Sunday 22nd of December 2024
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on the golden fleece .....

on the golden fleece .....

Gillard wants to be seen as the leader who delivers the policy goods but the voters may have already switched off.

If it were not already named after George Orwell, reversing the meaning of words for the purposes of political propaganda might have to be named Gillardian. Consider the talking points that the Prime Minister's office sent to ministers on Tuesday.

Labor had just been dealt a cold, brutal blow by the people of Queensland on Saturday. It went from 51 seats to seven, so few that it lost its status as a political party for the purposes of Queensland electoral law. Labor's primary vote in the state fell to a record low of 27 per cent. But federal Labor could, at least, console itself with the fact that its share of the national vote was higher, at 31 per cent in the most recent Newspoll.

Then the latest Newspoll published on Tuesday. Federal Labor's primary vote fell by 3 percentage points to 28. That is, not materially better than in Queensland. It was a devastating poll. The arguments about the difference between state and federal suddenly looked pretty thin. Labor's Queensland performance looked like a premonition of its federal fate.

The only faint hint of any positive news for Julia Gillard in the poll was that her approval rate became slightly less disapproving - from a net approval rating of minus 34 to minus 27. That still meant public sentiment was running two-to-one against her, and that she remained a tad more unpopular than Tony Abbott. Dismal, in other words.

The Prime Minister's office, however, saw it differently. This was the interpretation that Gillard's staff sent to all her ministers on Tuesday: the Newspoll result "shows people are responding positively to the Prime Minister's strong leadership on the mining tax, NBN and delivering a strong economy for working people."

If that is a positive response, what would a negative one look like? This Orwellian construction was so absurd that it had a cheering effect, though possibly not the intended one - some ministers laughed out loud when they read it.

It seemed to be the same vein of thinking that Julia Gillard was occupying when she was asked on Monday whether she, like Queensland's freshly dispatched premier Anna Bligh, had a problem of trust? Gillard answered that she would be happy to go to the next election and ask the people to trust her.

This sent up a gleeful whoop in the Liberal Party, which quickly produced a video juxtaposing her remark with her broken promise that "there will be no carbon tax under the government I lead".

And on the face of it, a Labor campaign based on the people's trust in Gillard does look to be ludicrously quixotic. The basis for her unpopularity is the perception of her very absence of trustworthiness.

A quick review of the evidence. A poll by Essential Media last June found that only 30 per cent of voters agreed that she was trustworthy, a collapse from her score of 49 when she first took the job. Qualitative polling by both parties has found that her biggest image problems with the electorate are that she's seen as cold and untrustworthy. The Australian Electoral Study, conducted at every election by a team of academics, found that just 9 per cent of voters agreed that the word "trustworthy" described Gillard "extremely well".

This is the woman demonised at No Carbon Tax rallies and on talkback radio by the epithet Juliar, playing to the public trust? Why on earth? Here's the thinking among some of Gillard's senior staff. Trust is an issue that haunts Gillard, but it's an issue that can't be skirted: "It's one of the things you can't go around, you have to go through," said one.

The Gillard team well recalls how John Howard did just that at the 2004 election against Mark Latham's Labor. After years of criticism that Howard was duplicitous and sneaky, over the ''never, ever'' GST, children overboard, Iraq and the non-existent weapons of mass destruction, there was widespread incredulity when he called the election with these words: "This election, ladies and gentlemen, will be about trust."

It worked for him. In fact, it was Howard's biggest election win. He won the Senate as well as the House of Representatives, giving him untrammelled control of the Parliament for the only time in his 11½-year prime ministership. He asked for trust, and Australia said, How much would you like?

Why did it work? First, Howard did not make it an abstract about trust or trust in truth-telling. This is how he framed it: "Who do you trust to keep the economy strong, and protect family living standards? Who do you trust to keep interest rates low? Who do you trust to lead the fight on Australia's behalf against international terrorism?"

In short, Howard made it about competence. The electorate did not think Howard honest, but it thought him competent in delivering economic growth and national security, the two prerequisites for a national leader. And, of course, he was - the economy had its longest run of growth on record under Howard and Peter Costello, and there was no successful terrorist attack.

