The city of Innisfail, where Cyclone Larry struck hardest, is in the seat of Kennedy held by former National Party MP and now Independent Bob Katter.
Katter won the seat in 2004 while standing as an Independent. The Nationals would dearly love to have it back.. The nearby seats of Leichhardt, Herbert and Dawson, although reasonably comfortable Coalition seats now, have all been held by Labor at times and have been hotly contested.
The seat of Canberra, on the other hand, is rock-solid Labor. It has only strayed to the Coalition (after the Whitlam debacle) and is unlikely to go that way again in out lifetimes.
So, there was Prime Minister John Howard out with the chequebook immediately after the cyclone hit with very generous measures for those affected by the cyclone. Fair enough, Australians should be generous in times of disaster, up to a point.
Compare that with 2003 after the Canberra bushfires. More died than in the cyclone, but there was less property damage. Nonetheless, more than 1000 people were homeless; pine forests devastated; a high school and much other state-level public infrastructure destroyed and many small businesses put on the brink.
But there was no immediate chequebook. Indeed, the one of the first responses from the Federal Government was from Territories Minister Wilson Tuckey who attacked environmentalist influence in what he called the mismanagement of fuel-reduction strategies in national parks. He was hosed down by Howard, who the day after visited Canberra (though it was odd the Prime Minister should “visit” the seat of Government). But there was no chequebook with details of individual payments right down to precise interest rates and terms for loans and exact details for individual and small-business payments.
But Cyclone Larry hit farmers – the salt of the earth, the backbone of the country, the battlers. And people who live in a political sensitive seat.
If anything the small businesses in suburban Canberra had more reason to be caught out by natural disaster than farmers who know that the vicissitudes of the weather are a part of business life and should be insured for. The federal help was slow and small for Canberra. We got the automatic state-of-emergency federal relief of the first half of $8 million and three-quarters of anything more spent on emergency relief. But no special treatment.
To say, as Howard has done, that politics should not enter disaster relief (and, indeed, special federal funding of any kinds) is a tad pious. Special programs for sport, roads, environment, indigenous people and a myriad of other things, including placement of public institutions, have been riddled with marginal-seat politics and interstate rivalry under Labor and the Coalition for decades. Natural disasters are no different. It is the nature of a federal system and single-member constituencies.
At least we appear to be doing a better job than that other great federation, the United States, did with Hurricane Katrina.
Marginal-seat politics is worse in the US because it runs both ways. The private sector (especially military suppliers) often locate in marginal seats and then get the local congressman in their pockets for greater spending on their industry.
But marginal-seat politics is still rife in Australia. We pander to farmers even though agriculture is less than 5 per cent of the Australian economy. We plonk the Defence Headquarters near Bungedore in Australia’s most marginal seat – Eden-Monaro, held by the Special Minister for State Gary Nairn whose responsibilities include the Electoral Act.
I suppose it would not matter what system of representation you had, those elected under it would do their best to extract maximum advantage from it. Nonetheless, you might get a bit more politics of national good if we could borrow the best part of the German and New Zealand list systems. Under these systems the political parties list their candidates for national seats (say, around 50 seats) which are allocated in proportion to the vote. If a national candidate wins an ordinary electorate seat, you move down to the next available candidate.
As well as forcing politicians to keep half an eye out for the national interest, it has other advantages. It might remove the anomaly of the party with the fewer two-party-preferred votes getting a majority of the seats – as happened in 1990 and 1998.
It would allow frontbenchers who happen to be in marginal seats not lose their career on loss of the seat enabling them to concentrate on the national picture. For example, Kim Beazley was forever worried about losing his marginal seat of Swan when he was Minister for Defence, instead of concentrating on the big picture.
It might encourage talented people to contest marginal seats if they had the alternative of getting a national seat if they failed locally. It might help stem some of the factional blood-letting in both major parties if safe seats were not the only “prizes”.
Further, it would enable minor parties representation in the Lower House without the huge instability of full proportional representation. It is plainly undemocratic that the Greens who get more votes in the Lower House than the National Party get no seats while the Nationals get at least some.
In the meantime, expect chequebook, marginal-seat politics to continue, even the wake of fires, storm and flood.