Sir Otto Niemeyer comes to town

In 1930, when the then Governor of the Bank of England, Sir Otto Niemeyer, came to Australia to push for austerity measures, the Scullin Labor government and all (but one) of the Premiers used him as a cover to implement their own cuts in government spending. Similar political shuffling was going on this week around the arrival of former World Bank bureaucrat Nicholas Stern bearing another austerity programme. Just as geopolitics (i.e. British Empire interests) impacted Australian politics in the early 1930s, geopolitics is again making its presence felt today.

While the US has been pushing its War on Terror over the last five years, a rival global agenda has been pursued largely by the EU and Japan against a rival threat, global warming. While the War on Terror made a virtue of US military power, the Global Warming agenda neatly turns the US’s stronger growth against it and makes a virtue of the EU’s more sluggish performance. There were similar benefits for Japan against its grubby fast-growing neighbour. As the War on Terror flounders in the streets of Baghdad, the Global Warming agenda has begun to gain ground in geopolitics. Even in the US a reappraisal is underway, signalled by the return of Al Gore to the national stage. One unfortunate effect of climate's greater role in geopolitics has been to turn what had been a lively, complex scientific debate over humanity's impact on climate into a rather crushing, moralistic orthodoxy.

For Howard, having hitched his little caboose to the War on Terror, visits by harbingers of this change in geopolitical weather, such as Gore and Stern, are obviously embarrassing. For Labor, it gives another opportunity to make policy around Howard’s problems. However, there are two risks for Rudd. Firstly, the Global Warming agenda is still not yet in the clear geopolitical interests of the world’s largest power and Australia's most vital ally. Secondly, like most moral agendas, it is better to preach than to practice and at the domestic level the austerity measures necessary may be awkward to implement. These risks are summed up in the uncertain performance of Garrett. However, as Rudd knows, it is easier to sell pragmatism from a position of faith and Garrett's very mediocrity as a political operator certainly reaffirms his appointment was an act of faith by the ALP.

Howard is likely to find it a frustrating business to exploit the detrimental economic impact of this agenda. He will be right in many ways – but wrong on the most important, the shift in geopolitics that is giving the Global Warming agenda such authority. As Jack Lang found out seventy years ago, no matter how much sense one makes, defying global political trends is not a sustainable option for Australian politicians.

Look at WA to see we are in new waters

If there are those who still think the two party system is in operation at the state level, then they should look at the latest poll from WA reported by The Australian. Despite needing to sack three ministers in four months, the ALP government has recovered since the beginning of the year to again hold a winning lead over the opposition. A similar poll in SA shows further strengthening of the ALPs dominance there.

Old man talking to himself

A perfect example of the last post is Howard’s defence of IR reform in The Age. His only winning point is that Labor has hyped up its impact, but is unconvincing on the reason why it was introduced in the first place. Interesting is the way he links it to a continuation of Labor’s reform programme of the 1980s - the difference being that Labor’s was carried out at a time of global deregulation that was exhausted by the early 1990s. The more he articulates it, the more Howard's agenda looks like a relic from the past.

‘Wall-to-wall’ Labor scare – how self-absorbed

Back in Parliament after the NSW result, Howard was reported to be looking relaxed and talking of the dangers of wall-to-wall Labor governments. This gives a good indication on where his thoughts are focussed at the moment, on the MPs behind him.

At face value, the wall-to-wall Labor scare makes little sense. For a Victorian voter, say, surely the central question is whether they would be comfortable with the same party in Spring St and Canberra. In the past they have been and given the policy lightness of today’s ALP, a Bracks-Rudd combo is unlikely to terrify. Given that then, why would they care about the colour of governments in the other state capitals? Is the Melbourne voter, while happy to vote for the same party at the federal level, supposed to pause at the thought that Adelaide or Brisbane will provide no resistance to Labor?

A clue to the real purpose of this issue for Howard is given by the fact it usually accompanies a warning of unbridled union power. Given that union power is not a broad-based concern these days outside his own constituency, one must assume that is who it is aimed at, in particular his own party. The warning is really saying two things 1) remember who we are, we are against union power (if nothing else) and 2) we face electoral irrelevance if we lose the next federal election.

