I’m planning at some stage in the reasonably near future to write a longish post about Anna Bligh’s prospects (and I wouldn’t comment on Mike Rann’s, not being a resident of South Australia, and thus I don’t think able to assess them with any authority). But there’s a bit of an indicator of the trend from Newspoll which finds a dead heat in South Australia (50-50 down from 54-46 in the last quarterly poll) and only a slight advantage to Labor in Queensland (51-49 down from 55-45).
However, I don’t buy the whole “balancing state and federal governments” argument. States have political cycles of their own which are substantially independent of federal swings of the pendulum. In Queensland, changes of government are very rare, with only six since 1915. That might give you some idea of why Peter Beattie hung on in 2006 when by rights (and he knew it) he should have lost. And the LNP is still looking quite messy. Aside from the internal shenanigans associated with the Nats takeover, Lawrence Springborg has made a couple of big mistakes by not following up on his teaser campaign with any substantial policy in areas such as infrastructure, health and education and by going relatively silent since his great conservative union was kinda consummated. The Borg is now back in a no policy, carping oppo leader zone – with internal rumblings. So I think 2009 in Queensland is still Labor’s to lose.
Continue reading ‘Labor takes a hit in the polls in Queensland and South Australia’
Muting a generation
mute a generation by ~funkadelic on deviantART
Image courtesy of Funkadelic at deviantart. Click through and click on full view for a higher res version.
Regular LP readers might recall that I’ve been emphasising for some time now research evidence which suggests that the “apathetic youth” narrative is nonsense. Just because no one’s marching in the street, doesn’t mean that nothing’s happening. Further evidence for that case comes from a literature review prepared for the Whitlam Institute by Philippa Colin – Young People Imagining a New Democracy [link to pdf]. Colin finds that engagement is migrating online, and that it’s much more likely to be issues or cause based than the “citizen oriented repertoires” of involvement in political parties. The review also suggests significant disengagement with the formal practices of citizenship coincides with idealism and engagement around issues and networks.
This report was discussed in the most stereotypical possible way on last week’s Q&A (where most of the panel wanted to diss blogging and those intertubes). Doing it justice might force us to answer the question of what’s wrong with our democracy, rather than squeeze it into the most tedious and condescending media frame of what’s wrong with teh yoof… In many ways, one could argue that disengagement from an unresponsive and elitist “democracy” is an eminently rational choice. That might be something the professionally cynical pundits and pollies might wish to ponder.