http://www.crikey.com.au/politics/2004/10/10-0006.html
Crikey's Sunday election post-mortem By The Crikey Team
Here are some of the election items sent to subscribers on Sunday after the dust had settled from John Howard's spectacular triumph.
Will Howard go the full Fightback! agenda?
No-one picked it. With the supposedly "most accurate" Newspoll telling the world that the 2PP was 50-50 late last week (as we exclusively tipped in our 6.30pm Friday edition), the possibility of the Coalition seizing control of the Senate completely slipped under everyone's guard - just like the way Steve Bracks got control of both houses at the last Victorian election without anyone predicting it.
The immediate question to ask is what legislation has been blocked by the Senate over the past eight years and will a supremely confident Coalition push the envelope and really hit the accelerator on its legislative program? The pressure will be on from its big business constituency and people like Murdoch and Packer will no doubt look for payback after giving such strong support.
Afterall, John Howard still hears critics complain of the do-nothing Fraser years when he was Treasurer. Here is a chance to do something, but the irony could be that policies which hark back to the days of John Hewson's Fightback! could be just the thing that Labor needs to put them back in the hunt in 2007.
Telstra to be sold, unfair dismissal laws abolished, Packer to buy Fairfax, more intrusive spy agencies, more user-pays in our universities...
The list will be long and we'd love someone to go back through all the legislation and name exactly what could be on the table.
So why did Labor do so badly? There will be a torrent of analysis this week and we'd love to hear your views to boss @crikey.com.au and might even work up a survey on the issue.
To kick things off, here are seven government positives and Labor negatives:
Seven positives for John Howard
1. The economy is strong and John Howard remained on message throughout.
2. The Government's negative advertising campaign was far more effective.
3. The Government pork-barrelled the marginals and key constituencies well and used that $125,000 postal allowance far more professionally.
4. The government had more to spend, partly due to incumbency and because business dug deeper than usual because they were worried about union mayhem with wall to wall Labor governments.
5. Howard promoted the team effectively whereas Latham was too much of a one man band.
6. Peter Costello was seen as a positive for the Government so Labor promoted one of the Liberal strengths.
7. Tony Abbott and more than $10 billion almost made health a positive for the Government.
Seven negatives for Labor
1. Labor failed to prove its economic credentials and Latham should have talked more about economic management and reform.
2. Labor's advertising and campaigning was too positive, even though Howard was constantly called dishonest.
3. The Labor policies were too complex, came too late and created too many losers.
4. The media was clearly anti-Labor with the Murdoch press leading the way and not a single major daily paper endorsing Mark Latham.
5. Latham carried too much baggage from Liverpool and his crude and violent past and needed some life experience outside Labor politics to broaden his appeal.
6. Baggage from the Labor states (Energex, Vic tollroad and Carr financial blowouts) spilled over into the federal arena.
7. Latham had a bad last week with forests, the Medicare Gold blowout and even that election day picture of their man aggressively shaping up to the PM sent the wrong message.
Hail, Caesar
Crikey's man in the Press Gallery, Hugo Kelly, writes:
To the winner the spoils, and the next three years will see John Howard control both houses of Parliament - the Senate either directly or via the religious fundamentalists at Family First.
There can be no complaint from Labor. The people have spoken and the verdict delivered. For Mark Latham and his party, the hard work of serious Opposition begins today.
A message to Peter Costello: you might be fantasising that maybe Howard will gracefully stand aside and let you take control? Forget it. John Howard is not for retiring. Why should he? He has increased his majority, again. He has the mandate, he will use it.
In politics, you have to wrest the Crown by force and guile. Peter Costello has shown he has the potential for leadership, but so far has not demonstrated the naked audacity to grasp the sword from the stone.
The Coalition must be congratulated on their overwhelming victory. From the Prime Minister and his Deputy, John Anderson, down, they have shown the will to power.
Their team at Coalition Campaign HQ performed like a Rolls Royce Silver Shadow: seamlessly, professionally, powerfully. The only noise you could hear during the past six weeks was the quiet tick of the clock on the teak dashboard ticking smoothly to victory.
