OFF THE RECORD 2010 FEDERAL ELECTION CAMPAIGN

The policy agenda:

The first week is usually about getting the parties’ campaigns up and running and allowing the leaders to find their feet. Sticking to script, neither party has been brave enough to set the tone for the election with a big policy announcement. The first days have been about communicating key messages and burying some skeletons. The Coalition has been struggling to finally shake off the ghost of WorkChoices and Labor has pressed the ‘move forward’ button, simultaneously hoping to paint Tony Abbott as backwards, while focusing attention away from the ALP’s difficult immediate past.

In hindsight we might refer to this as ‘Education Week’.

Julia Gillard’s first policy foray was in safe ground for the former Education Minister. Keeping with her pledge to not make this a big spending election campaign, the PM’s announcement of a National Trade Cadetship program for students in Years 9-12 was both cheap (at $3.1 million) and enabled her to draw attention to the Coalition’s plans to cut funding for the Government’s Trade Training Centres. Today she followed that up with an additional 50,000 work experience places for those national cadets.

Tony Abbott has framed his campaign around debt and economic management, playing to Coalition strengths. In the process, he is building up a considerable war chest for new policy later in the election. On Tuesday, he announced an additional $1.2 billion of cuts to Government expenditure, across the NBN, infrastructure and climate change - giving the Coalition close to $46 billion in savings to use for new initiatives. Today he spent some of the kitty, seeking to get back on the front foot and neutralise Julia Gillard’s early focus on education with an increase in the education tax refund of $500 for primary students and $1000 for secondary students.
 

The dog that didn't bark:

Climate Change. It was expected to feature early on in the campaign but apart from reaffirming former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s timetable for the CPRS, and making some broad-brush comments about renewable energy, it remains the one box unchecked on Julia’s “to do” list.

The Coalition announced a number of cutbacks to climate change programs including discontinuing funding for the Carbon Capture and Storage Institute and the Green Building Fund. However, they have added little to their ‘Direct Action’ plan on Climate Change announced in February.

As today’s pureprofile poll shows, a clear majority of Australians support immediate action on climate change, so it will be hard for either Labor or the Coalition to remain silent for long – especially as it will form the key election pitch from the Greens.
 

Ad watch:

It didn’t take long for the major political parties to roll out their television advertisements following Saturday’s election announcement. Both campaign teams appear to have brought in some new ad agencies for the 2010 campaign – although you could hardly tell from the ads themselves.

This week we look at the positive ads from the three major parties.
Labor’s lead positive ad – running in a 60-second and cut-down 30-second ad – sets out the Prime Minister’s case for ‘moving Australia forward’. The longer version of the ad attempts to position Julia Gillard’s core values within the context of her parents’ story of migrating to Australia. 

Labor’s longer ad then proceeds to tick off a focus-group derived shopping list of policy priorities, including:

• A strong economy and balanced budget;
• A commitment to stronger borders;
• Population policy: ‘Not a big Australia but a sustainable Australia’;
• Commitments on solar power and renewables; and
• Better education and trades training.

Interestingly the shorter ad (which is in higher rotation at the moment) places more emphasis on population policy than it does on stronger borders. The references to trades training also ended up on the cutting room floor. 

The Liberal Party’s advertising – only running in a 90-second version at the moment – feature a more focussed message from Tony Abbott which tries to tie in to voter concern about Labor’s financial management competence juxtaposing this with a four point ‘Action Contract’ to:

• End wasteful spending;
• Pay back Labor’s debt;
• Stop Labor’s new taxes; and
• Stop the boats. 

Both ads could have done with some concerted script editing as listeners struggle to keep pace with their talking head voice over from start to finish. Labor’s ads in particular feature some lazy writing: ‘Moving forward is also about better education, giving every child the chance of a quality education’ is one of the more egregious examples.

Abbott’s performance would likely connect better with voters if it weren’t for the jarringly dated soundtrack and jingle which wouldn’t have been out of place on a John Farnham album circa Whispering Jack.

