Political geography

As far as the public is concerned, political party conferences are irrelevant – they don’t change votes. But they do provide pointers as to where the parties think the votes are.

This is more a feature of Liberal Party national conventions than those of the ALP. The ALP National Conference is anchored to the Party Platform. This document is binding on the elected representatives, although they have the final decision about the timing of implementation of any policy. By contrast, the Liberal Party National Convention is more a series of seminars and motivational talks, with no ability to bind Federal representatives. As a result, ALP debate tends to be more intellectually rigorous – there is more at risk if resolutions are binding – and less driven by public relations concerns. It is therefore a less reliable indicator as to where the party expects to find votes.

Nevertheless, both parties’ conventions are about theatrical display and symbolism at the same time as they are about policy. The two Conventions just past hold clues as to where the electoral battle, due by Christmas next year, will be fought.

This is the first of a series of essays looking at the party conventions and the possibilities for approaches to the next Federal election. It will attempt to sketch the political landscape and some of its advantages and threats to both sides.

End of the Mass Market

For 200 years the political debate has revolved around individual rights – and not just in terms of political debate. The result is that people are less likely to see themselves in institutional terms and more in personal terms. For sellers of consumer products, that means the rise of the niche market – for politicians, the swinging voter. In politics the Cold War provided a constricting frame that hid the early signs of that trend. With that frame removed, established political allegiances are breaking apart.

The World’s Smallest Political Quiz – promoted by the Libertarian Party in the US – neatly sums it up. It analyses voters into five categories – Right Conservative, Left Liberal, Moderate, Libertarian and Authoritarian, which bisect the existing political divides in Australia. With a decline in institutional loyalty, individuals are becoming more likely to make choices that reflect those sorts of classifications, which forces politicians to pitch more on the basis of issues. Most of the major parties are capable of providing a home for people in most of these classifications.

Paradoxically, this fracturing of the market also makes politics more tribal and class-based than it has been. The ALP split of the ’50s was based around political antagonisms based partly on religion, but more firmly on attitudes to Communism. It fractured the working-class party and gave Menzies a record term.

In the absence of an overarching factor like the Cold War, support for political parties is more like support for football teams. There is no strong rational reason for supporting one team rather than another, so support tends to revolve around whimsy, or social identity. So at the same time as the modern political party has to target individual voters in terms of particular issues, they also need to relate to the voter as a part of his or her social group. This group will not be a whole class, but perhaps a sub-class, or even a regional grouping.

Economics is still a good predictor of voting intention, but here there is an interesting intersection with the class basis of politics. Financially better off electors tend to be less prone to think of themselves as being members of a class than those who are financially poorer. The old mass class-based approach to politics is therefore more alive in Labor electorates than in Liberal ones. The result of this is that the Labor Party has more safe seats than the Liberal Party.

This has the effect of making it easier for the Labor Party to pitch for sectional interest votes. The problems with the niche market is that you have to be careful what is promised to each grouping, otherwise you may cram new voters in the front door while older voters disappear out the back. Because the mass market is still alive in working-class electorates the Labor Party has fewer voters it is likely to alienate, and can therefore be more innovative and daring in its pitch for new voters.

The Laboral Party

Another aspect of the end of the Cold War is that the two major parties have moved closer together and are Pepsi and Coke in the minds of many voters. One Nation propagandists have summed this up by calling the political establishment the "Laboral Parties". This has given rise not just to an indifference to who gets in, and so lower voting turnouts, but tactical voting.

This is a different phenomenon from Reagan’s winning of the "Blue Collar Conservatives". That was a group that defected because it believed that Reagan was more closely ideologically aligned to its beliefs than the Democrats, a similar tectonic shift as occurred in Australian rural areas after the ALP split. These defections occurred because the voters concerned cared. Strategic voters don’t so much care, as figure they can wangle a better deal by giving the other side a turn on the swings. They are engaged only insofar as their personal interest is concerned.

They are more likely than the average voter to vote against something. Governments tend to make decisions and so give them issues to vote against. The existence of this type of voter has given rise to greater electoral volatility than Australia has seen for 50 years, and a tendency for governments to have shorter terms. They favour an Opposition rather than the Government.

The remnants of One Nation will also feature in the next election, just as they did in the last. But it is simplistic to view them as a bloc that somehow backs one side or the other. In fact, because of the preferential voting system, their votes at the last Federal election ended up being cast and split reasonably equally between both Labor and Liberal candidates. Perhaps the rise and rise of tactical voting might make a change in this behaviour, but again I think this is simplistic. The One Nation vote derives from a number of demographic groups as well as people who vote "none of the above", and is likely to continue to split between both parties.

