Labor's Julia Gillard may have (1) been the first Australian PM to lose a first term majority, (2) lost the primary vote by 500,000 and (3) lost on second preferences too, but with the support of a handful of independent MPs, and by the offer of pork bribes, she will cling to power. At least for now.
Opposition leader Tony Abbott has responded:
"I believe we will be an even more effective opposition in the coming parliament than in the last one. We will give credit where its due, for the extent it doesn't, we will hold (the government) ferociously to account."
"The longest election is finally over. It's a disappointing day, it's a disappointing result but nevertheless I could not have asked for more support from my colleagues, my staff and the party at large."
"For our country's sake, I hope the Labor party can offer a better government than it has over the last three years. For our country's sake, I hope the Labor party can discover the soul it has been lacking."
The one thing Julia Gillard was holding on to was the fact that her Australian Labor party had won more second preferences. Australia's first femaile PM said that this should determine whether or not the independent MPs gave her or Tony Abbot the balance of power. The opposition Liberal coalition had won one more seat and 500,000 more first preference votes but she was able to claim, under the AV voting system, that more Australians had voted for her once second preferences had been counted.
It is still not clear who will be Australia's next Prime Minister. Conservative Tony Abbott looks likely to win one more MP than Australian Labor's Julia Gillard (73 to 72 in the 150 member chamber) but the balance of power is held by a maverick handful of independent-minded MPs. It is difficult to predict who they will choose to support and if their support will endure.
In a previous blog I noted that the overturning of Australian Labor's majority was:
(1) a huge upset (no first term, post-WW2 Australian government has lost its majority before); and
(2) a sign of the strength of Australia's conservatism (even Labor tacked markedly to the right on immigration, tax and family but still lost many seats).
We should not forget a third lesson; this was another defeat for climate change. Tom Switzer, Editor of The Spectator in Australia, reflects on this in the latest edition of the UK Spectator (not yet online):
"For years, the Aussie debate had been conducted in a heretic hunting environment: it was deemed blasphemy to dare question Labor’s grand ambitions to implement an economy-wide cap and trade scheme. Even many Cameron-style Liberals wanted to bow to Labor’s agenda. But Abbott bravely challenged this cozy consensus, reportedly describ- ing man-made global warming as ‘absolute crap’ and an emissions trading scheme (ETS) as ‘a great big tax to create a great big slush fund to provide politicised handouts, run by a giant bureaucracy’. At the time, commentators predicted that his ‘ill-judged’ opposition to the ETS would amount to ‘electoral oblivion’, a ‘politi- cal suicide mission’ and ‘the road to ruin’. If anything, it was a political godsend for con- servatives. Following the Copenhagen fiasco, and with the ETS beginning to look like an electoral liability, Labor apparatchiks went to water and postponed its introduction to 2013."
This is only the latest setback for climate change policy in the developed world...
CANADA: The biggest previous electoral defeat was in Canada where the opposition Liberal Party was heavily punished for its green taxes plan.
USA:Barack Obama has had to abandon plans for a cap and trade scheme despite his party controlling both houses of Congress. This means the reform is effectively dead in the water given the more sceptical Republicans are expected to make big gains in November's mid-term elections.
UK: In Britain the environment played almost no role in May's General Election and the Coalition has sent mixed signals on climate change since coming to power. The Telegraph blogged that George Osborne's Budget hardly contained any green measures and The Guardian recently reported a likely U-turn from Chris Huhne, Climate change minister, on "dirty" coal-fired power.
FRANCE, ITALY AND SPAIN: Outside of the Anglosphere - as summarised here - we've seen France cancel its carbon tax and Italy and Spain end financial guarantees for the expensive renewables industry.
If the 'rich' world won't make sacrifices for climate change (and we must not forget that Kyoto targets were repeatedly missed during the long years of economic boom and despite the export of industrial capacity) it is unreasonable to expect the energy-poor developing world to do so.
The environment can and should still be an important party of global conservatism. Protection of endangered species, recycling, energy conservation, planting of trees, cleaning rivers and limiting air pollution have all been championed by right-of-centre parties over the decades. It is these micro-environmental measures rather than economically destructive, unilateral and ineffective climate change legislation that must be the core of 'blue environmentalism'.