The contrast with the Green’s 45-second television ad could hardly be starker. Their ads feature neither a talking head nor a voice over. Instead drawing on some backwards/forwards visual metaphors the ad implies that a vote for the Greens will take Australia forward on parental leave and mandatory detention (and perhaps by implication on public transport and education too). 

That both the Greens and Labor have settled on ‘moving Australia forward’ messaging suggest that there is a strong sense among voters that Australia is in some way stuck – this is likely to be particularly the case among left-of-centre and swinging voters. For Labor ‘moving forward’ means drawing a line under the Rudd government and giving Julia Gillard the opportunity to gain a mandate in her own right. For the Greens ‘moving forward’ means a shift away from a tired politics dominated by Labor and the Liberals. 

While the positive ads are important, party strategists know that it is the negative ads that do the heavy lifting and already the Liberal Party and the ALP have started to roll theirs out. More on these next week.
 

Doing the numbers:

Highlighting an important disconnect between the policy agenda of the Government and the Opposition, this week’s poll, featured today in the Daily Telegraph, finds that Australians overwhelmingly support taking action to address climate change now – 81 per cent in fact, around the country. Not only do Australians want action, voters say they want strong action – most want strong action now (45 per cent) while a smaller proportion want moderate action (36 per cent). Less than one in ten believes that we should take no action at all (8 per cent) and 11 per cent believe we should act only when the rest of the world does. (Click on graph to enlarge)

This popular desire for action on climate change sits at odds with a range of common misconceptions about the politics of climate change. A few truisms our polling does not bear out:

• Older voters do not support action on climate change: while there are lower levels of support for strong action now among voters over 55 compared with their younger counterparts, an overwhelming 72 per cent want action now rather than waiting for other countries to act or doing nothing.
• Concern over climate change is the preserve of inner city elites: there is no difference between the responses of voters from capital cities and those living in the regions.
• The Eastern seaboard is out of step with mining states: South Australians and Western Australians are most likely to want to take strong action now on climate change of voters in any state. Queensland voters however are least likely to want to take strong action. Nonetheless more than three in four Queenslanders believe in taking action now on climate change.

Far from needing to outflank each other with a conservative response to climate change it seems that political strategists are overlooking the concerns of the overwhelming majority of voters who want action on climate change now.

Poll results were provided by online research panel pureprofile. The poll surveyed a nationally representative sample of 1,000 Australians. To find out more about pureprofile’s services, please contact tspiegel@pureprofile.com .
 

This week's winner:

Prime Minister Julia Gillard is winning the election campaign thus far. It comes down to polls, preference deals, targeted policy announcements and the Coalition’s poisoned chalice - WorkChoices.

Gillard’s campaign is not without problems. Voters in key marginals have shown dislike for the execution-style disposal of former Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, whose election win many voters took strong personal ownership over. This is playing out most visibly in Maxine McKew’s seat of Bennelong where the large Asian community had a strong allegiance to Mardarin-speaking Rudd.

Gillard also has Labor’s weakness on climate change and the overhang from the schools building program and the insulation scheme to deal with. However, Gillard has thus far successfully avoided the election becoming a referendum on the Government’s first-term performance, allowing her to avoid wearing the kind of personal damage that would outweigh the Coalition’s challenges.

Although Gillard says the election will be a “photo finish”, the polls say otherwise. Of the most publicised polls, News Limited’s Newspoll shows a two-party preferred vote of 55-45 in Labor’s favour, while Fairfax’s Nielsen poll has Labor winning 52.7 per cent of this vote. Although the campaign has some time to run, on these numbers Labor has a comfortable election-winning lead.

Labor will be helped on polling day by its preference deal with the Greens which sees the Greens direct preferences to Labor in more than 50 marginal seats. In return, Labor will give the Greens Senate preferences in every state and territory.

Although the Greens tell their followers to determine their own preferences, a good number of Greens voters, particularly those who are not enthralled by the two major parties, can be expected to follow their how to vote cards. Only time will tell what policy promises secured the preference deal. 

