In an earlier post I briefly discussed the issue of civil rights in Australia, particularly as to how we justify infringing rights in order to deal with specific segments of society. It’s a distinctly worrying trend, but when the decision of the Western Australian government to grant police the power to stop and search citizens without reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing is cast in terms of ‘cleaning-up the streets’ to the benefit of ‘decent families’, as opposed to violent thugs, it’s pretty hard to say ‘Hang on a minute’ without being accused of being with the terrorists.

But… hang on a minute.

The trend in Western Australia, and Australia generally, should be alarming its citizens. This isn’t just about physical intervention by police forces, but an active campaign of intimidation designed to inculcate a compliant population.

And it appears to be working.

As of 2004 Perth was home to the largest single closed-circuit television surveillance system in Australia. CCTV isn’t about catching crooks; its advocates argue that it is meant to act as a deterrent to crime. Much could be written about the value of deterrents in criminology, but let’s skip that for now. In this instance, deterrence can only mean one thing: intimidation. CCTV exists to intimidate citizens into obeying the law. As does the newly increased use of sniffer dogs in police patrols through the city.

But which laws?

It’s all very well to say that many of the current laws are beneficial, serve to reduce violence and theft and so on. There are some laws, though, that really only serve to modulate society. Laws about littering or spitting, skateboarding or busking. Intimidatory surveillance is intended to promote fear of prosecution for all unlawful activity regardless of the social merits of the laws that may be broken, laws the passage of which is frequently the result of political maneuvering that may diminish or devalue the interests of minority communities of interest. When we introduce systems of intimidation they serve to enforce a societal rigidity, which arguably makes people more compliant and willing to accept subsequent, more interventionist laws.

Like stop and search powers, for example. The Western Australian government has introduced legislation which would enable police officers to stop and search any citizen without the need to rely on a reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing. I guess it’s good that laws which increased the penalties for assaulting a public officer were passed before these new laws: readers can judge for themselves how likely it is that levels of violence against police will increase as a result of being physically searched for no apparent reason other than that an officer doesn’t like the cut of a person’s jib.

These powers are not, as some might suggest, the thin edge of the wedge. Western Australia’s legislators have hammered the thing in a good couple of centimetres already.

The problem remains, however, that the people that such laws are intended to be used against are actually bad people. I know there’s a whole bunch of romanticism in Australia associated with some criminal organizations, and I also know that drug laws in Australia are not sufficiently effectively enforced (if they ever could be) and so there are people (’entrepreneurs’?) who are essentially just taking advantage of those circumstances. But let’s not forget that there’s a very high degree of human misery involved in the trade in which these groups so violently peddle.

It makes a bit of a mockery of concern for civil rights that the most ardent advocates for their preservation have such obvious and unabashed links with these interests. And if the only other voices raised against this progression towards ever increased surveillance and intervention are lawyers whose income largely comes from defending crooks, it’s going to continue to be pretty hard for the trend to be slowed, let alone halted or reversed.

Who from the not-tainted-by-association could or would take a stand on these issues? Until our parliamentarians hear it from the socially pure, it is virtually inevitable that future legislation will become increasingly harsh. If the current advocates, let’s be generous and call them ‘rights campaigners’, really want to make an impact, they need to start broadening the base of supporters of and advocates for their cause.

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.

A possible Barnett premiership would shift the dynamics somewhat, but Barnett would still have considerable incentive to cooperate. Rudd’s template for COAG reform comes from the 90s when Liberal premiers such as Kennett, Greiner and Court worked with Labor premiers such as Goss and Paul Keating’s government.

It’s also worth remembering that Rudd’s “ending the blame game” promise was explicitly defined as a response to the “coast to coast Labor” scare. A Liberal state government or two would allow Rudd to sharpen the almighty Narrative some, as well as enabling him to adopt a somewhat tougher political persona, just as Labor will probably benefit politically from Liberal Senate obstructionism. It would be very far from the disaster some short sighted commentators with short memories seem to think it would be.

The Nationals in WA are more agrarian socialist than they are in the rest of the country, and there are some who say that Brendan Grylls personally leans more towards the Labor Party. Common ‘wisdom’ and Liberal MPs suggest that the Libs and Nats will come to an arrangement, but Gryll’s personal politics, and a desire (and need) to appear genuinely independent and influential mean that there’s a good chance he may prefer to make a deal with Carpenter.