The problem for Howard is that as internal cohesion weighs on his mind he is increasingly getting the internal message mixed up with what he is telling the voting public. As with Iraq, IR reform is another issue that is becoming more beneficial for internal reasons than with the electorate.

Fortunately for Howard he is not the only one making this mistake, as seen by the ALP’s handling of the workplace reforms. Other than increasing insecurity for some of their own core voter base and threatening some of the influence of the unions, the main problem of the workplace reforms for the rest of the electorate is its irrelevance. The more the ALP keep hyping it up as a major threat to Australian family life for their own internal purposes, the more people are inclined to see it as not corresponding to their own reality and an agenda driven by the unions. Iemma's talking up of the role played by IR in the NSW result may make the ALP feel their hollow election victory was a little less so, but to the public it makes them look detached. With the agenda of both parties increasingly driven by needs of internal cohesion, this promises a federal political debate that will be seen by a bemused public as irrelevant.

NSW/Federal read-through - not a lot, quite a lot

Maybe there are grounds for optimism after all. Many of the initial reactions to the NSW result were the same old arguments: incumbency factor, voters switching between Labor at state level to Coalition federally etc. This now seems to be giving way to a much more negative 'read-through' for the Federal Liberals to the point that one article called for Howard to put himself out of his misery now.

Is there much direct political read-through from the NSW election to Federal? Not really, as there wasn’t much politics raised in NSW in the first place. Debnam’s inability to run a gym or look good in Speedos does not really have much read-through to Howard.

However, the NSW result may be important in undermining the confidence of the Canberra government and of the media observing it. The growing perception over the last three months that the Federal Coalition is in trouble is why the NSW election result is creating a much more detrimental read-through than last year’s Queensland debacle, despite the latter probably having more unsettling implications for the Coalition. There is a chance that the NSW result will only increase fragmentary pressures on the Federal Liberals.

This is why one needs to be cautious taking at face value claims that Howard’s Workplace Reforms had an impact on the NSW result. Even ignoring the absence of the workplace reforms on polls taken on leading state election issues, this more looks like a stick to beat Howard with, and not just by the ALP. Watch for any Federal Liberals noting that the workplace reforms are becoming an electoral concern, that is code for “dump Howard!”

Are workplace reforms a vote winner for the ALP? Yes and no. It is likely that it makes a minority of the work-force less secure, but they were probably Labor voters anyway. The point that has been missed, however, is that it is all to no purpose. Unions have not been seen as a major barrier by the broad sections of Australian society for years and Howard’s strange faux Thatcherite domestic agenda (and Debnam’s support for it) comes across as irrelevant and a nuisance. Howard’s ‘big idea’ is tackling a problem that no one especially thinks exists (which is why he has that strange defence that no one is using the reforms anyway). Without his global agenda to prop him up, Howard’s domestic agenda is being exposed as pretty thin.

Incumbency factor? Someone should have told Sussex St!

This blog's first post suggested that the NSW election could be one event that may cause a re-think about the current orthodoxies of Australian politics. Maybe that was optimistic. So far, media explanations for the NSW result, where the swing against the ALP looks to be only 3% (leaving the Liberals 8-9% to go and they have still yet to win a single seat from Labor), have recycled the same old chestnuts used for the other state results. Incredibly, given the way the NSW election was conducted, some are even trying to push the 'incumbency factor' as a reason for Iemma's return.

Even leaving aside its banality (voters keep voting for the incumbent because, er, they are voting for the incumbent these days), if there really was an incumbency factor, then someone should have told Sussex St. If there seemed to be one problem they had to deal with in the election campaign it was an anti-incumbency factor. The campaign was desperate to present Iemma as a new start and detach him from the past governments and its mistakes, not only from Carr but the ALP itself. Iemma’s dilemma was to retain power while appearing to be a new government but with most of the old personnel still in place (which is why they were hidden from view). It would be interesting to find out what the Federal Liberal MPs who chose to stick with Howard last year instead of a new start under Costello, think of the power of this ‘incumbency factor’ nowadays.

