JUST what is the rural and regional Australia that we are hearing so much about? Does it approximate the shaded area of the adjacent map? If so, we are looking at just 15 seats. It is a lot of money for 10 per cent of the electorate.
Take out another 15 seats and you have only capital-city seats plus Tasmania and a few near-capital seats.
The way the leaders of the major parties are talking, you would think that rural and regional Australia is half the population. In fact, it is less than 20 per cent, though it does have 90 per cent of the area.
When you look at the seats that all this effort is being put into, it is bizarre. Only three of the first 15 mentioned are even remotely marginal – that is requiring a swing of less than 5 per cent. The other 12 are dead-safe Coalition seats.
Let’s go to the next 15 seats out to see whether this politically generated rural-urban divide is justified. Quite a few of these seats are indeed marginal – at least in Queensland, NSW and Victoria. In Queensland they are marginal seats because there is an Labor urban base pitted against a rural hinterland. The seats of Herbert, Dawson and Hinkler are each centred a moderate sized city – Townsville, Mackay and Gladstone, respectively. The trap here is that the more a political party plays the to the tune of the rural, isolated rusticate, the more it will alienate the city dwellers in that electorate.
In NSW and Victoria, these rural and regional seats have been classic marginal seats for decades, they are a stone’s throw from Sydney or Melbourne and are fairly well serviced by the sorts of things that are important in metropolitan Australia: medical and other professional and telecommunications services. These are seats like Paterson, Eden-Monaro, Gilmore and Paterson in NSW and Ballarat, Bendigo and McEwen in Victoria. Moreover, these seats are a very short drive to absolute full-scale metropolitan services. Indeed, most of the people in those seats can get to a specialist in the capital city in about the same time as someone living in any of the outer suburban seats of the capital.
I am suggesting that the “”rural and regional” theme embraced as a life-saver by both major parties is in fact a furphy. Either the seat is a laid-down misere win or loss or it is so conjoined with the interests of the suburban-urban seat that it should not be distinguished as rural-regional. The Coalition is preaching to the converted in 12 of the 15 most rural seats. In the next 15 most rural and regional seats, there is a marginal tussle in seven of them, but they are close enough to a big regional centre or a capital that their voting habits are not determined by some artificial rural-regional divide.
In short, the expensive appeal to the rural and regional voter is a waste of time. Either that voter is already captured, or those voters are not defined according to the rural-urban divide.
But his appeal to the rural-regional voter is understandable. In the 1998 election, the Coalition saw a huge chunk of its primary vote taken away by the One Nation phenomenon. Since then, the state election in Victoria highlighted how rural seats could be taken by Labor. That was confirmed last weekend when the National-held regional seat of Benalla was taken by Labor.
But these should be seen as false sign by the federal Liberal Party. After preferences were finally distributed by the Australian Electoral Commission, you could see that One Nation (at least federally) was not powerful enough to drag enough preferences from the Coalition to Labor to have any profound effect. There was a huge effect in the Queensland state election, before the 1998 federal election, when One Nation won 11 seats. More recently, the rural backlash had a profound effect in Victoria, manifested last weekend with Labor winning the seat of Benalla. But the Queensland and Victorian elections simply do not translate federally. The One Nation vote was high in rural-rump land where the National vote is exceptionally high anyway, but it just took some cream away most of which went back to the Coalition anyway in preferences. In Victoria, Liberal Jeff Kennett, with power over local government, profoundly affected local services in the bush. This was compounded by a lot of seats centred around a centre like Benalla. Federally, however, there are comparatively few such seats.
In short, both major parties are making a huge mistake in so visibly making such effort to woo “”rural and regional Australia”. There is not much to be won that is not already won and the very few marginal seats will be determined by things other than the rural-urban divide.
The “”rural and regional” thrust this electoral cycle seems to be replacing the marginal seats campaigns of the 1990, 1993 and 1996 elections. If so, it is a misguided push that spends a lot of effort on what has albready be decided. Prime Minister Howard may see this as giving rewards to past and prospective support, but in these tight electoral times (last election he won despite Labor getting more votes on a two-party preferred basis), the Coalition can ill-afford misspent effort.
After July 1 when the GST arrives and after August 1 and October 1 when the first post-GST business returns under the new tax system are due, 850,000 small businesses will be squealling blue murder. Most of them are not in the 30 most rural and regional seats.
The matter will be tested in the second half of next year, when the election must be held. Realistically it cannot be held before July 1, 2000, unless it is a double dissolution (for which there is no trigger at present) because the six-year term of the senators elected in March, 1996, does not end until June 30, 2002, and they cannot face the electorate any greater than 12 months before the end of their term. And the House of Representatives cannot sit past November 10 (three years after the first sitting after the last election). Given nomination and writ times, practically and legally, it is not possible to postpone the election into 2002.
So we will see in the second half of 2001 whether the rural and regional campaign has been worth it. I suspect not. If anything, the more numerous city voters will provide a backlash.