Whether Carps will want to, when it will mean having to fork out a huge amount of money to rural seats, in addition to meeting all his election promises, and dealing with the instability of an angry party and CCC reports, is another question. Whether he’s capable of working with another party when he’s so terrible at working with his own is a third. To be successful would require an ability to reach a consensus, at least with the most important bills; that just isn’t his style.

But whichever man ends up Premier, both parties need to learn some serious lessons from yesterday’s result. On the booth I was on, there didn’t seem to be a lot of passion, either for or against anyone. This is reflected in the high minor/independent vote, and in what I’m betting is a high informal vote. While there were plenty of those heartbreaking votes with just a one that are clearly intended as formal votes, it appeared to me like there were a much bigger number of blank papers than usual. Unfortunately they are all lumped together in the final result – so anyone else who scrutineered a count last night, I’d be interested to hear your observations. For that many people to make the effort to get to the booth, wait in line, fold up the piece of paper and put it in the box, it says a lot that they found writing five or six digits too much of an ask. It also felt like there were much more donkey votes than usual, although with those it really is hard to tell whether it was intended as a donkey vote or an actual expression of preferences. Perhaps Mr Bludger can assess the results of candidates at the top of the paper as compared to their expected results?

One of the most effective ads of the campaign (as opposed to the one I enjoyed the most) was a silent piece that asked the viewer to name three things that the Labor Government had done with the boom. A Labor hack who pays attention to politics, I struggled for a while to answer the question. I have no doubt that most people struggled. Partly because it was a question that would have taken people by surprise, it’s also because, though arrogant about their mad skills as a government, they weren’t very good at The Narrative. Also, they weren’t all that flushed with mad skills. The Carpenter Government was uninspiring, lacked passion, and were pretty crap at understanding and communicating with the community. Their lack of political ability was made crystal clear in their lack of direct response to the ad. When I first saw it, I thought it was a good ad, too early. Turns out, I overestimated the Labor campaign team. It should have taken an hour’s writing and a day’s production to create a simple ad: “Only three things? Here’s 10!” Even they could have managed 10. I think.

They also need to learn how to work with others. It’s going to be an oft-repeated mantra that one of the reasons for the disaster was the imposition of parachuted candidates into seats. This is missing the point. Candidates like Bob Kucera were also parachuted candidates, but he knew how to work with local rank and file party members and supporters. What was a problem was campaign teams who thought they could run the show without them, and who didn’t care about including everyone. It was merely an extension of the last three years, in which the government grew even more distant from the party, and in which the rank and file grew increasingly disconnected. You can’t get a whole community excited about you if you can’t even bring your own party along. Not to mention another party…

Another problem with the “Dream Team” was the lack of diversity. While it was important for Carpenter to make a symbolic break from the problems of the last few years, his focus on actual “youth” alone was a mistake. In telling Kucera he was too old, for example, the Premier told a large group of his voting base that they, too, were too old.

Right now, the two parties are both trying to make deals with the Nationals and Independent MPs. But regardless of who wins, both parties will need to seriously examine the reasons for this result. It’s the job of the various party offices to examine the campaign flaws, however. Let’s hope that MPs choose to focus on the reasons they failed, as well.

Ever.

This was an election where all of the ALP’s problems over the last 6-8 years came home to roost.

There was no central theme. The campaign material was ugly, late out, badly written, and largely unrelated to anything voters actually cared about.

The central campaign was a shambles, courtesy of a complete disconnect between the Parliamentary Labor party, party office, and the lay ALP membership.

Local campaigns were worse – added to little or no leadership from Stirling St was the placement of inexperienced and incompetent teams in a large number of individual local campaigns. People who had either no campaigning experience, no recent campaigning experience, or who were completely subservient to the sitting members for whom they worked.

Add to this lazy and complacent sitting members, who assumed Buswell would take the Liberal party to the election, did no work as a consequence and are now looking about for someone else to blame.

Add to this a poll-based campaign which had its agenda set from data collected by a polling company that, it would now appear, knew fuck all about anything.

Add to this a lack of political operatives with a marginal seat campaigning background in ministerial offices – a key way of making sure that community concerns about sensitive issues are recognised and dealt with, and the best way of ensuring that ministers and the premier are aware what the actual issues are.