Anyway at the state level this ‘incumbency factor’ has had a curious way of working only when the ALP got in. So while the ‘incumbency factor’ was working for Carr in 1999, three years later in SA the incumbent Liberal government was losing power. It would seem more reasonable to say that at the state level there has been a decisive realignment towards the ALP rather than an 'incumbency factor' working irrespective of party. Where the ‘incumbency factor’ may appear to be reasonable, however, is to explain Labor dominance in the states with the Liberals’ retention of power in Canberra. That this state of affairs is stable is supported by the second orthodoxy: that voters will want to vote one way at state level and for the opposite party federally.

NSW - Do we still have a two-party system?

... at least at the state level? Put it another way, how bad does Labor have to get in any of the states before the Liberals can win? A change of leaders would have been the ideal opportunity to coalesce dissatisfaction with long running ALP rule and it has been lost. It is quite possible that Labor will now reconsolidate its position and regain a positive swing next time round.

Perhaps it really was Debnam, or his Speedos, or the tactical mistake in focusing on water not transport etc. etc. etc. Or maybe the fact that we see the same state of the Coalition in Queensland, Victoria (including the recurrence of the Speedos phenomenon), SA, WA and NT that we can talk about a trend. In this blog's view, the old political rules at the state level are over and state politics has simply become about services. Labor may be lousy but NSW Liberals cannot even summon a policy on transport, not because they forgot but because they have no relationship with the interested parties such as the transport unions to create a policy from, and no broader consensus to take them on. Politics has been drained from state politics.

Unsurprising that the Liberals will blame the leader, and other tactical issues, to take their mind off the more depressing long-term conclusions. More interestingly, the media will probably do so too.

One interesting point came from the interview with Pru Goward is the way that the ALP has been fostering and supporting the Independents. Again this closer relationship with Independents to undermine the Coalition has been replicated by the ALP in Vic and SA. Indeed it could be argued that with candidates like Phil Koperberg, they are fostering Independents in the ALP as well.

Is it the economy, stupid?

Dennis Shanahan in The Australian writes another one of those curious pieces that reads like an internal Liberal party memo. It repeats the two familiar arguments that Howard is reported to have told the Liberal party room in the face of the bad polls:

1. They have had bad polls before from which they have gone on to win
2. The economy is still in relatively good shape and this remains the number one deciding issue

On 1., even ignoring the fact that the polls have never been as bad as they are now, this blog is not one of those that believe that Howard’s consistently very bad mid-term polls are irrelevant. They do indicate that this government has never established a significant consensus for rule. Even the victories themselves, as commentators like Mumbles never tire of correctly pointing out, are not that resounding by historical standards. What the victories do indicate is that while Howard’s political consensus is weak, the ALP has no ability to challenge it after the exhaustion of its reform programme in the early 1990s.

The ALPs policy vacuum is still there. The important point about Rudd’s broadband initiative is not just its relatively modest size, less than half the cost of the government’s water programme announced a few months ago, but that there is no reason why the Liberals could not steal the idea and do it too.

If the ALP does win power at the end of the year, it will be the first time in its federal history that it will have done so without a programme that only it could carry out.

So given this, could the ALP still win? This blog believes it could, and by a resounding margin. The important dynamic here is not between the ALP and the government but within the government itself. If the ALP programme is exhausted at least they had one while in power. Howard’s government has truly been one of default with no agenda but a sales tax and an IR reform that even business didn’t really need. Fortunately, international events, especially since 9/11, have given it the appearance of an agenda. However the 9/11 effect is now fading and the Liberal’s policy exhaustion, similar to the ALP, is now coming to the surface. This cannot be redressed by focusing on the economy, because on the economy there is no real competing agenda. Howard’s second reassurance above may not be justified.

While the policy vacuum may be similar to the ALP’s, the problem for the Liberals is that, to put it crudely, it is an organisation of members often with many ‘active’ interests outside politics compared to the collective of public sector and trade union bureaucrats and professional student politicians that still make up a large portion of the parliamentary ALP. This could make the Liberal Party without a programme vulnerable to fragmentation and it is the degree to which this starts to become evident before the election that is critical to whether it stays in power. The Santoro scandal, a result of Queensland Liberal in-fighting, is ominous. In that regard, Howard’s attempt to show his toughness on international issues like Iraq may become less focussed on the electorate but aimed internally as a means of cohering his own party.