But, more than that, he made it a contrast. In a two-party system, powerfully drawing attention to an attribute of one leader posts an automatic contrast with the other. By emphasising his competence, Howard was pointing up Latham's inexperience and unsteadiness. It was a contrast that worked brilliantly for Howard.

Can it work for Gillard? Howard pulled "a judo move", by turning an apparent weakness into a strength, says Gillard's adviser. When, during the leadership challenge by Kevin Rudd, Gillard declared, again and again, that "I am the person who gets things done", some of her senior staff started to think that this could be the basis for a Gillard judo move. The guiding concept is for Gillard's campaign to find public perceptions of her that can be harnessed to an attractive purpose, while simultaneously pointing up an unattractive attribute of Tony Abbott's. Gillard is seen as a hard worker, ambitious, a good negotiator, and tough. The thinking is to link these attributes to Gillard as the leader who can deliver. "People want some certainty, they want a plan, they want someone to deliver the plan," says one of her advisers. "We will win on a real plan, we will win on getting things done."

This is designed to highlight by contrast the perception that Abbott has no positive plan, only negativity, cannot get things done, only block things getting done.

So when, on Monday, Gillard said she would ask for trust, she copied the Howard playbook. She did not make it about abstract trust or about truthtelling. This is how she framed it:

"I am happy now and in the 2013 election to say 'Who do you trust to manage the economy in the interest of working people? Who do you trust to understand the needs of the future and the building of that future economy? Who do you trust to spread the benefits of the mining boom to make sure that they are shared by all Australians; who do you trust to improve your local schools and local hospitals?'"

And it's the first of these, the economy, that will, as ever in national politics, be the main battleground. Gillard framed it very deliberately and very carefully and based on years of political psychology.

Peter Lewis of the campaign consultancy Essential Media Communications, the outfit that crafted the ACTU's successful campaign against WorkChoices, explains that the choice of words is grounded in work by the veteran US Democratic Party pollster Vic Fingerhut: "He showed that when you ask people, 'Who's best at running the economy?', people favour the conservatives. But when you ask, 'Who's best at running the economy in the interests of working people?', the left-of-centre party wins." It's all about framing the question. "By merely adding the words 'for working people' to the question 'who is better at managing the economy?', Democrats pick up 30 percentage points. This is the way that left-of-centre parties can win debates."

Lewis says that Australians have a firm conviction that social class exists despite our national narrative of egalitarianism. Asked whether they believe social class still exists in Australia, 86 per cent of respondents to an Essential Media poll said yes, and only 8 per cent said no.

This, no doubt, helps explain Wayne Swan's attacks on billionaires as he seeks to establish a polarisation in the public mind to the advantage of Labor. Guess how many Australians categorise themselves as belonging to the upper class? One per cent, according to Essential Media polling. Thirty-four per cent call themselves working class, and 50 per cent middle class.

"Our reading of this," says Lewis, "is that this is fertile ground. Class is the new black."

But if Gillard, Swan and Lewis are right, then why are we seeing poll results like this one? Asked "which party do you think would be best at handling the Australian economy in the interests of you and people like you?" in an Essential Media poll just this week, the Liberal Party still won, by 41 per cent to 29.

The theory is not working for Labor as it is supposed to. Similarly, Lewis points out that "on most issues, Labor is running with stuff that rates 50 per cent plus" on a policy-by-policy measure. He cites the mining tax, the NBN and the prospect of a national disability insurance scheme. "But it's not translating into electoral support."

One possible conclusion is that Labor's popular policies are outweighed by the unpopular. But even the hyper-controversial carbon tax still wins poll support of about 30 to 40 per cent, meaning Labor's most unpopular policy is nonetheless more popular than Labor itself. Another possible conclusion is that the problem is not the product but the salesman. Or woman.

Public Boots The Messenger

 

a legacy of patronage & factionalism .....

First NSW, then Queensland. Some are not sure the ALP can recover.