Add to this the complete inability of the Carpenter government to capitalise on its record of being a generally competent government – or even mention it during the campaign. Despite the usual media angst, there are no real problems in health and lauranorder in WA, and the looming infrastructure issues are largely in hand.

Add to this the fact that a two term government appears to have been outspent by a Liberal party that was broke and widely regarded as unelectable as recently as a month ago. How, a month before the election, was Stirling St not up to the armpits in cash?

Make no mistake, the ALP lost the campaign – Barnett didn’t win it. And they’ve lost, whether they’re able to form a minority government or not. While a Barnett government will be unstable, a returned Carpenter government will be worse – the presence of Michelle Roberts in the caucus room, at the very least, will ensure that.

They got beat because it was the worst run political campaign in recent history.

Sure, there was a generally hostile media environment (with Paul Armstrong at the West, in particular, intent on playing kingmaker at the state government level), a number of running (CCC, for example) issues, a Premier with little direct experience of formal campaigning and questionable political instincts, a botched preselection process which saw a number of sitting members dumped, and general voter fatigue with the government.

But those people in the WA ALP now looking for someone to blame – every MP who failed to get returned, every staffer newly out of a job, every political wannabe currently staring at the wreckage of their ambition – wants to pay close attention to the top part of that list, because the reasons they were weeping into their Crown lagers last night were the product of eight years of inattention and lack of political forethought, not one man’s decision to call an election six months early.

10.48pm. I’ll wrap it up here and carry on over at my place, so enormous thanks to Mark Bahnisch for allowing me to clog up his page. The Liberals have gained Ocean Reef, North West, Jandakot, Swan Hills, Mount Lawley, Bunbury, Darling Range, Kingsley, Wanneroo, Southern River and apparently Morley. Varying degrees of doubt remain about Riverton, Forrestfield, Collie-Preston and Morley. Labor might make a notional gain of Albany. Former Labor independent John Bowler has won Kalgoorlie from the Liberals. Labor may have lost Kwinana to independent Carol Adams. Independents Janet Woollard in Alfred Cove and Sue Walker in Nedlands may or may not lose their seats to the Liberals. The numbers are 27 to 29 for Labor plus Labor independents, with either one or two of the latter; 26 to 28 for the Liberals plus Liberal independents, also with one to three of the latter; and four for the Nationals.

10.33pm. ABC computer has Southern River back as Liberal win.

10.26pm. Primary votes in Southern River are Liberal 45.5 per cent, Labor 39.2 per cent, Greens 10.1 per cent, CDP plus Family First 5.5 per cent. The latter would make it very tough for Labor indeed.

10.24pm. ABC computer only has Southern River as “LIB ahead”, when the consensus seems to be that it’s gone.

10.17pm. Morley: Labor 36.0 per cent, Liberal 34.0 per cent, John D’Orazio 17.4 per cent. D’Orazio himself presumably knows something about it, and seems to think his preferences will give it to the Liberals. With the Greens vote on 7.6 per cent, I wouldn’t be so sure quite yet.

10.09pm. Alfred Cove still complicated: Liberal 43.4 per cent, Janet Woollard 25.5 per cent, Labor 20.1 per cent, Greens 9.4 per cent. Not sure what chance of Greens preferences putting Labor ahead of Woollard.

10.05pm. Carpenter not conceding.

10.02pm. So a left-right split of between 15-21 and 17-19. Greens one to five. Nationals one to four. Zero to three for the religious parties.

10.00pm. To clarify, this upper house stuff is based on very sketchy educated guesses following on from lower house trends.

10.00pm. Upper house part six: Mining and Pastoral. Upredictable, but very likely three left, three right. Greens and Nationals both in contention.

9.56pm. Upper house part five: Agricultural. Labor not certain of two seats: could be three Liberal, one Nationals and one Family First, or maybe two Nationals.

9.52pm. Upper house part four: South West. Looking like a close shave between four-two and three-all between right and left. A third left seat would certainly go to Greens. Family First and the Nationals in the mix for the three or four right seats.

9.45pm. Upper house part three: South Metropolitan. Liberals likely to have done well enough to have won a third seat, which if true is very bad news for Labor. Could be three Liberal, three Labor; or three Liberal, two Labor, one Greens.

9.42pm. Steven Smith says last Forrestfield booth good for Labor, returning it to lineball. But nobody doubts the Liberals have won Wanneroo, which decides the issue.

