Editor's note: If this is to be funny to you in any way, shape or form, it should be pointed out that the villain of the movie 'Lethal Weapon 2' is also named Mr Rudd, just like our former PM. It should also be pointed out that I watched 'Lethal Weapon 2' the other evening, after much consumption of beer and vodka had taken place. Did you need to know that in order to find what follows funny? Well, not really, but at least you know why I find it funny...
THE ABRIDGED CAREER OF KEVIN RUDD
As Told by 'Lethal Weapon 2'
Kevin Rudd started his political career in the Department of Foreign Affairs. There were lots of reasons why he chose this area to work in; his love of travel, his proficiency with Mandarin, the fact that he had no friends in Australia. But, above all, he loved having:
He thrived and quickly took control of the Labor Party, although he would endure an ongoing rivalry with another rising start, Julia Gillard. His attempts to keep her under wraps and the focus on himself were heavy handed at times:
In 2007 he lead the ALP out of the wilderness, with a thumping victory over John Howard's Liberal Party in the Federal Election. In his election night speech he paid out on Howard and everyone who had knocked him over the years:
After the election, he moved into The Lodge and had it refurbished to suit his tastes:
Rudd had some success early in his Prime Ministership; ratifying Koyoto and apologising to Australia's indigenous stolen generations. He would endure controversy as well. His close association with China would cause the Americans to regard him with suspicion. As he confided in Gillard:
He would also be faced with guiding Australia through the Global Financial crisis of 2008-09. Although the Rudd Government's policies were largely regarded as a success and Australia avoided the worst effects of the global downturn, Rudd's deficit spending would damage the budget bottom line. Rudd owned up to this publicly, admitting,
These and other policies would eventually cause Kevin Rudd a dramatic fall in the polls. As his popularity plunged throughout 2010, the faceless men of the Labor Party backroom decided to act:
They would replace Rudd with Gillard. Although shattered and surprised by this turn of events, Rudd would acknowledge:
Gillard was not entirely without sympathy for the man she replaced, however, and after winning one of the narrowest elections in Australia's history, she would return Kevin Rudd to her front bench. Once again, he would be able to hold his head up and declare to the world:
Really, it had everything; sex, violence, hit tunes... well, maybe it didn't have those things, but this isn't America. Even so, we had elections, changes of Government, a deposed Prime Minister, a deposed Prime Minister resurfacing as foreign minister, our first female PM, scandals, angry debate, boat people, cowboy hats and more budgie smugglers than anyone would've thought possible:
And so I wonder why, thinking back over the year that was, that I'm not filled with a sense of excitement, but mostly with a sense of disappointment... disillusionment... even self loathing. It almost reminds me of the time I went to see a Russ Meyer film at ACMI here in Melbourne; yeah it was great fun and I cackled like a goon at the camp hilarity of it all, but afterwards I felt like I needed a wash or, at least, two tickets to a Noel Coward play with some Proust to read afterward (this didn't stop me going and seeing another Russ Meyer film the following week, of course).
For rarely, if ever, have we had a year where there was so much political activity, so much political noise (to call it 'sound and fury' would be to imbue it with undeserved lofty qualities), that cost so much money (tax payers money for the most part), that lead to so little in the way of identifiable outcomes that would be of benefit to anyone.
The major political event of the year was, of course, the Federal election.
And you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who didn't get a bit of a jolt out of that one. I mean, it was so action packed that even people with no interest in politics - i.e. most people - were forced to pay attention as the leaks, backstabbing and vitriol mounted up. And that was just members of the ALP turning on each other! To say nothing of the result, which saw the two major parties effectively shadow box each other into a coma, leaving the outcome to be decided by a handful of Parliamentary independents in the House of Representatives; the nutjob in the hat, the crusty old timer, the serial candidate trying his luck in Hobart and the boyishly enthusiastic windbag who no one seemed to like very much.
To understand the election outcome it is instructive to look at the opposite trajectories of two of the major players in it; Kevin Rudd and Tony Abbott. The Ruddbot started the year miles ahead in the polls and appeared certain to stroll into a second term whenever he decided to call the election. But a strange kind of paralysis seemed to overcome his programming as the year progressed and he began to malfunction so badly that his party decided to disconnect him and destroy his CPU before he could even get back to the polls, making him the first Prime Minister to be kyboshed before facing re-election. This stands in stark contrast to the trajectory of the Opposition Leader, Tony 'Action Man' Abbott, who started the year as a Speedo wearing national joke, but came so close to becoming Prime Minister that many of my facebook friends posted status updates about leaving the country. Abbott lost the election but somehow seemed to convey the impression that he'd actually won it, or, that he'd rather be a respectable Opposition leader than Prime Minister of a coalition of misfits and weirdos.
This left the person who actually won the election, Julia 'Wavy Hands' Gillard, trailing badly behind Abbott and Rudd, in both interest and nickname stakes. To be as fair as possible to Gillard, she certainly tried hard once Labor's backroom head kickers had installed her in place of Rudd. But her efforts on the campaign trail were seriously handicapped by a hatful of factors, chief among them the fact that Labor's backroom headkickers had installed her in place of Rudd. It's quite hard to go to the electorate pledging yourself as trustworthy and safe when you've just conspired to overthrow your boss after a few bad polls.
Gillard also handicapped herself with a largely policy free election platform. I mean, what was she pledging again? Her vision for Australia? An unfunded promise to build a rail line in Western Sydney and an unbuildable refugee processing centre in East Timor. And something about broadband internet, coming to a suburb near you in 2035. Not that she was alone in the policy-lite stakes, as the Action Man took up the do-nothing-shout-loudly style of politics with gusto. He really seemed to enjoy it too, rushing around the country like the Loony Tunes devil in rolled up shirtsleeves, only pausing to yell 'Stop the Boats!' at any country fair, primary school, CWA meeting, small business, gas station, residence, warehouse, farmhouse, henhouse, outhouse and doghouse that would have him:
The Action Man was rewarded for his shrill, one note, intelligence insulting campaign with truckloads of votes from all corners of the country, proving that people in the suburbs are just as easy to convince that darkies are about to invade the country and drive up electricity prices as they were when John Howard was in charge. Sadly, you can bet we'll hear more about this issue, in the same overblown fashion, in 2011.
The Federal election was also good for at least one minor party, with the Greens obtaining their first lower house seat won at a general election, when they took Melbourne from the Labor Party (Michael Organ won the Federal seat of Cunningham at a by election in 2002, only to lose it back to Labor at the 2004 poll). There were a variety of factors behind this result, chief among them the retirement of popular Labor sitting member Lindsay Tanner and the decision of the Liberals to preference the Greens ahead of Labor. But it also shouldn't be forgotten that the Greens selected a well known local candidate - Melbourne based lawyer Adam Bandt - and had him run on a progressive program choc full of fresh ideas. Hopefully Labor and Liberal alike will take notice of these radical initiatives.
2010 also brought a State election to Victoria, with an even more surprising outcome than that of the federal poll.
