Note: This piece was published in today’s Crikey email and is cross-posted at Currumbin2Cook.
The post is informed by an online focus group of Queensland voters moderated by Graham Young and me for The National Forum. All interpretation and comment is my responsibility, and no doubt Graham will be drawing on the research for his Sunday Mail column. This qualitative polling forms the basis for this piece and my article tomorrow (on leadership), and was particularly fascinating as an insight into the sort of polling that usually only campaigns themselves are privy to.
Elsewhere: At Currumbin2Cook, Graham blogs on the post-election positioning of the Liberals’ Santoro faction. Pollbludger examines week two’s psephological news. And the ABC election site has reactivated its blog The Poll Vault, with posts by two ABC journos, but unfortunately no facility for comments despite this remark:
Katie is keen to explore a wide range of issues and hopes to involve readers in the blog.
[by Kim]: The Courier-Mail also has an election blog but not one with very regular posts.
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Kevin Andrews was going to be in Brisbane on Friday. Now he’s not coming. But Kim Beazley’s coming to Cairns today — to talk about WorkChoices. Neither decision is at all surprising if the Coalition and Labor are getting similar results from their qualitative polling as Graham Young and I got from an online focus group we moderated last night for The National Forum.
There were two intriguing stories voters in the focus group told about federal issues and the state campaign.
Right at the start of the focus group, before any issues or leadership images had been raised, participants were asked to discuss the most important aspects of the state campaign. WorkChoices was the first issue raised.
And right from the start it was clear that it was a vote-changer. Opposition to WorkChoices was shifting votes to Labor and holding votes Labor would otherwise have lost on state issues. And Beattie’s leadership was viewed by some participants as vital in standing up to Howard to defend state awards. These voters saw IR as the central bread and butter issue for themselves and their families.
Health and water, nominated by most commentators as the central issues of the campaign were indeed preying on voters’ minds. But Beattie seems to have neutralised health in part by shifting blame to the Feds. Again, participants raised the Howard government’s role in health unprompted.
The fascinating thing about the discussion of these two issues was that in a sense they are not issues. Population growth was highlighted as causing most infrastructure problems, and climate and technological change respectively were identified as causes of the water and health crises. Voters were sceptical of big ticket promises from both sides, but the key factor is that the issues are being discussed in the terms in which Beattie has framed them.
Part of that frame is blaming Canberra. Beattie hasn’t studied Sir Joh’s career just out of interest. Having blown the opposition out of the water in the first phase of the campaign, Beattie can throw bombs at Canberra in the next.
Importantly, IR has not yet been raised as a campaign issue. But John Howard himself has sown the seeds in voters’ minds, which state Labor merely needs to water for them to flourish and grow. If John Howard comes to Queensland, he should keep a sharp eye out for Queenslanders’ proverbial baseball bats. And he shouldn’t believe his own line on September 10 that the election was all about state issues.
Voters may be tiring of Beattie, but the negatives on the state Coalition are so strong that he can campaign on federal issues and leadership, and win hands down on both.
Well Beattie is the new Joh, basically. Has been ever since One Nation destroyed the conservative movement in Queensland.
Hell, I myself am heartily sick of Beattie in many ways, but sheer arithmetic suggests he can probably rule – legally if not with overwhelming popularity – for another decade if he wants, short of murdering someone. He, or his party, at any rate.
Until the Nationals (I see no point in dwelling on the Coalition as it isn’t really a coalition, in this state) realise that Joh’s days are gone and that Beattie is now Joh, they will flounder. And they deserve to, as in any practical sense they seem to be offering nothing different to what they would have been offering in 1991.
The Borbidge Government was not much more than revenge for the end of the Joh era (albeit not Joh himself), and nothing much seems to have changed since then. And in a way it is sort of silly. State politics is close enough to the people that both sides WANT to offer much the same thing – strong infrastructure and service delivery. I’m not even sure they differ on the means. It’s just that Labor is in power and can’t or won’t fix the unfixable (is any State government able to do so? Is Jesus Christ himself able to do that?) and the conservatives are not in power, and so don’t have to deliver.
So yes, not surprising that people would be gravitating toward the devil they know. Not that Beattie is much of a ‘devil’… he surely means well, in context.
Australia stops at the Tweed. Ain’t that what they always say? Regardless, we all know that Queensland is different. The question is how and why it is different. And there are probably 5,000 PhD theses in answering those questions. IMHO I reckon that by 2007 Howard will find that Australians will be waiting for him with a baseball bat – just like they were for Keating a decade earlier – and that Qld will be one of the first illustrations of that. Of course there will be the usual attempts to de-couple the state result from the Federal poll that is coming, but people are seeing interest rates up, Work Choices threatening their conditions, the value of their Telstra shares going through the floor and the value of their house starting to fall. If Beattie is clever – and he has a great deal of rat cunning – he will be able to blame the Feds for everything, while emphasising how little Labor has to do with these problems and how they can register a protest vote against the Howard and his cronies. All he has to do is be able to do it and make it appear as though he isn’t. Shouldn’t be a difficult job…
Cheers…
Kieran, you say:
You then say:
…
Would you care to elaborate?
