Last Liberal leader on the double

29 May 2022

The next State election in New South Wales takes place in ten months’ time. But one thing will stay the same, regardless of the outcome.

Having taken power in 2011, the Liberal Party already faces a struggle at the coming election, because it’s aiming for a fourth straight election win. Governments often struggle to win three straight elections, so it’s a big challenge to win four. Right now, things don’t look good in NSW.

Domenic Perrottet became Liberal leader and NSW Premier late last year. He’s the fourth Liberal leader since a big election win in 2011. This arguably should’ve been the start of a great period of governing for the Liberals, in tandem with the Nationals – hence a description of the Liberal-National Coalition. But with two leaders resigning amid investigative work by the Independent Commission Against Corruption, and another leader resigning in the wake of scandals, trouble seems to follow whoever leads the Liberals in NSW.

In fact, no Liberal leader since Nick Greiner has fought two straight elections in NSW.

And it was around this time in 1992 – thirty years ago – that Greiner’s leadership ended, because of a scandal that resulted in an adverse ruling by the ICAC.

Greiner led the Coalition to an election win in 1988, its first in more than a decade. But despite the euphoria, people overlooked that he didn’t win the election by much. He came away with 59 seats out of 109 in the Lower House. He had a majority of only a handful of seats.

He looked good because the Labor Party lost lots of seats, including some which Independents picked up. The number of crossbenchers made the newly-elected Premier look more secure.

Despite generally doing a good job as Premier, Greiner suffered an unexpected swing against him at an election in 1991. He lost his majority, and governed only with crossbench support.

A year after that close election, a decision was taken to appoint Terry Metherell, a former Liberal MP who’d gone to the crossbench because of a scandal, to a public service position. This meant a by-election in Metherell’s seat of Davidson, on the northern beaches of Sydney, and a certain return of that seat to the Liberal fold – thereby increasing the Coalition’s numbers and reducing its reliance on the crossbench just a little.

The ICAC investigated the matter, and delivered an adverse ruling against Greiner. As a result, Greiner was forced to resign as Liberal leader and Premier. If he hadn’t done so, it was possible that the crossbenchers – who held the balance of power – could put the Coalition out of power altogether. John Fahey replaced Greiner as leader, and lost office three years later.

History shows that after Fahey’s loss, the Coalition didn’t win another election in NSW until early 2011, with Labor holding power for sixteen years. History also shows that after Greiner’s shock resignation, no Liberal leader would face one election and live to face another.

Even winning elections hasn’t necessarily helped. Barry O’Farrell led the Liberals to their triumph in 2011, helped in no small part by the fact that Labor had utterly imploded amid scandal after scandal in its final years in power. Despite the 2011 win, and the fact that Labor had rendered itself unelectable, O’Farrell was uninspiring as leader and Premier.

He resigned amid an investigation by the ICAC in 2014, with Mike Baird replacing him. In 2015, Baird won an election, but he resigned two years later after some controversies, and replacing him was Gladys Berejiklian. She narrowly won an election in 2019, but resigned in 2021 because of an investigation by the ICAC. Her replacement was Perrottet.

It seems hard to believe that Greiner, who left politics with a cloud of corruption hanging over him around this time thirty years ago, is the last Liberal leader in NSW to have faced two straight elections or more. Something must be wrong with the Liberals if their last leader on the double, if I could put it that way, is someone who led them ages ago.

Perrottet already faces a struggle to win the next election, which happens in March next year.

Giving the Liberals their fourth win in a row would be an achievement. But would he last until the election after next, due in 2027? That question will remain unanswered for years.

Labor’s last Queensland defeat

27 May 2022

The Liberal National Party doesn’t look like it could take power in Queensland at any stage in the foreseeable future. Many of its people might find it hard to believe that it last won an election ten years ago, in March 2012, and back then it looked set to govern for many years to come. But it didn’t turn out that way.

In the years before then, the Labor Party found itself in a unique position. For just under one year, it governed not just at Federal level but in every State and Territory as well.

Campbell Newman, the winner of that 2012 election, was in unique standing for a period of time. A well-known figure in the Liberal Party, he was Lord Mayor of Brisbane, before making perhaps an audacious move to become Premier of Queensland. This was unusual, because he wasn’t even in State Parliament at that time.

During his time in Brisbane’s mayoralty, he was actually the top non-Labor leader to hold power in any jurisdiction, as Australia then had wall-to-wall Labor governments.

When Kevin Rudd led Labor to a Federal election win in late 2007, it was the first victory for Labor at Federal level in over a decade. But this situation only lasted about one year, before Labor lost power at an election in Western Australia. Later on, Labor governments would fall in several jurisdictions around the country.

In the meantime, a significant change took place in Queensland. Despite being successful in most parts of Australia, the Liberals weren’t particularly strong in Queensland, at least when it came to State elections and politics. Queensland had been the only State where the Nationals were strongest among the non-Labor political players. However, with both the Nationals and Liberals running against each other in State elections, under an election system of optional preferences when people voted, Labor was perceived to benefit more from this situation. So the Nationals and Liberals opted to merge – and form the Liberal National Party. But it took two elections for this arrangement to bear fruit.