Before I get into the detail of the inconclusive election result here's some wisdom from the Editor of The Spectator in Australia, Tom Switzer:
"Australia remains a conservative nation. On a wide variety of hot-button issues - border protection, economic management, social policy - the political gravity is well to the right of where many Labor partisans and small-l liberal intellectuals might think. So much so that a former socialist who now leads the ALP is browner and more anti-immigrant than John Howard... The marginal seat polling tells the story: the key groups that help turn federal elections are not the so-called left-wing elites from metropolitan Melbourne and Sydney who care passionately about refugees, multiculturalism and man-made global warming. No, the key voters are sections of the culturally conservative working and lower-middle classes, many of whom are mortgaged to the hilt and deeply concerned about population pressures and illegal immigrants."
The voters' indecisive choice will mean Australia has its first coalition government in seventy years.
Australian Labor became the first, first-term government to lose a federal election since before WWII. Australian general elections happen very frequently - at least every three years - and the electorate has always given its governments another go at the first time of asking. Labor's defeat - less than three years after Kevin Rudd defeated four-terms-winner John Howard - is a historic moment.
Ditching Kevin Rudd hurt Labor badly in Queensland. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd suffered a massive and rapid fall from public favour after he u-turned on his climate change policy (which he had described as the greatest moral challenge of our time) and threatened to impose a supertax on Australia's vital mining industries (the industries that helped the country avoid a recession). Labour dumped Rudd and replaced him with the Welsh-born Julie Gillard, Australia's first female PM. At first Labor jumped in the opinion polls and Gillard rushed to the polling stations in the hope of a honeymoon election victory. The benefits of dumping Rudd have been negated, however, by leaks - allegedly from the Rudd camp - that hurt Gillard's image and a backlash in Rudd's homestate of Queensland (where Labor lost eight seats out of 13 (so far)).
Every commentator agrees that Labor recriminations are about to start. The Age, for example: "There will be a backlash within the party against the coup makers. Many will think that the leadership change was counterproductive, and also that Ms Gillard, having got the leadership, went to the election too early." This will make governing hard.
Tony Abbott won most first preference votes. The Coalition won at least 400,000 more votes than Australian Labor but Julia Gillard has claimed that Labor edged ahead once second preference votes were counted under the country's AV system (by 50.7% to 49.3%). In the final stages of the election Labor is estimated to have out-spent the Coalition by more than two-to-one, largely with union money.
Abbott was a model Leader of the Opposition. A former journalist, notes Crikey, Abbott was adept at identifying a Labour weakness and relentlessly exposing it. He did this most effectively with his opposition to Rudd's climate change and mining tax policies. He spent little time on 'decontamination'. John Howard commented:
"It's clear that he has undermined and potentially destroyed a first term Labor Government. That is a tremendous achievement and I am very proud of him."
Abbott's campaign messages were simple, retail and drilled. He promised to stop Labor's taxes and 'stop the boats'. He copied the UK Tories' idea of 'a Contract' but, unlike the Tories, deployed it from the start of the campaign. 'Ironman' Abbott is known for his fitness regime and 4am starts. Labor underestimated him but his physical fitness was a clue to the message discipline he was able to demonstrate on the campaign trail. The physical and political came together in a Cameron-esque 36 hour final marathon.
Three established independents in rural Australia hold the balance of power. There are differences of opinion as to who will win the six seats that are still counting votes (the Sydney Morning Herald offers the minority view that the counting will favour Labor) but most likely is that three independents in rural Australia will decide whether Abbott or Gillard becomes Prime Minister. The majority view is that these independents hail from conservative parts of the country and will vote for Abbott. Gillard, however, may be prepared to offer them more 'pork' for their pet projects and there is a history of "loathing" between the independents and Abbott's junior Coalition partner, the Nationals.
*** And by way of a PS, the Australian press reports the UK media's lack of interest in the Abbott v Gillard election.
Before directing you to an interesting link or two here are six bullet headlines on where we are in the Australian election, due to take place on 21st August:
Six months ago it was a foregone conclusion that Kevin Rudd would be re-elected as Australian Prime Minister...
The conservative Liberal opposition then dumped its leader and chose instead Tony Abbott who has acted as a model Leader of the Opposition on climate change, immigration and tax*...