THE HISTORIAN ROSS McMULLIN

The rout inflicted on the ALP in Queensland was extraordinary - grim indeed for the Labor faithful, and a startling result even for experienced observers familiar with Australian political history.

Some will bracket this debacle with the defeat Labor suffered at the last NSW election, add to the mix that ALP governments were removed from office at the last state elections in Victoria and Western Australia, point to the Gillard government's consistently low primary vote in the polls, and be tempted to conclude that Labor's future is bleak, even that the party might be on a slippery slope to irretrievable irrelevance.

Others will contend that it's not all over for Australia's oldest party, partly because it is Australia's oldest party. That is, the ALP has been around for 121 years, and has survived the most tumultuous ructions and upheavals, vicissitudes and plummets.

Moreover, just four years ago the ALP was in government in every state as well as federally. So to some extent there's a cyclical element at play here; if you're in government long enough, the "it's time" factor kicks in, the punters stop listening, and the voting volatility (which has been particularly pronounced in Queensland) practically ensures your demise.

The ALP does have serious questions to ponder, as concerned activists have been emphasising for some time. To what extent does its malaise stem from the fact that the party has largely achieved the objectives that it was formed to pursue? And has struggled to shape a compelling set of contemporary aims and internal structures for the very different Australia of today? Labor has repeatedly demonstrated its resilience and adaptability in emerging from lacerating splits, demoralising defeats and philosophical tussles.

Labor needs to demonstrate this resilience and adaptability again. Some guiding principles are available. The sweeping review of the party conducted by John Faulkner, Steve Bracks and Bob Carr produced many important recommendations in 2010. Most have been either rejected outright by the party. If results like the last Queensland and NSW elections don't prompt a rethink, you have to wonder what will.

Ross McMullin is the author of the ALP centenary history The Light on the Hill and Farewell, Dear People: Biographies of Australia's Lost Generation.

THE CRITIC CARMEN LAWRENCE

Every election produces its own peculiar certainties about the grim prospects facing the losing party, certainties that more thoughtful consideration - and the passage of time - often show to be flawed. Knee-jerk analyses and advice are proffered by commentators about what must be done to avoid permanent oblivion. I've done it myself.

Last Saturday's results in Queensland will be pored over for a while yet - and the scorecard of firsts and worsts marked for the winners and losers. In every electoral cycle, the imminent demise of the losing party and creeping tide of blue (or red) across the nation will be trumpeted as unique, without precedent. Only a few scribes will have the humility to look back a few years and read what they said when Campbell Newman was the sole Liberal political leader left standing after the Howard defeat.

In all of the "horse race" commentary, it's likely only a few people will pay close attention to the real problem thrown up again by the Queensland campaign and results - the rot infesting both major parties and eroding the political culture; the steady decline in membership and diminished participation by Australians in shaping political values, designing policy and selecting candidates.

The major parties are failing our democracy and have been for some time; they are not parties any more, but, win-or-lose, hollow corporations run by a handful of paid officials, remote from their declining membership and the rest of Australia. And ripe for the picking by special interests - not to mention Clive Palmer. Our already rudimentary political parties are dying as power is concentrated in fewer hands - hands increasingly reluctant to share.

As one correspondent put it to me, Australia's political parties are "ramshackle top-down corporations which market products cooked up in back rooms". The old ideologies have been replaced by a managerial culture and poll-driven spin; by disquieting alliances with large corporations and big players. The major parties' agendas are so similar that they offer little choice for voters. In place of robust disagreements and debates about our future, the public dialogue has shrunk to repetitious sound bites which "stay on message".

The parties have been too clever for their own good, embracing simplistic, lowest common denominator policies designed with one eye on the polls and the other on the immediate public reaction, especially from the media. It's not surprising that Australians no longer appear to care who wins elections - as long as everyone gets a turn.

Carmen Lawrence (Labor, WA) was Australia's first woman premier, later a federal MP.

