Fifty-five days and counting (til the Federal Election)

Woohoo! The Federal Election has been called for 2 July 2016. We were due for an election around October, so it’s an early-ish election. Admittedly, it is a singular type of person who is excited by this news but this one is going to be interesting - once we get past the fact that the election campaign itself will last 55 days.  So it is going to be interesting if you can maintain consciousness.

Even the long, long campaign is part of what makes this election interesting because if a week is a long time in politics, 55 days is an eon (if 55 days is doing your head in, spare a thought for voters in 1969 election with John Gorton and Gough Whitlam vying to be Prime Minister; it was the longest campaign in Australian history clocking in at 66 days).  It is a long time to maintain party discipline and unity especially if there are divisions in the party (which there are in both parties - more about that later).  It gives politicians a lot of space to fill with soundbites, so the chance of someone saying something stupid (and vote-changing) is immense.  Conventional political wisdom says a short campaign favours the incumbent.

Laura Tingle is all of us during this election campaign

It is also a Double Dissolution election and we haven’t had one of those since 1987*. Double Dissolution (or double disillusion as some droll folk are calling it) means the whole kit and kaboodle that is both houses of parliament will be up for election; normally it is the House of Representatives and half the senate.  Yes the senate voting form will be absolutely bloody huge this election.  It may stop even me from numbering every box.

The official reason for the double dissolution (DD) is a piece of legislation that has been blocked twice by the senate, namely the legislation to re-establish the Australian Building and Construction Stasi Commission.  It stands to reason that the issue that has brought about an early election would be front and centre of the election campaign but on this issue the voter response is *crickets*.  If Industrial Relations issues gain any traction at all, it will be about penalty rates and whether they should be reduced (the answer is no - there I solved it for you**).

So unofficially the DD is being utilised because the currently the senate crossbench is made up of quite the motley crew of independents and people from parties so minor they are called micro parties, who may or may not have played the byzantine senate voting system to get elected on the back of approximately eleven primary votes.  This and the fact that they are voting according to their individual consciences, some of which are fairly regular and mainstream and others that are completely batshit crazy, depending on what side of the political fence you are on.  Or if you’re just normal.  Anyway, unlike Julia Gillard who negotiated her way through a minority government (which included Bob Katter) for almost three years, Malcolm Turnbull has decided that it is much easier to have another election and get a less recalcitrant crossbench. 

The main point of interest of any election though is the eventual result.  If you follow the money the Liberals will retain government.  At this stage I would tend to agree with the betting odds because voters tend to give first term governments the benefit of the doubt.  Another factor Turnbull has got going for him, apart from seeming to be a PM from central casting, is the fact that Australia, despite being a prosperous and stable nation, can’t seem to keep Prime Ministers.  A change of government this year would give us a nice even half-dozen since 2007.  Voters may baulk at another PM so soon.  

From Buzzfeed.  Then who is Voldemort in this situation?  

It isn’t the first time Australia has had a high Prime Minister turnover - after Robert Menzies’ 22 years as PM, Australia changed Prime Ministers seven times between 1966 and 1975.  To be fair this did include a fill-in deputy Prime Minister when Harold Holt went missing.  Then there was a tussle of egos between John Gorton (a reasonable chap who cast a vote against himself) and William McMahon (a clod whose ambition outweighed his abilities by a long shot and now vies with Tony Abbott as worst PM evah).  This was followed by Gough Whitlam’s calamitous but legacy-filled three years, which ended with the constitutional crisis that was the Dismissal, before Malcolm Fraser settled in for eight years.  So we’ve survived a revolving door at The Lodge before.

But there are many reasons why Malcolm Turnbull should not think he has it in the bag.  And those reasons all begin with Tony Abbott.

Now I didn’t write anything about Tony Abbott’s prime ministership, mainly because it was hard to keep up with his constant faux-pas - remember the knighthoods? The raw onion?  Threatening Vladimir Putin with a thorough shirt fronting (even though Putin is ex-KGB and probably knows how to kill people using only his thumbs)?  Only having one woman in Cabinet?  Mistaking our public broadcaster, the ABC, with a state broadcaster?  These gaffes caused mass outbreaks of face palming/laughter around the country.  Less easy to laugh about though was the 2014 budget.  Voters reacted strongly against this budget for two reasons:  a) it broke all sorts of fairly centrist, safe and familiar pre-election promises and b) it was more like an ideological manifesto than a budget.  It was a step way too far to the right and would have given Australia more in common with the US (a nice place to live if you’re rich) than, say, Scandinavia (a nice place to live regardless of income).  During Abbott’s Prime Ministership, I found myself constantly thinking “but even John Howard wouldn’t go there…”.  Yes, Tony Abbott’s government was so bad and so extreme I found myself, an avowed leftie, getting nostalgic for the comparatively moderate Howard years.  Wow!  I think in time we will look back at Abbott's government and wonder “what the hell was that?”. 

