From today’s Crikey email:
Writing in The Sydney Morning Herald, political scientist Peter Van Onselen sees Kim Beazley’s defeat as cruelling Labor’s chances in Western Australia.
Part of Kevin Rudd’s pitch was that he would be able to win seats for Labor in Queensland – where the ALP only holds 6 out of 28, and where another seat will be added for next year’s election.
Leaked polling from the Brisbane Liberal marginal of Moreton and Lindsay in Western Sydney was used to justify Rudd’s contention. The internal ALP polling found that Rudd had a much lower negative rating than Beazley and that Rudd as leader would make swinging voters more inclined to vote Labor.
That may well be so, but as Jennifer Hewett noted in the Fin Review, 17% of voters in the sample hadn’t heard of Rudd. Such polls are really exercises in hypotheticals. There’s no doubt that Rudd’s negatives will rise from the 11% reported now that he is Leader and the government will train its big guns on him.
As ANU economist Andrew Leigh points out, there are other very good reasons to discount the Nielsen poll which purports to show a Rudd-led ALP on a 48% primary.
The short answer to the question of how Rudd will affect electoral dynamics in Queensland is that we don’t know yet. No doubt there will be evidence to reflect on from future polls.
But there are two factors which might give pause to those who assume that Rudd’s elevation will automatically translate into higher support in the Sunshine State.
At the last election where the ALP leader was a Queenslander, in 1980, Bill Hayden won 5 out of 19 Queensland seats. Labor’s primary of 42% was the lowest of any state.
1980 was a long time ago, and circumstances in each election are different. But the results do suggest that it will be necessary for Rudd to work on Queensland support, and not just take parochialism for granted. He knows this, but he faces formidable obstacles in uniting the Queensland party behind him.
Rudd is from the smaller of the two Queensland right wing factions – Labor Unity. There is no love lost between him and the AWU, as the spray from Big Bill Ludwig over the weekend demonstrated in spades.
All five AWU members voted for Beazley, including Craig Emerson, whose vote for Latham last time led to a Ludwig veto on his front bench chances. Wayne Swan has a much more powerful position inside Queensland Labor than Rudd.
Despite Swan’s “machine man” image, he has been an effective grassroots politician in Brisbane. As has Rudd, despite his cerebral image. The ALP’s chances in Queensland depend on a reconciliation between the two.
What happens to Swan in the front bench ballot and the allocation of portfolios will be a key to whether this is possible.
I wondered about this theory that somehow Rudd will secure the vital Queensland vote. Like you point out, that may be done at the expense of WA which would make the whole endeavour pointless.
Swan and Rudd really do need to kiss and make up.
I don’t necessarily agree with Van Onselen about WA, mick, for the same reason as I’m putting forward here – you can overestimate state based parochialism. The states have different political dynamics operating but they’re not necessarily determined by where the leader comes from.
Um, yea. My comment was dumb. I agree with what you said. I think the caffeine intake so far this morning hasn’t been high enough. I meant to say that the same logic would say that a Rudd led team would lose support in WA etc…
You certainly can. Keating was a NSW MP but the ALP lost a lot of seats in NSW in 1996. As you mention, the ALP didn’t win many seats in 1980 (they then won a majority of Qld seats in 1983 for the first time in ages) – proportionally they hold fewer Qld seats now.
I hope that Milton Dick and Qld Labor people have some very good ideas about having a successful campaign.
I guess he’ll get the Russian-Queenslander vote with his babushka doll strategy!
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/one-chance-to-make-freshness-count/2006/12/04/1165080877908.html
Fuck Bill Ludwig.
Ludwig is as much a part of Olde Queensland as Joh Bjelke-Petersen. If Rudd tackled this dinosaur Coalition claims that he was a captive of the union movement would be unsustainable, while his ability to work with Combet and other union leaders on the big issues would be undiminished.
We all have to make sacrifices, and I for one am prepared to sacrifice Bill Ludwig. Mind you, I’m not a Queenslander, and the very prospect of a Ludwigless Queensland may scare some people. Depends on what you’re willing to give up, and whether it’s worth it.
Bill Ludwig’s suggestion that Unions Don’t Like Rudd, and the implied mutuality, is electoral gold. Onya B(i/u)lly Boy, there’s a place being prepared for you in the dinosaurs graveyard.
The Queensland state parochialism factor has been diminished by, amongst other things, a combination of increasing levels of education, information richness and interconnectedness with “the South” and overseas amongst the population and the growing proportion of interstate and overseas migrants who have never identified as “Queenslanders”.
When I moved to Queensland in 1988 I was struck by the emphasis on parochial sentiments in product advertising – e.g. Suncorp advertising itself, not on the basis of the quality of its banking and insurance, but its role in “building a stronger Queensland”, Big Rooster being advertised as “our big chicken for our big state”, etc. Such themes are seldom encountered today, which indicates that the marketing people have detected that Queensland state identity is no longer a potent selling point.
Could people please stop defaming dinosaurs by comparing them with Bill Ludwig?