Gillard is hoping that Rudd might yet save her and Labor by campaigning in his native state of Queensland where key marginals may decide the election outcome. Saturday's reconciliation meeting between the two did not go well, however, if the pictures are anything to go by. The Age - and I love the words - suggested the two former colleagues might be "sharing a lemon salad"! But if lukewarm support from one predecessor wasn't bad enough Gillard faced the wrath of another former Labor leader, the hot-tempered Mark Latham. Latham confronted the Labor PM about complaints that allegedly had been made about him, by the Labor operation, to the TV channel that employed him to cover the campaign. In this scatchy YouTube of the confrontation he also suggests that Rudd is sabotaging her campaign:
Labour have looked disunited and complacent since Rudd was ousted. Their great hope says Paul Kelly in The Australian is that Tony Abbott is unelectable. Their campaign is certainly attempting to frighten voters about Abbott's plans and they have a much bigger war chest to win the final ten days of the campaign (much of it union-funded). This scalpel ad is typical:
Labor is wrong to think Abbott is unelectable, concludes Kelly, in the must-read article on this election. Labor has become too metropolitan, ignoring the drift of the Australian population to frontiers with different values:
"The progressive hostility to Abbott's leadership transmitted from
inner Sydney and Melbourne is mocked by the steady shift in Australia's
population to the pro-development, more conservative states of
Queensland and Western Australia. This is reinforced by criticism of
Labor's brand in NSW ignited by state government ineptitude. Last
weekend's Newspoll shows Abbott beating Gillard in Queensland on the
primary vote by a huge 48-36 per cent. This is a Labor debacle. On
these figures Labor would lose a swag of seats in Queensland. The
numbers, if not the seats, are duplicated in Western Australia. They
mean the Gillard transition has failed in the big resource states and
is faltering badly in NSW. It suggests the deeper problems that
afflicted Rudd Labor also afflict Gillard Labor."
Gillard is beginning to understand this cultural aspect of the election and has consequently adopted tougher policies on immigration, ruled out same-sex partnerships and even praised John Howard. Interestingly former UK Health Secretary Alan Milburn is again assisting the Australian Labor party's campaign.
The Liberals meanwhile are running a pretty traditional campaign, warning that another Labor government will lead to more debt, more taxes and more waste:
Abbott has put tax cuts and immigration at the heart of his campaign but may have made one mistake in recent days. When he was behind in the polls he demanded a second leadership debate. Gillard refused but when the PM looked in trouble she switched position and offered a debate on the economy. This time, Abbott refused. He may regret that somewhat opportunistic decision if, closer to election, Labor's wall of attack ads has restored Gillard's lead.
"In the short time since he became leader, Tony Abbott has lifted the Liberal party out of the torpor of despair and depression, saved the country from the suicidal emissions trading scheme, prosecuted a series of government scandals very effectively and forced the ALP to get rid of a prime minister. Not bad for six months’ work."
The video above is the Australian Liberals' latest election ad. It plays on a fear that the ruling Labour party will introduce other 'green taxes' if they are re-elected, despite recent pledges to water down the former PM's mining tax. Fears of Labor tax rises have been fuelled by an agreement with the country's Green party to co-operate on voting preferences. Many Australians see the Greens as a far Left party dressed up as an environmental party.
Other Liberals are attacking the way Labor has dumped principles as well as its leader to stay in power. Alexander Downer, former Foreign minister:
"Rudd and Gillard won a lot of votes in 2007 by telling the public climate change was the great moral challenge of our time. To address it was urgent, humane and principled even if it cost everyone money. Eighteen months later Rudd and Gillard abandoned the centrepiece of their fight against climate change, the emissions trading scheme. You cannot tell the public something is essential and moral and then abandon it while retaining credibility. It’s as though Churchill had accepted Halifax’s foolish advice and sued for peace with Hitler, or Keating had decided the monarchy was a good thing after all."
The latest polls show a tighter contest than last week but about 75% of the bookmakers' money is going on a Labor victory.
Held four weeks before polling day to avoid it distorting the final days of campaigning, the video below is an amusing summary of the first and only election debate held between the two main party leaders. Julia Gillard has refused to agree to Tony Abbott's request for two more debates. That's what sensible politicians tend to do when they are ahead in the polls!
With just a few weeks until the Australian General Election the opinion polls suggest that Labor will be re-elected. Given that every first-term Australian government has been re-elected since WWII that won't be nuch of a surprise. What is noteworthy is the effectiveness of Tony Abbott, Liberal leader, since he ousted Malcolm Turnbull last year.
Under Turnbull the Liberals were in full 'decontamination mode', agreeing with Kevin Rudd's hugely popular government on climate change and downplaying issues like immigration. Abbott changed all that and started doing what Leaders of the Opposition should do; oppose.
As the extracts from leading Australian commentators prove, his harrying style of politics not only forced Labor to dump Kevin Rudd (at one time the country's most popular ever PM) but he has also forced government u-turns on the environment, a mining super-tax and immigration. Abbott proves that you don't have to be in government to have a major influence on policy.