Boosted by landslide victories in 2002 and 2006, the John Brumby lead Labor Government appeared to have an impossibly safe and intractable buffer to prevent them from losing at the November poll. That they managed to do so, coughing up a dozen seats and suffering a swing against of above 6% state wide, is more a tribute to some bizarrely inept campaigning and a stubborn refusal to address any of Victoria's problems than anything that Opposition leader 'Big Ted' Baillieu and the Liberal Party came up with.
Based on the Labor campaign, you'd have thought that the chief priorities of the outgoing Government were making sure everyone knew that Brumby sheared sheep occasionally in his spare time:
That, and the fact that he wanted to spend about a squillion dollars forcing every Year 9 student in the state to go to some kind of combination karate/army fantasy camp. And all while the demountable classrooms at the states public schools remained unairconditioned and slowly fell apart, and the trains running to the schools and everywhere else regularly broke down on hot days while the Transport Minister expressed amazement that it was hot in summer time. I mean, again? Geez, that seems to happen every year.
Coming to the rescue of Victorians, then, was Big Ted, with his well documented plan to fix the state's problems by... doing things exactly the same. Which is certainly a radical idea, if not very inspiring. Well, 'doing things exactly the same' may not be exactly correct. Victoria's new government will buy a massive 8 - 8!!!!!!!!! - new trains over the next four years, so there'll be a handful more to break down on hot days. And they're going to give us a new state slogan too, to replace the old one that has been the bane of everyone's life for sooo long. What was it again? The old slogan? 'Victoria: Something something.' Man, am I ever tired of that thing. It's good to see that Big Ted has got his priorities straight.
2010 was also a rare year, in that an Australian managed to make a mark on the world political stage. We're talking, of course, about 'WikiLeaks' founder Julian Assange, who caused such a stir worldwide and was so widely discussed that he probably should've been 'Time' magazine's 'Person of the Tear.' I mean, Mark Zuckerberg? They know that he founded facebook about 8 years ago, right? All that happened to Zuck this year was that a film got made about him.
Anyways, Assange's website published thousands of secret diplomatic cables that had been leaked to it, managing to embarrass pretty much everyone with any association to politics in the process. He also found himself threatened, broke, jailed and facing sexual assault charges and so had pretty effortlessly acquired all the trappings of a major modern celebrity. We'll know that the transformation is complete if he releases his own line of underwear this year, or starts talking about his 'brand.'
And so 2010 came to an end, with neither a bang nor a whimper, but a kind of unsettled feeling, a bit like indigestion. And for all the disappointment and disillusionment and self loathing that comes from following the political debate in this country (and I smashed things several times listening to our leaders speak), there's no doubt that I'll do it all over again this year. After all, I need something to fill the gaps in the week and year when there's no footy or cricket on.
During negotiations with minor party and independent parliamentarians over the last two weeks on who would form a minority government, the Opposition leader pledged a 'kinder, gentler polity,' if they supported him as Prime Minister.
Then, in the aftermath of yesterdays decision by the final pair of uncommitted country independents - Rob Oakeshott and Tony Windsor - to back Julia Gillard instead, handing her the top job, Abbott promised to hold the new government 'ferociously' to account and to 'vigorously' scrutinise all Government policy and to 'smash the fuck out of any Government members who step out of line or look at me funny.'
Well, maybe not that last one, but you get the idea.
Abbott, more than a little disappointed he's not going to be PM, has cancelled all bets now that the election has finally limped to an exhaustive conclusion. You'll note that he didn't say he'd be nice if he didn't get to sit in the Prime Minister's office.
Which probably suits the man and his temperament. Nice was never his strong suit and holding his breath these last few months and not trying to yell and bash things has probably worn him out a bit. Now that the election is over and he doesn't have to try and convince any swinging voters in marginal seats to vote for him - at least for a little while - he can exhale and let the mongrel back out again.
And he's not alone. Members of the Liberal Party were flailing around today, desperately trying to get onto some sort of media conveyance - print, radio, television, online, whatever - so they could let fly at our new Government and it's independent backers.
Liberal Senator George 'The Hitman' Brandis: 'This government has as much legitimacy as the Pakistani cricket team.'
Nationals Senator Ron 'Begbie' Boswell: 'This is payback from Tony Windsor on the National Party.'
And Manager of Opposition Business Christopher 'The Hammer' Pyne: 'This government is like putting a mongoose and a cobra together.'
And while I'm not sure exactly what The Hammer is getting at with his comment, you can bet that he doesn't approve of the way things played out.
So what does this mean for our incoming Government? The one that will be mostly made up of shell shocked Labor MPs and backed, sort of, by an excitable Green (Adam Brandt), a taciturn former Army officer (Andrew Wilkie) and the aforementioned country independents? Well, it probably means that it's unlikely that it'll be a Government that'll 'let the sunshine in' (as Gillard said it would be yesterday, trying her best to sound optimistic at a difficult time). Robb Oakeshott's desire for 'consensus politics' is also about as likely as Bob 'The Mad' Katter agreeing to appear on a Mardi Gras parade float.
Far more likely is that this will be a government on the run, trying to appease it's disparate supporters in the House of Representatives - who span the whole political spectrum, from left to right - while trying to come up with something the the balance of power Greens in the Senate will also find acceptable. And all this while the Coalition will fight tooth and nail on all fronts to oppose every bit of legislation the new Government puts forward, knowing that they only need to shake one vote free to stop any policy in its tracks. And also knowing that if this were to happen a few times, the Government would grind to a halt and Coalition calls for a fresh election - which they are confident they would win - may well be overwhelming.
There is a precedent for this type of thing.
In 1975, the Whitlam Labor government held control of the Senate by a single vote. The death of one Labor Senator, and his subsequent replacement by a National Party representative (quite a story in itself), cost Labor control of the Senate and set off a chain reaction of events that lead to the Liberals Malcolm Fraser being installed as Prime Minister. Fresh elections were subsequently called to resolve the situation. Much has been written about this incident, the great 'Constitutional Crisis' of 1975, and much of what has been written about it focuses on the injustices heaped onto Gough Whitlam and Labor. What is usually less focused on is that when fresh, deadlock breaking elections were held, the Liberal Party gave Labor such a trouncing it took them nearly a decade to recover.
The problems for Labor then, are many.
They have to try and look confident and in control at a time when their confidence has been knocked by a poor election result and they have, literally, lost control of Parliament. They have to try and put forward bold, definitive policies on climate change, taxation and asylum seekers at a time when their new, independent, supporters do not agree what, if anything, needs to be done about any of these things. They have to try and prevent all their factional heavyweights and apparatchiks from tearing into each other and blaming one another for their appalling electoral outcome at a time when they show no interest in doing anything else. And, and perhaps most importantly, they have to find a way to get Robb Oakeshott into the ministry that they've promised him while keeping him away from any microphones or press, lest he launch into another endless speech like he did when he announced his vote yesterday.
Really, that last one is important. This bloke'll be assassinated and we'll be back to the polls again if he thinks he can drone away endlessly about the nobility of country children and the wonders of the democratic process whenever he feels like it (I wanted to jam corks in my ears and smash my radio after about five minutes).
Which is to say, he can do exactly that, drone on endlessly or whatever else take his fancy. All the independents can. Whatever may happen in the life of this government, for now Oakeshott et al are king makers, and as Mel Brooks will tell you:
Like an excitable parent who doesn't take the Christmas decorations down until Australia Day, one of my neighbours just cannot seem to let the election go:
I mean, I know the final result is still unclear, but the campaigning part of the whole thing is over and done with, right? The signs and stuff can't help anymore, right? None of the candidates are still actually trying to get our vote... right?