Beattie has lots of similiarities to Joh, a cult personality, attracting votes to his party regardless of performance.
However he lacks the superior management skills of Joh.
If it wasn’t for father time, and getting voted out, Joh would have run Qld forever.
Beattie will empty the cashbox sooner than we think, and we won’t get anything tangible or lasting to show for it.
Without opposition Beattie will power on for far longer than he should. The “devil-you-know” factor will keep in him power for several terms (in the abscence of a coherent & cohesive opposition, that is)
I cannot think of a single reason to vote for the coalition (er, ok, the nationals, if you like).
My (possibly haywire) forecast: Beattie back in with a slight reduction in primary vote or seats, the Nationals largely unchanged, & the Liberals losing a few but picking up a few.
I dont see IR as a critical issue (I dont see it as an issue at all) I see the lack of an alternative govt as being a major problem. If whoever it is that is the opposition could cobble together some sort of half decent intelligible leader that could inspire confidence there would be a landslide.
Beattie will talk and talk and talk his way back and things will continue on their merry way much as before, until they seriously run out of cash.
Beazleys appearance is just a side issue really, he thinks that if he hangs around long enough he might get lucky.
However he lacks the superior management skills of Joh.
I must be pissed,doesn’t the above read the superior corruption skills of Joh?
steve at the pub, would you care to elaborate?
What paricular management skills? Managing the media? Selecting Police Commissioners? Sponsoring Hydrogen powered cars? Endorsing those who had ‘discovered’ cures for cancer? Taking out loans in a foreign currency? Running for Prime Minister? ( The Rodent may disagree) but I thought that was particularly brilliant.
Feel free to enlighten me.
Rog:
Really? [L-O-L] Sorry but attitudes way out in the Queensland bush don’t always match those in Collins Street or Eagle Street …. and industrial relations is big news here and, regardless of spin and lollies, will probably remain so for a very long time.
Wonder what the effect would be if the federal Liberals sacked Andrews, Costello and Howard before the Queensland election? No, not allowed to resign; nobody would fall for that; sacked. Just wondering ……
Beattie the new Joh?
You’re on drugs! I have lived through them both and the similarities END at their populism. Joh was a corrupt croniest of the highest order who retained power at the behest of a gerrymandered electoral system and intense porkbarreling. The oposition to him amongst the electorate was immense, but he had so rorted the sytem the only way he was removed was when his colleagues realized he was taking them to oblivion in 1987 as the Fitzgerald inquiry gathered steam. Queensland is a much better place since that mob of dunderheads was removed.
I currentlylive in Sydney and I’ll give you one guess where I’d rather be. Many people who live down here feel the same way.
Beattie has his faults, they all do, but they are not all the same.
Rog, you say:
Rog, I hope you have a day job, because you are not attuned to the general feeling in the community.
Even Minchin said Work Choices (WCs} was a major political problem.
What? Oh um, yeah. Ok, I should clarify my slightly flippant comment. Not that I thought it was that controversial…
Beattie is the new Joh in so far as he is the entrenched populist leader of Queensland, and seems likely to remain so for the forseeable future. Makes sense? The entrenched part should speak for itself, and the populist part… well how else does he keep winning elections? I’d say the modern Beattie style is a very conscious thing, remembering what became of Wayne Goss all those years ago, and remembering the nods he always gives to the Joh style of, um, engagement with the population.
Do I mean to say that Beattie runs a vicious and corrupt police-oriented regime like Joh did? No.
Who needs a day job when you can be attuned to talk back radio?
Hardly anybody rings up complaining about IR, on the odd occasion that they do they end up looking silly once the details of their complaint are aired.
I exclude the ABC where they dont seem to stop mentioning IR.
Where I live, Hunter Valley, its a non issue as nobody gets paid award wages unless they are really slack. Employers complain, cant get anybody to work.
Kieran, thanks for the response. You say:
Does it make sense? Yes. But are you suggesting that the only way to win elections is to be populist? Maybe?
Do you think Goss was a ‘populist’?
Rog, I live in Brisbane and IR rarely gets a mention on ABC talkback. Maybe, that’s beacuse the talkback host is the wife of the editor of the Courier Mail. We call it Radio Courier Mail up here.