Newspoll - the penny begins to drop

The most important feature of the latest 61/39 Newspoll was not the poll itself so much, which carried on the trends seen since the Rudd ascendancy, but their interpretation by the media as suggesting a break from the pattern of the last two elections. However, in this blog's view there is still a vast under-estimation of the unprecedented political environment we are now entering. The return of the hapless NSW government on Saturday may partly address this.

The myth of the ‘protest vote’

The classic 'protest vote' election showed what a myth the concept is.

A basic assumption of this blog is that electoral behaviour is reasonably straight forward. Voters have a fair idea of what they are voting for and tend to vote for what they want. At a federal/state election people realise they are voting for a federal/state government and vote for which party they want to run it. At a by-election, generally governments are not being chosen and people will vote for the local member they want but may be influenced by their view of the current government.

Over the last few years, however, this fairly straight forward view of electoral behaviour appears to be challenged by some commentators in Australia. Now there appears to be a new type of voting, a tactical or ‘protest’ vote at a government election, where people really want one government but are so sure they will win that they ‘protest’ with a vote to the opposition. The possibility of this has been a feature of media discussion in the current NSW election and last year's one in Queensland. This is despite no such vote emerging in Queensland and little evidence that it will in NSW on Saturday.

This blog suggests that it is less that voter behaviour has become this convoluted and tortured but that commentators' interpretation of it has become confused. The clearest example of this was the election that was supposed to be a classic protest vote election - Kennett’s defeat in Victoria in 1999.

Despite the opinion polls pointing to it, Kennett’s defeat was so unexpected by commentators that they assumed the voters did not mean it. They were apparently protesting against Kennett without actually wanting him out. Ironically, this classic ‘protest’ election was one of the few that was immediately followed by by-elections that were decisive in the make-up of the government and so could disprove that voters did not mean what they did. The Liberal government’s further defeats in Frankston East and Burwood by even larger pro-ALP swings should have laid to rest the idea that voters were not really voting for Labor (see a thorough paper on this here). Despite the evidence of the Victorian election, however, there are features of the political landscape that are keeping the idea of 'tactical protest voting' alive in current commentary.

Two different types of mud

Media comment about Santoro and the resignations are starting to skate over an essential fact. The Santoro issue is not a direct carry-on from the conflict between the government and the opposition starting with the Burke doo-dah and leading to the Campbell and Thomson resignations. Santoro, and the three Queensland MPs, were a result of the Liberal's attack on the ALP being picked up by the fragmentation within the Liberals themselves. Indeed the ALPs efforts of mud-slinging have been pretty pathetic (e.g their attempts to link Howard's nuclear policy with Ron Walker). The real damage is coming from internal sources as the Liberal Party fragments.

Pyne to investigate Santoro. Is Howard serious?

Howard’s decision to get the new Ageing Minister Pyne to investigate Santoro’s dealings must surely make those who think Howard is an astute operator think again. Does Howard seriously think that will put the Santoro issue to bed? Events are moving too fast for an internal investigation to have any political credibility. This now leaves the way for Labor to push for an independent review and take-over the issue.

Why Debnam is not Bracks

In the discussion around the NSW election, and last year’s in Queensland, there has been the constant resurfacing of an idea that some sort of protest vote could unseat the ALP governments if the Coalition lowers expectations that they are a serious contender for power. This has especially taken off after Debnam’s pre-election concession speech last week.

As said earlier, this blog believes Debnam’s pessimism is less tactical than given credit for by some commentators, and there was a swift retreat from it in the days following. Rather it should be more seen as a response to a chronic policy vacuum.

The polls point to a comfortable Labor win with a largely unchanged majority and this blog sees no reason to expect anything different. However, the perception that Debnam could do better than expected by a protest vote like Bracks in 1999 and Gallop in 2001 contains two ideas that are worth questioning.

The first is the idea of a protest vote. The second is the underlying assumption of equivalence between the Coalition's chances now at the state level and those of the ALP at the beginning of the decade. Separate posts will look at these in turn.