One issue deserves a special mention at this stage, and that is Indigenous affairs. While the One Nation vote is not a monumental whole, there are some issues that motivate it across the board. One Nation voters are uniformly hostile to giving Indigenous Australians what they see as greater rights than other Australians. This is an issue that is poorly handled by most Indigenous politicians, and some of the likely activities of a number of Aboriginal groups during the Olympic games will not improve the situation. While neither party will run a racist campaign, if these issues gain too great a prominence they will damage the Labor Party with these voters and result in a greater propensity for them to vote for the Coalition.

Reform Fatigue

There is a belief among observers of politics, and a lot of politicians, that the public is worn out with reform. This is both false and true. Yes, electors say they are tired of change, but change has been a strong constant of Western Civilisation since the Renaissance, and belief in that change expressed as "Progress" has been an article of faith since Victorian times.

Voters say that they are fed up with change but go to an election telling them that "Things will be no better tomorrow than they are today under our policies" and they won’t see any reason to vote for you.

The trick is to find improvements with no clearly identifiable winners or losers. The issues that tend to allow for these sorts of promises are the softer issues like health, education and welfare. Economic issues are easier to quantify and tend to be more obviously redistributive.

That is not to say that economic issues cannot be winners. A timely tax cut can win votes, as can a scare campaign on potential tax hikes. However, tax cuts are easier to achieve in times of high inflation when bracket creep (wage earners moving into higher tax brackets as a result of higher nominal wages) makes it easy to restore what has just been taken from voters, giving the illusion that no-one has lost. Budget surpluses can also provide an opening, although an independent Reserve Bank, which might jack up interest rates, seeing this as inflationary, and an Opposition that can access the same surpluses, make it a small opening.

This election a campaign based on the soft issues will have an advantage. In any event, most of the headline economic reforms have now been achieved, leaving little to promise in this area apart from industrial relations reform, which does not rate highly in terms of potential to change votes.

Politics as Entertainment

Along with the fracturing of the mass market for politics and a belief that one side is as good as the other, goes the trend for people to want to be entertained in whatever it is that they are doing.

News and current affairs has shown a tendency towards infotainment, which reflects a public preference for higher entertainment values in the arts in general. It is partly fed by general access to the best performing products via the media of T.V., video, and recordings, and also by an increase in the numbers of people directly employed in entertainment. This has spilt over into areas that used not to be regarded as entertainment. For example, shopping centres now market an entertainment experience rather than things like wet and dry groceries, clothing, hardware and so on. We have become a society that cares about how things look, and then confuses looks with substance.

Given no strong anchors of habit or ideology, insubstantial issues like which party or leader is more likeable become serious issues in the voting decision.

Paul Keating

Electors tend to vote against, rather than for, parties. One of the strongest reasons for not voting Labor at the last two elections was probably Paul Keating. In the late ’70s and early ’80s Gough Whitlam performed the same function. Malcolm Fraser successfully used Whitlam for 3 elections in 5 years. Howard has used Keating for 2 elections in 4 years.

The next election is the first where he is unlikely to be a strong factor. That adds to the potential volatility of the vote. It also forces the parties to argue more about the future.

Marginal Seats

There are some structural things that make campaigns harder or easier. Incumbency brings with it greater resources. It also means that you do not have to win seats to stay in government, so limiting the workload and expense in terms of campaigning in seats. Oppositions not only have to keep the seats that they hold, but to win fresh seats from the Government.

At a Federal level there seems to be a tendency for Governments’ votes to erode from the moment that they gain office, losing seats with each succeeding election until they lose office. But there is no inviolate law that says this will always be the case, as Bob Carr demonstrated in the last NSW election.

However, a belief among journalists and observers that this is the case will have an effect on how the campaigns are framed and received. A more serious structural problem for the Government is that it holds twice as many seats by a margin of three per cent or less than the Opposition. This negates some of the benefits of incumbency.

There is also a belief that rural and regional areas may rise up against the government. If there is an uprising, it is unlikely to cost the government many, if any, seats, because of the margins of safety involved, but that threat will spread the defenses more widely, and therefore more thinly.

Conclusion

There are no steep mountains or deep ravines in the political landscape for this election. Both parties are reasonably evenly matched on the basis of the last election’s results. They need to put together coalitions of swinging voters on the basis of issues, promising progress, if not reform, and arguing about the future more than past records. Likeability and personal performance are likely to be deciding factors in the minds of many electors who do not see strong differences between the parties anymore, and are likely to vote in their own immediate interests. One Nation voters will be a factor, but depending on Indigenous affairs, are likely not to be decisive.