Oz Politics Blog

I have just finished Annabel Crabb’s Losing it: The inside story of the Labor Party in Opposition. This is the third book this year to cover similar territory. First there was Bernard Lagan’s Loner, and who could forget The Latham Diaries.

What can I say? It was well written. Crabb has a great turn of phrase. It was more analytical than Lagan. But while it was a good read, it was not a great read. To be fair, for me at least, it suffered from being the third to til the same soil. Perhaps it was as Crabb predicted,

Books about parties in opposition have none of the flash and swagger of books about parties in government; this is acknowledged, and the author offers her apologies accordingly. Books about governments are marvels of mechanism: how Decision A was made thanks to a deal between ministers B and C; how Tycoon D met secretly with the prime minister to orchestrate the thwarting of Tycoon E, staring down the opposition of ministers F and G. Books about oppositions instead have as their meat and bread a battleground much more personal, often more bloody, and from which a purpose is invariably harder to divine. [p.2]

Crabb attributed much of Latham’s failure at the election to his many personal failings. In terms of the personal failings, I found this Liberal Party research following the ‘lay off my family’ media conference hit the nail on the head.

Liberal Party internal research on attitudes to their new young adversary; however, conducted after Latham’s explosive press conference, detected a subterranean trend of uncertainty about him. While focus group participants reported that they thought Latham was ‘interesting’ and ‘fresh’ and ‘challenging’, there were other, darker appraisals.

Some thought he was ‘embarrassing, crude and crass’ or ‘unpredictable and erratic’. The research also found voters who believed Latham was ‘hypocritical (he dishes it out, but can’t take it)’, ‘weak (he cries)’, and ‘dangerous (he mistreated his first wife)’. There’s something wrong with his personality,’ concluded one contributor in the anonymous survey group.

The analysis of this research, submitted to the Liberal Party as the federal election loomed close, had an encouraging message for the Government despite Mark Latham’s continuing popularity: ‘Labor is singing a tune of better health and education outcomes, fairer tax cuts, and more opportunities for people. It all sounds good to these voters, but they worry about the dark side of Mark Latham’s personality, and the dark side of Labor which is their proven inability to manage the nation’s finances. [p.226]

One of Crabb’s theses is that Labor has not been competitive at recent elections in part because it is out of touch with the electorate. Crabb identified two sources of disconnect. First, the Coalition has outclassed Labor on qualitative polling. Second, Labor’s union-based, factional arrangements produced practitioners that respond the party’s erosion of external influence nationally “by clinging to the power they wield internally… Latham’s complaint that more than a third of his Caucus considered themselves to be factional ‘powerbrokers’ is perfectly justified.” [p.281].

Perhaps as a result of this perceived weakness, Labor has fallen into the dangerous habit of fighting each [election] campaign roughly as if it were the last one. It’s a generalisation, but not an unfair one; the 2001 campaign was planned on the basis that Australians hated and would continue to hate the GST, for example, which had nearly lost the 1998 election for the Government. In the 2004 campaign, meanwhile, Latham did a good job of neutralising the national security issue which had proved so dominant in 2001, but failed to judge the extent to which the real battleground would be the economy. [pp.282-283]

Like I said, it’s a good read but not a great read — three and a half stars.

The headline result: the two-party preferred vote favours Labor 50.5 to 49.5 per cent.

According to Morgan, primary support for the Coalition was 42 per cent, and for Labor it was 38.5 per cent. Among the minor parties, support for the Greens was 9 per cent, Australian Democrats 2.5 per cent, Family First 2 per cent, One Nation 1.5 per cent and other parties and independent candidates 4.5 per cent.

Just look at those graphs. There is no way that public opinion has been moving in this erratic manner over recent weeks that Morgan predicts.

One of things I enjoy is Morgan’s studied seriousness when it comes to explaining each fortnight’s chart.

ALP support is up since publicity surrounding the Latham Diaries has subsided. The electorates concern has now shifted to high petrol prices and worries about the Australian economy.

I am a little more cautious. I happen to think that outside of truly dramatic events (and not just the melodrama in someone’s diaries), actual week-to-week movement in the population voting intentions is limited. My take is that underneath the stochastic madness Morgan appears to have found a creeping trend from Labor to the Coalition over the last 6 weeks, but it is a little difficult to tell at the moment.