John Howard and his team are back in the leather seats and the plush blue carpets of parliamentary power. Now they must use their mandate wisely.
Wither Labor?
Former Labor hack Hugo Kelly writes:
There will be no leadership challenge against Mark Latham. He fought a strong campaign, but his loss was the inevitable conclusion of ten years of federal Labor decay.
Simon Crean was admirable in his attempts to restructure the party after 2001. But Latham needs to do more to clean out the deadwood that continues to clog the party's arteries.
Put simply, Labor fielded too many duds in winnable seats. Too many factional hacks. Too many lazy labour lawyers. Too many time-serving troglodytes, many who hail from the union movement.
But there were many positives from this campaign. Julia Gillard showed leadership potential. Latham, John Faulkner and Stephen Smith were an astute strategic team (leaving aside the Tasmanian forests disaster).
The inevitable frontbench reshuffle must result in a rejuvenation of the leadership team.
Jenny Macklin is an admirable Labor soldier, who's done some good policy work and helped unify the party during the potentially divisive Crean trauma. Simon Crean also has a place on a Labor frontbench. But not in their current roles.
Gillard should replace Macklin as deputy leader. This will be extremely painful for Macklin, who has shown loyalty to successive leaders. But loyalty to leader and faction is not enough.
Latham doesn't need just an earnest sidekick for the next three years. Labor needs an energetic, vote-winning alternative leader who can sell the party as the Government-in-waiting.
Ditto Simon Crean. He did the right thing in throwing his support behind Latham, and Latham repaid him in spades by giving him the Treasury post. But Labor cannot win Government with Crean as shadow Treasurer.
Treasury needs to go to an ambitious Rooster. Someone like Stephen Smith or Stephen Conroy, who even Andrew Bolt was promoting on Insiders this morning (disclsoure: both the Crikey editor and Senator Conroy attended Bolt's 4oth birthday in 1999).
Victorian Senator Conroy needs to find a lower house seat quick smart, and take a place high up on the Grand Prix grid. He's been driving in the Senate go-kart race long enough.
By learning the lessons of defeat, Labor can keep the Fourth Howard Government honest and build a platform for victory in 2007. The alternative is more of the same. That is simply not good enough for the party or the nation.
Is the booth anger up?
A subscriber writes:
Apparently there were a series of rather acrimonious clashes in Sydney seats between the Liberals and Liberals for Forests at the polling booths on Saturday, which centred around the Liberals accusing LFF helpers of being a Labor front.
Indeed, the LFF candidate for Greenway is Julie-Anne Houltan, who is, or at least was, a solicitor for the MUA. There are rumours floating around about the LFF in NSW being propped-up by the Labor Party, and unionists standing as LFF candidates appear to support such rumours.
Another observer writes:
The Liberal For Forests front man Glenn Druery may not have made it into the Senate as Charles Richardson predicted, but he did stop the Greens in NSW and gave the ALP Parramatta and Richmond.
Larry Anthony is very dark at LFF and when LFF were handing out HTVs in Parramatta, Ross Cameron was going ballistic.
Ross verbally attacked two of the young female LFF workers and both walked away in tears. A short time later six Liberal workers wearing Ross Cameron T-Shirts had an altercation with a LFF worker and police were called.
A Cameron supporter also threw an egg at one of the LFF people but he jumped out of the way and the missile hit an elderly female voter in the face.
The situation is best summed up by this Sydney booth worker:
I've been working polling booth gates for 15 something years now at local, state and federal level, and have grown very thick skinned against the "fingers shoved in your face" type of person who comes scurrying through the gate determined to vote the way they want to - but I gotta say there was a really strange dynamic out there on Saturday.
Even amongst the booth workers (from the "enemy camp") - as it stands you usually end up working the gate for 4, 5, 6 hours with the same faces so there has always been an unspoken rule that you "play fair" (and you would normally even offer them a can of drink or a sandwich out of your Esky) - but yesterday it was all seething and pulsating just below the surface, there's real hostility amongst people, they seem very polarised and ready to let you know all about the evils of whatever Party you are barracking for - it's a bit weird to be honest.