Greg Sheridan, The Australian: "Abbott forced Labor to move much closer to the Coalition on the
mining tax, with many of its previously non-negotiable points abandoned. Now
Abbott has forced Gillard to adopt Howard's policy on illegal
immigrants. He has even forced her to describe asylum-seekers as
illegal immigrants, as she did in her speech yesterday. Taken
altogether, it establishes that Abbott is ruling the country from
opposition, the next best thing to ruling it from government."
Spectator Australia: "It is a measure of Tony Abbott’s success that, in Julia Gillard’s first fortnight as prime minister, she has backed down at least partially on her predecessor’s mining industry super tax and changed the government’s tune on asylum-seekers. Recall that in 2007, Ms Gillard said the Rudd Labor government was ‘committed to ending the so-called Pacific Solution, we would not have offshore processing in Manus Island and Nauru’. Just last year she declared, ‘We also said to the Australian people … we were going to end the Pacific Solution which had cost so much money for so little result.’ And now? In a major speech on immigration and asylum-seekers — hot-button issues that internal Labor polling reportedly showed were killing Kevin Rudd’s chances for re-election in outer suburban and sun-belt electorates — she has proposed something that looks an awful lot like the Pacific Solution, processing refugees not in Nauru, but in East Timor."
Malcolm Farr, The Daily Telegraph: "Abbott deserves almost as much credit as Gillard for rolling Kevin Rudd, certainly more than the backroom plotters. It should be remembered that a significant number of senior ministers,
including some who moved against Rudd, believed he might have won the
coming election. However, Abbott had made the Government and its former leader so
insecure the senior ministers didn’t want a fighting chance, they
wanted certainty."
No one has ever doubted Julia Gillard's popularity, but pollsters and market researchers agree her continued standing – and survival – depends on policy.
That’s why no one should be surprised Australians have headed off to an election just four weeks after she became PM.
The day after Kevin Rudd fell on his sword Rod Cameron, Labor’s one-time pollster, told me the new Prime Minister would do ``superbly'' in the next few polls, but warned she had ``some ticklish work to do.'' "She's nominated three policy areas; asylum seekers, the emissions trading scheme and resource tax, and she's going to have to kick a couple of goals in at least two of those,'' he said.
Newspoll boss Martin O'Shaughnessy agreed. "It's going to come down to what she does,'' he warned back then. "In five weeks we'll see how she's really regarded.'' O'Shaughnessy’s deadline is almost here, yet the Prime Minister has only passed one of three tests she set herself.
The big miners appear to be happy with the new resources tax proposal, although the small and medium sized companies are still poring over the details. Her asylum seeker policy began to unravel within 24 hours and now looks ragged indeed. And it is hard to see what she can do on climate change without a price on carbon that does not involve heading down the "direct action'' road already travelled by Tony Abbott.
The Climate Institute, scarcely Liberal cheerleaders, even issued a media statement on the election eve saying their analysis found the opposition’s policies offered more scope for emissions reduction than anything on the table from the ALP.
At the end of June, Rebecca Huntley of IPSOS Mackay said her research from recent years indicated voters regarded a Gillard prime ministership as an inevitability. "There was always a sense it was going to happen to her,'' Dr Huntley said. That, she believed, meant Julia Gillard was only going to have a very short honeymoon. "She was often singled out in my groups as the exception amongst politicians, as someone who was reasonably straight talking, who came across as comparatively genuine, authentic,'' Dr Huntley said. But she added ``I don't necessarily think any of this stuff will help her unless she manages to do a range of things very quickly, very directly.'' Dr Huntley warned voters would only give the new Prime Minister ``a little window'' to act.
Ms Gillard has seen the window closing and is bolting to the polls. The length of the campaign could not be any shorter.
Time is tight for the Prime Minister. The result could be even tighter.
Julia Gillard, who replaced Kevin Rudd as Australia's Labor Prime Minister just three weeks ago, has today called a general election for August 21st.
Jason Groves wrote this informative piece for ConHome as she took office last month, correctly predicting that Gillard would call an election "during her political honeymoon" and explaining why Labor could face defeat at this contest.
The Australian Liberal Leader, Tony Abbott (pictured), has now put out his first official statement - carried in full on his website - setting out the platform on which he will fight the election (NB Coalition Government in his statement refers to the Liberal's Alliance with the small National Party).
