The parliamentary press gallery, political scientists and the think-tank fish love a good by-election. Remember the 1975 Bass by-election when Labor Deputy Prime Minister Lance Barnard resigned to take a plum diplomatic job? The 17 per cent swing was a portent of the heavy defeat of the Whitlam Government a year later.
Forget the 1982 Flinders by-election on the death of Phil Lynch which was supposed to be the portent of the end Labor’s reign a decade later. The Howard-led Liberals won the by-election and lost the main game. Remember the how the tea leaves were arranged around the cup in the 1988 Adelaide by-election when Labor’s Chris Hurford left for greener pastures. Some of the tea leaves swung up the right-hand side of the cup indicating a natural swing to the right when a leftist government was in power. And there was a spray of leaves around the top indicating voters were about to spit the dummy over timed local calls. And what’s this? A hard dollop of leaves at the bottom of the cup surrounded by some yellow fluid, indicating voters were crapped off with Hurford leaving for a plum job. Still, Labor won the main game. And so to Canberra. The seat of Canberra that is, not the town. (And, incidentally, what confusion will this cause among the readers of metonymic headlines in the nation used to a diet of “”Canberra slashes pensions” and “”Canberra does XYZ”. “”Canberra by-election”? Does that mean Federal Government by-election?) On March 25, craftily subsumed by the NSW state election, the people of the seat of Canberra will vote in a by-election caused by the resignation of the deeply-committed-to-Tuggeranong Ros Kelly, who has gone to live in Sydney. The election will be in a seat that has more voters than any seat in the history of federation. Still, it will be less than 1 per cent of the Australian electorate. And it will a far less-reliable guide to the state of federal politics than a good opinion poll. The reason is that a different question is being asked. At the by-election voters are being asked: “”Would you like to give a free, swift kick in the pants to the Keating Government without having to even think about whether the government will change?”
Yes please. (Or perhaps in these non-violent times I should rephrase that “”kick in the pants” to “”a program of interaction and involvement counselling to rechannel destructive energies” _ still the answer is “”Yes please”) Whereas, pollsters ask the question: “”If a Federal election were held today (and you might lose your Medicare benefit, get a tax cut, get hit with a GST, get a faint prospect of your child being taught English in school etc etc etc) how would you vote?” _ Um, well, yes. I’ll have to think about that. Moreover, the opinion poll is conducted Australia-wide and the sample verified against known demographics to see if it matches the Australian average for age, sex, employment etc. The by-election has the uncertainty of local factors. Still it is a trophy. Indeed, a by-election is like the pre-season cup in the AFL or Rugby League. Nice to win. Something to put in the shelf until the big one in September, but nowhere near as a reliable guide to September form than a close study of pre-season training. The local factors in Canberra (for the metonymically challenged I am continuing to refer to the seat) are considerable. First, the Labor Party has done the smart thing. It rejected at pre-selection someone who worked for Ros Kelly during the whiteboard fiasco, so it would not, Hamlet-like, be racked by the ghost of Ros Kelly _ the only trace left of her in Tuggeranong. Second, the Labor Party has done the dumb thing. It pre-selected someone involved in an even more odious piece of ministerial incompetence and disposition of money to party favourites _ Sue Robinson. Whereas, the rejected Sally Standen was an adviser in a Sport Minister’s office that channelled money from taxpayers to Labor seats, at least it went to playgrounds and basketball nets. On the other hand, Ms Robinson’s advice to a Sports Minister helped result in money being channelled from the taxpayers into the pocket of the newly love-struck Bob Hawke and a whole lot of smart gamblers with shadowy links to Vanuatu. Meanwhile, Annette Ellis, victim of factional lunacy that put the unknown Andrew Whitecross into her Assembly seat, sits by rejected, despite a good personal constituency following in Tuggeranong. Right candidate. Wrong faction, wrong place, wrong time. And so, the five nominees who face pre-selection tonight on the Liberal side are smiling at the chance to take on Vitab Sue. Who are they? Pre-selection candidates tend to keep their heads down publicly and say, in the words, of candidate Gwen Wilcox: “”It is a pre-selection not an election, so it is a matter for the party.” In the past decade commentators have pointed to the lack of professionalism and long-term party culture among Liberal candidates, who have often been working elsewhere and not involved much in politics, so Labor has had the upper hand. In Wilcox, pre-selectors have someone who has done a political apprenticeship. She was the first director of the ACT division from 1989 to 1992 and president and acting director from 1992-94 and has been on the federal executive. She works in Senator Robert Hill’s office. She has been a behind-the-scenes worker putting the ACT Liberals’ machine on a more professional footing. She also did a dry run by standing in an impossible seat: the seven-member Molonglo against seven sitting members. John Haslem is no novice either. A Canberra lawyer, businessman and restaurateur, he won the seat in the Fraser swing of 1975. The win was regarded as a one-off aberration in a naturally Labor public-sector town, until he repeated it in 1977, squeaking in and making Canberra one of the three most marginal seats in the country. He lost to Ros Kelly in 1980. Haslem proved Canberra could vote Liberal and wants to prove it again. However, he stood as an Independent in the 1989 Assembly election, taking a four-per-cent purely personal vote and perhaps as much as six per cent on the southside. He also bucked the party by calling it gutless for not immediately standing a candidate when the vacancy occurred. These things should be seen as pluses because the independence of spirit might attract some wavering Labor voters; but party people do not see things that way. In Brendan Smyth, 35, and Jane Drake-Brockman, 40, the pre-selectors can opt for a public-sector employee, which might help dispel some of the Fraser-Lynch-Reith slash, burn and chop-at-the-knees approach to Canberra that the Liberals are seen to have. Smyth works for the National Library and Drake-Brockman for Foreign Affairs. The fifth candidate, Ian Morrison, who has retired as a partner in a law firm at the age of 37 “”to take up public life”. He says ambitiously that if he is not pre-selected this time he would be putting himself up “”again and again”. As to who has the best shot, political parties can do anything. It is a complete waste of time trying to find out. We’ll know tomorrow. There are a couple of other local factors. The Greens, buoyed by success in the Assembly election will be out to punish the Keating Government and prove they are a force to be reckoned with. What better way than to refuse to direct preferences in a by-election where government and a possible handover to the chain-saw wielding, species-endangering Liberals is not at stake? The other local factor is Paul Keating’s contemptuous “”so what” remark about our “”municipal” election _ where the vote was Liberal 40.5 per cent and Labor 31.7 per cent. That said, it would require a 9.6 per cent swing for the Liberals to win the seat. That is not easy in a town whose main industry is feeding, housing, clothing and providing the good things in life to Federal public servants who work in an organisation grown fatter on the policies of Labor. But which ever way it goes; don’t read too much into the tea leaves. There is a world outside Canberra.