Well right.
But only in the sense that our primary political leaders are no longer trying to get our vote. As in the humble punters that make up the bulk of the electorate in this country. Nope, we've had our go and the major parties are well and truly done with us. And since these same major parties went out of their way to ensure there were no real differences between them during the election campaign, and so no meaningful choice, we didn't end up choosing either of them outright.
Final power, then, now rests in the hands of a disparate group of independents and minor party parliamentarians, and the wooing of their vote is very much still in full swing. A second election campaign, of sorts.
And both major party's seem much more comfortable with this. This is politickin' as both Labor and Liberal prefer it, in private suites of offices away from the prying eyes of the public and the media. Where deals can be cut and votes bartered over coffee and sandwiches and where the talk is pragmatic and no one has to pretend to be in favour of reducing public debt while simultaneously announcing $42 billion worth of spending, as the Liberal Party did, or to pretend to be strongly in favour of reducing carbon emissions while simultaneously announcing a ludicrously complicated citizens assembly that would have made it impossible to reduce anything except the application of common sense, as Labor had done.
Those kind of nonsensical, doublethink ideas have gone out the window now we're into 'Election Campaign 2: Meet The Independents.' Both Gillard and Abbott are doing their best to stick to facts and reality and keep the bullshit to a minimum at the moment. And both are looking pained doing it, like people who learned how to play the piano when they were kids but haven't played for years and are now trying to recall a phrase or two. But this - hard facts and no hyperbole - is what the independents want and so this is what our leaders are trying to give them, at least in public.
And so this current dance between Labor, Liberal and the Independents is simultaneously like an election campaign as we know them... and yet not like one.
For example, Julia Gillard gave a speech to the 'National Press Club' last week, as she did during the real election campaign, in which she outlined her vision for Australia... a vision which suddenly included things like reform of Parliament and more money for neglected regions of Australia and more money for mental health treatment and disability insurance. Things, policies, with a bit of vision about them and so entirely missing from her actual election campaign, the one that was supposedly run for our benefit. And Tony Abbott this week submitted all of his election policies to Treasury for costing, exactly as the 'Charter of Budgetary Honesty' requires him to do during an election campaign... except he didn't do this during the actual election campaign, the one supposedly run for our benefit, claiming at the time that Treasury was full of liars and communists and should be the subject of a Federal Police investigation.
That Federal Police investigation is now forgotten about, and anyone that asks Mr Abbott about it in public will get a sickly grin before he changes the subject (in private they'd probably get a punch in the face, at least). Likewise anyone that asks Ms Gillard about her sudden conversion to Parliamentary reform, a broken Labor election promise from 2007, will get a short reply about the wonders of democracy and her personal commitment to reform. And then both of them would probably dash, sprint, to the nearest phone to call Rob Oakeshott or Bob Katter and ask them if they'd seen the press conference and what did they think and how was everything going anyway? Bigger office? Maybe you could use a bigger office. We could arrange a bigger office if you feel you need one. Now might be the time. Anything you like, you've got my number.
There can be no doubt that these are unusual times in Australian politics (Don Bradman and Adolf Hitler were both still captaining their respective countries last time we had a hung parliament) and this is causing some unusual side effects. Quite apart from the major party leaders behaving like rational adults with the best interests of the public at heart, some good ideas are being batted around about what to do with this country of ours. Some bad ideas are being batted around too, but the key word in both of those sentences is 'ideas' (and the 'batted around' part is important too):
Bob Katter wants a return to protectionism and the tariff wall, Rob Oakeshott a national unity government, Tony Windsor super fast broadband, Adam Bandt and the Greens a conscience vote on gay marriage, Tony Crook a sackfull of money for his mob in the bush and Andrew Wilkie a new hospital for Hobart (I guess not everyone's caught up in the big picturedness of the moment).
Now you could fairly quickly make a list of pros and cons for all of those proposals and stir up a pretty lively debate about any of them. And if you did that, you'd have the undying gratitude of anyone in Australia with an interest in politics who's just suffered through 5 weeks of 'Moving Forward' and 'Stop the Boats!' (A debate! With ideas and and differing points of view and everything!).
The other thing you can fairly quickly deduce from looking at that grab bag of wish list items is that it's no surprise we don't have a government yet. The fate deciding independents have little in common other than the phrase 'Independant Member for' in front of their parliamentary title. Little wonder then, that Tony and Julia look not only like people who have forgotten how to play the piano, but like medieval princes who have forgotten how to play the piano and who are also watching their castle being sacked by Visigoths. Business as usual has been suspended and change is in the air. Which has got to be good for the rest of us.
The Labor Party, which has already signed agreements with the Greens and Andrew Wilkie for limited support, appear best placed at this time to stagger over the line. The Coalition's mathematical problems with how they've funded their policies, exposed at long last by Treasury scrutiny, has undoubtedly hurt them. Treasury reporting a short fall of $7 - 11 billion dollars in the funding of a candidate that had sloganised constantly about 'ending debt' and 'stopping the waste' in Government spending could only ever be bad. Although Abbott did his best to heroically wave these sums aside as unimportant, and nothing more than 'a difference of opinion.'
Oakeshott, Katter and Windsor have indicated they should make up their mind this week, and maybe as early as tomorrow (Tuesday). The established thinking is that they will find enough common ground with each other and one of the major parties to install a minority government of some sort and end this current limbo period.
If they cannot, and it's probably unlikely but not impossible, we could all be back to the polls to have another go. Perhaps my neighbour, the one with the election signs still in the front yard, knows something the rest of us don't.
For the first time since 1940, Australians woke the day after polling day to find that they had no government.
Which was probably a relief to lots of them. A goodly number wouldn't vote unless they were forced to by our constitution, and an even larger number try and have as little to do with politics and politicians as possible. Three quarters of a million of the electorate voted informally, and about the same number lodged a 'donkey vote,' numbering the boxes in sequential order from the top of the page to the bottom, without and consideration of who they were actually voting for. So a day after polling day newspaper headline that read:
Would disappoint surprisingly few.
But, of course, this is not the case. We still have a government and it's the same government that we had before Saturday's inconclusive poll.
As neither major party was able to win 76 seats in the House of Representatives, to garner a majority in their own right, Australian politics has entered a kind of limbo state. The Labor Party will remain in office, with Julia Gillard as Prime Minister, at least for the next week or so while things sort themselves out. And by 'sort themselves out' I mean while the two major parties offer the tie breaking Parliamentary independents their own ministries, choice of parliamentary jobs, dump trucks full of cash for their electorates, flat screen TV's, iPhone 4's and anything else that might tickle their fancy in order to get their vote.
A minority government, which is what the eventual winner of this combined lottery/raffle will be, is a tough gig, but in comparison to not getting a gig at all, it's the only gig worth gigging.
In the mean time, while this barter between Labor, Liberal and the Independents continues, the two leaders both have to try and keep their party's well behaved and united. Which will be no mean feat and will require different skills from both Gillard and Abbott.
