AUSTRALIAN elections are always close run things. But September’s election could easily be one of the very unusual outriders. In the 24 elections since Menzies came to power in 1949 in only two was the two-party-preferred split greater than 45-55. 
Those were in 1966 — the All the Way with LBJ victory of Harold Holt — and the 1975 post-dismissal victory of Malcolm Fraser. (Cycle helmets stuff is below.)
Labor’s biggest victory was Bob Hawke’s 53 per cent in 1983.
Sometimes elections are so close that the party with the most votes does not get the most seats and does not get government. It happened in five of those 24 elections.
This, however, seems different. The opinion polls since February seem to have opened up. Nearly all of them are showing a two-party-preferred split of 45-55. Various polls of polls are showing the same thing – nearly three months’ worth of polling where the Opposition is around 10 points higher than the Government.
It is a big hole for Labor to pull out of in a very short time. True, John Howard and Paul Keating came back from such a deficit less than six months out from an election, but they did not have this long stretch of persistently bad polling.
Moreover, the Opposition’s lead is despite Tony Abbott not because of him.
It seems that there is a visceral detestation of Labor this time around. The core of it has been Labor’s own making. Kevin Rudd ditched the carbon tax after saying it was the biggest moral issue of our time. Labor then ditched Rudd. Julia Gillard then ditched a promise not to have a carbon tax.
Then the unnecessary promise to have a surplus was also ditched along with various other promises.
Some of the detestation has been an irrational reaction to Gillard – the misogyny factor.
Part of it has also been the sudden policy and legislative lurches and the failure to lay groundwork with long campaigns of explanation and argument for change. Voters are pretty thick and doggedly apathetic. It takes a lot of work to get a consensus for reform. And without it you don’t get the reform and the credit for improving society that goes with it.
Much of the rest of the detestation has been caused by the relentless News Ltd exaggeration and repetition of every fault and blemish of the government and its silence over anything the government does well. Of course, those newspaper newsrooms set the news agenda for so much of the rest of the media.
So, what will be the political lessons of this saga? It will not be for political parties not to break promises. Rather it will be for them not to make the promises in the first place. And we are seeing that now. The Opposition is committing to very little at the moment.
This is part of the ebb and flow of Australian politics. Grand vision and land of promise is followed by disappointment and unfulfilled promise. That in turn leads to political leaders making themselves small targets and then becoming mealy mouthed as they qualify every promise or projection. That then leads to a government being seen as out of touch or past its used by date. Re-enter the grand vision.
But these are neap tidal flows rather than spring tidal flows – they are not huge. They usually amount to only a few percent of the population changing their vote.
A great swag of the Australian electorate is rusted on – perhaps 70 per cent of it.
Rarely, the flow is more than a few per cent. A shift that pushes the two-party split to beyond 45-55 is rare indeed.
When it happens it seems more cataclysmic than it really is because the single-member electorate system we have can move a lot of seats with a small amount of vote.
If Labor’s two-party-preferred vote falls to 45 per cent it will be lucky to get a third of the seats in the Parliament. It will be called a landslide.
But our history in the past 40 years shows a remarkable tendency for the parties to move back closer to 50-50 quite quickly.
DOT DOT DOT
Australians often compare themselves unfavourably to other countries that do things better. Norway does saving from resource income better. South Korea does internet better. The whole of Asia seems to do education better.
The perception is probably because of media attention to the negative.
But often Australia does very well on world standards. It has often led the world on health and safety – especially road safety.
Australia is one of the very few countries in the world where helmets are compulsory for cyclists.
Between 1990 and 1992 helmets became compulsory in all Australian jurisdictions after an enormous amount of agonising, even though the evidence was coming in that they spared people from brain injury or death.
Now the evidence is becoming more like smoking and lung cancer. The more anti-helmet people argue the more researchers work to show they are wrong.
A letter to the editor in article in the latest Australian Medical Journal tells of a study showing that cyclists without a helmet are 5.5 times more likely to suffer a severe head injury than helmeted cyclists. The rate for motor-cyclists is 3.5.
The topic got scant media attention.
Ambulance officers recorded helmet status among other data about patients they took to seven Sydney hospitals. The letter from Dr Michael Dinh, co-director of trauma services at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, said that his study also put the kybosh on the theory that the extra weight of the helmet could add to diffuse axonal brain injuries caused by rotational acceleration.
Further, evidence that helmets deters cycling is exaggerated.
“Severe head injuries were defined as any with significant brain haemorrhage, complex skull fracture or brain swelling,” Dinh said. “Some 70 per cent of such patients end up on a ventilator in intensive-care units; many patients with severe head injuries are left with permanent brain damage.
“It’s estimated that each new case of severe brain injury costs Australia $A4.5 million. But it’s the things that can’t be calculated that are perhaps more crippling – the long-term personality changes, the seizures, the post-traumatic adjustment, and the interminable stress on family and carers.”
So, wear a helmet. It’s a no-brainer.
CRISPIN HULL
This article was first published in The Canberra Times on 11 May 2013.