There are a number of similarities between many of the key messages which he is putting out and those used by the Conservatives at our general election. He emphasises:
His desire to end Labor's spin and incompetence
His intention to tighten the Government's belt
His belief in devolving power to people and communities
That said, his "respect for the environment" is tempered by an even stronger desire not to damage the economy and his reference to "stopping the boats" indicates a very tough stance on asylum seekers.
Here's Abbott's statement in full:
"This election is about giving a great people a better government. We are a great country but we have been let down by our government at least for the past three years. Australia will be at its best when all of our people are empowered to be at their best. But the only way to change for the better is to change the government.
"Only a Coalition government can end the spin and incompetence that has marked the Rudd Gillard Government and which has just got worse over the past three weeks since Labor’s faceless men executed the elected prime minister. Three weeks ago the government had lost its way but since then its just got worse.
"Why should people trust Labor’s 2010 promises when you couldn’t trust its 2007 promises; why should people trust a new prime minister who said she’d fix the messes her own government had created – failed to do so – and now has rushed to the polls before she’s established her credentials to govern; why should people trust Julia Gillard when even Kevin Rudd couldn’t?
"Why should people trust a government which can’t say who the finance minister, the defence minister or the foreign minister would be if it is re-elected; why should people trust a prime minister who can’t guarantee that she will serve a full term because she can’t guarantee that the factions will let her?
"There is a better way. We’ll stand up for real action. A Coalition government will respect the taxpayers’ dollar. We know that households and businesses have had to tighten their belts. We’ll make government tighten its belt too. A government which is borrowing $100 million every single day is taking away $100 million that would otherwise be available to small business and that’s hurting every family’s budget.
"We will respect people’s judgment too. The government trusts parents enough to help them buy school uniforms but not enough to let them decide the classrooms or halls or canteens that their schools need. We’ll give local communities a real say over the schools and hospitals that they so rely on. We’ll respect the environment because we only have one planet to live on. But you don’t help the environment by damaging the economy. We’ll reduce emissions in ways that help our farmers and establish a standing Green Army, 15,000 strong, to care for our country.
"There is a real risk in this election. It’s that a bad government will get the second chance that it doesn’t deserve and that Australia can’t afford. The election isn’t about glib slogans. It’s about competent government that works for everyday Australians and their families and that’s what the Coalition stands ready to deliver.
"The Prime Minister wants to move forward because the recent past is so littered with her own failures. If we stay with Labor we’ll be moving forward to more spending, more taxes, more debt, and more boats. That’s why Labor needs to move out for our country to move on.
"We’ll stand up for Australia. We’ll stand up for real action. We’ll end the waste, repay the debt, stop the new taxes and stop the boats."
Eight months ago Kevin Rudd was enjoying some of the highest rates ever enjoyed by an Australian Prime Minister. He was preparing to pass a wide-ranging environmental bill ahead of the Copenhagen Climate Change summit that would have made his country a global leader on green issues. Things look very different today. Last November, the Australian Liberals dumped their leader, Malcolm Turnbull, and installed Tony Abbot in his place. Abbott tore up the cross-party consensus on the environment. Today the environmental legislation has been abandoned - provoking the charge that Mr Rudd is a "coward". Even worse, Rudd proposed a super-tax on the mining industry (The Resource Super Profit Tax) as part of his plan to restore his green credentials and provide a fund for infrastructure investment. The tax, says Turnbull, has "produced the most extraordinary political backlash we have seen in many years."
Two other problems for Labour have been, says ABC, "the haste at which stimulus money was allocated and spent" and "the eventual abandonment of the home insulation program." The home insulation programme was abandoned after a series of lethal electrocutions and fires.
Rudd's support has tumbled in parts of Australia where the mining industries are powerful. In Western Australia Labour stand at their lowest ever level (26%). In Australia as a whole the Coalition of Liberals and Nationals is now level-pegging in the polls with Labour for the first time in Rudd's premiership (although Rudd still enjoys a clear lead as preferred PM). One poll even has the Liberals ahead. 51% are satisfied with Rudd and 39% are dissatisfied. There is even exaggerated speculation that Rudd might be dumped.
Rudd, says The Australian Spectator, faces trouble on two fronts. To his Right he faces an increasingly confident Liberal Party. To his Left he faces a base unhappy at his backtracking on the Emissions Trading Scheme and which is no longer united by its determination to end John Howard's record-breaking hold on power - as it was at the last election.
Abbott remains unlikely to become Prime Minister but the rout Liberals feared in November last year is a distant memory.
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