Although it has attracted criticism from business groups wanting continued migration to fuel economic growth, Gillard’s policy announcements on sustainable population and asylum seekers were designed for maximum impact in capital city marginal seats like Lindsay in Western Sydney. By contrast, yesterday’s announcement from the Coalition that they would cut a raft of Government programs prosecutes a general message of fiscal restraint rather than a ‘king-hit’ announcement aimed at particular marginal seats. 

Owing to WorkChoices being the single largest reason for the Coalition’s 2007 Election loss, Opposition Leader Tony Abbott has needed to rule out the opportunity to campaign on labour market reform, a holy grail for many within the Coalition. Despite Abbott pronouncing WorkChoices as “dead, buried and cremated”, he, his Deputy Julie Bishop and workplace relations shadow minister, Eric Abetz between them bungled the rhetoric. Abbott suggested that a Coalition government may tweak Labor’s Fair Work legislation by removing unfair dismissal protections for small business employees. Their inconsistent messages, which have dominated the headlines, have left the gate open for voters’ doubting the Coalition’s real intentions on industrial relations and have wedged Abbott between those who need to be convinced of his IR message and small and big business, his natural consistency who would prefer to see a Coalition government make some changes.
 

State in Focus - Tasmania:

One only needs to recall Mark Latham’s forestry policy in 2004 to demonstrate the influence Australia’s smallest state can have come polling day. Tasmania once again looms as a vital battleground for political leaders with a focus on the northern seats of Bass and Braddon.

After many years of split preferences, Tasmania returned to ALP stronghold at the 2007 Election but a string of new faces for Labor and the Greens have added some uncertainty. The marginal seat of Bass will again be hotly contested after sitting MP Jodie Campbell stood down due for personal reasons. In an electorate that has ousted five sitting MPs in the last six elections, the ALP’s new candidate Geoff Lyons will struggle to hold the party’s slim 1% margin over Liberal Steve Titmus.

Denison has been the ALP’s safest seat, held by incumbent Duncan Kerr since 1987. His retirement will be of great concern to the ALP in a green-leaning electorate. Opinions remained divided over whether Green candidate and Royal Hobart Hospital staffer, Dr Geoff Couser is the right candidate to turn around the 15.3% swing ALP candidate Jonathan Jackson enjoys and provide the Greens with the lower house seat they are looking for.

Redistribution of electoral boundaries has slightly increased the margin of ALP’s Sid Sidebottom in Braddon who regained the seat in the 2007 Election. With a 2.3% margin, the seat though remains a key marginal with Liberals recruiting local farmer Garry Carpenter as its candidate. 

While forestry has been a major issue in Tasmanian politics over the last decade, changes to industry economics are calming many old debates in the lead up to August 21. While the ALP/Greens coalition at the state level may impact the vote, expect health reforms to be a major area of concern for Tasmanians.

Even with a host of new personnel and growing support for the Greens, the ALP will expect another victory from Australia’s most southern state.
 

Candidate of the week:

The Liberals’ candidate for the Tasmanian seat of Bass, Steve Titmus, joined the Liberal Party three years ago and was recently endorsed to run for the seat of Bass, left vacant by ALP MP Jodie Campbell.

The media-savvy candidate had a lengthy career in the local Tasmanian media as a journalist for The Examiner and a popular news reader for Southern Cross Television. However, he was notably shown the door by the television station due to a perceived conflict of interest with his other job as a consultant with a Tasmanian public relations firm.

In an electorate that has been identified as a potential Liberal Party gain, Titmus should expect a lot of attention. His campaign, focused on costs of living and job security, is off to a bad start with today’s headlines revealing that his wife Robyn used her Boral email to issue a press release on behalf of her husband, a situation currently being investigated by the construction company.
 

Clanger of the week:

"Wayne Swan is to surpluses what Paris Hilton is to celibacy. They remember it once existed but they'll never see it again,”

- Shadow Treasurer and Member for North Sydney Joe Hockey announcing spending cuts to Government programs, 20 July 2010.
 

Commentary of the week:

“This year's (election) promises to be just as ferocious, or possibly even more so, given that the leaders in 1993 were not subject to strongly conflicted psychosexual feelings about each other.”

– Ben Pobjie on ABC Drum, 19 July 2010.