The journalistic firmament is littered with the carcasses of political commentators who have served up election predictions only to be proven completely wrong on polling day. Here I humbly offer myself up to the pile.
The Coalition will narrowly win next Saturday’s election and govern in its own right. That is, it will win at least 17 seats from the ALP. If it falls short of tis target it will govern with the support of three independents - Rob Oakeshott, Bob Katter and Tony Windsor, who despite their well-documented fallings-out with the National Party over the years, are too smart to alienate their overwhelmingly conservative constituencies by siding with what would be a very battered Labor Government.
Despite polls suggesting a 17-seat turnaround is possible - this week’s Newspoll showed the Coalition would win 16 seats in Queensland and NSW alone - almost every other commentator who has stuck his or her neck out is saying Labor will scrape home.
Perhaps my take on things is clouded by living in Sydney, where the NSW Government is as popular as head lice. But in descending order of importance I’ve tried to distill my thinking down to four key areas, the first of which does involve my home state.
1. NSW Labor is seriously and irreversibly on the nose.
When NSW Labor registered a pathetic 25 per cent primary vote at a by-election in the blue-collar heartland seat of Penrith earlier this year, pundits said the swing was exaggerated by corruption allegations against the outgoing Labor MP. I don’t think it was. The Penrith result reflected a deep-seated malaise with the Labor brand in the most populous state, and suggests that Labor’s improbable victory at the 2007 NSW election, massively aided by a woeful Opposition campaign, has created a sense of pent-up fury which is ready to explode. The cynical reaction to Julia Gillard’s promise of a $2.1 billion western Sydney rail link - something State Labor has promised for years and never delivered - showed how hot under the collar the voters are. The pivotal role of the NSW Right in knifing Rudd for Gillard - based on the roaring success of the Morris Iemma-Nathan Rees-Kristina Keneally model - has galvanised the voter view that these people see power as their own personal plaything.
2. The Rudd factor is massive in Queensland.
It’s now obvious that Labor massively underestimated the perception of arrogance and imperiousness it would generate by removing Rudd the way it did. Voters believe that, when it comes to Prime Ministers, they’re the ones who should do the hiring and firing, not the factions. This sense is most acute in Rudd’s home state, and his awkward and unwelcome return to the campaign trail has only shone new light on the manner of his removal. Tonight’s interview with the former PM on Channel Seven will add salt to a very raw wound. Labor holds 17 out of the 30 seats in Queensland, 10 of them by less than 5 per cent, and all of them are in very serious danger. And you can repeat much of what I said above about the NSW Government in the context of Anna Bligh’s Queensland Labor Government.
3. The so-called pro-Gillard states aren’t pro-Gillard enough.
Victoria is obviously proud of its PM, and South Australia has a high degree of affection for her too, as it’s the place where her Welsh migrant parents settled when she was a three-year old girl, and where she studied intol her 20s. But whatever warm feelings this pedigree generates are unlikely to deliver any corresponding gains in either state. Visiting the two Liberal marginals of Boothby and Sturt on a daytrip home to Adelaide this week, every voter who was gushing about Gillard was cancelled out by another who’s unhappy about the way she got the job, or upset at her policy efforts as Rudd’s deputy.
4. The Liberals have run a much better campaign than the ALP.
The unusual battle for supremacy between the fake Julia and the real Julia, the re-emergence of Rudd, the leaks, the Latham circus…Labor has found itself trying to divert the attention of voters away from massive and often hysterically entertaining distractions. The Liberals, in contrast, have been able to keep their heads down and capitalise on the madness. Labor has had a better week this week and Tony Abbott has made mistakes - his 7.30 Report quip that he’s “no Bill Gates” made him sound like a luddite on broadband. But equally, Gillard’s rave reviews from going on programs such as Q and A and The 7pm Project were illusory, as I’d suspect that on these shows she was already preaching to the converted.
So that’s me. There’s every chance there’ll be an egg obscuring my face on this column next week, but based on our roadtrips out in voter-land, and having spent absolutely no time locked on the bus with Abbott or Gillard, that’s our sense of it. Vote early and vote often.
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