The Act Government is now officially in caretaker mode and the election campaign for the October 20 poll is officially under way.
Almost immediately, the Liberal leader and Chief Minister, Gary Humphries, sought to distance himself from the approach of his predecessor, Kate Carnell. In particular, he sought to distance himself from chasing big-ticket items – like Bruce Stadium and the V8 race – and he sought to emphasise all the Liberal candidates and what they can do for their electorates, making himself less presidential.
On the presidential front, Mr Humphries does not have to do anything to be less presidential. It is difficult to imagine an Australian party leader less presidential than Mr Humphries – with perhaps the exception of his Labor counterpart, Jon Stanhope. There is nothing wrong with being less presidential, provided the team members are up to it and do not require the leader to repair damage created from within.
Mr Humphries conversion from presidentialism, however, might be due to more than just his personal style being less suited to it. There is likely an element of opportunism here. The Liberal party was content to have a presidential leader when it suited. Mrs Carnell took the Liberals into government in 1995 largely due to the force of her own personality and general vitality in what had until then been a fairly grey political scene. Three years later she was returned to office after running a presidential-style for three years. But after 1998 the presidential style came unstuck with things like the futsal slab, the Bruce Stadium and the V8 race. Canberrans expressed a desire for more attention on health and education.
Mr Humphries has clearly read this mood when he said last week that the Government would move away from big-ticket items. But he was part of the decision-making process behind the V8 and Bruce Stadium. His argument is that now the ACT economy is much stronger, there is less need for government financing of this sort of thing. It is an interesting Keynesian justification to reorder government spending priority, but it has perhaps more to do with the political cycle than the economic one.
Labor, however, can take little joy from this because it supported the funding of the V8 race. Nor can it take a huge amount of joy on the planning front unless it does some more work in the next month.
Labor can, however, talk about education and health. It can point to a steady decline of the ACT’s position against other states and territories on both spending and outcomes. These are critical areas of voter dissatisfaction – retention rates, the standard of education and hospital waiting lists.
One of Labor’s difficulties will be financial management. The Liberals have done reasonably well on that front in the past six and half years, turning around large deficit trends of both previous Labor and coalition Liberal Governments. In this solidly Labor Territory at the Federal level voters’ commitments might be as much financial as philosophic. Federal Labor brings economic goodies to Canberra financial by taxpayers elsewhere. That is not true at the Territory level where the people who spend money But this is not just a contest between the major parties; nor should it be. There is a contest within parties. Most are standing more candidates than likely seats so Labor voters will have to choose which of the seven or five Labor candidates on offer they prefer, and Liberals likewise.
Then votes will also have to look at the independent and minor party candidates and ask what to they stand for and how well equipped are they to do the complex job of governance. It is more than a few populist slogans. It requires some knowledge and understanding of administration, policy, law, health, education, environments and so on. Without that base, keeping the Government on its toes is impossible and initiation of policy and legislation fraught with danger.