ephemeral, development. Before the Tampa hove over the horizon, John Howard was doing very poorly in the polls. In fact, they were showing something approaching a 10 per cent swing against the party at some stages.

In that sense, the Victorian election result may not be that far away from the probable result of a generic federal election, sans the refugee issue. This leads to the question: What might happen to the Federal Liberals now that Howard’s policy on boat people appears to have been so successful and the flow of fresh arrivals has been cut off?

The problem for the Liberal Party is that it no longer symbolically or socially identifies with the broad sweep of Australians. Nowhere is this more obvious than in Victoria. There was a view that Bracks would have trouble winning seats because the state is traditionally Liberal. Well, since 1993 at a Federal level it has voted Labor. It was the strongest state for the Republic and the state where One Nation gained least purchase. When I visit Melbourne from Brisbane I feel like I am in another country, not because of its more settled and European culture, but because it has a left-of-centre air.

Perhaps Victoria has not moved. Perhaps the rest of us have. Certainly the Liberal Party has. Malcolm Fraser is now regarded by many as left-wing; and the philosophical heirs of Sydney free-traders like George Reid, who were vanquished by the Victorian Deakinite protectionists, today run the Liberal Party. This handicap can be overcome but generally only by Labor catastrophes opening the door to company doctor-style Liberal administrations, or by the Liberals finding leaders who can overcome the brand issue. (Which doesn’t mean that they have to be charismatic, but that is another essay). Interestingly, the Michael Krogers of this world who now run the Vic Libs, are followers of Reid rather than Deakin.

Which leads to…

Factor Number 5 – Robert Doyle and Dennis Napthine

Napthine wasn’t going to win the election, but does anyone seriously believe that he could have done any worse than Robert Doyle? In fact, as a local member, he appears to have done better. According to Adam Carr’s Psephos site, Napthine experienced a swing against him on a two-party preferred basis of 4.3 per cent while Doyle had a swing against of 5.9 per cent.

The Liberals need to realise that replacing leaders at the last moment, as they did this time in Victoria, and previously in New South Wales, is rarely going to do any more than tarnish the incoming leader with an election loss. Doyle was a virtual unknown who brought no personal capital to the job, except for the ability to be more aggressive than his predecessor. This aggression was on display in his concession speech. It was short, he took the opportunity to take a shot at Napthine’s leadership, and I don’t recall him thanking too many people. It was so bad that commentator John Faine called it “blonde”. And aggression is not necessarily the trait that Australians are responding to at the moment in their leaders.

One of the Liberals’ justifications for their loss is that in these uncertain times people are sticking with the devil they know rather than changing governments. This argument ispremised on a presumed collective reaction to 9/11 and the Bali Bombing. The only problem is that people aren’t feeling uncertain in that way at the moment. Witness both the Yellow Pages Business Index, and the Westpac/Melbourne Institute index of consumer sentiment which both show robust consumer confidence, as do other indicators, like the demand for new housing.

What On Line Opinion’s federal focus group research showed was that after 9/11 Australians felt a sense of shared community with the world at the same time that they felt a need to come closer together. We have an electorate that is looking for an inclusive, less materialist government. Napthine may well have been more in tune with that mood than Doyle.

Factor Number 6 – Steve Bracks

Bracks was probably more in tune with the electorate than either of the potential Liberal leaders. That was his main strength. He was able to run with the popular Kennett initiatives, at the same time as he spent most of the dividend that was available from the unpopular Kennett reforms - hiring more teachers, nurses and police. He came across as genuine and a nice guy at the same time as he banished the guilty party image. Being a “nice guy” might seem easy, but politics rewards people who don’t take risks. In politics, being a “nice guy” is the province of the brave. Just as Neville Wran, in his own way, banished the spectre of the cardigan wearing union operatives making Labor acceptable in government, Bracks has exorcised Cain and Kirner.

Conclusion

After the 1978 Wranslide it took the Liberals 10 years to recover in NSW. It was another 15 years after Bjelke-Petersen’s ’74 win until Labor came back, and then only off the back of the Fitzgerald Inquiry which revealed entrenched corruption to the highest levels in the state. History would suggest that it could be just as long before the Liberals come back in Victoria. It will certainly be longer if they follow the Kroger template for constructing candidates.

For Howard it should be a reminder of his own mortality. The tide is generally flowing against him, no matter how secure he looks at the moment. Perhaps the hardest lesson is there for Costello. Some of the same people who were responsible for the Victorian debacle have also spread their influence into other states, like Queensland, where they have proved equally inept at campaigns, and destructive of party organisations.

The Liberal Party is a federation of state-based organisations. Unless these individual principalities hold together, there is no federal organisation. With Labor now decisively in charge almost everywhere, the Federal Liberal Party is at risk whenever Howard goes. If he wants to be a long-term Prime Minister, Costello needs some new friends.