The old buttons are not working when pushed

Howard’s trip to Iraq and Afghanistan only served to highlight how none of the old buttons are working in the same way. This blog’s guess is that the trip had minimal political impact and will probably be seen as a pre-election stunt. This cynicism even seems to be extending to Howard’s emergency landing in Iraq (see Crikey).

Howard is now apparently going to try and revive the Iraq issue with a speech and show that he is not for turning. This is supposed to show his fortitude, strength of character etc. Again he is not getting the point on the character issue - it means nothing separated from policy. People only admired his stance on Iraq, even if despite doubts, they suspected it was the right course to follow to keep in with the US. Now that that no longer seems the case after the UK's announcement last month, he just looks out of touch and a bit ridiculous.

Howard's Code - A club for the Libs to beat each other with

Good article in The Australian on how Howard's Code of Conduct is being used to further factional warring in the Queensland Liberals - all a precursor to what will happen when they lose office.

Debnam's pre-election concession - not as tactical as it looks

Debnam’s pre-election concession of defeat is predominantly being seen as a tactical response to unfavourable polls and an unpopular government á la Bracks and Gallop. But it also reflects the fact that they have no agenda for power. The telling issue was transport. State politics has become nothing but who provides the best public services, which is why the ALP, with its public sector ties, is naturally favoured and the Liberals are at a natural disadvantage. This is the reason for the ALP sweep of the states.

The Federal level has always been about more than this but with the War on Terror falling apart, federal politics is threatening to become not much more than about services either e.g. water management. Rudd’s attempt to link state services with the federal government through the ‘new federalism’ is a smart move.

Howard’s Code rumbles on

Santoro - Another fall-out from Howard’s disastrous decision to revive the Code of Conduct. The revival of the Code, a sign of political weakness, is now starting to expose it. By making an issue of MP activities outside their proper roles of State it highlights how little State role the Liberal Party has. This is the start of a destructive process that will accelerate once they lose power.

Excellent ringtone from Crikey. Listening to it reminds that Labor in power was more devastatingly personal than the Liberals could ever hope to be.

Howard's Code strikes at the core of the Liberal party

What is the Liberal party these days but a bunch of lobbyists for business? The Santoro kerfuffle shows that Howard’s Code of Conduct is now starting to extend beyond the attack on Rudd over Burke into a corrosive process that goes deep into the Liberal party. In the past Howard’s position was strong enough to handle the hypocrisy in attacking the conduct of others. Making such activity ‘morally compromised’ in his current weakened state has started a process that could run and run. Maybe Costello's political naivety will turn out not to be such a bonus for Howard after all.

Hollow Libs v Labor-Lite

Good articles on Labor’s policy vacuum in the Age and Bulletin. Especially like Koutsoukis’s link between the lack of Labor policy and the personality cult around Rudd, although it stops short. The other side of the focus on Rudd is as a counter-attraction to the emptiness of the Liberal Party, which seems to be under-stated by the articles. After all, a new tax and what appear to have ended up being fairly modest IR changes do not point to a reforming decade under Howard. Even the Iraq war is hardly a sign of the Coalition's (or the US and UK's) policy strength. What better example of policy vacuum was an invasion conducted by a military coalition that had not a clue what to do once they got there?

What this means is that while the Liberals’ personal attacks can unnerve Rudd (compare his defensive reaction to the Burke affair to that of the old reformer Keating) it has significant potential now to back-fire on the Liberals with more devastating consequences. While both the programmes of parties are exhausted, the Liberals are even more organisationally hollowed out.

Staring collapse in the face

The media is refusing to countenance an electoral collapse of the Liberal party. The election is still months off and the policy weakness of both parties means the situation is still volatile, but that does not mean there is any reason to dismiss the current polls as ‘incredible’ as much of the media are. On what basis are they doing so? None have questioned the polls' methods, none have posed an alternative poll of their own (Newspoll: ALP 57%, Nielsen: 61% and Morgan: 61.5% have all been seen as unfeasibly high). There has not even been an attempt to try and pose an alternative reading of the public mood.

There seems to be no basis for dismissing these polls other than the fact it has not happened electorally before.

