The Coalition must be redefined if non-Labor is to overcome One Nation

According to Henry Ford, "Failure is only the opportunity to more intelligently begin again". The failure of the Coalition at the last Queensland state election was so comprehensive that they have no alternative but to begin again.

One of the unanswered questions of Australian politics is why One Nation is so strong in Queensland. Are Queenslanders really different from other Australians? Demographics would tend to suggest not. They are less ethnically diverse than some, more than others; poorer than some, richer than others; less well educated than some, better educated than others. The finger is often pointed at Queensland as the most decentralised state, but a closer look at the statistics shows that we are about as likely as anyone else to live in the capital city. Yet Pauline Hanson gets by far her best results in Queensland. Is this a "State of Origin" effect? I don’t think so.

The answer to the question partly lies in the fact that on the non-Labor side the dominant partner in the Coalition has been the rural National Party, not the urban Liberal Party. As a result, the National Party has become less rural and more politically centrist, abandoning its core constituency and leaving room on the edge for political competitors like One Nation and independents.

Common mythology in Queensland says that the National Party gerrymander kept the Labor Party out of power for 33 years, but common mythology can’t count. There was no election between the Nicklin win in 1957 and Goss coming to power in 1989 when the ALP could have won on fair boundaries. The real victim of the gerrymander was the Liberal Party. It never won seats in proportion to its vote, and even when in 1974 it outpolled the National Party, it was still several seats short of being the majority partner.

As a result, the Coalition became difficult. The Liberal Party resented the undemocratic way it was treated by its partner, and was financially weakened as the business muscle in Queensland danced with the National Party. In 1983 the fractious arrangement came to an end. The Liberal Party split from the Coalition and was decimated at the following election falling to 8 seats. Two of its members – Don Lane and Brian Austin – defected to the Nationals and the Liberal Party six-pack was born.

The gerrymander has been abolished, but the Liberal Party has still not had a real opportunity to struggle out from the shadow of the National Party. Until now.

The National Party is likely to hold 13 seats in this Parliament, the Liberal Party 3. It would appear that the Liberal Party is further away than ever from being the major non-Labor Party. But the percentage of the statewide vote won by each party was roughly similar, so the Liberal Party’s 3 seat tally is deceptively weak. The ALP faced a similar result to the Coalition in 1974. At the 1977 election it doubled its numbers from 11 to 22. What might happen at the next State election?

I would expect that seats like Burleigh, Mudgeeraba, Albert, Gaven, Southport, Broadwater, Springwood, Mansfield, Redlands, Mount Ommaney, Clayfield, Aspley, Indooroopilly, Toowoomba North, Glasshouse, Kawana, Noosa, Hervey Bay, Burnett, Charters Towers, and Cairns, could easily swing back. But, with the exception of Charters Towers and Burnett, they are all in territory that is urban and represented by the Liberal Party at a federal level.

Until the Coalition eliminates One Nation it will never be in a position to offer majority government and will be in an impossible position to win an election. Politics is now more geographical than ever in Australia, and One Nation is strongest in those geographical areas that are the heartland of the National Party. To see One Nation off, the National Party needs to abandon its plans for conservative domination and cede the metropolitan areas to the Liberal Party. That would give the Liberals a good chance of winning 18 seats out of the list above. Add Rob Borbidge’s seat of Surfers Paradise, soon to be vacated, and the Liberal Party could feasibly be looking at 22 seats and majority leadership of the Coalition in the next Parliament.

So much for the opportunities. What are the risks?

The first risk is leadership, and here the signs are not promising. Rob Borbidge and David Watson both accepted responsibility for the election result, but campaigns are run by the party organisations. When the Liberal Party had its debacle in 1983, not only did Parliamentary Leader Terry White step down, but then Party President John Herron accepted blame as well and announced that he would not be renominating at the next convention. No such maturity from the National and Liberal Party organisational leaderships this time.

Rather than seeing themselves as the problem they believe that they are the solution. In doing so they prove they have not heard the electors speaking at the last election. They are inviting the public to give the Coalition a whack in the Ryan by-election, and if they do not move before the Federal election, another whack then.

