Regardless of who won the South Australian election there was always going to be argument as to whether it provided any lessons for Canberra. Like just about every state election campaign I’ve been involved in over the last 20 years, the direct federal implications in this campaign were limited.
Australians understand the difference between state and federal issues and generally resist attempts by politicians to intertwine them. For example, I recall watching focus groups in state election campaigns during the Howard years where participants rejected the notion that state Liberals would adopt WorkChoices. This, they said, was a federal issue and therefore not relevant to their decisions about state elections.
They also said that they would judge the federal Liberals harshly when the time came - and they did.
Sometimes federal governments are so unpopular that they can damage the overall party “brand”. This happened in 1974 when Bjelke-Petersen thrashed Labor at the hustings at the height of the anti-Whitlam hysteria that swept Queensland and other states.
By contrast, Neville Wran led NSW Labor out of the wilderness in May 1976, just five months after the dismissal of the Whitlam Government and the subsequent federal Liberal landslide.
Conversely, Bob Carr led Labor to power less than a year before Paul Keating was defeated and certainly at a time when the gloss had gone off the Keating government.
I am struggling to recall a federal election where the popularity or otherwise of a state government or opposition affected the outcome of the federal election in that state.
Its really a case of water not being able to flow uphill. In other words, unpopular federal governments will sometimes - but not always - infect their state branches but not the reverse.
During the recent South Australian campaign the only specific federal issue that touched voters was the Rudd government announcement that it would take from the states principal responsibility for hospital services.
Liberal Leader, Isobel Redmond, went to Canberra - ostensibly to be briefed on the plan by the federal government - and returned a day later saying Kevin Rudd had many questions to answer. She then failed to actually ask any questions at all on possibly the most important issue involving federal/state relations since the Commonwealth took over responsibility for income tax collection during the Second World War.
This was the first and last attempt to introduce a federal issue into the campaign.
Since then Tony Abbott and his spin machine have attempted to get up the argument that voters in South Australia were rejecting Rann’s so called “all talk no action” approach to politics and they would do the same with Rudd. The problem with this argument (ignoring the fact that Rann looks like losing just three seats after 15 years as Labor leader) is that in neither the South Australian nor the federal cases is Abbott’s claim supported by the facts.
Both jurisdictions have been enjoying low unemployment, stimulus supported development and steady economic growth. Across the country Australians are essentially happy with the economy and its management.
And this, arguably, is the one area where there are some lessons to be taken from the South Australian campaign. It took until the last week of that election for the question of economic management to become a serious point of distinction between the two parties.
From the first day of the campaign Labor had been pressing the case that the Liberals were fudging on their costings. With little early effect, Rann, Foley and Hill argued that there were serious flaws in the Liberal assertion that they could save $1 billion by rebuilding the Royal Adelaide Hospital on its existing site rather than relocating to a new site nearby.
One week ago today Labor was staring defeat in the face. Then came Vickie Chapman’s inexcusable intervention in the Liberal campaign where she failed to rule out a leadership challenge to Redmond.
This gave voters the first tangible demonstration in the election of our claim that Redmond and the Liberals were not in fact ready to govern.
Then on the second last day of the campaign the Opposition released its costings and they were a mess. There were no savings identified in the rebuild of the Royal Adelaide and they had completely failed to put aside any funds for the widening of the Southern Expressway.
These problems were further compounded when the Shadow Treasurer, Stephen Griffiths, admitted that their claims about saving $1 billion were “spin” and savings would not be realised for years.
So, on the eve of the election, voters were confronted with television images of Isobel Redmond being savaged by reporters as she tried to explain away these gaffes by her Shadow Treasurer who had now gone to ground.
In the wash up a sizeable portion of the South Australian public shyed away from voting Liberal because the Opposition suddenly looked risky on the issue of economic management.
The danger for Tony Abbott - and a lesson from this campaign - is that Australians will ultimately see him and his economic team as a risk.
This would have been unthinkable when Costello was in charge of the coffers - but now things have changed.
Abbott himself proclaims that he is uninterested in economics, his Shadow Treasurer, Joe Hockey, is the embodiment of bluff and blunder and Barnaby Joyce struggles to be seen as anything but a fiscal practical joke.
If there is a lesson to be learned from the South Australian election it is this - Australians never have and never will elect a party which they see as a risk to the national economy or their household budgets.
Bruce Hawker was an adviser to the Labor Party during the recent South Australian elections.
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