State Elections

Given we don’t have an official national dance, I would like to nominate one. Let’s call it ‘the Election Day Waltz’. It has a few tricky steps, then a big finale that always ends up the same way.

New NSW Premier Barry O’Farrell was doing the dance this week. First the light steps through the campaign: ‘there will be no public sector job cuts, there will be no cuts to services’, up there on his tippy toes all grace and poise.

Then he lands with a thud. The day after the election he ‘discovers’ a ‘budget black hole’ and he starts stomping around on the very workers and services he was reassuring just days ago.

Continue reading "How can they dance when the promises are burning?" »

The South Australian election is not over just yet. 

Some 20% of votes are yet to be counted and there are three Labor seats which are too close to call.  Bright will most probably be Liberal by the end of the week and Hartley and Newland are still in play.  If all three come to the Liberal Party then Labor will only have 22 seats and will need to do a deal with independents to survive.

We should consider the facts on Saturday night’s result.  There was an eight percent state wide swing to the Liberal Party resulting in approximately 52% of the state wide two party preferred.  There will be at least five new members of the Liberal team, an increase of a third to the Parliamentary team.  Better still the new members including Dan Van Holst Pellekann, Steven Marshall, John Gardner, Tim Whetstone and Rachel Sanderson have genuine talent and will add some real fire power.

Continue reading "State elections: It’s not over until the fat lady swings" »

I first met Bruce Hawker when he gave John Fahey’s staff just 24 hours to pack their belongings after the 1995 election defeat and get out of Premier-elect Bob Carr’s new offices. At that time I was Director of Policy to Fahey.

Whilst bitterness is not in my nature I use events to define character – mine and theirs.

Bruce Hawker is a spin merchant. He moulds the message for electoral gain. So when I read his piece today on The Punch about the weekend elections I was not surprised. How does Labor turn a hostile 7.4% swing in South Australia and a hostile 12% swing in Tasmania into a win for Rudd? Easy: “It could have been worse.”

Continue reading "Hawker’s bluff: Spinning the state results for Labor" »

A week or so ago conservative commentators across Australia were predicting all sorts of implications for Kevin Rudd from last Saturday’s elections in Tasmania and South Australia. 

On Saturday morning as the last Newspoll results landed with a thud on front doors across Adelaide, they began to polish up their “the tide is turning against Labor everywhere” columns.

Some of them are still out there beating this drum but the more astute have gone silent.  It is possible they are embarrassed, because it’s clear from the results that neither the South Australian or Tasmanian elections hold any portents for Federal Labor. 

Continue reading "The Saturday night electoral massacre that wasn’t" »

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.

Continue reading "Election fallout: Economic weaknesses can be fatal" »

VOTERS are a fickle lot. The extent of their capriciousness can be told with the tale of two governments: Mike Rann’s generally competent Labor administration in South Australia, which is facing possible defeat today, and that crazy sideshow act in NSW now under the care of a new ringleader, a likable American-born woman called Kristina Keneally, who is harnessing public sympathy if not pity as the basis for an improbable political comeback.

Rann has presided over a state where job growth has surged and investment has boomed. The one-time basket case of the national economy, which younger people (like me) were keen to flee in the backdraft of the State Bank collapse 15 years ago, now finds itself in the once-unimaginable position of having the lowest level of unemployment in Australia.

Continue reading "Tale of two premiers plays to mixed reviews" »