[Via steve in comments] Just as it appears that The Borg has finally got his way and Liberals at all levels are happy to enable the formation of the Pineapple Party (that’s if rank and file Liberal members accept the Nationals’ takeover offer), it appears that the hurdles the new Liberal National Party will have to cross have been set higher than anyone had been anticipating. Anna Bligh’s been busy talking up how the state redistribution map proposed for comment by the Queensland Electoral Commission will make Labor’s task of winning a fifth term more difficult. But Antony Green has finalised his calculations and reported at The Poll Bludger that Labor would have 63 nominal seats on the redrawn boundaries as opposed to their current 59 of 89.
The LNP may or may not put paid to the problem of three cornered contests (and if it forces Liberal and National candidates to fight it out within one party structure, or if it spawns breakaway parties on either side, it won’t). But that was never the real problem electorally it’s been built up to be – it was more about the squabbling exacerbating perceptions of coalition disunity. The real challenge for Lawrence Springborg is that neither the Nationals in the regions nor the Liberals in the South-East have been able to dislodge Labor from traditionally conservative territory even when running uncontested by the other coalition party. Can a largely rural (in terms of membership and MPs) party do better? Can it straddle both types of seat as Labor has proved it can? That’s the real question Pineapple Party advocates should be asking themselves.
After all, if and when the LNP comes into being, it’ll still be stuck with the same leadership and the same absence of policy as the coalition is now.
Elsewhere: More on the redistribution at Ambit Gambit.
That’s the thing, Mark. The Coalition have to reinvent themselves not with a merger or with glossy photos of the ‘Borg but with actual proper policy and a credible front bench. The rusted on Country Party voters will vote for any anti-Labor candidate in a pinch but they’ve really got to get Labor’s primary vote right down and pray that the ALP don’t make it up in Green/Independent preferences. The only way they’re going to actively draw votes away from Labor is by offering something better and they’re simply not doing that.
The Coalition’s problems may be institutionalised but they’re not institutional in nature.
Yep, they’ll have to come up with something more if the Pineapple Party does end up coming into being, Sam. Although it’s more than possible that disputes within that party and breakaways will keep all the attention on them and not on Labor.
I’d also observe that it was very obvious indeed prior to the last election that almost no work at all had gone into policy formulation.
And I still think the PP will be too strange a beast to appeal across a very broad demographic – Labor seem to be able to do it.
Oppositions do not win elections, governments lose them. All the pineapples have to do is maintain a facade of unity and wait for the empire to fall. The less they focus on their own policies and weaknesses the more likely they are to appear as a viable alternative. Rudd presented a facade of unity and competence while maintaining an absense of real policy alternatives, voters rejected Howard more than they embraced ALP policy. Similarly, all the Qld. opposition has to do is maintain discipline and stop shooting itself. Policy vacuum and a small target strategy is not a stupid ommission but the most likely path to a pineapple government.
Here is the Pineapple Party constitution and merger proposal.
http://www.qld.liberal.org.au/mergerproposal.aspx
OOPS – the Pineapple Party has eliminated chief financial backer Clive Palmer and Graham Young before it even gets off the ground.
http://ambit-gambit.nationalforum.com.au/archives/003113.html
Yeah John, that worked so well for Prime Minister Beazley.
If you’re going to focus on policy, there will be division. Successful oppositions pick a few key points of difference and fudge the similarities. A few ministerial corpses changes things too (not in the Hillary Clinton sense – I mean political death, not wishing ill on anyone physically).