9.41pm. Upper house part two: North Metropolitan. Unlikely to be other than Liberal 3, Labor 2, Greens 1.

9.38pm. Upper house part one: East Metropolitan. The swing here might just be at that exact point it needed to be to give the CDP the final seat; it could otherwise go to the Greens. Other than that, Labor three and Liberals two.

9.33pm. Consensus seems to be Liberal Bill Marmion will defeat Sue Walker in Nedlands. The consensus probably knows something I don’t: figures are Liberal 43.6 per cent, Walker 23.5 per cent, Labor 16.4 per cent, Greens 14.1 per cent. Are Greens preferences putting Labor ahead of Walker?

9.31pm. The Greens still looking likely to fall short of overtaking the Liberals in Fremantle. McGinty on 38.9 per cent, Liberal 29.7 per cent and Greens 27.7 per cent, with the only preferences to come Family First and CDP.

9.27pm. In Kwinana, independent Carol Adams is well ahead of the Liberal, 24.4 per cent to 16.9 per cent, and very likely to ride over Labor on 39.6 per cent.

9.22pm. John Bowler also playing the leverage game.

9.15pm. Labor apparently think they’re gone in Forrestfield, yet with apparently all booths in they have a lead on the primary vote and likely to go further ahead on Greens preferences. Obviously I’m missing something here. Smith sounding modestly confident about Albany.

9.15pm. Brendon Grylls of the Nationals talking tough on who he’ll support, no doubt for leverage purposes.

9.12pm. Looks like all the booths are in from Wanneroo, and it’s the straw that’s broken the camel’s back. The Liberals lead 43.6 to 40.3 per cent, the Greens are on 8.6 per cent and apparently flowing weakly to Labor, and the CDP and Family first (5.3 per cent between them) would be going the other way. Most likely result looks like Labor with maybe 25 or 26 plus two Labor independents, with 30 required for a majority.

9.07pm. ABC computer gives Fremantle back to the Greens, but with 46.1 per cent counted and the computer’s unreliable record in calling contests involving the Greens.

9.05pm. Julie Bishop pretty much calling a Labor defeat.

9.04pm. Nationals seem to have won the four seats I expected: Central Wheatbelt, Wagin, Blackwood-Stirling and Moore.

9.03pm. Smith now sounding gloomy about Forrestfield as well as Wanneroo, and they need to hold both. Riverton and Collie-Preston very close; Labor 300 votes ahead in Albany.

9.02pm. Situation confused in Kwinana, but Antony Green and Stephen Smith seem to think the independent Carol Adams will win it.

9.01pm. Labor lead dwindling in Albany.

8.59pm. If anyone’s reading this at LP, I’m double-posting both here and at PB.

8.58pm. A reader says I’m too quick to write off the Greens in Fremantle, which may well be right.

8.57pm. ABC has Liberal 1.3 per cent ahead in Wanneroo, which would mean the end for Labor if so. But Antony Green warns that projections can be unreliable in this kind of growth corridor seat.

8.55pm. ABC computer giving North West to Labor, confirming what we’ve been hearing via scrutineers for a while.

8.54pm. ABC computer calling Collie-Preston for Labor.

8.51pm. Seats crucial to the outcome according to ABC commentators: Albany (51-49), Collie-Preston (51-49, big booth to come), Riverton (shaky), Wanneroo (49-51), Forrestfield (50-50), Joondalup (looking good for Labor). Labor would need to win all of them.

8.50pm. Labor clearly home in Joondalup, the 1.5 per cent swing very surprising under the circumstances.

8.48pm. Labor still ahead in Albany with 33.5 per cent now counted, after being stuck on 17 per cent for a long time. But the big booths in Albany proper as opposed to the rural hinterland could yet reverse this.

8.46pm. ABC computer calling Kalgoorlie for John Bowler, so there’s one piece of good news for Labor.

8.45pm. ABC now calling Wanneroo for the Liberals. Morley depends on John D’Orazio’s preferences, with reason to believe they will cost Labor the seat. Chamber graphic says Labor 29 seats, but that’s at the upper range of what seems likely. If it’s true there might yet be a minority government with support from John Bowler in Kalgoorlie.

8.43pm. Raw primary vote with 46.3 per cent counted: Labor down 6.2 per cent to 35.7 per cent, Liberal up 3.3 per cent to 39.0 per cent, Nationals up 1.2 per cent to 4.8 per cent, Greens up 3.9 per cent to 11.5 per cent. If that holds, the pollsters have done very well, but maybe calculated the 2PP wrong due to mistaken preference assumptions.