Logic would suggest that completely disowning the Abbott agenda would be the wisest course but there is an election to win and if Malcolm did that, the far-right faction would start agitating against him - yes even in the middle of an campaign (if you are wondering why Abbott and his supporters can’t concede defeat, do not underestimate the extent to which they  see themselves as on a crusade to save humanity from “evils” of socially progressive policy).  So there’s a truce which requires the factions (no they aren't just a Labor Party thing) to play nice and has Turnbull hedging his bets on a number of policy issues such as same sex marriage and climate change.  Sort of a “do as we say or we’ll lose you the election”.  Come to think of it, the terms of the truce are a bit one-sided.  Voters know Turnbull is a progressive on many issues so seeing him appease the far-right is not playing well with voters.  

So what of the opposition? Bill Shorten has, um, taken his time growing into the job of alternative Prime Minister.  He’s been touted as a future PM since his days as a union leader with the Australian Workers’ Union.  He entered Parliament in 2007 and Kevin Rudd made him Parliamentary Secretary for Disability Services.  What he found shocked him so much that he started developing what is now known as the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS).  This is the good side of him.  The bad side of him was that he was one of the boneheads who decided to depose Kevin Rudd as PM***.  The other bad side to him is that he seems quite awkward and sometimes struggles to speak in coherent sentences.  And then there are what Shaun Micallef dubbed Shorten’s ‘zingers’.  There is evidence that he can and will develop sound policies which also have the benefit of being in line with what voters are thinking eg.  Housing affordability/negative gearing, defending penalty rates and the Royal Commission into banks.  He has also united the Labor Party after the Rudd/Gillard bloodletting years but also faces divisions over asylum seeker policy.  But that is a separate post.

Labor‘s other problem is that their last term - the Rudd/Gillard/Rudd years - might still be a bit fresh in people’s memories  They may be nervous about the ideologues in the Coalition but then they’ll remember the open warfare of the previous Labor government and wonder what the hell were they thinking (as I often do) and wonder why Bill Shorten was in the thick of it.  Or maybe he’s learnt some lessons from 2010. He says he has.  I guess he won’t be interested in leading a coup against himself.  

So what are the polls suggesting?  When Malcolm Turnbull became Prime Minister, there was an initial spike of support (or was it relief? Anyone would have seemed an improvement on Abbott) and many would have thought he would romp it in.  But since Turnbull took over, with all the bet-hedging, the gloss has worn off quickly.  So the polls have narrowed and they are sitting at 50-50 TPP.  Some even have Labor ahead 51-49%.  This does give Labor hope of a come from behind win but their big hurdle is its primary vote which some polls have at around 38% but other polls have as low as 33%.  If their primary vote in the week before election day is not in the high thirties at least, they can’t win. But nothing is a foregone conclusion - there's a dose-y feel to this campaign so voters have so far been viewing all as a big yawn (but with pre-poll voting starting this week, we are getting to the pointy end when the parties will start with the bells and whistles) and Labor has just wheeled out Hawkie with an ad about the future of Medicare.  Australians like Medicare; the Liberal Party do not.  It is an issue on which the Liberal Party are not just vulnerable to attack but completely out-of-step with most of the country.

The swing required to change government is 4.5% across the country.  This is not a massive margin and I suspect the Liberal Party apparatchiks would probably sleep easier if the margin was double that.  This is an election which will be won or lost during the final weeks of the long, long campaign.  If Turnbull slips up a few times, or Abbott pokes his head up and says “remember me?”, we might be getting our sixth Prime Minister since 2007.  But a zinger too many from Bill Shorten, or policy fumbles (more specifically economic policy fumbles) and the Coalition will be returned.  My guess is that there’ll be a sizeable swing against the Coalition and Labor may even win the popular vote 51-49% but the swing will not be uniform and the Coalition will hang on in enough seats to form a majority.

And if all my prognosticating isn't interesting enough do not despair - The Chaser have entered the campaign.

*  most people think the last one was in 1975, after the Dismissal of the Whitlam government.  It was a double dissolution BUT the reason it sticks in people’s mind is that it is the only one that resulted in a joint sitting of both the house of reps and the senate.  Others were in 1914, 1951, 1974, 1975, 1983 and 1987.  You can look it up on the ever-helpful Wikipedia.  I should donate something to them.  

** There is facility within the current industrial relations law through enterprise agreements negotiated with staff to change penalty rates. 

*** I should point out that I don’t have a lot of time for Kevin Rudd - Julia Gillard was a much better PM - but deposing him a few months out from the election was one of the worst political own-goals I’ve seen.   Julia Gillard’s time as PM will be reviewed eventually and found to be much better than the headlines suggest; Rudd‘s prime ministership had a couple of substantial moments and many more insubstantial moments but mainly it had Rudd‘s ego).