The so-called master political tactician – John Howard – is making a hash of it again.
This week Labor maverick Mark Latham made a similar comment to one made in this column about a year ago – there is too much emphasis on “”the bush” and not enough on the outer suburbs of the major cities. Latham was representing his constituents in Gough Whitlam’s old seat of Werriwa in Sydney’s south west.
There are two aspects to whether enough or too much attention is being given to the bush or the outer suburbs.
One is whether the people there deserve the attention/neglect on the merits of their case. The other is whether the effort being put in by the political parties to the bush is the politically prudent thing to do – will it deliver the votes that count.
Latham’s very reasonable position is that the outer suburbs have too much unemployment, welfare dependency, infrastructure deficiency and so on and deserve better from the system. Moreover, they do not have organisations like the very influential National Farmers’ Federation to represent them to put the hard word on politicians so that they get attention.
But merit aside, a politically astute politician would see Latham’s point. Howard has ignored it, instead appealing to a mythical concept of the bush which is encapsulated in the term “”rural and regional Australia”. Howard has been pandering to it ever since he lost so much of the vote in the 1998 election. However, it has been a wasted effort. The bush or rural and regional Australia is a waste of time politically. There is little to be lost in ignoring it or to be gained by pandering to it.
Close your eyes and think of Australia. Think of that huge area in the centre of the continent – regional and rural Australia. The bush. Place of Australian legend. What is in it for the Coalition? Very little.
Look at the map. Look at the white area of rural and regional Australia. It is more than 90 per cent of the Australian land mass. Look at the red area that makes up the rest.
The light area comprises just 20 seats out of the 148 seats in the House of Representatives.
Of those 20 seats all bar two, the Northern Territory and Capricornia, are held by the Coalition. Of the 18 held by the Coalition, one (Kalgoorlie that makes p most of Western Australia) is very marginal on 2.2 per cent. Three are medium on 4.1, 4.2 and 4.5 per cent, and all the rest are very, very safe with margins between 8 and 19 per cent on a two-party-preferred basis. When Howard talks about the bush and rural and regional Australia he is wasting his effort by preaching to the converted. If he needs to work on these seats he has lost the election anyway. All this rabbitting on is over holding four or five marginals. It only seems a logical course of action because the area is so huge. But as its population is so small it has very few seats.
But there are more than that many seats on a margin of less than 5 per cent in just the suburban areas of Melbourne alone (La Trobe, McEwen, Deakin, Dunkley, Flinders, Aston, Corangamite and Casey). There’s a further three in Adelaide (Adelaide, Makin and Hindmarsh), a few around Sydney (Parramatta, Lindsay, Robertson) and a couple more in Brisbane.
In short, the election will be won or lost on the outskirts of the major Australian cities. Australia is an urban country. The bush is huge in area, but there are not many voters there. And the voters out there are dyed in the wool conservatives whose votes will go to the Coalition (even if via One Nation or independents).
For every appeasement or gift to the bush – the outer suburbs will feel neglected and be more likely to vote Labor.
Latham is right on this one.
Howard is wasting political and fiscal effort on bush voters. It is a sign of his lack of political savvy. He may well retain his three seats in the bush, but if he loses just four of the eight vulnerables in suburban Melbourne, he loses Government.
The basic voting figures from the last election tell you that this election will be one and lost in blocks of units, in backyards with barbecues and not in open spaces of akubras and agriculture.
This is Howard’s lack of geographical political savvy. It is compounded by his lack of political savvy on the issues (expressed in this column last week). While he is busy pandering to the right he has in five short years lost every small-l liberal who voted for the Coalition in 1996.
Menzies understood the importance of geography and the need to capture the centre. Menzies looked at the fringes of the cities, identified the issues that concerned them and met them. And he did not alienate the centre ground. Indeed, after the 1961 members of his Cabinet complained that he was embracing Labor policies. To which Menzies replied: “”And 50 per cent of the people voted Labor”.
He increased his majority at the next election in 1961.