The art of misinterpreting election victories Inside Story

NATIONAL AFFAIRS

13/07/2015 3:35 am

1280 words

The art of misinterpreting election

victories
2 APRIL 2015

Unexpected wins in 1993, 1998

and 2001 have distorted the
way we interpret election
results, writes Peter Brent. The
effects are still inuencing how
political players think and
behave
Right:
Wrong lessons: John Howard responds to
favourable opinion polls in early September 2001
amid the Tampa refugee controversy. Julian
Smith/AAP Image

SW premier Mike Baird claims he has a mandate to implement his electricity privatisation

plan. And hes right. Baird has been saying for months that his government, if re-elected, would
lease 49 per cent of the states poles and wires, and a big majority of the NSW electorate voted for
his Coalition parties.
But that doesnt mean Baird convinced voters that electricity privatisation is a good idea and that
theyre now in favour. A referendum on the issue would still surely fail. His government was reelected despite this unpopular policy.
Does this mean that Bairds victory would have been even bigger if he hadnt included privatisation
in his re-election manifesto? Thats a tricky one, because Bairds public devotion to the cause as
state treasurer means a hand-on-heart never ever promise might not have been believed. A Labor
campaign about a secret agenda to privatise might have developed traction, and that would have
been worse for the government politically. It was presumably a factor in the governments decision
to come clean.
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Theres a tendency for political analysts to assume that because an issue provokes a strong, even
emotional, reaction in the community, and dominates the media coverage, its an important driver
in peoples decisions at the ballot box. But there are many things people feel forcefully about that
dont affect their votes.
Three recent federal results have achieved single issue status in the collective memory. The
Howard governments 2007 loss is popularly blamed on WorkChoices. Its earlier 2001 re-election is
widely believed to have been driven by asylum seekers. And Paul Keatings unexpected victory
twenty-two years ago came from his opponents promise to introduce a GST.
Its likely only the last-named deserves the honour. We can say with reasonable certainty that had
opposition leader John Hewson promised not to do anything much at all in 1993, as John Howard
did three years later, he would have become prime minister.
Hewson has suggested that hes responsible for the subsequent small target template so favoured
by Australian federal oppositions, and he has a point. Labors 2007 campaign provides a textbook
example (Kevin Rudds me too became a tagline) and in that case the result was what 1993s
should have been: a cyclical change of government, a party ebbing out of ofce after four terms
once the opposition had reassured voters that it wouldnt go crazy if it were elected.
And what of 2001, when the Howard government achieved an apparently unlikely re-election after
whipping up hysteria about boat arrivals? Early that year the Coalition appeared gone for all
money, trailing by double-digits in the opinion polls. But it was already clawing back when the
Tampa arrived in late August. That event, and the turmoil and emotion accompanying it, and then
the September 11 attacks in the United States lit up the radio talkback lines and produced some
very big poll leads, again double-digit. But on election day in November the win was a modest 51 to
49 per cent after preferences.
And if you trace the opinion poll trajectory from early 2001 to mid August, and extrapolate that
line to November, you end up at around the election result anyway. The Howard government was
probably headed for re-election regardless.
Yet politicians, their advisers and the media still cling to the supposed lessons of 2001; they
pollute Australian politics, uniquely among Western nations, to this day.
In 1998 Howard was re-elected despite lumbering himself with a GST. As with Baird and electricity
privatisation, it would be preposterous to conclude that he sold the package, or convinced
Australians of its desirability. The GST was disliked right through to election day and beyond. The
Coalition recorded the lowest winning two-party-preferred vote in federal history.
But just as we can be reasonably sure of the GSTs overall impact in 1993, it also probably made

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1998 a real competition. With no GST, re-election would likely have been easier.
The GST went on to become an emblem of the Coalitions economic competence and Howards
conviction politics. It assisted him politically in his last two terms. He dines on it to this day.
The tax has been accepted as part of the fabric, and cant be introduced again, but the ghost of that
tight election hovers as well. Any suggestion of an increase or broadening raises a warning ag,
and not just from Labor: in 2004, and again in 2007, treasurer Peter Costello cautioned direly that
wall-to-wall state Labor governments, combined with federal Labor, might bring a GST rise. Which
naturally drove those opposition leaders to swear they would never do that.
And in the rst leaders debate of the 2013 election Kevin Rudd whined and carped that an Abbott
government would increase the GST rate, which naturally led Tony Abbott to assure the country it
would not.
Have a quick squiz across the ditch. Before New Zealands 2008 election, opposition leader John
Key insisted he would not touch the GST. He and his party won ofce and, midway through their
term, increased it. He was comfortably re-elected. New Zealand has neither states nor an upper
house, which made the change much easier than it would be here.
Howards GST and Bairds poles and wires were exceptions. In Australia, reforms are usually sprung
on the voters, having gone unmentioned, or perhaps been vigorously denied, at the previous
election. They meet resistance but once theyve been introduced people usually get used to them.
Most of the headline changes over the last half a century that are now seen positively ending
White Australia, increasing immigration from the late 1970s, accepting Vietnamese refugees,
dismantling tariffs, and all those reforms of the now celebrated HawkeKeating agenda t that
category.
In modern, professionalised Australian politics, parties rst strategic port of call is to ramp up
fear, on as many fronts as possible, about what their opponents might do. The modern media
attention-span deprived, story-churning joins in, demanding answers, and political leaders, the
memory of Hewson hovering, swear off anything vaguely contentious. If in doubt, rule it out, well
do it anyway once were in ofce. New governments break pledges thats always happened but
the number and extent has escalated.
A wise person once said that Australians are easily terried by the prospect of change and then
adapt to it with relative ease. But the current federal government is stuck in political hell, with
unpalatable policies in suspended animation, forever in prospect but never becoming reality.
Thats partly because of a large Senate crossbench, a function of decreasing support for both major
parties. But its also because the Coalition unequivocally ruled out so much of its agenda before the

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2013 election, leaving it with little moral authority to argue its case.
Perhaps the politics is broken crowd have a point.
Mike Bairds victory is being popularly transcribed as a case of a courageous politician taking a
difcult agenda to the voters and being duly rewarded. Although its more complicated than that, if
this encourages other politicians to be upfront before elections, it would be a good thing. But its
difcult to see the major parties armies of advisers, pollsters and strategists allowing that to
happen.

PETER BRENT
Peter Brent is an Adjunct Research Fellow at the Swinburne
Institute for Social Research and blogs on electoral matters at
Mumble.

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