This time last year, we were all feverishly anticipating the calling of the federal election, which was less than a fortnight away. Now, courtesy of the quarterly Newspoll geographical and demographic analysis we can track where and with whom the Rudd government has been travelling well and less well from January to September 2008 and compare the poll numbers with the election result in November 2007.
Possum has all the spiffy graphs.
As The Poll Bludger notes, there are two really interesting trends in the aggregate poll. First, the Rudd honeymoon is still very much alive for the 18-34 demographic (and it will be intriguing to see some good data on how Turnbull’s elevation shifts this – if at all – down the track.) Secondly, Labor is still doing poorly in the West, and has gone a fair way backward in South Australia. (Incidentally, the data supports the point Kim made here the other day about Labor trending upwards in Queensland federally while Anna Bligh’s state regime goes into a slump – albeit a slump which is still of election winning dimensions even if it’s not a Beattie style landslide. And federal Labor hasn’t been hurt in New South Wales by the implosion of the Iemma government.)
A lot of folks are attributing Labor’s performance in South Australia to the Murray-Darling basin issue. Again, it’s worth noting that Labor still has a primary lead of 3 points over the Coalition, but it is no doubt significant to see eight points knocked off its lead so quickly in the last quarter, after having been stable at 49% more or less since the election. I’d be interested to hear from South Australian LP-ers about what they think is going on.
If it is the Murray-Darling, this might say something interesting about the Rudd government’s ability to deal with relatively intractable problems through its preferred mode of governance. COAG is meeting today – in Perth, for the first time since the defeat of the Carpenter government. Writing in Crikey, Bernard Keane observes:
There’s something faintly pathetic about the Prime Minister sitting down with the mugs who make up our State premiers today to debate the minutiae of consumer credit laws, hazardous materials and registering business names. The contrast between that and the conflagration engulfing financial markets makes the whole COAG process look like an exercise in unreality.
Appearances are deceiving, however. The boring work of getting the Australian federation to work in as effective and business-friendly a manner as possible is a key reform, and the Prime Minister’s determination to cajole, beg and bribe the states into harmonising their regulatory frameworks across a range of areas is laudable.
Economic reform in Australia doesn’t tend to get noticed unless it comes with a capital R — the floating of the dollar, the end of protectionism, a new industrial relations regime, a GST. The smaller stuff, the 5% stuff, is mainly of interest to businesses.
It’s not glamorous, and it’s not easily spun into a “narrative”, but this sort of “5% stuff” is the nuts and bolts micro-economic reform Rudd, Tanner, Gillard and Swan promised would be a key feature of the Labor government. Most of it will probably survive the end of “Coast to Coast Labor”, and it’s probably more prone to defeat through bureaucratic and policy inertia than through some sort of crusade from Colin Barnett – which he would know well is not in his state’s interests. The days of Premiers’ conference fireworks are well and truly gone.
[It is worth observing, however, that the performance driven school bit of the Education Revolution is something Barnett wants nothing of. The politics of closing down schools - as LP observed at the time - is fraught, and if push ever came to shove, would make all the policy wonk rhetoric of metrics and incentives look completely irrelevant in electoral terms.]
Keane is right to say that much of the COAG agenda is necessary. But where it falls down may be in its intersection with issues which are both far more politicised and far more difficult to solve. In an interesting commentary in The Monthly, Judith Brett dubs such issues “Wicked Problems”:
The transition from Howard to Rudd is not about new national narratives, nor Big Ideas. It is about the hard work of solving complex policy problems which are linked by little else other than that they have been neglected for so long. Each is extraordinarily complex, and has a myriad of stakeholders and potential losers.
The Murray-Darling is one of those, as is student performance in schools, as Brett notes.
The Rudd government’s approach probably works best where policy issues are confined to one domain, with a finite number of stakeholders and a large degree of policy knowledge and smarts which can be tapped – often by doing an end run around the public service as a whole and/or by privileging Treasury’s role. Tax and welfare probably are amenable to some sort of policy fix, though the pensions issue shows how the politics of reviews and committee governance can come close to escaping attempts by the government to contain it. But issues like the Murray-Darling are just not fixeable in the same way, and climate change presents another dysfunction of the review governance model – delay costs, and stakeholder input (or rentseeking ranting from business) may well be the way that policy is watered down so much that it becomes meaningless or even counter-productive. Some old fashioned big picture instant decisions might be the better way to go.
