Australian Election 2016
Week 3, Queensland Point of View
by Professor Anne Tiernan
Australian voters endured another week of the ‘phoney war’ that has waged since Prime Minister Turnbull announced his intention to bring on double-dissolution election on 2 July.
Echoing war-time Europe, where for eight months following the declaration of hostilities in September 1939 to May 1940, there was very little military action, the major parties and the leadership contenders have faced off, but only a few shots have been fired. Any that have found their target have achieved flesh wounds at best. That is likely to change as Week Four kicks off with a Leaders’ Debate — this time at the National Press Club and on free-to-air television.
After ‘going negative’ on asylum-seekers in Week Two, the Coalition began Week Three targeting Bill Shorten over Labor’s ‘spend-o-meter’, a throwaway line the hitherto disciplined Opposition Leader (and ALP Campaign HQ) must surely be rueing.
The government pounced. Minister after minister appeared in the media hammering home a consistent Coalition theme: Labor can’t be trusted on the economy. This set the context for the serious over-reach that followed and dominated much of the week.
Scott Morrison and Matthias Corman gave a press conference on Thursday during which they claimed there was a $67 billion ‘black hole’ in Labor’s expenditure plans. The oldest trick in the book of Australian political campaigns quickly unravelled, as journalists’ questioning of the government’s most senior economic ministers forced them to concede the actual figure could be much lower — closer to $21 billion. We’ll soon see whether voters were listening to the finer details, or whether — as the Government no doubt hopes, they heard only the headline message — cementing the trend consistently reflected in the opinion polls, that voters regard the Coalition as the better economic managers.
Economic management dominated this week, as independent advisers including the outgoing Governor of the Reserve Bank, Glenn Stevens and the Secretaries of the Commonwealth Departments of Treasury and Finance warned that whatever the outcome of the 2 July poll, the next Australian government would need to embrace structural reforms to repair the Federal budget.
A weak outlook for growth and exports and concerns that the ratings agencies might revise down Australia’s AAA credit rating, provided the backdrop to Friday’s Treasurers’ Debate. Scott Morrison and Chris Bowen went head-to-head in a ‘spirited’ and wide-ranging debate at the National Press Club. Both claimed their policies would forestall a credit downgrade, but conceded the need for further spending cuts. The Treasurer argued the Coalition’s company tax cuts would help spur ‘jobs and growth’, while the Shadow Treasurer emphasised Labor’s fiscal discipline in identifying offsetting savings for its election commitments and its ‘bold’ plans on the revenue side, including proposed changes to negative gearing. He reiterated Labor’s earlier commitment that a Shorten government would release a mini-budget within its first hundred days. Under the Charter of Budget Honesty, the final verdict on costings sits with the independent Parliamentary Budget Office.
The Coalition claimed a victory of sorts, when on Thursday, Labor was forced to acknowledge it had abandoned plans to reinstate the ‘Schoolkids bonus’. It emerged the decision to drop its opposition to the cut followed the embattled Member for Batman David Feeney’s disastrous interview on Sky News, in which the Shadow Minister for Veterans’ Affairs failed to articulate his party’s policy. Chris Bowen confirmed the decision, citing the deteriorating Budget position as the reason for the Opposition’s backflip on one of its key commitments. Shadow ministers did their best to defend the decision, but they looked uncomfortable, given education is an area of Labor strength and its campaign is premised on increasing funding for the nation’s public schools.
Journalists called the result of the debate a tie, praising both men’s performance and remarking on the pleasant change it made from tightly scripted appearances and three word slogans. The same week as the New Zealand Treasurer revealed a projected surplus of $NZ 700 million ($652 million AUD) in 2016–17, rising to $2.5 billion and $5 billion in subsequent years, his Australian counterparts acknowledged that a return to surplus is far off into the future.
Meanwhile, as leaders continued to criss-cross the country, making choreographed visits to marginal seats and announcing modest spending promises, the polls suggested that while Labor’s vote is improving, it is failing to get traction in the battleground state of Queensland.
The Fairfax-Ipsos poll, published on May 21st, showed the Coalition leading 51 to 49 two-party preferred. It confirmed disappointment in Malcolm Turnbull’s leadership — there was a further slide in his rating as preferred Prime Minister (47 per cent — a four point slide on the previous fortnight), but Turnbull maintains a 17 point lead over Bill Shorten.
However, in Queensland, where Labor needs to gain up to ten seats to be competitive, the Coalition’s support is holding. This perhaps explains why Julie Bishop was campaigning in Labor-held marginals, as well as in those the Coalition needs to retain. It may be bravado, but the government doesn’t look to be sand-bagging as some had predicted at the start of the campaign.
The week ahead
To return to our military metaphor — which seems appropriate given the recent stoush over Labor Candidate for Brisbane, Pat O’Neill’s use of a photograph showing the former Major who served two tours of Iraq in his fatigues (reportedly he was asked by the Defence Department to take the billboards down), the forces are massing. So what can we expect in Week Four?
- A barrage of advertising from the major parties, but we understand too, from non-party actors.
Ominously for the Coalition, the Australian Medical Association has launched a full-frontal assault on the government’s 2014 decision to ‘freeze’ the Medicare rebate. The True Issues survey conducted by JWS research into the 2016 Federal Budget, revealed that health and hospitals funding was the key concern for 75 per cent of respondents. The powerful doctors’ union has consistently opposed the decision not to index the rebate, which commenced on 1 June 2014 for an initial four-year period.
The government extended the freeze by a further two years (to 2020) in the May 3 Federal Budget (or ‘economic plan’ as Treasurer Scott Morrison describes it). The AMA claims doctors cannot continue to absorb additional costs (which Labor claims are ‘a co-payment by stealth’), arguing the result will be a reduction bulk-billing, with flow-on effects to the cost of living for vulnerable sick Australians. Health Minister Sussan Ley found herself in a world of pain on Monday 23rd May, when she said told Radio National’s Fran Kelly that she would like to lift the freeze as soon as possible, but that she was being blocked from doing so by the Departments of Treasury and Finance. Labor has promised to reinstate indexation of the Medicare rebate from January 2017.
2. An uptick in social media
The Prime Minister is an avid user, adept at communicating in this genre and supported by a campaign team keenly aware of the potential of Twitter, Instagram and SnapChat to maintain visibility and mobilse support. Again non-government players are active. As we’ve noted in previous analyses, activist groups like GetUp are targeting key marginals, while the unions and others focus attention on issues like penalty rates, and “$100,000 University degrees”.
3. More focus on the minor parties and independents — particularly now the campaign is in full swing.
The Greens’ Richard Di Natale launched the party’s campaign in Queensland and can be expected to make further policy commitments after last week’s promise to expand Medicare to provide better treatment for chronic illnesses through funding to general practitioners.
As the Senate race intensifies, expect to see plenty of Nick Xenophon who is fielding candidates in both houses and in jurisdictions outside his home state. The Nick Xenophon Team, according to an two month analysis of Newspoll, is polling 22 per cent of the primary vote in South Australia.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ANNE TIERNAN
Professor Anne Tiernan is Director of the Policy Innovation Hub at Griffith University, Australia.
Professor Tiernan’s research focuses on the work of governing. Her scholarly interests include: Australian politics and governance, policy advice, executive studies, policy capacity, federalism and intergovernmental coordination. She has written extensively on the political-administrative interface, caretaker conventions, governmental transitions and the work of policy advising.
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