The Labor Party has emerged from the election blinking and disorientated, like someone who's just been in a plane crash and is amazed to find that they've somehow survived... And who then grabs a microphone off one of the TV news crews reporting the crash and starts slagging off the entire country on National TV. Really, the National ALP leadership doesn't seem to know whether to be happy, sad, puzzled, disappointed, angry, patient or philosophical. It's been a dizzying two months for them, in which they've dumped a first term Prime Minister, installed the country's first female PM in his stead, soared in the polls, crashed in the polls and then fought a thoroughly inept election campaign that ended in a deadlock. You have to pity Julia Gillard having to try and present this lot as a united team, 'ready to govern.'
The Liberal Party, on the other hand, have come out of the election like someone who's just seen their numbers come up on Powerball... and then realised that they forgot to put their ticket in. Somehow, they've managed to simultaneously win and lose the election, which is undoubtedly bothering them all very badly. They comfortably beat the Labor Party on primary vote figures - 44% to 38% - and won a host of seats and really, if you'd told them that that would be the outcome 12 months ago they would have laughed in your face and then probably installed you as leader. Nevertheless, despite these successes, their relentlessly negative, policy free election campaign was not enough to win the count outright. The biggest challenge for them then, is going to be trying not to sound like they did win the campaign outright and that they deserve to be installed in government without any debate. A tough ask for someone like Tony Abbott, who has 'Born to Rule' tattooed on his shoulder.
And so, for different reasons and from different starting points, both major parties find themselves in a similar position, one that neither one would want to be in. They're both of them stuck trying to woo a handful of independents from the cross-benches that they've both aggressively ignored these past ten years or so. I imagine both leaders are practicing their pitch right now:
'You know how I've never returned your phone calls or agreed to any meetings or allowed you to introduce any legislation into Parliament... well, let me just say, it was all a big misunderstanding! Are you comfortable? Would you like some water? You can have it with a twist of lime if you like. Very refreshing! Well let me know. We can always get you a lime.'
The independents themselves are a mixed bunch. Three of them - Bob Katter, Rob Oakeshott and Tony Windsor - represent former safe National seats (Katter and Windsor are former members of the National Party) and so are considered more likely to side with the coalition. Although, The Man in the Hat, Bob 'The Mad' Katter:
Had this to say about the Howard Goverment:
If they were good for the bush, then I'm a Martian astronaut.'
Which paints an interesting mental picture, as well as indicating no particular love for the conservative side of politics. The other two independents are newly elected Greens member for Melbourne Adam Bandt and former Greens Candidate and army intelligence whistle blower Andrew Wilkie, who are both on or thought to be on the left side of politics.
A diverse group, all of them playing their cards fairly close to their chest, as smart people on the make are wont to do.
And so the limbo period looks set to continue for some time longer. There'll be a lot of meetings and talks and discussions and canvassing of opinion, and probably no definite results for at least a week, and maybe three or four. There will be much debate and speculation and almost nothing will be certain until the very end.
One thing we can be sure of, though, is that the two major party leaders would much rather be watching John Sayles' 'Limbo':
Then living through their current limbo experience.
Editors Note: The following was written on the Friday before the election, the day before polling day. It was meant to be posted that day... or at least the next day, before the polls closed... or at least that evening, just shortly after the polls closed but - crucially - before I went to an election night party to get blind stinking drunk. Of course none of these things happened which is why I'm posting it now. Your correspondent saved it on a different computer on the Friday before polling day and couldn't access the fucking thing across the weekend. This is why your correspondent should be never be charged with doing anything important. Nor anything unimportant for that matter. In fact, your correspondent should probably spend more time in bed reading and leave the doing of things to others. My final thoughts then, from a sort of time warp, before the votes were cast...
Australian elections aren’t generally super close. They’re not generally landslides either, in either direction. When they are landlsides, there’s normally an overwhelming reason for it: Labor’s Paul Keating got buried in the ‘waiting with baseball bats’ election in 1996 when everyone in the country was sick to death of him and the Libs Malcolm Faser got wiped out in 1983 because he was stupid enough to put the economy in the hands of a young up and comer named John Howard, who did such a bad job that Fraser’s career came to an end.
But we’re a conservative bunch in this country.
The majority of people will vote the same way all their lives, never changing from whatever major party they support regardless of changes in leadership or policy. A handful, about a quarter of the electorate, of swinging voters who do actually change the way they vote from time to time decide elections in Australia. And this group - mostly immigrants, students, intellectuals and nutters - take some convincing.
Hence the fact that we’ve only changed Government three times in the last thirty years; 1983 (Hawke over Fraser), 1996 (Howard over Keating) and 2007 (that bloke from Queensland with the glasses whose name escapes me over Howard). That two of these elections are mentioned in the first paragraph about landslides tells you two things:
1) The limited amount of research I do for these entries leads me to reuse a lot of my material,
And
2) When we do decide to change Government there’s normally widespread community sentiment that the incumbant mob are not up to the task and need to be turfed out on their ear.
Which brings us to our current election, Julia v Tony.
Having read and watched and listened to a simply ridiculous amount of election coverage, and absorbed so many polls in the last few weeks that I’m inclined to talk about any topic at the moment in terms of numbers (‘What movie would I like to see tonight? 41% of me says ‘Incepetion,’ 39% says ‘Scott Pilgrim,’ 14% says ‘Me and Orson Welles’ with 6% Undecided’), I get the feeling that the Australian public at large is not angry enough with Julia and that Queenlsand bloke with glasses to aggressively turf them out. Nor are they sufficiently enamoured with Tony to get right behind him and sweep him into The Lodge so that he can yell ‘Stop the Boats!’ at them for three years.
The Labor Party has not been bad enough, nor the Liberals good enough, for this election to move into the decisive result category. Which leaves us where, exactly?
The most likley result tomorrow is that Julia Gillard and Labor will be returned with a reduced majority, losing roughly a dozen seats in Queensland and NSW, and offsetting those by nabbing one or two in Victoria and South Australia, with the staus quo in place in Tasmania and West Australia. Not a very good result for a first term Government, but not disastrous enough for them to lose office.
A net gain of 17 seats, which is what the Liberal Party requires to win office outright, appears unlikely. The best that Tony Abbott can seem to hope for would be a hung Parliament, with Labor fairing worse than expected in Queensland or New South Wales and the Libs squeaking an unexpected seat or two somewhere else. There are likely to be four independants in the next Parliament, three of them former members of the conservative National party and it’s a possibility that Abbott may gain the Prime Ministership through the back door, leading a minority government with the support of these three.
Which leaves us where, eaxactly? No wait, I did that already. Ok! This time I’ll try and answer that question.
Where either result - narrow Labor victory or Liberal minority government - will leave us is with a hanstrung government without a sufficient mandate to do anything much. Small margin in the legislative lower house, blocked by the balance of power greens in the Senate. Which might not make much of a difference, since neither party has really appeared to propose to do anything much, policy wise.
The simple truth is that this has been a dispiriting election, with little on offer from either side other than some sloganeering and some, pretty modest, pork barrelling for punters who live in marginal seats. If you do live in such a marginal seat, you may find yourself with a new railway line if you vote Labor, or a new hosptial if you vote Liberal, or vice versa depending on where you live.