We don’t have the constant distractions and bells and whistles of the Howard government to watch any more, but we nevertheless still do live in interesting times for Australian politics. I’m inclined to think that Rod Cameron still has the most elegant explanation of the Rudd government’s continued polling success – that public trust in government is being rebuilt through the rigid adherence on the part of Labor to keeping its election promises. But it’s still early days for the policy model and its politics, and it may be that there are some significant clues to its sustainability in the South Australian polling.
I suppose we’ll have to judge the “government by review” approach when some of those reviews start to get turned into policy. That’s going to have to start happening soon, because the committees are starting to report.
First cab off the rank is probably the climate change review white paper, but there’s a whole bunch more; the tax and incomes study, the various health reviews, the 2020 responses, and so on.
“I’m inclined to think that Rod Cameron still has the most elegant explanation of the Rudd government’s continued polling success – that public trust in government is being rebuilt through the rigid adherence on the part of Labor to keeping its election promises.”
Like WorkChoices Lite for example?
Yes, that would be the glaring exception!
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2008/09/24/government-moving-too-slowly-on-ir/
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2008/09/18/julia-gillard-and-the-unions/
What will be interesting there – from a political point of view (and I’m very far from being happy with the Rudd government on IR, education or climate change) – is the degree to which the ACTU succeeds in selling the message that “Forward With Fairness” is turning into something too skewed towards business. It was already WorkChoices lite in many aspects, of course, before last year’s election. But the devil is notoriously in the detail with IR (and the consequences of which often need translating from fairly arcane terminology) and I’m not sure how much public awareness of it exists yet.
I think Labor does already have a political problem with the hasten slowly approach, though, as I said in the two previous posts to which I’ve linked.
You’d have to say the ACTU campaign on IR, if one can dignify polite media statements and TV ads with that robust term, has been woeful.
Still, strange things do and can still happen.
Not federal, but somehow my NSW public sector union has just gained a 12% EB wage increase for a selected number of designated frontline workers just as we face a probably hopeless mini budget and very tough times for all workers as a result of other recent developments. And more and more people are making and getting the point: The federal government can and must subsidise our infrastructural needs, for where else are the states to get the $? We already know the answer to that question in NSW. And the majority of both the parliamentary ALP and the citizenry at large, reject or are deeply unhappy with those options.
#2 – Jinmaro
Even though I have deep reservations about the Rudd Government’s proposed IR regime, I think it’s difficult to argue that it represents a broken promise (bar the relatively small, somewhat technical issue of matters that can be subject to bargaining). The policy as it stands now does not differ from the pre-election FwF documents in any significant way. The problem is that many people (myself included) and unions expected the ALP to keep their promises on the broad brushstrokes of FwF, but to provide a more pro-employee environment in the detail that would surround those broad brushstrokes. Instead, they’ve kept the broad outline and have not made any post-election concessions to the left. Disappointing as that is, it’s not a broken promise.
The two main areas in which I’d hoped for a bit of a leftward lean post-election are pattern bargaining and good faith bargaining. I had hoped that the Govt could could the policy they announced in FwF (which was sufficiently vague as to leave them some leeway in these matters without breaking the promise) while delivering something a bit better on these two issues.
jinmaro @ 4 – would it be that bad to run some deficit budgets for infrastructure investment instead of waiting on federal government funding?
Making incremental progress doesn’t cut it when paradigm shifts take place. Such as are necessarily taking place almost daily here now. Such as the state of the net here, such as the state of the Governor-Generalate here and such as the state of the ‘special relationship’ with US bases here. You can install all the nuts-and-bolts reforms and improved micro-management you want Kevin but if you don’t measure up on some of the big challenges then its golden parachute time baby.
Time to spend more time with the family.
– jinmaro #4
Fred Argy’s post today suggests that the answer is debt, and that that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
The first part of this statement is simply not true. Rudd has reasserted the ALP’s version of the ‘national narrative’ most definitely. The Apology for one, the reassertion of Keating’s ‘engagement’ with Asia for another, his calls on Turnbull viz the Republic, the re-establishment of social-democracy as Australia’s natural political system…
Yes that’s one thing I have to give old Kevvie. He has tried in his way to be honest. It’s not so much about the public trusting government so much as the public trusting the ALP. Whatever you think of Keating the man’s a first class liar. If the public were to trust ALP governments and not Liberal ones Kevvie couldn’t be happier.