The first election contest for the LNP was in 2009. Labor was enjoying a massive majority in Parliament, care of big victories in previous elections. The LNP made up some ground on Labor in 2009, but not that much. However, perhaps it took some time for perceived differences of opinion regarding the LNP to become clear. Its leader was an ex-National, Lawrence Springborg, and he was never that popular, especially among city voters, who perceived him as too much of a bush figure – though at the same time rural dwellers saw this new group as more attuned to city slickers. This perception still seems strong now.

Labor began to implode after its win over the newly-formed LNP, with scandals and other problems. But voters simply weren’t warming to the LNP. So a decision was made to run Newman as leader, with the intention of becoming Premier, from outside Parliament.

In 2012, this audacious move paid off, in a big way. When the election came, Labor was utterly decimated, finishing with only a “netball team” of seven seats out of eighty-nine, while the LNP won most of the seats. Incredibly, this was the first election lost by Labor since 1986 – when I was merely a teenager!

Mind you, when Labor won power in Queensland in 1989, it was its first election triumph in that State since the 1950s. After the 1989 win, it lost power in 1996, albeit not because of a general election but a by-election. It had a one-seat majority after a close election result in 1995, and then it lost a seat in a by-election, leaving an Independent MP holding the balance of power. The Independent, despite representing a Labor-leaning electorate, chose to support the Nationals and Liberals, who then took power. Labor regained power at the next election, in 1998, and held it right through to 2012.

After that big loss in 2012, you’d have thought that Labor couldn’t possibly get back into power for at least a few terms. But as Premier, Newman went on to be hugely unpopular, and when voters next went to the polls, in 2015, the Newman Government narrowly lost power, with Newman losing his own seat as well.

Since Labor unexpectedly regained power in 2015, it’s increased its majority at subsequent elections, and at this stage it doesn’t exactly look vulnerable.

Indeed I wonder if Newman, given his unpopularity from his years as Premier, nowadays reminds Queenslanders of why they turned against the LNP back then. When he’s either heard or seen, voters remember why they feel inclined to stick with Labor.

Labor’s last Queensland defeat seems like an eternity ago, especially to those who support the LNP. Leaving aside the unusual circumstances of how Labor was tipped out of power briefly during the 1990s, Labor’s only lost one general election since 1986. The road ahead for the LNP, with the next election due in late 2024, looks difficult.

Another two leaders gone

23 May 2022

Tasmania and the Northern Territory have new leaders now.

Last month, Peter Gutwein resigned as Premier of Tasmania, after not much more than two years in the job, and less than a year after he narrowly won a general election. And earlier this month, Michael Gunner resigned as Chief Minister of the Northern Territory, after a bit less than six years in the job. And the fortunes of both leaders revolved in part around events in recent years.

As we all know, Australia became caught up in a worldwide outbreak of coronavirus in early 2020, along with a subsequent pandemic, which meant that we were all forced to keep apart from each other for a long time. Responses from leaders to the pandemic included border closures within Australia, so people couldn’t travel interstate to see loved ones. Some leaders were more forceful than others on the issue of borders. In the cases of Gutwein and Gunner, they were in contrasting positions when the coronavirus trouble began.

Gutwein had only just become Premier of the Apple Isle at that time. He took over from the very popular Will Hodgman in January 2020. Hodgman had become Premier with an election victory in 2014, the first for the Liberal Party since the 1990s, and won another election in 2018. He was Premier for a little under six years before deciding to step down. And Gutwein replaced him.

The two men entered Parliament at the same time, in 2002. This was amid something of a dark time for the Liberals. They’d lost power four years earlier, but in 2002 they lost more seats, with the Liberal leader at the time, Bob Cheek, losing his seat. It took twelve years for them to finally win an election, although there was a close election result along the way.

After around a year as Premier, and having done a pretty good job in steering Tasmania through the pandemic, Gutwein called a snap election. He didn’t need to go to the polls until March this year, but he went for May 2021. And he narrowly won the election, giving the Liberals their third straight victory – they’d never won more than two Tasmanian elections in a row before. He was also immensely popular at a local level, easily being the first of five people elected in Bass, which covers Launceston and other towns in Tasmania’s north-east.

Now he’s stepped down, and his successor’s got at most three years before there’ll be an election due. The Liberals hold a majority of only one seat in Parliament, but it’s enough for them now.

On the other hand, there’s quite a different story surrounding Gunner. He became Chief Minister of the Northern Territory after leading the Labor Party to a big election win in 2016 – long before anyone had heard of coronavirus. The next election was due in August 2020, but there was talk that he might lose his majority, because of some controversies. Indeed I’d predicted him to lose his majority on those grounds, regardless of the pandemic.