But the important questions that Governments need to deal with; how we’re employed, how our economy functions, how we deal with the rest of the world, how much tax we pay and what it gets spent on, how we look after our environment, how we attend to our poor and underprivelaged, will be little changed regardless of who wins the election. There will be some fiddling at the margins in terms of policy, and some lofty rhetoric from whichever side gets to do the fiddling, and a small number of punters who are slightly better or worse off because of it. And that’s about it. No wonder former Labor leader Mark Latham went on telly to tell everyone to vote informally (as about 6% of the electorate, or as many people as vote for the National Party, do anyway).
And the price tag for this never ending 5 week circus that will deliver this negligible result? This relentless bombardment of ads and slogans and photo ops and op eds pieces that will encourage approximately three quarters of a million people to write ‘Fuck’ on their ballot papers or just leave them blank? According to the ‘SMH,’ somewhere in the nighbourhood of $200 million dollars. And that’s just the tax payers share.
Something to think about during the next Parliament, when whoever is then Prime Minister starts describing how there's no money left to do anything substantial.
As has been noted here and everywhere, Federal Election 2010 has been overrun by sloganeering. So much so that the casual political observer would think that there has been little else other than slogans on offer... and a more engaged political observer would also think this, and be angry about having wasted more time finding it out.
And there's a reason for all of this empty, banal word play: The major political party's in this country think you're stupid.
And disengaged, disinterested, disenfranchised and disabled (mentally that is. See previous point). They assume that you, the voter, have no real interest in how the country is or will be run, and you wouldn't be able to understand the way it is or will be run even if you did. You like football and porno and books about war. Little else interests you, certainly not how billions and billions of dollars of your money, harvested straight out of your pay packets, is going to be spent. Hell, you can hardly even count to ten! Best leave the politickin' to the politicians while you get on with... whatever it is you do, out there in the suburbs.
But every few years, our nations elected and wannabe elected have to come to us looking for our vote. What then do they do, to try and get us interested in a subject - politics - that we have no interest in and don't understand? They turn to the advertising industry.
Because everyone knows that the advertising industry can sell any idea, any concept, anything to anyone.
Take the 'Advanced Medical Institute' as one example, among, well, all of the corporate world. Started by a Russian immigrant to Australia with no medical background, the AMI sells nasal spray with no beneficial properties - and possibly some harmful ones - to the public under the vaguely worded promise that it'll 'Make Sex Last Longer.' The modern day equivalent of the old travelling medicine show that contemporary westerns make fun of... right? Right?
Did I mention that the AMI has billboards, lots of them, dotted around every capital city in Australia that say things like:
and that they also have some really crappy TV ads? And did I mention that they sold $36 million worth of their benign-if-you're-lucky product in Australia last year?
The power of advertising.
And so it's only natural that our major political party's will turn to the same dark... scratch that, evil forces of marketing and advertising to try and get us to vote for one of them over the other. So you're familiar with the ads on radio and television and in the press. And by familiar I mean bombarded. What about the slogans then. How do they come about?
And this is where we get to talking about a particular aspect of the dark... sorry, evil, art of advertising: Focus Groups. It works like this.
The major political party's know that the election will be decided in a handful of marginal seats out of the 150 in the lower house of parliament. And an analysis of the electoral results will show that most of these marginal seats are on the suburban fringe of our major cities. And some quantitative research from among the population on the fringe of our major cities will show that most of the people living in these areas are 25 - 44, have 1 - 2 kids and a mortgage that they can barely afford (Now do you understand all the education refunds and increased baby bonuses and child care super premium rebate thingos that get handed out to middle class parents during every election campaigns?).
So what happens next?
Firstly, a large and obscenely expensive marketing company, paid for by YOU most of the time, goes onto the Labor or Liberal payroll. This company will go out to a marginal electorate and look for people willing to participate in 'discussion groups.' These people will be 25 - 44, have 1 - 2 kids and a mortgage they can barely afford. The marketing company might advertise in the local paper or just contact people directly off lists the major party's keep of constituents who have identified themselves as swinging voters at some point (during a doorknocking campaign or at the local Church fete or in an overheard conversation in the Woolies check out queue) and ask them if they'd like to participate. Sometimes the marketing company will offer small cash inducements, but mostly they have no trouble finding people willing to contribute to what's pitched as something to do with policy formulation.
So the marketing company gets these people together and asks them what they think about a hot button contemporary topic:
The answers that are given are recorded:
And they try and get as many views as possible:
While encouraging people to be as honest, as off-the-cuff, as non PC as possible:
The marketing company then draw up a report which highlights the key statements of the group:
Which they present to Labor/Liberal HQ, so that the campaign team and the speech writers can convert it into a short slogan or two that they can bludgeon us over the head with.
QUESTION: Mr Abbott, you've committed to substantially reducing Australia's Greenhouse Gas emissions but have also pledged not to put a tax on carbon. How will you achieve one without the other?
ANSWER: Well that's an important question that needs to be addressed, but an even more important question and one that the the Labor Party have failed to address entirely is what they're going to do about the fish problem plaguing this country and that's why I'm ready to stand here committed to a policy of STOP THE FISH!
Essentially feeding the people in the marginal seats their own views back to them, in slightly rephrased form. Which bizarrely, somehow, makes the Labor or Liberal leader look like they understand them and how they feel. At least in theory. What it actually makes the Labor or Liberal leader look like is a mindless little drone with a few push button, pre-programmed responses to anything they get asked
And the other purpose of all of this activity, time and money? So that when we think of Tony Abbott, we'll immediately know that he wants to 'STOP THE FISH!' I mean, BOATS! Without thinking about it too much ourselves.
Which leaves the idea of political leadership or courage in this country exactly... where? I don't need my own expensive focus group and quantitative research to know the answer to that. I'll let Bill Hicks sum it up for me:
The Australian Greens leader, Bob Brown, can probably relate.
After all, leading a minor party in a Western country that has a two party system (i.e. all of them) can be a tough gig. The major party's suck up all the media time, energy and oxygen, leaving precious few column inches or airtime minutes for you and your party to try and get your pitch to the electorate out. What media attention you do get is often unwanted, as it's along the 'These nutty freaks want to give ecstasy to our school children' type of slanderish media beat up.
Which is a shame. Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott having both decided to campaign with empty slogans and trivial promises, a la Kang and Kodos in the 'Treehouse of Horror VII' ep of the Simpsons:
there ought to be plenty of space available for other ideas.
So into this policy free zone come the Greens, who had their campaign launch last weekend. A brief smaple of their announced policies to date:
DENTICARE: Modelled on Medicare, the idea is to provide a cheap, universal dental care system across the whole country. Most people with any experience of trying to get dental work done know that it is either ridiculously expensive (private care) or subject to ridiculously long waiting lists (public). The effect of which is that a fair proportion of Australians just learn to put up with wonky teeth or toothache.
EAST COAST RAIL LINK: The proposal is to build a super fast, hi tech railway link between the major East Coast capital cities; Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne. Most people with any experience of driving along Deathn Route 1 (AKA the Pacific Highway) or Death Route 2 (AKA the Hume Highway) thant currently link these three cities would agree there’s some merit to this plan. Better for the environment than air travel and thats before we even consider how many people would be employed to build it.