What an interesting 24 hours. According to Michelle Grattan and Misha Schubert (also here), no sooner than voluntary voting had been proposed, the Prime Minister ruled it out.

“We are not considering it, we will not be proposing it for the next election,”

A clarification or two later, it appears that advocates for voluntary voting within the Liberal Party have the license to continue arguing their case within the party room. If they get lucky (which seems unlikely in the face of moderate Liberal and National opposition) it could become party policy after the next election.

From the SMH, the ABC, the Oz and the Courier Mailthe we learn that while voluntary voting is out, other reforms look like going ahead,

• optional full preferential, above-the-line voting for the Senate and (implicitly) primary vote thresholds before candidates or parties can be elected
• all prisoners serving a full-time custodial sentence would be struck off the electoral roll (currently prisoners serving terms under three years are not struck off)
• stronger identity requirements for people enrolling to vote and casting their ballot on polling day
• the electoral roll would close the moment an election is called (not seven days later as it does currently)
• the campaign finance threshold for anonymous donations to political parties would be raised from $1500 to $10,000
• the donation amount that could be claimed as a tax deduction would be increased
• financial disclosure rules for unions and non-government groups would be tightened
• a referendum on flexible four year parliamentary terms would be explored further
• electronic voting would be tested

Abetz’s opinion piece on Senate voting was in yesterday’s Australian.

Update: The full text of Abetz’s speech — Electoral reform: making our democracy airer for all — is now available.

In today’s Oz it was reported that the Special Minister of State, Eric Abetz, will tonight announce changes to Australia’s electoral laws.

According to the Oz, the changes are:

• Above the line preferential party voting for the Senate
• Photo identification and proof of address to get on to the Electoral Roll
• (Possibly) four year terms for the House of Representatives
• Voluntary voting

In respect of the last point, the Oz reported, “Nationals Senate leader Ron Boswell said his party would oppose voluntary voting”.

Compulsory voting was first introduced into Australia at the Queensland state elections in 1915. It was introduced at the Federal level in 1924. Then Tasmanian and Nationalist Party Senator Herbert Payne introduced it into Parliament as a private members bill. At the time, the bill had bipartisan support. It passed the House of Representatives in less than one hour, and no divisions were called in either house. Implicitly, the private members bill had the support of the then governing Nationalist-Country Coalition, the forerunner of today’s Liberal-National Coalition. Compulsory voting (or more accurately compulsory attendance at elections) has been a feature of all Federal elections since 14 November 1925.

The big winners from compulsory voting have been the independents and minor parties. Under compulsory voting they attract protest votes from those who would otherwise sit out an election. They also score the preferences of the major parties, as the major parties tend to preference each other last. In terms of the major parties, the winners are more difficult to assess. While it is contested, more commentators than not think that Labor and the Nationals have been the beneficiaries to date, as both parties have sizable constituencies who might be less likely to vote if it were not compulsory.

Turing to that other compulsory, I am interested to see whether the government will seek to remove compulsory preferential voting. As a teenager in the 1970s, I remember being regaled by an (very left-of-centre) aunt who was outranged that preferential voting meant the right side of politics got their vote to count twice, while the Labor side only got their vote to count once. How things have changed with the rise of first the Australian Democrats and then the Greens. My guess is that today a move to optional preferential voting would do more harm to Labor than the Coalition.

A short history of the recent changes to electoral laws is here.

Update: Antony Green has a fantastic piece on voluntary voting published at Crikey. Also at Crikey, Christian Kerr writes on four year terms.

While Latham’s book might be selling like hot cakes, it has had minimal impact on the betting market. Two years out from the next election, the punters think it ho hum.

• IASBet’s odds are unchanged since 1 September 2005. For a Coalition win, IASBet would pay $1.67 and for a Labor win it would pay $2.15. The implied probability of a Coalition win at the next election is 56 per cent.
• At Centrebet, Labor has drifted from $2.20 to $2.50. The Coalition has shortened from $1.60 to $1.50. At $1.50, the implied probability of a Coalition win at the next election is 62.5 per cent.

There is one other factor that might explain the minimal impact of Latham’s Diaries. The hot gossip at Canberra dinner parties is that Howard plans to retire in February 2006.

The usual graphs are here.