When you say:
I question whether ‘nobody gets paid award wages unless they are really slack’. If you think about it, you will realise that comment is not very sensible. Try shop assistants, teachers, bus drivers, railway porters, dental therapists, bakers, barmaids, teacher aides, etc.
Or are you referring to people in the mining industry and those related to that industry who are in clover at this time in the economic cycle?
wpd, I don’t think I’m suggesting any of the things you mentioned. What I was trying to do what explain my view that Beattie occupies a similar position to the one Joh used to within Queensland (albeit with a different political philosophy).
Do I think you have to be a populist to win elections? No, not really, elections hinge on all sorts of things, not least a chronically weakened opposition (post-Split ALP or post-Hanson Nationals, take yer pick… again, can you see the parallels?).
Simply that it’s one way of winning elections, and Beattie uses it. He’s a lot smarter and more thoughtful than the lowest-common-denominator persona he projects, I think.
And as for Wayne Goss: no. That was my point. Goss was a technocrat, in public, and he went down in flames just a few years after the Joh era itself. I think Beattie would have (apart from his reported dislike of Goss and vice versa) noted that well.
The end.
There’s a lot of value in the Beattie-Joh comparison, and I didn’t think Kieran was implying anything about corruption in the current government.
One other point of comparison is the strong dominant leader who embodies “Queenslandism”.
Elsewhere: At Currumbin2Cook, Graham blogs on the post-election positioning of the Liberals’ Santoro faction. Pollbludger examines week two’s psephological news. And the ABC election site has reactivated its blog The Poll Vault, with posts by two ABC journos, but unfortunately no facility for comments despite this remark:
Goss of course appealed in past because of the contrast to populism.
That’s a really punchily written piece, Mark – one of the best, if not the best yet of the election columns.
I like the water metaphors that were snuck in
Yes I agree with you in some points. You have my trust.
Good to read that someone is still concerned about Work Choices as a major political problem. I hope the situation improves in the near future.
Thank you for sharing this story with me !
The Courier-Mail also has an election blog but not one with very regular posts.
WPD,
it doesnt matter what industry, everyone is on AWAs.
Except employees of sole traders, they are stuck on State Awards, and that portion of the Public Service that does not outsource contractors.
The ALP are now saying they will retain core elements of WC eg no State awards and a more simple national system.
It will be interesting to see what their policy will be, once the warring has stopped.
Talkback callers are a self-selecting sample from a specific subset of the community; they’re not a reliable way of gauging wider community support. (It’s not Queensland related, but here’s a look at Alan Jones’ audience.)
Bill, thanks for the link. I must admit that I am not really surprised. he has been appealing to ‘extremists’ for years.
Talk back radio announcers are considered to be more honest and ethical than union leaders, TV reporters, stockbrokers, MPs and car salesmen…but we all new that, eh.
http://www.roymorgan.com/news/polls/2005/3938/
Rog:
I should have added more detail for you to what I said last night [9:54pm] about the importance, way out in the bush, of (federal) Industrial Relation in this state Election.
This is the 21stCentury, things have changed; rich squatters are few and far between nowadays. Many rural properties survive these days only because at least one family member is working for wages, sometimes hundreds of kms away. Many traditional Nationals voters have recently had whopping big kicks in the guts (AWAs, etc) from the government they elected in Canberra …. they might still repeat all the coalition slogans and talk about damned socialists and greenies but deep down they are not happy and they will get their own back on election day.
They see Beattie and his mob as their last hope in protecting their own personal interests, regardless of how much they dislike Labor. Poor Springborg. No matter how hard he tries he cannot undo, in time for the election, the terrible damage already done to the Nationals in Queensland by the follies of Andrews, Costello and Howard.
That’s right, Graham. Barnaby is not an aberration. Traditional National voters in Queensland have little or no time for the Federal Coalition.
Kim:
Sen. Barnaby Joyce, former Nationals now Independent Bob Katter Jr and, in her early days, agrarian-nationalist Pauline Hanson seemed to understand what people in the bush were actually thinking rather than what city-bound journalists and party functionaries imagined they should be thinking.
i.m.h.o., If the federal Nationals left the Liberals and went into alliance with other parties …. even the Greens and the Democrats …. they would probably start recovering some of their lost followers; A.L.P. is too ossified to even think about such an alliance with Nationals even though that would probably be the most effective one.
Since none of this could possibly happen before Queensland election day, it won’t help Springborg one little bit.
Everyone:
My last comment was a bit off-topic ….. but there are now land-holders, traditional Nationals voters, who now have recent painful experience themselves of exploitative new work conditions and pay disadvantages.
The prize will go to the politician who can give them CREDIBLE effective protection. Sorry, airy-fairy promises and impractical undertakings will only inflame the situation.