CARBON PRICE: The Greens want a 40% reductionm in Australia’s carbon output below 1990 levels by 2020. Recognising that they have no chance whatsoever in getting this done, they have proposed a more modest alternative, to be negotiated with the enext government; a simple tax on carbon of approximately $20 per tonne, to be kept in place until a more comprehensive cap and trade system can be put in place.
This last one to pay for the first two, among a host of other progressive initiatives (which, if you think the above is a bit too radical for your taste, you’re probably better off not finding out about. Euthenasia anyone?).
Now regardless of whether you agree with these proposals or not, it has to be admitted that they are bold, constrcutive ideas with a bit of vision attached to them. Compare these ideas to what the major parties have come up with, policy wise, so far in this election. Summarised here:
COALITION: A solemn, weighty, heartfelt promise to ease the tax burden on Australia’s business sector by reducing the corporate tax rate by 1.5%. And a solemn, weighty, heartfelt promise to produce a paid parental leave scheme by inccreasing the corporate tax rate by 1.5%. And, oh yes, turning around the few hundred hapless refugees who wash up here each year and leaving them to drown at sea.
LABOR: An absolute rock solid committment to prevaricate and obfuscate and procrastinate and do as little as possible in any sector, other than copy the policies of the Rudd government. A Government so bad that Rudd himself was replaced before he could even afce the electorate. And, oh yes, copying the Liberals on refugees, population, environment and any other major issue that frightens people in outer metropolitan areas.
Even giving a short paragraph each is probably overstating the amount of content in the major party's policy positions. What they've announced to date has been little more than fiddling at the margins, subtle tweakings to to a society that they've obviously both decided is already A-Ok.
But despite being almost devoid of content, these Labor and Liberal policies will be subject to thousands of words of analysis in the printed media and thousands of hours of discussion on radio and television, as earnest talking heads sift through the details and try and work out if there are any actual differences between them. In the meantime, better, more foward thinking, more interesting policies from the minor parties, the Greens being just one among many, will whither and die on the floor of the rainforest, starved of sunlight and rain by the tall trees around them.
To quote 'Citizen Kang' again:
Kang: It's a two party system! You have to vote for one of us! Man: He's right, this is a two-party system. Man 2: Well, I believe I'll vote for a third-party candidate. Kang: Go ahead, throw your vote away.
Which us back to the beginning; whether you’re a small plant in the Amazon, or a muppet frog in the swamp or a geeky looking guy in the Asustralian Senate, it ain’t easy being green.
Kevin Rudd was dumped as Prime Minister a month or so ago due to bad polls.
You can ignore everything that's been said about it since. That the Government had lost it's way, that the machine men that run the ALP wanted one of their own in charge, that Kevin ran a dysfunctional government and treated his cabinet with disdain and was erratic and moody and a aloof and pretty hard to deal with when he didn't get the right sort of food. All tosh. While the above may have been factors, these elements had existed in a greater or lesser extent since Rudd assumed the Labor leadership in 2007. He was always a thin lipped, bloodless little freak and he didn't suddenly become erratic and egotistical and devoid of substantial policy a few months ago.
No, all these elements were ignored, or at least tolerated, while the ALP was miles ahead in the polling and Rudd himself had personal approval ratings not seen since Hawke. The party began to turn against Rudd as soon as those polls started to turn against him. A few months of bad polling and the man himself was gone, at least from The Lodge, although not from the scene or the campaign (how ever fervently Julia Gillard may be wishing for the earth to swallow him whole).
So it must give pause for thought to our new PM, and the her senior Labor colleagues, to have a look at the Neilsen poll figures released yesterday and see they are almost in as bad a position as when they booted Rudd out. This, most recent poll, shows the Coalition edging Labor 52 - 48% in the two party preferred stakes. Much more worrying for Labor, however, is the massive lead the same poll shows in the primary votes, which has the Coalition ahead 45 - 36%. If this sort of result were repated at the election, Labor would be buried in a landslide, with a host of marginal seats swept away, not just in Queensland and WA but everywhere.
So actually, forget what I said two sentences ago.
The Labor Party are in a worse position now then before they booted Rudd out. At that time, a few weeks and several political lifetimes ago, they were in exactly the same position in the two party preferred stakes and were behind the Coalition on primary votes 42 - 33%. Statistically the same margin but with a lower vote for themselves, but at that time they had Rudd as leader and not on the loose somewhere in Queensland, doing his best Mick Taylor impersonation (the rest of the Federal ALP are an annoying British backpacker in this analogy). Before Rudd was deposed, Labor could do their rally-behind-the-leader thing come election time and make it reasonably convincing, which is always worth some votes. A united front. Solid, dependable leadership. The punters like that sort of thing. But now... well, the bulk of the Labor party has retired to a back alley somewhere in Canberra to settle things in the style of the rival news crews from 'Anchorman,' leaving Julia to lurch around the country, trying to ignore the scuffling behind her and say that she's for 'Jobs, education and a strong economy,' with a straight face.
Which will make another bit of Neilsen polling potentially even more disastrous. This one is, on the surface at least, good news for the government, in that it shows Julia edging Tony in the preferred PM stakes 49 - 41%. But the bad news lies in the fact that just two weeks ago, at the start of the campaign, she was shading Abbott in this measure by more than twenty points. In other words, in two weeks of campaigning under her leadership, she's reversed the ALP's standing in the overall polls and put them behind and more than halved her lead over her direct opponent in terms of who is better suited to running the country.
Is she Julia Gillard, Prime Minister, or Colonel Cargill from 'Catch 22'?:
Colonel Cargill was so awful a marketing executive that his services were much sought after by firms eager to establish losses for tax purposes. Colonel Cargill could be relied upon to run the most prosperous enterprise into the ground. He was a self made man who owed his lack of success to nobody.
Which is probably a bit rough on her, but it's hard to know what the ALP were thinking over this initial period of campaigning. It appears to have been something like:
'Let's get rid of that bloodless, thin lipped little freak from Queensland that none of us have ever liked and replace him with someone a bit more down to earth and human that the punters in the marginals can relate to... and then when the election rolls around let's drain all the life out of her campaign and have her chant inane slogans and do our level best to make her impersonate that bloody bugger from Queensland again.'
Either the Federal Labor Party is suffering from an acute case of schizophrenia or they have a very warped sense of humour.
Which leaves us with the opposition leader, 'Action Man' Tony Abbott, who would appear to be on his way to living in The Lodge and can probably hardly believe his luck.
This time last year he was stuck in a dead end minor portfolio in Opposition, the moderates under Malcolm Turnbull seemingly having taken over his Liberal Party and closed the door on Howard acolytes like him forever. Rudd was still riding high in the polls at this time and the 2010 election seemed to be heading towards a deadly dull Turnbull-Rudd battle over which one of them would bore the fewest of us to death with their minimalist carbon reduction plans.
Fast forward to... well, now, and Abbott finds himself hustling around the country, getting surprisingly positive press while his opponents pour gasoline all over themselves and set themselves on fire. And let's not forget those polls. Even facing such lacklustre opponents as Kim 'The Bomber' Beazley and Simon 'Please Make Him Stop Talking' Crean, John Howard never enjoyed a nine point primary vote lead in any polls I remember. And this was a man who won four consecutive elections and enjoyed almost God like status in his party.
