A recent flurry of opinion polling today reaches a climax with results from ACNielsen and, unexpectedly, Newspoll, which normally reports on Tuesday. The former rains on the recent Coalition polling parade somewhat with a survey of 1403 voters showing no change in the primary vote situation from last month: Labor on 48 per cent, Coalition on 39 per cent. Nonetheless, the two-party result has narrowed just slightly, from 58-42 to 57-43, while Kevin Rudd’s preferred prime minister lead is down from 51-43 to 48-42. Bryan Palmer’s newly updated graphs can be viewed here.
Newspoll offers a similar result, with Labor leading 56-44 on two-party preferred. However, it’s better news for the Coalition in relative terms – the previous Newspoll three weeks ago had Labor with a quirky-looking lead of 60-40. The Coalition primary vote is up from 35 per cent to 39 per cent; Labor’s is down from 52 per cent to 46 per cent; Kevin Rudd’s preferred prime minister lead is down from 47-38 to 46-40.
Nostradamus: I assume Iraq, AWB, four(five?) interest rate rises, petrol prices, balooning foreign debt, banana republic level trade deficit, record household financial stress, housing unaffordability, lack of conviction on climate change, the federal-state blame game, leadership uncertainty, rampant porkbarreling and 11 years in office are all positives.
Note I didn’t mention WorkChoices. Didn’t happen. Wasn’t there. If it did happen we didn’t mean it. Sorry. We’ll do better next time. An unqualified positive.
Mark:
Nostradamus put out the bait, and you bit.
Mark, I totally agree.
We mustn’t forget that 2001 was extraordinary in that Labor was well out in front in March / April but far, far behind come August / September. The voter shift in those intervening months (esp post Tampa, 9/11) was massive. Labor went into the campaign well behind but then recovered immensely during the campaign to lose out 49 – 51 of the TPP vote. Many people tend to forget the trough Labor found itself in immediately before the campaign commenced. Instead, they tend to see Labor’s polls from March / April and then directly compare them to the final election result, a terrible trajectory down. But a more accurate observation would be a catastrophic trajectory down followed by an impressive bounce up during the campaign, only to fall short. Who says Labor can’t get a swing to it during the campaign?
Please, can we ignore him
Nostradamus, that is
Another day, another round of completely rotten polls for the government.
At first I couldn’t really foresee them losing later on this year, it now looks as though they are headed for a nasty drubbing. I’d like to establish the fact that I am a firm Howard supporter and I do not believe that Rudd has demonstrated that he is fit to lead (ie just an ambition-laden, slick spin-merchant with few policies of substance).
I must admit, I am a little bit dumbfounded over these horrific polls that really show no sign of abating – how could Australians possibly vote out one of the most competent government’s we’ve ever had, while re-electing without any qualms, a bunch of rotten to the core / completely inept State governments? I guess I’ll be asking myself that question for a long time to come.
I’m wondering if there’s anything the government can do to turn things around and recover – but by this stage, I am beginning to doubt this is possible. To say the least, Rudd is running a very mediocre, uninspiring campaign – yet given his repeated slip-ups and good economic news for the government, the fact that he really hasn’t suffered in the polls at all probably shows that this isn’t going to be much of a contest.
my rant.
Ray, Chris, Graeme
Thanks for your useful feedback. It is refreshing to see good, objective discussions generally on the thread.
I absolutely agree that any party will have candidates who, on one article or reported statement may appear extreme for the party. Gillard? (ALP)Tuckey (LIB)? Hutton (GRN)? are, on occasion, outspoken and on extremes with some values for their parties but generalising is as unhelpful as it might be for this FFP party here. It is still a little soon to tell.
In addition, parties can be oriented traditionally in terms of social values but this may or may not bear much relation to votes cast. Indeed, any party will have a “social orientation” that voters of other parties can’t stomach (perhaps why they don’t vote for them!) but this does not preclude commonsense stances on education, environment, economics and immigration. Indeed, bloggers on this site have convinced myself and others that FFP is genuinely centrist.
Chris, on the code of conduct:
I would agree here and have done the same previously on Ozpolitics. Trying to be objective has meant barbs from both “sides” of politics on that site and unwarranted assumptions which follow (as Dr Ed De Bono would call) “knife edge discrimination”. If you are not a Lib supporter, you must be a Labor supporter, fascist/communist, you get the idea. Of course this is all nonsense. No one yet has picked my political persuasion correctly, and if they did, I am not being objective enough with commentary.
I commend the bloggers here to take a more academic/psephological approach to discussions too, it is FAR more interesting that way. 🙂
A-C, your post exemplifies what is wrong with this Government. This assertion is not an attack on you but an observation that Howard supporters, and probably the majority of the govt, simply do not comprehend the problem — many people are unhappy.
