The 2010 Federal Election Campaign: What Happened?

Paul Kelly is an insightful, prominent and prolific political commentator. He is editor-at-large of The Australian and has authored seven books on the modern Australian political landscape – the most recent being The March of the Patriots (2009). Paul Kelly has earned a number of accolades for journalistic excellence, including a double Walkley Award (2001) and Graham Perkin Journalist of the Year (1990). Paul Kelly addressed The Sydney Institute on Tuesday 24 August 2010 with Peter Hartcher and Claire Harvey, and reviewed the 2010 Federal election campaign.

The 2010 Federal Election Campaign: What Happened?

PAUL KELLY

It’s great to be back at The Sydney Institute with Gerard and Anne Henderson participating in their contribution to public debate.

It will take some time before election 2010 is resolved. We almost certainly will face a minority government. The contest has moved from the community to the Parliament and there’s no guarantee that we will see stable government in the coming term. That depends upon the negotiations between the leaders and the independents and the agreements that are struck. Resort at some stage to a second election cannot be ruled out. One thing is apparent – we are in a new political environment.

This recent phase of politics has been surprising and turbulent and demands historical perspective. In 2007-8, Kevin Rudd and the Labor caucus believed they would enjoy at least two terms in office. This view was reinforced by mid-2009 when it had become clear Australia had survived the global financial crisis without recession. At this stage any notion that Julia Gillard might lead Labor at the next election and lose its governing majority would have been regarded as inconceivable. And, from the Liberal point of view, looking at its 2007-2008 internal disunity and leadership problems, a further swing to the Labor Party would have been expected. The idea that, at the next election, the Coalition would be competing with Labor to form a minority government would have been equally inconceivable.

I want to begin with two historical points. First, this election represents a major failure on the part of the Labor Party. It is the worst result for a first term government since Scullin in the 1930s, an outcome that was shaped by the Great Depression. Looking at Labor’s recent record, Gough Whitlam won a second term in 1974. Bob Hawke won four elections and Paul Keating was elected prime minister at the 1993 poll after getting the job from the caucus. In my view, this election result indicates deep seated problems in the Labor Party.

The Rudd Government’s core success was its handling of the global financial crisis. Yet its overall record in policy and political terms was disappointing. The caucus overthrow of Rudd as Prime Minister was a vote of no confidence by the Labor Party in its own leader and in its performance. From this point, the party struggled to persuade the people not to make a judgement on the government that the party itself had already made. Gillard campaigned as a formidable warrior. She was effective, she was fluent and she was Prime Ministerial. Gillard did more that the party could have expected. I doubt that Rudd would have done as well as Gillard. Yet Gillard had a legitimacy problem. She did not have her own policy agenda. Gillard was unable to surmount fully the difficult situation she chose for herself by deciding to challenge Rudd.

The second historical point was a surprise to many – Tony Abbott emerged as the best option as Liberal leader. He campaigned effectively and the Coalition looked, most of the time, to be a credible alternative government. Abbott, to a considerable extent, evolved as a political figure during this campaign. He was no longer the romantic warrior infamously attached to fading causes. He was disciplined and, emerging as a pragmatist, Abbott changed his position on a number of issues. He was able to keep the party united and maintain the pressure on Labor throughout the campaign. Abbott’s real message to Labor was, “You have to win this, the Coalition won’t surrender this election to you.”

The key to Labor’s poor result lies in the implosion of the Rudd Prime Ministership. There were three factors behind the overthrow of Kevin Rudd.

First, the government’s poll ratings collapsed triggering the survival instinct inside the Labor caucus. Fear of electoral liquidation fuelled the surge to Gillard. Second, Rudd failed the classic test of politics – to protect his back, to build internal alliances, to bestow patronage or at least flattery upon his colleagues. He seemed to think there was no need to purchase political insurance against bad times. This constituted a failure of people management but extended into a character failure on Rudd’s part in the way he ran an increasingly dysfunctional government. When his position collapsed in the polls, Rudd had nothing else to rely upon. There were no fortifications, no personal or tribal loyalty. Third, Labor had an alternative leader waiting in the wings. Julia Gillard was more than deputy PM. She was seen as Rudd’s successor by all factions of the party and was expected to be a competent PM when her time arrived. This was a potentially dangerous situation for Rudd that he seemed not to grasp.

Beyond these political and management factors, Rudd made a series of policy blunders that proved to be fatal. His retreat on climate change in April 2010 was the single worst decision he made. This transcended a mere policy retreat. It cancelled his governing credentials as a leader of conviction. Rudd never recovered from this back down. But the final straw was his government’s decision to embrace a super profits tax for the mining industry. This decision broke every rule in the political book. It was imposed without proper consultation in an ambush. Rudd misjudged the reaction of the industry and the Abbott-led Coalition. I believe he would have survived as Prime Minister if he hadn’t tried to introduce the mining tax.

The caucus decision to change prime minister was an extreme step yet the political justification was strong. The problem, however, was the method of implementation and, I stress, that some of these judgements come with the benefit of hindsight.

From the start Rudd should have been locked into a senior post. This went against the grain. But it would have been better than consigning him to angry humiliation on the backbench. This promoted internal instability and public misunderstanding. Beyond that, Gillard’s approach as PM was to “fix and run” to the polls – fix the problems and then call an election. The three alleged main problems were the mining tax, the boats and climate change. But this thinking was too superficial. It was not easy to fix the problems, witness the boats and climate change and such thinking misread the depth of Labor’s dilemma. The view of the Labor apparatchiks was that the Gillard personality would do the job, another almost fatal mistake.