CRIKEY: Did anyone else spot the LFF battles with the Liberals and we'd be interested in more booth tales. Was this tension isolated or did others pick it up. Maybe it was just a Sydney thing? Contributions to boss @crikey.com.au.
Miranda Devine, Family First and Creepy Jesus
We didn't have much on the potential new Senate kingmaker, Family First Victorian Senate lead candidate Steve Fielding, during the campaign except for this snippet on September 23:
Family First candidate nicknames
Family First's lead Victorian Senate candidate Steve Fielding works in the superannuation industry as a marketing person for Vision Super - the old Local Government Super Fund. He's universally known as "Creepy Jesus" by colleagues. Says it all really.
This earnt us a rap over the knuckles from Fairfax columnist Miranda Devine who wrote the following last Thursday:
The influential political website crikey .com.au, often echoed in print by journalists, has given the "God-botherers" much attention during the campaign, focusing on connections with the "autocratic" Assemblies of God church and the party's opposition to abortion. One Victorian candidate was described as "Creepy Jesus". Then Crikey criticised a Family First press release as "curious and defensive". What do you expect?
Check out Miranda's full column here.
However, our original informant from the funds management industry has provided this update on the man who could decide to sell the rest of Telstra:
He's a vanilla god-botherer type. You know the drill - the type that pinches you on the arm just above your elbow as he's looking meaningfully into your eyes. That's the charisma bit. He'll always able to find a way to weave in a yarn about his "community involvement" and church activity no matter what the context. Then he follows it up with a couple of probes about your personal life. Sort of an Amway Mormon if you know what I mean.
Apart from that he worked in New Zealand for a while as a marketing person for Telecom New Zealand's mobile division before he landed the marketing gig at LASB.
Ben Oquist blames Labor and the Democrats
Former Bob Brown chief of staff Ben Oquist writes:
Dear Crikey, perhaps the silliest silly performance in the tally room last night was Andrew Bartlett�s blaming of the Greens for the swing to the right in the Senate.
In fact, in the Victoria Senate race despite the Greens polling 8.65% and Family First gaining only 1.9%, it seems that the new Christian right party will win a seat because it receives preferences from both the Democrats and Labor. With the Coalition now guaranteed 38 seats in the Senate from July 2005, this one Family First seat gives the Howard Government effective control of the Senate.
For the Greens the 2004 election will be remembered as the one where the party at least doubled its Senate representation. Meanwhile the Victorian ALP and the Democrats will forever have to remember their odious decisions that gave John Howard complete control of the parliament.
Ben Oquist The Greens fall short of the mark
All that talk of one million votes, retaining Cunningham and six new Senators has fallen flat for Bob Browns' Greens although it is now, for the first time, the undisputed third party in Australian politics.
The Greens only made double digits on the primary vote in the Tasmanian Senate and in the following seats:
Sydney: 22.85% Cunningham: 20.40% Bennelong: 16.58% Melbourne: 14.91% Denison: 14.14% Melbourne Ports: 13.56% Richmond: 12.8% Kooyong: 12.35% Wills: 12.28% Fremantle: 11.44% Curtin: 11.35% Higgins: 11.15% Wentworth: 11.05% Fraser: 10.90% Page: 10.68% Franklin: 10.64%
It is true that the Greens faced unprecedented attacks from the Liberals and the Murdoch press and also had Mark Latham trying to steal their vote in the final days of the campaign with his Tasmanian forestry policy.
However, for all the noise, the Greens will be even less relevant in the next Senate because they failed to deny the Conservatives a third spot in any Senate contest and even failed to stop Family First taking a fourth conservative spot in Victoria.
However, they will probably have as many Senators as the Democrats who will probably be wiped out for good at the next election.
If the Greens are going to develop beyond anything more than a hard-left protest party, they will also need to modify some of their kookiest policies and hope that Labor lurches back closer to the middle on issues like the Tasmanian forests, the Iraq war and refugees.