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Of course he’d say (quite rightly) that reinvigorating trust in Liberal governments is not his problem. Still it probably won’t last. If it comes to a choice between telling porky pies and losing office Rudd’ll be buying Mr Keating’s forthcoming book How To Bullshit for Fun and Profit.
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Given the editorial policy of The Australian I expect Mr Keating will be offered a half-page to tear me to shreds next week-end. Anyone see last weekend’s Oz? Keating was given lots of space to respond to a negative review of a recent book by one of his sycophants. Jay-sus! What gives? Does he have rude pictures of a drunken Lachlan havin’ some fun with the livestock in Yass or something?
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Philip Adams probably has copies. That would explain why he still has a job. Nothing else does.
Matt C @5:
I don’t know who dreamed up the terms “pattern bargaining” and “good faith bargaining” but I’d wager for most workers and/or their unions the former is today an objective impossibility (we can’t even get parity for unionised public sector workers doing essentially the same work within a single narrow discrete organisational entity) and the latter simply does not compute for any union activist at the coalface.
This is a power struggle going on here mate, always has been always will be.
Chris @6. A deficit budget is certainly an acceptable option if you and your government have completely surrendered the possibility of raising needed revenue in ways not currently even contemplated. What may the options be, I wonder? Hint: taxation.
Have long do we have to keep reinventing the wheel?
Matt @8. Ditto my comments at 6.
Some of the factors at play in SA right now, IMO, are:
* Rann’s disgraceful changes to WorkCover, which basically screwed workers pretty hard, based on some very flawed metrics claiming the scheme would be broke in 5 years. Basically business won a lot of premium cuts, and workers get a lot of benefit and eligibility cuts.
* A quite prolonged (8 months so far, and now in mediation through the SAIRC) enterprise bargaining dispute with public school and TAFE teachers. The state government is also trying to force a per-student funding model onto the public ed system as part of this EB, which the AEU is pushing to be negotiated as a separate item. They’re also trying to divid-and-conquer by negotating TAFE and public ed/ deals seperately. SA teachers are current;y the worst paid on the mainland, and if the Govt’s current deal goes through, would be even worse paid in 3 years.
The government here has been engaged in some very unLabor-like behaviour (which seems to be par for the course across the board right now), with lots of big-noting, big-ticket items like hospital, education (“superschools”) and sporting ground infrastructure upgrades, but lots of penny-pinching around providing the human resources needed to make sure that these systems run well.
I think the problem Rudd has among Labor supporters is that he is not behaving like a Whitlam. They want more from the dream than just a responsible, well organised and planned government that intends to set about is reforms in a logical and sensible manner. How dare Rudd just be competent and sensible! Now, they could have their dreams, but it would all of two seconds and all the scared horse would be deserting Labor – with the help no doubt of the murdoch media.
The playing field has just been made a lot more tricky with the financial crisis and a probable global recession or slow down which will impact on Australia’s growth and unemployment.
The thing often forgotten by the critics, and it easy to be critical because it takes less thinking and is why we see more of that, is what we would have had if Rudd had not won the election.
I am sure we would all love Minchin’s ‘we have a lot further to go’ with Workchoices, the reduction in health and education funding and so forth and the total abandonment with Climate Change issues except as they help propel an all out nuclear power industry.
And there is a bit of the impatient journalist/newspaper here as well where a new headline is required every day otherwise the government is boring.
Yep. Let’s get Swan off to Nimbin to smoke some weed and then bung ‘im on a plane to Iran to borrow money. Great idea! (if you’re a Tory).
The Nimbinites would love and chortle at exactly that. I was there the other day and they told me. In so many words.
No Thomas
Paine!
Much of what the Rudd government does/seems to think is not “logical” at all!
Its inability to deal with environmental, industrial relations, so-called “security” issues particularly where they intersect with civil liberties, the “ideas”sector ( education, unis, CSIRO, public broadcasting etc) and indigenous affairs indicates a cultural problem within Labor, particularly the Right faction.
Some would relate the problem to issues of capitalism/ patriarchalism; the intantiation the faction cabinet indicative of sociological structures at this point in historical time and problems of resulting individuation.