The Liberal Party State Executive is meeting tomorrow night (1/3/01). Here are a couple of things that they should consider doing. First, call in the Federal Party. Under the Federal Constitution this can happen when a State Branch is in financial difficulties, as the Queensland Liberal Party is. As noted in an earlier article the Queensland Liberal Party is so factionally riven that it is unlikely to heal itself. As with the ALP in 1974 it needs Federal intervention.

Then the President and Vice-Presidents should also announce that they take full blame for the election result and will not be seeking re-election at the next Liberal Party State Convention, scheduled for June.

That turns the whole thing over to the Federal Party. They need to appoint someone as "receiver manager" to see the show through until June and to start the restructure. Who that person is will shape how successful the intervention is. It cannot be Tony Staley, John Howard’s favourite "administrator", he is regarded as being factionally aligned. John Herron has been mooted as another name. Nice guy, but factionally aligned too. Warwick Parer? Ruled out by being Santo Santoro’s mentor and patron. Party President Shane Stone would be a good choice, but a better choice would be to reach out to the Queensland business community and enlist the help of a senior businessperson who is not factionally aligned and could become Party President after June.

The Queensland Liberal Party has lost its roots in Brisbane, as well as most of its resources. It needs to re-establish them, and a senior businessperson as President would be a signal to the community, particularly that part most crucial to resources, that it was prepared to reattach itself.

The next President of the Liberal Party has also got to recognise that the most important thing is not to worry directly about fixing the existing factions in the party, but to strategically seek out candidates in the seats it must target for the next election. There will be pressure to call pre-selections as early as possible so as to start the task of winning seats as soon as possible. This must be resisted. The effect of early preselections would be to cement factional players in place. Preselections should be held as close to the next elections as possible.

If the right candidates are preselected, the factional problem will fix itself almost overnight. The Liberal Party has suffered over the last few years through low membership and too few centres of power. Eighteen new MLAs with their own bands of fresh and devoted supporters would change all that.

Another risk to the scenario is that the National Party will insist on contesting metropolitan seats in three-cornered contests. It has to realise that three-cornered contests will be very difficult to successfully run. In the aftermath of Beattie’s "Just Vote One" strategy, and with the vote more fractured on the non-Labor side, multiple coalition candidates are a luxury. The Libs and Nats need to negotiate a regional strategy as part of the next Coalition agreement.

Some Liberals and Nationals want to call the Coalition off. That would be a mistake. The last election was won by Beattie on the question of who could actually provide a government. If the Liberal and National Parties part company then not only will there be a One Nation problem to deal with, but a Coalition disunity problem as well. The Liberal Party also needs to consider its position in Parliament. Coalition will deliver it front-bench positions and resources that it would not otherwise get, as well as relevance. Added to that, the Liberal Party can exert influence over the way that the National Party deals with One Nation in Coalition in a way that it can’t on the cross-benches. But that doesn’t mean it should rush into a Coalition either – long courtships make for more secure relationships than brief ones.

Some Liberals such as former Liberal President Paul Everingham, are already trotting out the possibility of a "Pineapple Party" – an amalgamated Liberal and National Party. This would be the worst solution. Modern elections are about market segmentation, not one-size-fits-all retailing. Such a party would prove to regional voters that the Nationals had deserted them as well as confirming city voters in their shift to Labor. It would also give John Howard a huge headache forcing him into a tri-partite coalition with the National Party and the Pineapple Party, and raising the question of stability of government at a federal level.

The most important thing the Coalition needs to do is to decide a joint strategy for dealing with One Nation. The 2001 election should have been about proving that it could beat One Nation and be at the least a good opposition. It wasn’t. As a result, that will be what the next election is about. The challenge will be to convince the National Party rank and file that One Nation is the enemy.

After 44 years of off-and-on-again cohabitation the Liberal and National Parties are getting another chance. But, as Henry Ford would have wanted to know, will they do it more intelligently this time?