Liberals dominating the Nationals
By Crikey psephologist Charles Richardson
There will be many interesting stories to be told about the results of this very interesting election, but let's look first at that special object of your psephologist's attention, the National Party.
The National Party, like its Coalition partner, was in triumphalist mood last night. Even though one of its seats is in danger, its leaders were trumpeting the recovery in its nationwide vote and claiming that they had finally put the trauma of One Nation behind them.
Well, look again. Yes, the Nationals' vote rose slightly. But overall vote has never been the important thing for the National Party. Its total vote is largely determined by the Coalition's performance as against the ALP, but the real threat to the National Party's existence is the Liberal Party, not the ALP, and the fundamental indicator of its health is its performance as against the Liberals.
The big recent signal of National Party decline is that at each of the last three elections it has lost a seat to the Liberals, and made no headway towards winning any back. There were no further losses at this election, but only because there were no three-cornered contests in Coalition-held seats (not counting McMillan).
There was, however, one very revealing Liberal vs. National contest: for the Senate in Queensland. As recently as 1993, the National vote for the Queensland Senate was just under half the Liberals'. By 1998 it had fallen to a third. In 2001, it was only a little over a quarter.
Yesterday, the Nationals could only manage one sixth of the Liberal vote, 6.5% to 38.5% - not enough to win back the seat that they lost to One Nation in 1998. Instead, the Liberals will win three Queensland Senate seats for the first time.
There could hardly be a more dramatic demonstration of the fact that the National Party exists as a viable force only at the sufferance of the Liberal Party. But why that party continues to suffer it is a question for another day.
Ted Horton take a bow and bring back Singo
An advertising expert writes:
Simon Canning was right on Friday in The Australian when he singled out the Liberal's advertising was much much better than Labor's.
Even though the interest rate campaign was misinformation it hit the nerve of a public who really don't have much interest or a grasp of economics. Intelligent people I know were fooled.
It was the work of Ted Horton, an advertising genius who learnt his craft at the knee of advertising icons Mo and Jo. What they taught him was that he shouldn't write ads for his advertising friends but for the people. And it was that common touch in communicating with the people that won the campaign.
Who is Bill Shannon at Shannon's Way and the team at Saatchi & Saatchi compared to Horton? There is only one person with the same common touch to bring back Labor into power. Love or hate the ocker king, Singo is the man. They've got about two years to ponder it.
Nine's election night loser
By Terry Television
The Nine Network could rightfully be said to have joined the ALP in being a loser from the 2004 Howardslide. Long the leader on election nights, Nine's viewer numbers have gradually slipped since 1996 as rivals Ten and then Seven went to a more entertainment based non-election programming with regular updates.
That did the trick for Ten in 2001 and it did the trick for Seven this year, thanks to the movie Toy Story. More than a million people still watched Nine on Saturday night on average from 6.30 pm to 11 pm, but not many more than a million, and behind Seven.
It was the smallest audience for a federal election night since 1996 when the man known as 'Honest John" first won power from Paul Keating. Official Oztam figures show that a total of 3.898 million watched free to air television in the five major metro markets on Saturday night, when the Seven network went head of Nine for the first time in at least four polls.
It was also the first time that Nine had lost an election night in terms of audience.
The total number of people watching was 100,000 people down on the 4.098 million who watched the 2001 poll night and other events on free to air TV, 67,000 or so down on the figure for 1998, and just above the 3.937 million who watched in 1996(but actually smaller given the growth in the TV market and the overall Australian population).
Seven was watched by an average of 1.040 million people, just in front of Nine with 1.014 million, Ten with 780,900 and the ABC with 890,700 or so people. SBS was watched by 171,800.
Nine's audience is down on all elections, Ten's down on 2001, its non-election programming with updates not as convincing as 2001. In contrast Seven's non- election programming with updates did the trick with the audience up by more than 40 per cent on 2001.The ABC audience was up on 2001, but down on the 920,000 or so achieved in 1996 and the 1.01 million in 1998.
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