No minor hubris risk

21 December 2020

The political year in Australia ends with a Federal by-election having seemingly just come and gone, with not that much notice taken of it. Perhaps this was to be expected. When you look at the history of the seat where the by-election took place, the result was a foregone conclusion.

For the record, the by-election was in Groom, a seat covering the Toowoomba area in rural Queensland. The Coalition has always held this seat since it was created in the 1980s, and has rarely been threatened in it. When the by-election came about, everybody tipped the Coalition to win, and it did.

This was in fact the kind of by-election that many observers predicted the Labor Party to opt against running in. With no prospect of winning, in an area where it’s never been that popular, you’d have wondered why it bothered. But it ran, and finished second, as was expected.

But despite being a really safe seat for the Coalition, there was still something interesting about the by-election – at least in relation to alternatives.

While several minor parties ran in Groom in the last Federal election, only two parties ran in the by-election. Normally you’d expect Independent candidates and minor parties to willingly run in by-elections, if only for the sake of gaining some sort of exposure. Indeed plenty of Independents and minor parties threw their hats in the ring in a by-election for the seat of Eden-Monaro in July, where more than a dozen candidates ran. The Greens in particular rarely opt against running in by-elections, even in seats where they don’t poll well. But the Greens gave the Groom by-election a miss, and so did almost every other minor party which ran in Groom in the last general election. Only the Sustainable Australia Party and the Liberal Democrats ran in this by-election, and neither contested Groom in the general election. Voters didn’t have as many alternatives here.

Given that more than one in every four voters in Groom supported somebody other than the Coalition or Labor in the last general election, there was perhaps interest in where such a massive share of Groom’s vote would go. Would voters support minor parties that they mightn’t have heard of, for the sake of simply rejecting the major parties? Would they turn, perhaps reluctantly, to the major parties because of an inability or an unwillingness to give minor ones a look?

In the end, around eight per cent of the vote went to the Sustainable Australia Party and around five per cent of the vote went to the Liberal Democrats.

From more than one in four voters supporting minor parties in the last general election, the proportion declined to about one in eight voters in the by-election, meaning that it halved – or did worse.

But winning relatively strong votes can breed complacency, and even arrogance or hubris, within minor parties. Might they start behaving like they’re expecting similar performances in other parts of the country when the Federal election eventually comes? If so, they’re in for a shock.

It’s very unlikely that the Sustainable Australia Party and the Liberal Democrats would repeat their by-election results in the general election if they run again for Groom – and even that isn’t guaranteed. More minor parties will run then.

As such, these minor parties could display a degree of hubris. If you’ll pardon the pun, there’s no minor hubris risk among those minor players.

The Sustainable Australia Party and the Liberal Democrats are currently holding seats at State level – the former with a seat in Victoria and the latter with several seats across different States. Whether they hold those remains to be seen.

Dissatisfaction with the major parties definitely exists among voters, in many parts of Australia. This is beyond question. But will they find good alternatives when they head to the polling booths? Sometimes they find them, but generally they go reluctantly to the major parties. Relatively few minor players appear able to take advantage of that disaffection and win seats.

Leaders and seats lost

19 December 2020

The recent passing of two former political leaders might suggest a case of things coming in threes. Admittedly, they passed away within a few months of each other, but their deaths still came during the same year. Before then, they lost power together, and later their parliamentary seats later abolished at the same time. Adding these to their deaths, you come up with things coming in threes.

Mind you, only fate has allowed me to make the above suggestion. News this week of the passing of one of the former political leaders to whom I refer, Ian Armstrong, makes my suggestion possible. With this year almost over, perhaps just a matter of weeks would’ve prevented this sad “trifecta”.

Armstrong was a former leader of the Nationals in New South Wales, and also served as Deputy Premier during the 1990s, when John Fahey was Premier.

Fahey was something of an accidental leader. He became leader of the Liberal Party, and also Premier, after Nick Greiner resigned amid a corruption scandal in 1992. Greiner was a popular leader and did a good job as Premier, but after losing his majority at an election in 1991 and needing support of crossbenchers to hold power, he made some poor decisions. His fatal mistake was to arrange for work outside Parliament for controversial crossbencher and former minster Terry Metherell, whose subsequent resignation from Parliament would bring about a by-election which the Liberals would easily win – thereby giving them more flexibility in terms of relying on crossbenchers. This was seen, and later ruled, to be corrupt behaviour. As a result, Greiner resigned and Fahey became Liberal leader, serving as Premier until losing office in 1995.

With the existence of the Liberal-National Coalition, certainly when governing, the leader of the Nationals was naturally also Deputy Premier. Under Greiner and then Fahey, it was Wal Murray leading the Nationals and therefore holding the deputy’s job. Murray stepped down during Fahey’s premiership, after which it was Armstrong who became leader of the Nationals.

In 1995, Bob Carr narrowly defeated Fahey in a State election, beginning what would be sixteen years of power for the Labor Party in NSW. After that election loss, Fahey moved to Federal politics and was a minister for a number of years before cancer brought about his retirement.

Fahey died in September this year – just months before Armstrong died.

But while Fahey left State politics after losing power, Armstrong stayed around, losing the leadership of the Nationals a few years later and retiring in 2007.

And this brings us to the third “thing” surrounding Fahey and Armstrong. Not only was there a case of the two losing their “premiership” titles together and later passing away in the same year, but their State seats also went together.

Armstrong held the seat of Lachlan, in central NSW, for many years, and when he retired at an election in 2007, the seat itself disappeared as well, having been abolished in an electoral redistribution before the election. Because of changes in population, both actual and forecast, electoral redistributions are necessary to put as near as possible to an equal number of voters in each seat, so suburbs and towns can be moved from seat to seat. Rural seats often disappear under these circumstances, and this was the case with Armstrong’s seat.

Interestingly in this context, the seat of Southern Highlands, which Fahey held during his time as Premier, was also abolished in the redistribution which saw Lachlan abolished. It was effectively split in half, with the seats of Wollondilly and Goulburn created in the area that it used to cover. But still, it didn’t exist after the 2007 election, just as Lachlan didn’t exist after that.

As such, I see a case of things coming in threes regarding Fahey and Armstrong, being leaders who lost power at the same time and whose seats were abolished at the same time and who passed away in the same year. I can’t imagine that other examples of leaders and seats lost together, especially with the relatively close connections of Fahey and Armstrong, can be found.

Memories would undoubtedly stir in the minds of Liberals and Nationals after the passing of both Fahey and Armstrong. But if Labor had been in power now, those memories might be more powerful, and perhaps even painful, given how long ago it was that Fahey and Armstrong were in power. The presence these days of the Coalition Government in NSW, with Labor not exactly looking like much of a threat, would provide some comfort.