And so, after all the synonyms, metaphors and analogies I've employed in this piece to describe how Labor are fucking themselves up and ruining their re-election chances, the metaphor that best describes how Abbott is going at this time could well be this one:
In his published diaries, former Opposition leader Mark Latham tells this hilarious story about Kevin Rudd. He, Latham, had just been elevated to the ALP leadership in late 2003 and was settling his shadow ministry. Rudd was going to get foreign affairs:
Kevvie wanted his title expanded to the more grandiose Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs and International Security. No worries, but then he rang me last Sunday to say he objected to McLelland (Shadow Minister for Homeland Security) also having the word 'Security' in his title. At first I thought it was some kind of joke, but the crazy bastard was serious: he had a long and absurd argument ready about the overlap of the two jobs. By the end of the day, Rudd was threatening to go to the backbench, over a question of semantics. I told him I was willing to accept his resignation and he went away to think about it.
It goes without saying that Rudd didn't resign and somehow managed to get on with his job in the shadow ministry, despite this 'security' problem. Nevertheless, there was something about the chaos that overwhelmed the ALP in the last couple of days that brought this story to mind.
A brief recap then, of events as they transpired. On Tuesday, both Channel 9 and The Sydney Morning Herald came out with stories detailing comments that our freshly minted PM had supposedly made during internal deliberations over big ticket policies of the, now dispatched, Rudd Government. Among the colourful allegations:
- That Gillard had been opposed to both the paid parental leave and age pension increase schemes the Rudd Government had implemented.
- That she had argued against the paid parental leave scheme as it did nothing to help stay home mothers and
- That she had argued that it was pointless doing anything to help retirees as they never voted Labor anyway.
And this after she had gone on the debate on Sunday of the previous weekend and highlighted both of these policies as something that she had been intimately involved with formulating and proud of.
These leaked allegations have proved enormously damaging for Gillard for a variety of reasons. Firstly, they make her look disingenuous and amplify the growing perception that she doesn't really stand for anything; that she'll say and do anything to get elected, even praising popular policies she privately doesn't support. Secondly her blithe dismissal of parents and age pensioners as important groups worthy of government attention accentuate Labors problems with these demographic groups; parents are attracted to Tony Abbott's more generous paid parental leave scheme and old people really don't vote for Labor and really won't now. Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, Gillard had to spend a valuable day of campaigning time defending herself rather than rushing around the country to 14 different marginal seats to promise people living there that she'd build them a new railway line (and anything else they fancied).
But at least she defended herself rather well. An early morning press conference in Adelaide was the forum for the PM to shake off some of the dull, weirdly Rudd-like, non persona of the first week and a half of campaigning and show a bit of spunk. She bristled, she counter attacked, she started one answer, 'Oh come off it.' She said in plain language that she was skeptical of any policy that crossed her path and this was a sensible way to be and that anyone who wasn't like that was a dill. It was more like the Julia Gillard we'd seen prior to her sudden elevation to leadership, which could only be a good thing for her. But it was still defense and the leaks still hurt.
Which brings us back to the leaks themselves.
Which brings itself back to why anyone from the Labor side of politics would want to do such a thing.
Which brings us back to Rudd.
Popular opinion among the nation's press seems to rule him out as the direct leaker, but I'm not so sure about that. The other possiblility appears to be an un-named person or persons within Labor, deeply offended by Rudd's treatment, trying to get back at Julia for her treachery. But it's hard to imagine anyone doing this for someone like Rudd, who had so little support in caucus he couldn't even muster enough votes to have a credible (i.e. non humiliating) vote on his leadership.
It seems far more likely to me that Rudd would have done this himself. He has a reputation for leaking and a nasty streak so prominent that journalist David Marr wrote a recent profile of him that made him sound like Francis Begbie when he was losing at pool. And Marr was meant to be one of Rudd's 'mates' for fucks sake!
No, Rudd destabilising his own side makes perfect sense if you consider these things, the fact that he's a terrible sook and also:
Kevvie's Plan to Being a Very Popular PM (Mark 2)
Step 1: Leak all sorts of nasty shit about your replacement and ruin her election chances.
Step 2: Watch the Labor Party tear itself to pieces as they become the first one term Government in Australia since the Great Depression.
Step 3: Try not to laugh hysterically as Tony Abbott outlaws abortion and restores the White Australia policy and orders every kid under 16 into fat camp and all the other crazy shit that he'd really like to do once he doesn't have to suck up to us anymore.
Step 4: Quietly assume the ALP leadership again after Swan, Smith, Macklin, Roxon, Combet and Shorton have had a go.
Step 5: Win the following election, or even the one after that, and quietly put Australia back to sleep after years of chaos with a blizzard of the dull, technocratic gibberish that you specialise in.
Somewhere in the back of Kevvie's fevered mind, I've no doubt that this plan is formulating.
There's not much to be said about Sunday's Great Debate. Everything you need to know is right here:
I really wanted this entry to be an in depth analysis of the cut and thrust of the debate, the policies the leaders presented and the vision for the country that each had on display, but this has proved impossible. No such vision was on display.
For each candidate, the debate was more about what they were trying not to do; Julia trying not to look too much like Rudd, Tony trying not to look too much like an angry nut. On this score, you'd say that Tony fared better. Julia, with her empty sloganeering and vague promises, was pretty Rudd like. Tony was presentable and didn't say or do anything that would've frightened anyone too much.
In terms of what they talked about well, anyone with even a passing interest in national politics could've guessed beforehand. As I heard the PM's campaign spokesman say before the debate occurred; 'Julia Gillard stands for better schools, better health and a strong economy' (presumably her opponent is against these things). Her part of the debate was her saying this over and over and then rephrasing it to say it again and trying to ignore anything else.
Q: Can you tell us how you and Kevin Rudd are substantially different?
A: Well I won't comment on that. What I will comment on is my commitment to a improving education and health and building the economy.
Abbott stuck to the relentlessly negative tone of his campaign and ragged on everything the Government has done over the last three years (except the revised IR laws which he's very supportive of... or something). There was also a fair bit about turning boats back and stopping boats and sending boats somewhere else. Moving away from this safe territory proved a bit trickier:
Q: Can you outline what the top priorities of an Abbott Government would be in the areas of helath and education?
A: .... (pause)... (pause)... Stopping the boats!
Sometimes I htink it's a shame that these live, televised debates aren't taken a bit more seriously in Australia, like they are in the States. In US politics, the three debates are seen as absolutely key to winning office and shape the remainder of the campaign once they're done. Here, while it was well watched, it caused nary a blip on the national consciousness. Both candidates, having agreed to just one debate in the non prime time slot of 6.30pm Sunday, seemed eager to get it over and done with and forget about it.
After the success of Channel 10's 'Hawke' telemovie from last week, it was probably no surprise to see the Silver Bodgie back on the campaign trail. Although keeping the former PM out of the action may well have proved impossible, given the blokes enthusiasm for the limelight: 'Elections really get the juices flowing,' Hawke was quoted as saying with relish, while campaigning in Melbourne last week (and also quoted as saying 'I like your English' when some punter called him a fucking legend).