Why the hostility to the Greens and intellectuals? Why the authoritarian approach to social policy and civil liberties?
What is the pathology of the government and where is the self-reflexivity? The symbiosis with media and public service?
Having said above, they are not yet proven to be as revolting as the libs. They are like Obama, just out of reach of blame for the sins of predecessors, but suspected as sympathetic if not complicit.
Therefore it makes it triply baffling that they adopt so much of the junk of the neo cons/libs and so little of anything of value even those klutzes ever accidentally developed.
Jinmaro, you should know that Nimbinites “chortling” may not necessarily be related at anthing actually happening around them.
If you get my drift.
Paul@16, Nimbinites, to be methodologically crude, are often pretty positively attuned to their beautiful environment and very aware of what’s happening around them. As in all communities there are multiple strands and points of cohesion, common purpose, solidarity and leadership and if one were to generalise its probably fair to say this is relatively quite a strong, savvy, creative, self-protective, idealistic and engaged community, despite all challenges. Though not one many understand or value.
I don’t think Rann’s slide is related to the Murray-Darling basin. While water issues inspire massive outrage along the river and at its mouth, your average urban Adelaidean would be unlikely to have the faintest idea what’s going on.
I’d say there are two factors at play:
* Public transport. There’s been a surge in demand for bus and train travel, and the government seems to have been completely taken by surprise.
From the front page of today’s Advertiser (surely Australia’s worst major newspaper):
“TRANSADELAIDE’S new chief has apologised to commuters enduring the city’s overcrowded train system and told them to expect at least another two years without relief.”
http://www.news.com.au/adelaidenow/story/0,22606,24438454-5005962,00.html
Two years. You can imagine what fun the opposition will have with that. Which brings me to …
* A reasonably competent and personable opposition leader. There was a long reign of bland, ineffectual Liberal leaders — during which time you might have been forgiven for thinking that opposition only existed in the person of the independent MLC Nick Xenophon (now Federal Senator).
But finally the Libs found someone with a bit of personality, a bit of toughness, and enough judgment to avoid the ridiculous antics of Liberal leaders in other States. A little like Malcolm Turnbull, perhaps?
This guy, Martin Hamilton-Smith, will probably make the next election more of an interesting contest than it would otherwise have been (though at this stage, I’d still put my dosh on Rann).
I disagree with the ‘insufficiently Left’ analysis of SofaMan: his reasons, whatever their validity, are hardly going to drive people to vote Lib.
And SofaMan, you complain that “SA teachers are currently the worst paid on the mainland”. But some State is going to be the worst paid at any given point in time — they can’t all be top, can they? And it actually makes sense for NSW, Vic, Qld and WA teachers to get more, given the higher living expenses and housing costs they face.
Just to clarify, Paulus and SofaMan, it’s federal voting intention disaggregated by state. So – unless South Australians are judging Kevin Rudd and federal Labor mainly with reference to Mike Rann (and the evidence now shows that the two levels are on different dynamics in other states – although apparently Tasmania doesn’t exist as far as Newspoll is concerned) – I’m more interested in perceptions of how Rudd is travelling in SA.
Sorry, I sort of skimmed though the post, and then started my long comment in response to some of the other commenters. I should have taken more notice of the title, “The State of Rudd Nation”!
Why’s Rudd trending down? Sure, Murray-Darling effect in rural SA, where it’s turning some people incandescent with rage.
And maybe SA is just a bit more inherently conservative than the other states, and is returning to its long-run average.
[/unscientific speculation warning]
Ranns ok, but he has been in a while now- stuff accretes.
Like most governments, they seem too unduly influenced by developers etc, but many votes going back to libs are soft votes due to leave at the first sign of lib revival anyway.
The Libs are still along way from regaining government in SA. Mundane themselves, they are badly hampered by the aimlessness of the federal libs.
But then Labor is also hampered by this now, with a FED labor government reneging on repeal of Serfchoices and lack of imagination concerning stuff I mentioned earlier re education, environment and civil liberties (eg, breaking out of the unquestioned rightist cultural paradigm).
Paulus, I would have thought that if any state is inherently liberal/progressive, it is South Australia.
BBB
BoyI wish we would stop using the word ‘honeymoon’, it’s deceptive it makes it seem like a temporary effect rather than a trend (short/long, yet to be seen). WA and SA are interesting results, but I’m not sure if it has anything to do with any one issue, but maybe a change in the political equilibrium, as to say. And it could be driving this conservative swing in the states as well.
