During the last Queensland state election, I made this point, which arose out of some focus group polling Graham Young and I conducted:
Coalition state governments in the 90s weren’t afraid to be economic and social reformers. Greiner and then Kennett set a cracking pace. Not only was the pace much too fast for voters’ speed limits, but the liberal economic agenda and particularly privatisation were deeply unpopular. By the time the gloss wore off, voters punished Coalition administrations for placing ideology over services. The final nail in the Liberal coffin was the 2002 SA election. The Libs were punished for electricity privatisation, and supply failures in searing southern summers.
After 2002, state oppositions avoided privatisation like the plague. The result was that they staked out ideological positions not discernibly different from those of Labor governments, and ran on personalities, Laura Norder auctions, critiques of mismanagement and so on. Unless a government is in deep trouble, this always implies that it is a very hard ask to beat the incumbent because you can articulate no fundamental difference in vision.
This will be an interesting frame through which to assess the NSW election campaign. Past NSW oppositions have tacked slightly away from the Greiner legacy, sometimes offering populist twists on electricity privatisation like a cheque for every voter. But having seen Carr retreat from the privatisation agenda, and the wilder ideas of Costa put back in their box, the NSW Liberals, like other state oppositions, seem to have rejected any fundamental difference with Labor in favour of negativism. That’s always a very dangerous position for an Opposition leader, as governments can make news with policy, but the Opposition, unless it outlines a different direction can only niggle. And Peter Debnam’s persona seems particularly prone to the negatives that the electorate perceive in being negative. This is one of the reasons why Iemma isn’t in as much trouble as he should be. The other is that the real philosophical difference some in the NSW Liberal Party have with Labor – reactionary social conservatism – is one that any Opposition would be insane to highlight.
What you’ve described there is the exact route taken by every Labor government in beating conservative incumbents. Bracks v Kennett, Carr v Fahey, Beattie v Borbidge, Gallop v Court, Rann v what’s-his-name, Bacon v the-guy-that-Bacon-beat: all of them successful, none of them paradigm-shifters. The Liberals aren’t crazy in following this line – they just don’t do it well.
The NSW Libs also don’t realise that voters perceive the rabid right as a far more potent threat than even the maddest trade union leftie.
My personal view is that reactionary social conservatism is not the vote loser implied by Mark (though I find it hypocritical and dangerous) and I am suprised that Debnam has not let his backbench off the leash to say what they really think even if it would cause problems for party unity.
A lot of people a looking for certainty which the simple conservative rhetoric and analysis offer (this is shown by the attraction of even young people to the happy clapper / fundamentalist churches and mosques and a their simple theology). It is also reflected in peoples tolerence of giving more powers to the police.
My view is that if Debnam did run a social conservative camapign he could attract the anglo-celtic blue collar workers in the western sydney suburbs away from ALP.
I expect the biggest screaming wouldnt come from the ALP but from the remnant left of the Liberal Party. Most of the ALP MPs are almost more social conservative than their Lib/Nat opponennts and the ALP Left are still speechless after one of their own was charged by the police.
Personally I expect the election campaign to go this way – expect the bashing of teachers for not teaching respect, expect aussie values and I daresay christian values to be raised in this campaign.
Debnam has to do something because he has well and truely been tagged as someone who is going to sack lots of public servants because of his ideological views. We might not like public servants but we dont want people sacked because of an ideological view – I agree with Mark on this.
I agree with Mark that I expect the ALP to remain in government – so I expect the Lib/Nats to go feral as they realise they they have stuffed it up again!
A version of that dynamic worked in the other direction in SA after the State Bank collapse, for which Labor was savagely electorally punished until Rann pulled them together. Your theory is not competely true about Rann except for the Laura Norder thing, which is more about perceived fear in the electorate of the genuinely feral elements (this is Weird Adelaide, after all) and which he plays to the hilt — it doesn’t spill over into general social conservatism in other ways though.
In SA everything still refers back to the days of Don Dunstan, for whom Rann used to work when he was still practically a teenager and whose memory you can still see in Rann’s agenda. He would never go chasing the fundie vote in a fit, for example. What I do fear is that once the SA Libs get rid of the hopeless Ian Evans, on whose round pink-cheeked head the eye persists in sketching in a St Peters school cap, and promote the 2IC in their boy-girl tag team — the attack-dog Vickie Chapman, who has more brains in her little finger etc — then it will become a real contest.
Uh oh, my bad, again. Actually his name is Iain Evans and he went to Heathfield High, which is a different proposition altogether, leavened as it is with the offspring of Adelaide Hills hippies.
But he looks like a Saints boy.
Labor State Govts eh? As they live by their bloody communard controls, so they should bloody well die by them http://www.news.com.au/story/0,10117,21067187-1246,00.html?from=public_rss
There is no truth in the rumour that yours truly who lives in the same suburb as the aforementioned communard deviant, actually dobbed him in. However I feel it my sanctimonious citizen’s duty to dob in the Channel 7 camera crew, who were set up on the footpath outside Mr Wrong’s house and wait for it- get this- on a stinking hot day without hats on. There’ll need to be a serious enquiry here if there is a shred of truth in the rumour that they were not wearing any sunscreen at the time.
‘Communard controls’? In Adelaide? Observa, you’re weird, dude.
I agree that the Wright/sprinkler episode is very funny and I agree that he should bloody well be fined, but Iain Evans calling for his resignation just looks like a silly boy — it’s exactly the kind of niggling knee-jerk negativity, writ small, that Mark’s talking about, and it makes oppositions look as if that’s all they’ve got.
PC, there is no shortage of water in Adelaide or any city for that matter. Just an artificial shortage at the current communard controlled pricing system. User pays and Mr Wrong and I could water our lawns to our wallets’ content. So could rice and cotton growers if they figured it was economically viable.
I wouldn’t write Debnam off just yet Mark. He’ll do just fine if he follows Piers Ackermans lead and blames terrorism and duel income families on a lack of Summary Offences Act.
Oh God, not the Summary Offences Act (or “I don’t like the look of your face sonny Act” as we used to call it).
I know I’m being mean and vindictive, but I reckon what Piers Ackerman needs is to be pulled over, beaten up and verballed by some dodgy copper in search of a payoff. His attitude to Laura Norder might then change. But of course he has too many connections amongst Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs A-list for that to happen.
Same shit, different state derrida http://www.news.com.au/story/0,10117,21061858-1246,00.html?from=public_rss
Mustn’t touch ‘people of aboriginal appearance’ now must we? Note the copper’s frustrated plea for help in the article?
So Piers doesn’t know what he’s talking about eh derrida?http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,21063123-5006009,00.html
Unfortunately obs it is not only Piers who doesn’t know what he is talking about but few others do either. I seriously doubt that the zero tolerance applied in New York had the positive result Piers would have us believe. What it did do was just push the crime out to the outer fringes rather than the city centre.
His prescription is a failed philosophy that has been trialled in many parts of the world and go down that path and you need more batons, more dogs, more horses, more artillary, more water cannon, more police, more magistrates, more courts, more lawyers, more judges, and bigger prisons as society continues to decay.
The more things got implemented we would still have Piers screaming for more of the same. Because that is what conservative revisionism is all about – trying to get things that never worked last time to be given a bit of spin and hope for better luck next time around.
We certainly need at least one new magistrate, that’s for sure
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,21071074-1702,00.html