What was surprising (and a little disappointing) was that Hawke didn't get out the powder blue lounge suit and white shoes, as he did during Campaign 2007:
Putting that disappointment aside though, this underlines something quite unique about the man himself; With the exception of Hawke, the Australian public never has much love for ex Prime Ministers. I mean, can you imagine any of John Howard, Paul Keating or Malcolm Fraser (our other surviving ex PMs) hitting the campaign trail for their respective parties this time around? Anywhere? For any reason? The current batch of candidates all avoid these ex leaders like the plague. And hell, Malcolm Fraser has disowned the Liberals and cancelled his party membership anyway and is probably more likely to doorknock for the Greens than any of Tony Abbott's bunch.
On the other hand, Hawke is probably more popular than he was when Keating ousted him. I mean, now that he doesn't have to worry about upsetting the squares out in the marginal seats he can have a drink and a punt and pinch the odd girl on the bum ('Look at all these beautiful women,' was another choice quote from his day campaigning) and that stuff always goes over well with the mob.
The other thing that was significant about Hawke's campaign appearance was where the Labor Party strategists had him appear; the marginal inner Melbourne seat of Deakin, held by backbeancher Mike Symon on a slim margin of 1.4% What this tells us about the election is:
a) Where the campaign will be won and lost and;
b) What your vote is worth.
And the answers to these questions are, in order:
a) In the marginal seats and;
b) Nothing.
To summarise the above then, starting with the marginals.
There are 150 seats in the House of Representatives, where Government is formed, and the Australian Electoral Commission defines any of them held by a margin of less than 6% a marginal seat. There are 57 of these at this election, or about 38% of total seats. The Liberal Party needs a net gain of 17 seats from the ALP in order to win Government, so guess which ones they're going to concentrate on? That's right! The ones with the smallest margins! It's no wonder they call it political science, because rocket science it ain't.
In any case, this is where you come in. Unless you live in one of these marginal seats, the 62% of people that don't in other words, you're in a safe seat and that means that whichever major party you belong too can afford to take you for granted. Or, on the flipside, can't afford to spend their scarce electoral resources trying to gain a seat they'll almost certainly lose. And so the whole thing can become a bit like a perpetual motion machine in theses safe seats. Neither party really bothers contesting them very vigorously and so the people that live there have little reason to change their voting intentions. The simple truth is that most of the seats in most of the country don't come within cooee of changing hands election after election, year after year, generation after generation.
So to summarise the summary of the summary then, a handful of marginal seats decide each election and the majority of people who live elsewhere can suck up to their local member or just fuck off.
And what this means is that the marginal seats become like black holes, exhorting enormous gravitational influence over major party leadership, time and money. To return to Deakin for a moment, as well as RJ Hawke's visit, already in this week old campaign they've had visits from Tony Abbott, Bronwyn Bishop and Peter Garrett. Julia Gillard will be there sometime this week and will undoubtedly promise to build a new school, or hospital or rail link or whatever the focus groups are telling her the Deakinites want... Then Tony Abott will come back the week after and promise a larger, spiffier and yet cheaper schoolhospitalraillink... Then Julia will come back the week after that and promise everyone a free hot water system and a new car and maybe their OWN PRIVATE SCHOOLHOSPITALRAILINK!!! And then Tony will come back and tell people that they'd already have all of those things if the Labor Party hadn't let so many filthy boat people in to steal all of our schoolhospitalraillinks... and so on, until voting day.
And so it'll go across all of the marginal seats in the country, as the leaders sweep through every couple of days and the actual candidates themselves stalk each other like rabid dogs who have learned how to drive. I've lived in a marginal seat before and if you think the bombardment of campaign ads and propaganda is bad elsewhere, you have no idea what the marginalites are in for. They get the same number of TV and radio ads, but they'll also get personalised auto dialled campaign telephone messages and so much mail box dropped leafleture that they're in danger of disappearing under it all, like De Niro at the end of 'Brazil.'
And this while the safe-seatites wnder why the local members office is shut 328 days of the year.
And so, to summarise the summary of the summary of the summary, the Australian electoral process is a bit skew-iff.
Looking and sounding a bit like a Richie Benaud doll with flat batteries, Kevin Rudd made his debut appearance in Campaign 2010 yesterday. Fresh from his $40 000, tax payer funded, first class flight back from his working holiday in the US, the ex PM was out and about in his seat of Griffith in Queensland, which he has represented since 1998.
The Rudd-bot sat out in the sun for a bit, chatting to shoppers along one of the main streets in the electorate, before moving on to Coorparoo State School, where he addressed the kids about their new hall. The sparkling Rudd public persona, so fondly remembered by anyone who has followed politics in this country these last two and a bit years, was on display again:
RUDD: Hands up now, what's the best thing about having a new school hall.
KID: This ones got seats!
RUDD: This one's got seats. That's very good.
Which made me kinda sad. Clearly, losing the top job has taken the edge off Rudd. If it had been the last election and he got this kind of response, he would then have gone:
RUDD: Is it better having seats in your school hall? Yes it is. Am I glad that you've got them? Yes I am. Would my opponent have delivered seats for your new school hall? No he wouldn't. Has my opponent had 12 years to deliver seats to your new school hall? Yes he has. Has he failed to deliver the seats to the new school hall? Yes he has...
And so on, for another fifteen or twenty minutes, far past the point where anyone in his audience could remember what had set him off in the first place. Makes a pundit almost feel nostalgic, especially during these grim days of 'Moving Forward' and 'Stop the Boats.'
But almost is the operative word when it comes to Rudd, as it seems a fair bet that the only one who misses seeing him in the PM's office is Tony Abbott (well, maybe Therese too). Abbott was all set to have a nice little 'Regular If Angry Man versus Inhuman Rudd-Bot' election before Gillard and the factional leaders in the ALP stepped in to make his task much more nuanced.
Leaving the leader of the Opposition to one side, the PM and other senior Government ministers seem to want Rudd to disappear as quickly and discreetly as possible. There's been a lot of talk of Rudd focusing on 'local issues' and 'campaigning in his electorate' and 'maybe fucking off back to the States until August 22.' I mean Rudd is the principle reason for the whole 'Moving Forward' campaign strategy. They want to move forward, from him, and only see him occassionally in the rear view mirror. And even then only by accident.
When asked whether she would campaign with Rudd in Griffith, Gillard sounded a bit like Abbott trying to explain his stance on 'Work Choices':
GILLARD: Well I will if he wants me to... Which he probably doesn't... Although we haven't spoken about it... But if he did ask I probably would... If there was space in the diary... And he wanted me to, which he probably doesn't... He's got a pretty safe seat anyway and I'm pretty busy... But I'd help him out if he needed it... Who were we talking about again? Judd? That bloke who plays for Carlton?
And that reminds me of something that my girlfriend said the other day when we were watching Carlton getting belted in the AFL. Chris Judd was having a very dark day and when, on one occasion, he grabbed the ball and then booted it out of bounds on the full, she went, 'Come on Rudd, for fucks sake!'
Says a lot about the last few weeks in Australian politics really.