8.42pm. Jim McGinty’s scare over in Fremantle. As I was about to say, parts of Fremantle are migrant and low-income areas that don’t vote Greens, but other parts are very bohemian.

8.41pm. ABC computer still calling Joondalup for Labor, which I thought they would have dropped at a losing election.

8.40pm. Liberal Riverton candidate Mike Nahan complaining of expensive Labor campaign in Riverton, but says it has come at the expense of Labor defeats in Southern River and Jandakot.

8.38pm. Talk of Greens preferences overall behaving in peculiar ways. Labor can normally depend on at least 70 per cent of them and is reportedly not getting them.

8.35pm. 37.5 per cent counted in Fremantle, parts of which are greener than others, but Greens well ahead of Liberal 29.5 per cent to 27.3 per cent and Jim McGinty on a very weak 39.9 per cent. Parts of Fremantle are greener than others, but McGinty in big trouble from there.

8.34pm. Looks like I wreak havoc wherever I tread – LP now crashing. Am trying to do it both here and there.

8.30pm. Steven Smith calling Morley for the Liberals, but thinks John Bowler has won Kalgoorlie. Thinks Albany in play, but we’ve heard nothing about it from ages. Collie-Preston, Riverton, Joondalup, Forrestfield and Wanneroo all more or less 50-50. Outer limits of best case scenario for Labor means minority government plus John Bowler.

8.20pm. Thanks Mark. Labor can only afford to lose nine seats.

Labor losses: Darling Range, Ocean Reef, Bunbury, Jandakot, Mt Lawley, Southern River, Swan Hills, Kingsley

Labor in trouble: Forrestfield, Wanneroo, North West.

Close: Forrestfield, Collie-Preston, Joondalup, Riverton, Morley.

Miracles Labor can hope for: Albany, independent John Bowler in Kalgoorlie.

Shocks: Labor appears to have lost Kwinana to independent Carol Adams, and Jim McGinty might lost Fremantle to the Greens.

Possum and The Poll Bludger have rounded up the latest polling, which suggests a very close race.

Election bloggy goodness: Worst of Perth and the WA Greens both have posts. Liveblogging is going to happen at The Poll Bludger, and Antony Green’s place at the ABC, where the election coverage will also be streamed. ABC Local Perth Radio also has a tally room blog.

Update: The polls in WA have now closed and local lad The Poll Bludger has opened his liveblogging post.

Watch it on your computer: Here’s the url for the ABC’s live streaming tv coverage.

Update: [by Mark] William Bowe’s been having database problems at The Poll Bludger, so his liveblogging of the WA count continues here at LP.

When polling was “leaked” in the usual way last week, Joe Spagnolo wrote that:

Labor is still quietly confident of victory.

It just doesn’t want to show it.

Labor still believes that come election day, voters will not want to bank on a Coalition which has changed leaders four times in three years.

It just wants to make sure that the expected protest vote doesn’t become a protest of tsunami proportions.

But after yesterday’s performance, “quietly confident” is not a phrase I would use to describe them. It looks like they really are worried. The punters, not so much.

In writing a post about the last week of the election, it occurs to me that there’s nothing much to say on actual issues. The main ones:

The mining boom and how to best manage it. Liberal Senators are getting involved, claiming that Carpenter and Rudd are conspiring to keep the fact that Japanese gas outfit Inpex has decided to pull out of WA and build a $15 billion processing plant near Darwin instead.

The environment. Labor is running attack ads about the Liberals’ support of uranium mining, with a woman asking which streets would be used to transport the uranium, which schools will it have to drive past? The Libs have assumed that similar scare tactics will be used about their GM stance, and so have launched a “pre-emptive strike“.

Health. The Liberal Party will “save” an old inner-city hospital because it’s close to where the doctors live. They have also promised to establish a minister for mental health in one of their few promises that isn’t one to reverse a Labor decision.

Transport. Labor is going to build another train line and a will also introduce a tram line along another major road. The Liberals will release their policy “in the week before the election”, but will probably steal have already decided on the same things.

On a day when speculation ran rife that WA had lost the nation’s biggest resource development project, the Inpex Liquefied Natural Gas project in the Kimberley valued at $25 billion, Alan Carpenter announced yesterday he would be closing the bars at Parliament House.