THE ACTIVIST DARCY BYRNE

At the 1931 federal election the Scullin Labor government was obliterated with a swing against it of more than 20 per cent. Having lost his own seat, the future prime minister John Curtin was asked what, if anything, could be done. He replied simply that the party "has to be reincarnated".

After historic defeats in NSW and Queensland many are now predicting, not for the first time, that Labor is finished. The threat to our survival as a political force is real but it can and will be overcome.

At the centre of Labor's problems in NSW and elsewhere is the devastating shrinking of our base. Across the Western world the decline of the blue-collar working class is robbing social democratic and labour parties of their traditional supporters. The ALP is no exception.

In NSW this societal phenomenon has coincided with the centralisation of control within the party that has made the role of members and volunteers less meaningful.

This culture of patronage and factionalism has led to members walking away from NSW Labor in droves.

There are serious electoral consequences to the alienation of life-long Labor activists. At last year's election there were hundreds of polling booths across NSW that for the first time went unstaffed. No doubt this was also the case in Queensland last Saturday.

For a party such as Labor, with the radical aim of creating a fairer society, our goals can be achieved only through personal persuasion on a mass scale. This requires an energised army of foot soldiers to knock on doors and reach out to their friends and neighbours.

Labor's future viability as a party of government depends on rebuilding ourselves not simply as a parliamentary party but as a progressive movement with deep roots in local communities.

A reform campaign has been growing among rank-and-file members in NSW. We are fighting for the democratic evolution of our party. We will not stop until members have a real say at all levels including, for the first time, a vote on who is to be our next state parliamentary leader. We are also demanding that Sussex Street pour resources into the grassroots, so that members can organise their own campaigns at a local level.

It is up to all members and the millions of true believers who share our values to stand up for Labor's future. The spirit of John Curtin must inhabit us all.

Darcy Byrne is a Leichhardt councillor and winner of the statewide ballot for the NSW Labor Policy Forum.

THE LIBERAL NICK MINCHIN

The Australian Labor Party has suffered probably its worst defeat with a near wipeout in Queensland and a primary vote of only 27 per cent.

For the ALP it was an unmitigated disaster and follows its electoral armageddon in NSW.

Labor now clings to government in South Australia and Tasmania, plus the two territories, and the minority federal Labor government trails badly in the polls.

Labor is paying the price of an incompetent and scandal-ridden government, and of treating voters like fools. Labor in government thinks voters are so stupid it can lie to them and get away with it.

Queensland is the greatest wake-up call the ALP has ever had about its bankrupt modus operandi in office.

Labor has become nothing more than a political machine devoted entirely to the acquisition and retention of power for its own sake.

Labor has failed spectacularly its two conflicting constituencies, inner-city progressives and suburban and regional working families.

Nevertheless , Liberal and National party supporters would be foolish to assume the ALP is dead as an effective political force.

We should know - we conservatives have been written off in the past by the commentariat, yet now govern in Australia's four biggest states and are on track to regain government federally in 18 months' time. Labor too can crawl out of the political grave.

Labor has one big advantage (albeit a two-edged sword): it is the political arm of Australia's trade union movement, with all the inherent institutional strength and resilience endemic to that relationship.

While there is a union movement, there is a potentially potent Labor Party.

Yet Labor cannot afford to be, or be seen to be, simply a lobby group for militant unions, or a dumping ground for ex-union officials.

Federal Labor has the guarantee of the great majority of Greens preferences to keep it electorally competitive, but its relationship with the Greens and its genuflection to the Greens agenda are killing it in the suburbs and regional Australia.

Nevertheless, there is one fundamental truth about Australian politics - the pendulum ultimately swings. It swung like crazy in Queensland, but it can swing back.

Any pattern of incompetence, arrogance or deceit on the conservative side, federally or state, would see that pendulum swing back to Labor.

The extent to which the pendulum swings back to Labor will also be a function of its capacity to resolve its existential dilemma - to compete with the Greens for progressive inner-city votes or compete with the Liberal and National parties for the votes of hard-working Australian families trying to make ends meet and build a nest egg for the future.

Is The Labor Brand Terminal?