However, he was very firm on border closures during the pandemic, whereas his opponents were seen to be trying to relax border restrictions, amid risks of the virus spreading. When the election came, he ended up winning comfortably again.

Now he’s stepped down, with just over two years left before his successor must go to the polls.

Even at this stage, I can’t see Labor losing in the Top End, because of Labor’s opponents looking nowhere near electable. Indeed all but one election since 2001 has gone to Labor. That triumph in 2001 was Labor’s first since the Top End became self-governing a few decades earlier. Leading Labor to victory then was Clare Martin, who held the seat of Fannie Bay, just north of the business part of Darwin. And after she departed in 2008, her successor in Fannie Bay was in fact Gunner.

Following the resignation of Gladys Berejiklian in New South Wales last year, and an unexpected election loss for Steven Marshall in South Australia this year, we’ve now seen another two leaders gone at State or Territory level, in the form of Gutwein and Gunner. They all led their respective places throughout the pandemic.

The new leaders in the Apple Isle and the Top End have time to prove themselves.

Albanese seemingly power-bound

21 May 2022

Will Australian voters opt to return the Liberal-National Coalition to a fourth straight term in power? Will they send the Labor Party to power for the first time in many years? Will they choose neither, and end up with crossbenchers holding the balance of power in the House of Representatives and ultimately deciding who ends up in power?

Possibly tonight, the answers will come. Today marks the end of a general election campaign that seems to have been a long time coming. Although you’d consider today to be the actual polling day, voters right across Australia have increasingly been choosing to vote early, with maybe a majority of votes cast since the period of early voting began at the start of last week, and with more votes than usual also cast by post.

An outbreak of coronavirus overseas in 2020, which caused countless deaths worldwide and led to lockdowns to keep people apart, has played some part in the growth in early voting when elections have come, not just in Australia but elsewhere. However, early voting had long been on the rise in elections before anyone had even heard of the coronavirus – although that probably made the growth in early voting bigger than it might otherwise have been.

In terms of the coronavirus and a pandemic that followed, governments have been at times rewarded and at times punished for their handling of that stuff since it started. In the case of Australia, feelings among voters have definitely been mixed, with most accepting the need to receive vaccinations and stay home at times to keep the outbreak to a minimum, although many strongly resent being forced to get vaccinated or stay home. The Coalition probably has done a reasonable job here, but there have been many problems.

Some problems associated with the pandemic, as well as recovery from that, look like turning voters off the Coalition and Prime Minister Scott Morrison, but his responses to issues such as bushfires and floods and climate change and women might well see them lose power today.

However, voters haven’t exactly warmed to Anthony Albanese, who became Opposition Leader after Labor lost the last election, in 2019 – which virtually nobody predicted. He seems reasonably popular, but he doesn’t offer much in terms of vision, and after some gaffes over economic issues, the Coalition has run hard on portraying him as a risk.

The national economy has been in reasonable shape in light of the pandemic, although governmental spending to keep it in shape has created a massive budget deficit, and it looks like staying large for some time.

With these issues, as well as the unpopularity of Morrison and the questions about Albanese, voters are increasingly looking at Independent candidates and minor parties. We’ll probably see more of them elected.

In terms of numbers, the Coalition won 77 of 151 seats in 2019, while Labor won 68 and crossbenchers won the rest. Since then, we’ve seen a Coalition MP go to the crossbench, and we’ve seen electoral redistributions notionally give Labor a new seat in Victoria and abolish a Coalition-held seat in Western Australia. Effectively, the numbers read 75-69 to the Coalition.

Opinion polls suggest a swing of 3-4 per cent to Labor today. But as swings don’t always affect every seat, we’ll probably see a patchwork of results.

I tip Labor to win ten seats from the Coalition – Bass, Boothby, Higgins, Reid, Swan, Longman, Casey, Brisbane, Pearce, and Flinders.

I tip the Coalition to win two seats from Labor – Hunter and Parramatta.

I tip Independents to beat the Coalition in three seats – Goldstein, Mackellar, and Wentworth. I also tip an Independent to beat Labor in Fowler.

As for the former Coalition MP now on the crossbench, Craig Kelly, I expect the Coalition to regain his seat of Hughes. All other crossbenchers, including Adam Bandt of the Greens, will hold their seats.

Plenty of other seats could change hands, but the seats that I mention above are the ones that I tip to change. Mind you, many results will be quite close, so we mightn’t have a result tonight.

If these tips are correct, Labor would finish up with 76 seats – the minimum needed for victory. It’d make Albanese and Labor seemingly power-bound, although they’d be wise to act on good terms with the crossbenchers.

As for the Senate, it’ll still have crossbenchers holding the balance of power, though some seats look like changing colours.

To sum up, Labor looks like taking power today. Of course, everyone points to 2019, when Morrison scored an election win that nobody tipped, so many might be shy to predict now. Mind you, I also remember an election in 1993, when Labor pulled off an election win that nobody tipped. Despite the shock results that I refer to, victory for Labor still looks more likely.