It is extraordinary that Gillard never outlined her own agenda as Prime Minister for the next term. She was essentially running on Rudd’s agenda, the agenda that hadn’t worked. The one big idea she offered – a sustainable Australia or a smaller Australia – was highly equivocal judged by the election result. Labor’s weak performance in a number of migrant-orientated seats suggests a sense of public worry about this position.

Gillard, like Rudd, was unable to resolve Labor’s central strategic problem – it was fighting on two fronts, against the Coalition on the Right and the Greens on the Left. This two-front conflict had destroyed Rudd, a fact insufficiently appreciated. It almost destroyed Gillard in the 2010 election. It has the potential to ruin Labor’s future unless it is confronted and addressed. At this election Abbott energised the conservative forces and the Greens won votes from Labor on the Left. And Labor, as ever, kept under-estimating Abbott.

This brings me to the Coalition. Abbott came to the Liberal leadership in late 2009 with two great insights. The first was obvious – that the only way to unite the conservative side of politics was by opposing Rudd’s Emissions Trading Scheme. It was a fundamental judgement that proved to be right. Malcolm Turnbull’s difficulty, regardless of the merit of his position, was that the ETS had divided the Coalition and such disunity gave it no chance at an election.

Abbott’s second insight was much less obvious – that if the Coalition maximised the difference with Rudd and attacked him from the right as distinct from the middle, then Rudd would feel the heat and melt. Once again, this is exactly what happened.

Labor’s attitude toward Abbott was ambivalent. In one sense Labor had little time or regard for Abbott and dismissed him as “unelectable”. Yet Labor was also intimidated by Abbott. Indeed, the government was intimidated out of calling an early 2010 election on the ETS, an election that Labor probably could have won. They feared Abbott’s ability to mobilise a campaign around electricity prices and the great big new carbon tax. It is extraordinary that Labor, having fallen victim to Abbott’s campaign on the “carbon tax” promptly gave him another chance – this time with a new mining tax, completely underestimating the risk they were taking.

In the campaign proper, Abbott was disciplined, pragmatic and relentlessly on message. His refusal to contemplate industrial relations changes in the coming term and his commitment to paid parental leave both constituted far-reaching policy switches from his previous positions. In a sense Abbott’s profile as a values politician purchased him flexibility on policy short of being seen as a “flip flop” leader of mere expediency.

The election result shows Australia in a condition of indecision and split into three political geographies. Labor has done very badly in the big resource states of Queensland and Western Australia. The Labor primary vote in the West is under 32 per cent. In Queensland it is below 34 per cent. These are dangerously weak results suggesting that Labor has serious problems in the pro-growth, resource states. This relates to its position on both the ETS and the mining tax.

However southern Australia is pro-Gillard and likes the idea of the Gillard prime ministership. Labor’s two-party preferred vote in Victoria is 54 per cent, in Tasmania 60 per cent, in South Australia 53 per cent and in the ACT 62 per cent. The south is a pro-Gillard paradise zone. Finally, there is New South Wales where the result is equivocal. Yes, there was a strong anti-Labor swing in NSW but the seats didn’t fall in the numbers the swing or the early polls had anticipated. Poor Liberal Party campaigns on the ground were a factor and Abbott lost the prime ministership in his home state.

Let me conclude with some random points. The Liberals were unable to conceal fully the impression that they were still unready for office. Perhaps their failure on the National Broadband Network was the most obvious example of this. Another was the damage they suffered on the costings issue. Having been preoccupied with their internal affairs for most of the term the Coalition fell short on critical aspects of the campaign.

Labor suffered from the problem of brand. The election revealed the Labor brand is contaminated in Queensland and NSW because of the performance of state Labor governments. The voters know the difference between national and state polls. But when their anger with state governments spills into hostility towards the Labor brand then that affects their national vote. This raises a series of issues about future interaction between Commonwealth elections and state performance.

The Greens emerged as big winners, a trend unlikely to fade. They now have nine Senators plus one member of the House of Representatives and polled more than 11 per cent of the primary vote. The Greens have arrived with greater power and responsibility than they have ever enjoyed before. They are a substantial force in their own right with the ability to influence Australia’s debate, policy and its national direction. One consequence is that the media’s refusal to treat the Greens as a serious force needs to be abandoned. The Greens need to be scrutinised in a professional way by the media, particularly by the ABC which has so far resolutely refused to do this in a stark lapse of journalistic standards.

This election inaugurates at a more intense level a new struggle on the Left between Labor and the Greens. Its outcome will be far-reaching for Australia’s democracy, its public policy and the nature of the progressive forces in this country. The Greens represent a fundamental problem for Labor without precedent in its history – the rise of a potentially popular ideological force on Labor’s left whose objective is to steal Labor’s seats and votes. The Greens are Labor’s ally and they are Labor’s enemy.

Finally, it is by no means clear that an effective government will emerge from this election. The Independents, despite their humbug, must commit to either Gillard or Abbott. Once the deal is done, securing legislation through the parliament will demand multiple compromises that point to weak policy. Both Gillard and Abbott are desperately keen to become Prime Minister. The prospect remains, however, that victory may be a poisoned chalice.