There is a cycle to our political system; it’s different between each government so it never looks like it matches up, until Howard. It’s possible that through all the wedging and politicking that made up the Howard years, he actually did something that others before him did, break the equilibrium, the cycle that we see in governments rising and falling around the country.
His own (let’s say successful) work federally made him popular enough for re-elections, but there was still an underlying groundswell of dislike for the man, which manifested in bad results for Liberal governments/oppositions that didn’t have his playbook, resources or the ability to execute a good counter strategy, leading to even the most unpopular state Labor governments being returned with unheard of margins, like the voting public had a ‘group unconscious’ thought that they needed to reign in Howard, but still wanted him in power.
Now he’s gone, the system is correcting to meet the returned equilibrium. State Labor governments will now have to perform to stay in power, but the Libs won’t have an easy run to victory because the ‘group unconscious’ hasn’t come to the conclusion that the Rudd government needs that extra check.
It would be interesting to see the figures on, after each state has had their post-Howard era election, but it’s a crazy electorate, so you never know, I could be right.
PinkyOz
Fair point, PinkyOz. The irony in its use in the post should be taken as read!
Sorry Mark – I made the same error as Paulus, and read into ‘local factors’ as State rather than Federal Labor, since state Labor has had a sharp recent downward trend.
SA is a curious beast in some ways – there are quite strong localised pockets of both extreme conservatism (one of these being in the NE suburbs, home of the happy-clappers and Family First) and other quite progressive pockets, which made Jamie Briggs’ recent election in Mayo such a near miss. There are strong progressive pockets in places like Goolwa near the Murray mouth.
Just by way of evidence, we have 1 Green MLC, 1 Democrat MLC, 2 No Pokies MLCs and 2 Family First MLCs in the Legislative Council, out of 22 – Labor and the Libs have 8 each. We do seem to have a fairly strong history of voting away from the two major parties toward independents and minor parties whether centrist or extreme, perhaps due to being that smallest mainland state and fearing that we’ll be subsumed by Party Discipline™ without independent voices.
Paulus@18 – OT, but it’ll be brief. You’re quite right that someone will always be lowest paid in the country, but very rarely throughout the entire life of an EBA. At some point, you will skip ahead of at least one other state. The current Govt offer would leave us at the bottom for the entire life of the agreement.
No worries, SofaMan, and thanks for that context on the federal story!
Apart from Qld’s hallowed auld sod itself, Good King Rudd himself doesn’t suffer unduly from any local-yokel state reversals…and neither does he profit by any ‘tides-taken-at-the-flood’ imo. Horses for courses.
This simply relates to the obvious inverse-square-law relation-ship between federal intervention and ‘ letting-a-thousand-flowers-bloom’ ala Ruddy …such long as the fine arts of the Canberra tea ceremony are so assiduously practiced by our dear helmsman Kevie.
Mark,
You know, I probably have read enough of your articles on ‘The honeymoon’s over’ line form the papers to know better, but your right, there is irony there.
Looks like my communications lecturers were right, most communication is non-verbal and sarcasm doesn’t work on the Internet, oh well.
PinkyOz
Oh god, you know my opinion, just another neo-liberal Anglo Saxon Govt, Bliar withput the, well the eh, charming lies, Howard without the populism (though they are trying, watching the Hansen thing has given me more laughs than since, well, Howards Deputy Sherrif thing .. ok I have a weird sense of humour, but since there is so little to laugh about in this rubbish World you have to get your jollies wherever you can).
It is a lying Govt, incompetent, neo-liberal to a fault, anti-science, anti-justice, captured by big money (FIRE, coal, etc) ‘interests’. They are so bad that my little ‘canaries’ in the ACT now hate them more than Howard (and boy did they hate Howard).
Yep, we in Oz continue our long slide downwards into 3rd world irrelevence.
However, after being nice about Dudd I really I should say what I think about Bumby …… thanks for, for as I predicted, killing off solar in Victoria. Nice tag team work with the Federals.
You know, I’d actually like to be proven wrong once in a while .. I simply predict the worst (and assume that our ‘elite’ decision makers are stupid, bent, corrupt, very stupid, very very stupid, etc) .. and it magically happens.