But that is based on the assumption that nothing unprecedented is happening. This is despite Australia already having an unprecedented all-Labor rule in the states and some with unprecedented majorities. Australia would not be the first Western democracy to face fundamental changes in the political order since the end of the Cold War and there is no reason, on evidence, why it is not facing one now.

Round and round and round

A curious feature of commentary is that the more unprecedented the conditions, the more it tends to cling to the past to explain it. It is hard to think of another election in which the past has been regurgitated as a guide to the future as that of 2007, which one do you want, 2001 or 2004? The graphs are being trotted out to show the decline of Latham or Beazley to project forward the future for Rudd from his apparent peak reached in Newspoll today following the Burke furore.

As said earlier, this blog believes that the Coalition are making a mistake playing the old game of personal attack in new conditions and have now released a process that could
easily get out of control. There cannot be a more inappropriate morality campaign launched by a government since Major's 'Back to Basics' in the UK in the mid 1990s.

There is no evidence to suggest why Rudd should have peaked and certainly the ALP has not yet done so.

The reliance on the past comes from the weakness of both camps. For the Libs they have nothing left but to hope that the old buttons work, without knowing why they did. Labor's insecurities on whether it is ready for power makes it vulnerable to superstition that history will repeat itself. In terms of state of eroded grassroots organisation and global political realignments, the Coalition is facing an unprecedented situation for which the past is no guide at all.

The dangers of separating personal from policy

In one way the Coalition's attack on Rudd over Burke shows all that is wrong with its strategy at the moment. It can do nothing but press the old buttons and, as has already been seen over national security, they no longer work in the way they did. On Burke, the Coalition looks to be making the same mistake. Attaching the L-plate label was of course supposed to work with Latham, but only after it translated to policy, namely the premature proposal to withdraw from Iraq. As Rudd has shown recently, when the political environment changes, old buttons do not always work, even on Iraq.

Unless the same can be done with the latest attack, i.e. a link made to policy, the attack on the personal can back-fire. The Campbell resignation already highlights how quickly this attack can get out-of-control.

For Rudd this a crash-through or crash time. He cannot let this rest but could do a lot of damage to the Coalition if he persists.

Normal service resuming ...

This year looks to be the year when some of the underlying trends in Australian politics, obscured and partly suspended by 9/11, now come to the surface in a way that may challenge some assumptions of the last few years. These assumptions seem to be based on the view that the post-war political alignment is still basically in place, but with the added touches of:

• an incumbency factor
• voters tactically not wanting the same party in power state and federally
• the political astuteness and personal following of Howard.

The first event that may challenge this orthodoxy is the NSW election this month. In a way the election will repeat some of the features of last year's Queensland election - an incoherent crisis-riddled government that defies expectations to crush an even more incoherent opposition. The overwhelming dominance of NSW Labor, as in Queensland, must raise questions that the post-war political order is still in place. Once again this may be explained as the 'incumbency factor' but the weakness of that argument is likely to be exposed with the second more important event, of course, the federal election.

The last 11 years has seen the Liberal Party attempt to fill the vacuum created by the exhaustion of the Hawke-Keating reform programme, but not very well. The traditional slump in government standing, occasionally to almost record levels is not to be ignored in this blog's view. It reflects a government that has failed to create any serious consensus and that only stays in through a combination of a politically exhausted opposition and the brief benefit of 9/11 and the War on Terror, which is now fading. The resurgence of the ALP under Rudd is largely reflecting the fading of the 9/11 effect than any particular attributes of Rudd, although he seems to be handling the process fairly well.

In fact this week could be a sign of how well he is handling it by his approach to the Burke episode.

This blog believes the Coalition has got this more wrong than commentators think. There is a major problem in the personal nature of the Coalition's attack that could back-fire and the Campbell resignation now offers a window to pursue it. Costello triumphant is old politics and tactically Rudd has an opportunity to pose 'a different approach' to the old mud-slinging of the past by focusing on the issues. Gillard seems especially effective at this and they should pursue this. I notice that R&G saved their defence for the press conference not parliament. The main game is the media and they may know that the image of Costello gleefully attacking Rudd may not have played as well on the TV as the Coalition thinks.