BlindFreddy, do you reckon Bill Ludwigs’ antipathy to Kevin Rudd is electoral gold? I just think that Howard would love to slip into his little wedgie undies again and exploit the potential rift. The possibility of Howard cheering along with a crowd of admiring unionists again cannot be discounted, nor can the prospect of John Howard and Bill Ludwig canoodling together on some moonlit boardwalk by the sea. Remember Lathams’ disastrous attempt to shore up the Green vote in Tasmania!
Megan,
Could Ludwig command such a crowd?
Given that the current Queensland governmernt are almost universally Ludwig people, and that government is past its best, has not Ludwig’s power declined?
Does Ludwig hate Rudd so much that he’d campaign with Howard?
If the timberworkers’ union could excuse their actions within the broader Labor movement on the basis that 1) it was protecting its members jobs, and 2) Latham was a nob anyway, does Ludwig have the same excuses open to him?
Do you thing the broader l;abour movement would rather have a chance at winning federal government and knocking over WorkChoices, or rallying around good old Joe with all the benefits he brings?
I’m sure he kicks butt within the Queensland ALP, but where are the old conservative lions who can point to their scars and say: “Joe Ludwig did this to me”?
Is being no friend of Joe Ludwig really the same thing as being no friend of the workers? Is it possible to be one and not the other?
Well who knows Andrew E. Given we have yet another Labor leader we know very little about and moreover one without any history in the union movement, anything could happen. But maybe my imagination is running riot. The point though, there’s a rift and John Howard loves to exploit them. I mean Kev hasn’t ever had a lot of beers with people in unions and they are suspicious of him. I thought the way Kevin Rudd lamented that Work Choices legislation was not in the spirit of Robert Menzies Liberalism was a bit rich, even if he was only taking it up to Howard. Well why isn’t he a small-L Liberal then?, people might ask. Maybe what he should talk about is how unions protect people’s rights for a fair days work for a fair days pay and how unions aren’t a dirty word etc etc.
However the Libs are always banging on about how Labor is a slave of love to the unions so maybe that’s not such a bad thing to have a bit of distance…On the other hand any discordance in the symphony and the Libs will be onto it – Kev can’t control the faceless might of the unions, doesn’t know what he’s up against, should be one of us blah blah…
Andrew E,
I composed a painstaking reply, pressed Refresh and it promptly got lost in Cyberspace, or maybe the editors thought it was no good. My main point is, you’re probably right, my imagination is running riot but we really don’t know Kevin Rudd very well and he doesn’t have a lot of history with unions has he?
And although his parliamentary speech underlined the need for workers to secure certainty in employment, I thought the way he criticised the Work Choices legislation as against the spirit of Menzian Liberalism could be interpreted the wrong way. Why isn’t he a small-L Liberal then?, people might ask.
Maybe it’s not such a bad thing that there appears to be a little distance between Kev and the unions because the Libs are always banging on about how Labor is a slave to the unions etc, but any discordance in the symphony and Howard will be onto it like Nosferatu onto the cut finger in the old film of that name…They’ll all be yammering Kev can’t control the faceless might of the evil unions, Kev doesn’t know what he’s up against, Kev should be one of us and start drawing blood….
Megan, your comments were caught up in our spam filter. Please see this post for what to do in future if they don’t appear:
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2006/12/06/dont-fill-our-purple-blog-with-spam/
Just a thought: given his background, Rudd’s approach to politics, leadership and government may be more influenced by “overview management” than by advocacy – the structural role in society of a union leader is quite different to the role of the head of a dept of premier and cabinet. I don’t know if Rudd is seen to be trustworthy by different union leaders as he didn’t make his mark from within that sector. I’ve read that he has done quite a bit of advocacy as a local member and so isn’t unaware of that part of politics.
It was a shame to read Jennie George decrying the demotion of a woman in shadow cabinet in favour of a man. Is she interested in pulling together and winning the big game ie winning the election, or in moaning?
It was a shame to also read Big Bill’s swipe at Craig Emerson. Obviously Bill thinks this kind of bickering is helpful for Labor’s election chances or maybe he just doesn’t care or think.
The Murdoch press has been trying to talk up the prospect of such a wedge being driven between Labor and coal industry workers over climate change policy. This overlooks the massive political and cultural differences between the coal industry union, coal workers and coal communities on one hand, and their counterparts in the forestry sector. These differences are obscured by the fact that both the coal union and the forestry union are divisions of the CFMEU, and therefore nominally part of the same union.
To cut a long story short, the Mining & Energy Division of the CFMEU is as left-wing as any union in the country, has an antagonistic relationship with the coal employers and the Federal government, shares an office and a political orientation with the MUA, and (as I have posted previously) has adopted a more proactive, strategic and independent approach to environmental issues than has the Forestry Division of the CFMEU. The Mining & Energy Division has also warmed to Labor’s current climate change policy (see page 15 at link). In any case, even if differences arise between the union and either Labor or environmental organisations between now and the Federal election, it is unthinkable that the Mining & Energy Division would mobilise its members for Howard (as the Forestry Division did in Tasmania in 2004), or that its officials would deal under the table with Howard government ministers to undermine Labor (as Michael O’Connor and Scott McLean did in 2004).