That announcement, aimed at wedging Colin Barnett over his predecessor Troy Buswell, was pretty typical of how this election has gone in the first two weeks and might explain why at the halfway mark of the campaign Labor finds itself in a tight contest against a crisis-ridden Opposition that only settled on a leader the day before the election was called.

Barnett may be obsessed with Brian Burke, but the Labor campaign is a little too fond of the Buswell jokes they had prepared to let them go this quickly. There are many valid points to be made about Buswell’s continued political success, in particular the effect it’s had, and will continue to have, on women in the Liberal Party, which translates to the women whom they seek to govern. But stunts like this impress nobody, and they belittle the real issues that Buswell’s behaviour brings to light. The problem with Buswell, and the boys’ clubs on both sides, is not that there are bars in parliament house.

There’s an even bigger problem with this kind of stunt, though, which is that it helps paint Carps as arrogant, but arrogant in the service of very little except his ego. “No-one else would have dared to try this,” he would have thought to himself, though it probably wouldn’t have occurred to him to wonder why that was. As Barnett pointed out, it’s the Speaker’s job to make these kinds of decisions. Quite aside from the issue of whether a Premier should be involving himself in such trivial matters, it doesn’t help his standing within his party to be attempting to take on yet another power that isn’t his.

Outside of legal restrictions and standing orders, the only standards for MPs are those that their constituents set for them. The issue isn’t whether they share a bottle of wine during a meeting, it’s whether they make the right decision. It’s not about drinking during work hours, as if they’re operating heavy machinery; work hours for an MP are a fluid thing. Is networking a work requirement or a social opportunity? It’s both.

The problems this is supposed to be a fix for are serious. The treatment of women, the seriousness with which political decisions are made, the amount of work done by our politicians, a lack of transparency and democracy in decision-making… State politics is certainly in need of a lot of work. But this is just a way to hide some of the symptoms. It will do nothing to make MPs take their responsibilities more seriously. It won’t prevent a single meeting with a lobbyist. It won’t stop women being excluded from the exercise of real power(if anything, it could reduce the ability for women to be included, if it forces people to meet and network elsewhere), and it won’t stop them being objectified and harassed .

Election campaigns are mostly for those who haven’t paid attention for the rest of the term. Stunts can be useful; they’re certainly understandable. But it’s best to consider the long-term implications before pulling them out.

So it’s not surprising that the verdict this time: dull.

Carps focussed on his Vision for Western Australia, in a strategy that sounds a little “More to do but heading in the right direction“; talking about environment, infrastructure and services.

Barnett’s main theme was that the current government is too corrupt to win another term, although he refused to implement a ban like Gallop’s (and, eventually, Carpenter) on his team meeting with Noel Crichton-Browne or Brian Burke. He started off quite well, and the worm liked him, but he struggled when the focus turned to how he would deal with the problem. Frankly, it’s a little strange to make Burke the focus, yet be unwilling to say the word “ban”. Apparently, his team just won’t have any contact with them.

Barnett is also going to return values to the WA community, which seems to involve putting more sex workers and teenage pot smokers in prison. You see, no-one smoked pot and prostitutes stayed away from the suburbs before Labor and their laws.

Nothing much was discussed policy-wise; the debate was largely about fitness to lead, and character. The debate got most interesting when it turned to women and their role in government. Barnett did very badly with that, which was unsurprising. The Liberals’ record on putting women up for winning seats, and treating them with respect in the workplace is indefensible, and Barnett can’t even distance himself from the main culprit, given he’ll be Treasurer should the Libs win.

There was also a question about the fact that until three weeks ago, Barnett was in “semi-retirement”. Again, Barnett would have found it easier to address the issue had he been able to distance himself from Buswell, and paint himself as selflessly giving up his plans for the service of his party, and his state. Instead, he has to try to convince the voters that his team is good enough, experienced enough, to run the state, yet none of them were good enough to lead the party. But while he’s keeping the same people, he’s claimed that the last three years’ worth of policy work was completely up for debate. This helps the Labor claim that they aren’t ready because they’ve wasted the last three years.

So, a useful way of providing an overview of the story for those who haven’t followed any election news. But for anyone who’s undecided in the sense that they’ve paid attention and still don’t know who they’ll vote for, I don’t think tonight would have been much help.