After every by-election, political leaders and winning and losing candidates spin the result to extract the best interpretation of it for themselves. The result of the by-election in the Federal seat of Fraser on Saturday was no different. The comments of all must be taken with many grains of salt.
Defeated krypto-Liberal Cheryl Hill blames Labor dirty tricks over the distribution of out-dated pamphlets depicting her as still a member of the Liberal Party. However, very few people read these pamphlets and even fewer take the slightest notice of them.
Victorious Labor candidate Steve Dargavel has claimed an eight per cent swing to Labor on a two-party preferred basis. This is twaddle. For a start, there was no Liberal candidate, so the phrase “”two-party preferred” is more a psephologist’s artifice than an expression of voter opinion. Secondly, Mr Dargavel’s joy that the two-party-preferred litmus paper turned red on the night ignores the fact that many voters had a far more vinegary view of Labor when the first-preference litmus paper is viewed. Half the electorate gave their first preference to non-Labor candidates. And this came after the Government’s honeymoon was over and after the Government had targeted Canberra with extensive public-service cuts that affected the economic well-being and general security of virtually every elector in the seat.
The Liberals’ Andrew Robb made more of Labor failings rather than what the result indicates about the Howard Government or maintaining a decent silence given his party did not field a candidate. The Leader of the Opposition, Kim Beazley, attempted very poorly to extrapolate the Fraser result to feelings about the Howard Government in regional Australia generally. In fact, in so far as the return of the two-party preferred vote to Labor means anything, John Howard could quite reasonably put it down to an isolated regional response based on a single issue _ public service cuts _ which might has far less relevance Australia-wide. Mr Robb was probably exaggerating the picture to suggest the people of Canberra had accepted the need for the cuts imposed by the Government, and the Liberals would be naïve to think that any group of people in Australia relying on the public sector will be forgiving.
The political question for the Liberals is whether applause for large public-sector cuts will out-weigh any protest that sounds in the ballot box. The wider, and more important question, is for the Government to understand the needs of Australians and acknowledge that many of these can only be met in the public sector, even if when it came to office there was room for greater efficiencies in the public sector and there was no need for the public-sector to be as large as it was. The voters probably acknowledge that, but they will also tells governments, including this one, what the limits are, and governments that fail to listen do so at their peril.
An interesting aspect of the by-election was how the hostility to the major parties expressed itself. The Greens could be pleased with their result. The various right-wing, Christian and anti-multi-cultural minor parties were given short shrift by the voters. However, a pro-multi-cultural independent, Alice Chu, has done exceptionally well with 8 per cent of the vote. That should make both major parties fearful about the next ACT Assembly vote. On that vote, Ms Chu would have a good chance of getting a seat under the Hare-Clark system, in addition to the Green.
The message from Saturday’s poll is that voters want the major parties to present better candidates (indeed, a candidate at all) and policies in tune with their needs, and if they do not, they will turn to independents and minor parties.