Wayne Goss has been forced to see sense. Faced with the likelihood of an electoral backlash, he has backed away from asking the Governor, Leneen Forde, for a general election in the face of Labor’s loss of the pivotal seat of Mundingburra in the by-election at the weekend.
Having lost the seat, Labor has 44 seats, the Coalition 44 and there is one pro-Coalition Independent, Liz Cunningham. In short, Labor has lost its majority. Mr Goss faced two obstacles if he wanted to cling to power. The first was the good sense of the Governor who could easily have refused a request for a general election, given that there had been one such a short time ago and that the by-election was just a formalising or finishing off of that process. The second was that the electorate would have seen through the ploy and voted against Labor even more heavily, leaving Labor in even more difficult circumstances at the next election.
None the less, Mr Goss is determined to hang on to some power. He wants to retain the Labor Party leadership, even if that inevitably means as Leader of the Opposition. He has pre-empted opponents within his parliamentary party by calling a meeting of his parliamentary party for tomorrow (THURS) at which he will declare the leadership vacant and recontest it himself. This gives very little time for others, in particular Health Minister Peter Beattie, to shore up their votes. It also means that MPs will be voting during a hiatus, while still technically in government but on the verge of a no-confidence motion. It smacks of trickery.
Further, Mr Goss has decided to delay the inevitable. He will not recall Parliament before March 5, even though the writ for the by-election (formally declaring the winner) will be returned well before then. It is clear that Mr Goss’s timing has more to do with the timing of the federal election on March 2 than with the needs of Queensland democracy.
Mr Goss imagines that by clinging to office past the federal election date he will somehow help Prime Minister Paul Keating. It is macho thinking. It presumes that voters will think worse of Labor the moment it admits defeat; that it is on the run and therefore voters will side with a winner.
This sort of thinking is the very thing that voters find repulsive about modern Australian politics. They do not want to see Mr Goss in the playground dust with his arm twisted behind his back refusing to say “”give in”. They would prefer a more graceful, adult approach and an orderly hand-over of power. Mr Goss does Labor a disservice by needlessly clinging to government.
Labor may feel cheated by the circumstances of the by-election and the fact that Mrs Cunningham portrayed herself as a working-class candidate in an essentially safe Labor seat, but the fact she got away with it reveals as much about Labor’s relationship with the electorate as her ability to beguile voters.
The situation in Queensland reveals the need for more certainty and less gubernatorial discretion in constitutionally affairs. State and federal parliaments should have fixed terms and a requirement that all no-confidence motions name the new head of government.