Don’t forget that these people are already very angry at being betrayed again and again in dodgy international trade deals …. and in some cases, that betrayal over trade is the reason they have had to enter the wage-earning workforce in the first place, despite have mountains of jobs that need doing on their own properties.
The Nationals taking the guns from their voters will never be forgiven. Nationals voters instantly dropped the party. Members of the central council included, didn’t even bother to resign, or even phone in to say “goodbye”.
Reminiscent of XXXX drinkers switching brands when Alan Bond started pulling down “Castlemaine” signs.
In both cases, Rusted on lifetime loyalty was destroyed overnight…. tsk tsk tsk.
And not much time for their own senior Federal leadership.
Graham, I find the Nats in Qld are inveterate little capitalists and could never hob nob with evil unionists and socialists. Nor with greenies. But the Liberals are their second worst enemies after the socialists.
SteveAtThePub:
I wasn’t happy that untrained, careless and drunken civvies were running around with temporarily-semi-automatic military weapons ….. but the federal government’s bungled response to the Port Arthur massacre was downright idiotic. It helped criminals and black-marketeers; it probably armed right-wing death squads just waiting for their big day …. and, as you pointed out, it offended a lot of traditional Nationals supporters.
An intelligent, well-managed scheme would have got the firearms off the street a hell of a lot faster and more completely as well as having all the traditional Nationals supporters eating out of the government’s hand ….. and all without a single firearm being destroyed either.
Brian:
Does this mean that, in failing to adapt to the new realities in a new century, the Nationals are doomed?
Graham Bell: I imagine many things make you unhappy. However the thread is about the Queensland election, not your personal anti-firearm prejudices.
By legislating to remove guns from law abiding citizens, the Nationals have offended (in many cases for life) a not insignificant number of their previously rusted-on voters.
Just as you are entitled to your views, the great mass of gun owners are entitled to theirs. And in a display of more principle than many of us have, they have changed their vote because of it.
Brian: The loathing by members of the senior federal leadership is very noticeable.
The selection of a Nationals as a minister by the ruling Labor party in South Australia would lead one to think that agrarian socialists & the ALP are not necessarily diametrically opposed.
Shhhh! Its supposed to be a big surprise!
My definition of an “intelligent, well-managed scheme” is the one in Switzerland, where everyone is obliged to keep a gun.
Perhaps now in the medium, not the short term, Graham.
If anyone can find me a leadership approval rating even in the same remote ballpark as the 2% (yes folks not 20 but 2 percent) that Flegg has in Australian political history, I will be massively surprised.
The Qld Liberals have to be the biggest joke in Australian politics. Unfortunately for Springborg and his mates, the laugh is well and truly on them.
The Qld Liberals have been a joke forever.
Bruce Flegg is guilty of not (yet) being a smarmy politician.
Sometimes, just for fun, I mentally swap his & Beattie’s names in the TV news reports.
Indisputably, Beattie is fawned over by the media, whilst Flegg is given a much undeserved caning.
(for example) I just can’t help wondering how the news media would report it if Bruce Flegg’s hat blew off & was rescued by a boy.
“Idiot Flegg humiliated in public by not being able to handle a simple such as keeping his hat on”…”kid does job better than Flegg”…. ?…. sounds about right, compare it to how the ABC handled it when Beattie’s hat blew off.
SteveAtThePub:
Don’t inflict your prejudices on everyone alike. I’m definitely NOT “anti-firearm” as you seem to imagine, though I don’t own or need a firearm at the moment …. but I am anti-yobbo and anti-d*ckhead. [What do you think would be the worst thing that could happen because a carload of gun-nuts blasted away with several hundred rounds into windmill, tank, trough, pipes and everything else?].
Rog:
And from memory, 5 rounds of ammunition. Though I would prefer 20 at least.
As for any RW Death Squads, they probably have more undercover coppers as members than actual wingnuts; this is Australia and we do have a long-standing tradition of dobbing and infiltrating to uphold, haven’t we?.
.
50 rounds.
Dobbers? as in Dirty Orange Bastids?
Mark:
2% approval rating? Wasn’t there a leader of a certain federal minority party who got an even lower score in recent decades. Dunno; guessing; just an impression. It would be a pity if the Nationals vanished altogether from the political scene.
Rog:
20 aimed shots should be suffient, of course …. or were you thinking of a truly awful situation?
Dobbers? Our tradition did come from overseas …. with the First Fleet!
SteveAtThePub:
Disagree with you on many things but you were absolutely spot-on about the news media on Flegg and Beattie [at 4:55pm]
Sorry, that’s wrong – it should be 2% think he is performing best out of the three leaders.