The Prime Minister Paul Keating said virtually in the same breath yesterday that the Queensland election was not a rebuke to the Federal Government and yet there is no joy in lodging protest votes by voting for what he called no-policy parties. It sounded like whistling in the dark. Why did he argue there was no federal rebuke and then immediately drawn an analogy with the Federal situation _ that he might be thrown out of office purely on protest.
Mr Keating’s view was also a very self-centred view of what happened in Queensland. Perhaps Mr Keating imagines that because he took no part in the campaign that the election was divorced totally from Federal politics. Not so. Opposition Leader John Howard campaigned there extensively.
Of course, much can be read into any election result. It would be silly to claim a “clear message” arising from more than a million votes. Many factors were at work. Among them, perhaps, was that some voters were not going to vote Labor because of the performance of the Keating Government. Others, perhaps, did not like Mr Goss or the performance of his Government. Others may have thought the unity of the Coalition deserved credit; that the days of the corrupt National Government of the 1980s were gone for good; that the Liberals had asserted themselves, particularly in the south-east, to a point where they were a viable choice whereas in the past those who could not bring themselves to vote National voted Labor; and still others might have imagined Mr Goss was getting to self-assured and that though he ought to win he should not win by too much.
The last theory _ though the most touted _ is perhaps the weakest. It assumes the electorate has a collective consciousness; that the whole is greater than the parts. Are we to believe that individual voters who wanted Mr Goss to win went into the ballot box and voted against him on the ground that they did not want him to win by too much?
As for the Queensland factors, Mr Goss ran a fairly ordinary Government. At times, fiscal frugality took precedence over delivering key services that have been taken for granted in other states. None the less there was no solid reason to vote his Government out. Moreover, his opponents did not display any of the imagination, freshness or policy inspiration that usually accompanies a change of government. There was little about governance in Queensland to suggest a change of Government was deserved by either side.
In those circumstances, the Federal element cannot be ruled out as a factor in some voters’ minds.
Mr Keating is right to argue that it is disconcerting that Queensland electors voted against a good state government in favour of a “no-policies” Coalition _ hinting, of course, that it would be disconcerting for them to do the same federally. But his conclusion was wrong. He said it would make people think about whether protest votes were of any value to them and that there were no prizes for hurting a good government.
There is a different conclusion. That people would prefer to risk a “no-policies” Coalition than continue with Labor and that they are finding Federal Labor so distasteful that they are prepared to punish an innocent and reasonably competent state Labor leader to get that message across.
If that is the case (and who knows what is in the minds of voters), then it is an especially damning indictment of Mr Keating’s Government.