I fully accept that many people are happy and doing well. But look at the polls going back months and months — many people aren’t happy. They’re suffering in one way or another, they’re missing out in one way or another. While some people are going forward, others are going backward. Howard’s mistake was in not looking after enough Australians. And all this “news” about how wonderfully the economy is doing just makes the misser-outerers feel even worse about missing out.
The govt can improve their chances by actually governing for a change instead of pandering to interest groups and peddling fear. I do believe though that it is so late in the cycle that people might view with cynicism any genuine governance from this point on, in which case we here might be chronicling a Shakespearean tragedy.
I tend to agree with those posters who state that these polls are just more of the same. It’s hard to see much volatility in these numbers, with just an almost statistically insignificant move towards the government over the last few weeks. If the election was in late 2008, the government could feel complacent, but as it will be some time in the next five months, they had better pull their collective (though I realise that word makes them uncomfortable) fingers out.
All in all, it feels like the rather fenetic build-up of political blather since the Budget is starting to dissipate, and with parliament not sitting for 6 weeks after this one, we can look forward to a bit of piece and quiet for a month or so. Of course, the voter who would never think of reading a site like this (ie 99% of people, no offence William), hasn’t been listening to any of this. They have made gut judgements about Rudd (safe, interesting) and Howard (was good, past his best) and then got on with their lives. I agree with pundits who say that barring external shocks, nothing much will change until the election, but I think other posters have pointed out that Howard is not a great campaigner. His strength has been in setting up the election dynamics beforehand. This year he is leaving his run very late, possibly too much so.
For my part, I vacillate wildly between exultation about an ALP victory and depression about Howard sneaking back in. I am prepared to stick my neck out, however, and say that we will definitely know by Christmas who will win the election.
LOL you have a very short neck Hugo 🙂
Does anyone know on which occasions Federal Elections have been held later than the third anniversary of the prior one?
Not too many, I suspect.
I remember reading that the only late elections in the last 60 years were 1949 and 1972. Both delayed by governments facing and eventually achieving defeat.
Just as some of us suspected, these recent polls point to the previous Galaxy poll (two weeks ago) being a rogue at best or a deliberately dodgy survey at worst. Frankly, I think Galaxy tried to rescue Howard from a fresh round of leadership speculation – the timing just seemed too coincidental – which brings into question Galaxy’s credibility. And the way the media jumped on that poll to declare the return of the “man-of-steel” was truly disgraceful.
Apart from that, there really isn’t much else to say in response to these polls other than we all knew there would be a slight drift back towards the government. Even so, the change is negligible, and as Aristotle points out, there hasn’t been ANY change in voting intention since Rudd took over the leadership in December. You can spin it this way or that way, but the FACT is Labor is in a very strong position pollwise.
On the issue of fears about this blog going the way of Ozpolitics, this is my two cents:
I think it is unreasonable to expect a politics blog in an election year not to get heated. There will be some anger as people often invest a lot of themselves in the outcome of their preferred party, and occasionally they will lose a sense of rationality and composure and this can sometimes turn into personal attacks. You cannot stop this from happening.
So, I think we need to be reasonable. It doesn’t matter if a thread has some heat in it from time to time. Just skip any posts that you can’t be bothered reading and move on.
But in saying this, I think Chris Curtis’ point about not responding to abuse is a good one. If someone is trying to wind you up, then don’t give them the satisfaction of getting wound up. Either ignore them or just respond with a clear, cogent argument, without resorting to unnecessary abuse.
In the end, I think people have been taking the need for moderation in blogs way too seriously. Let people say what they want to say. We’re all grown-ups. We can deal with it.
oakeshott, the 2001 election was held in November. The 1998 election was held in October.
“Does anyone know on which occasions Federal Elections have been held later than the third anniversary of the prior one?”
Full list for HoR elections:
31 May 1913 – 3 yrs 48 days
16 December 1922 – 3 yrs 3 days
17 November 1928 – 3 yrs 3 days
23 October 1937 – 3 yrs 38 days
28 September 1946 – 3 yrs 38 days
10 December 1949 – 3 yrs 73 days
29 May 1954 – 3 yrs 31 days (although there was a half-Senate election 9 May 1953)
9 December 1961 – 3 yrs 17 days
2 December 1972 – 3 yrs 38 days (although there was a half-Senate election 21 November 1970)
10 November 2001 – 3 yrs 38 days
From dates of all federal elections here: http://www.aph.gov.au/library/elect/elecdate.htm
The newspoll shows a subtle, but very steady decline in Rudd’s satisfaction rating, and rating as Preferred Prime Minister.
If we assume that the ALP’s lead in the polls is entirely due to Rudd’s popularity (and I think that’s not too bad an assumption, given that Beazley’s ALP never polled this well), then this is moderately bad news for Labor.
PS: How the hell can Newscorp say “Howard closes gap” ? On primary, and 2PP vote they’re back to exactly where they were in May.
While I note the inconsistency between the findings of the Galaxy polls and those of Newspoll and ACNeilsen, I do not understand the argument that Galaxy lacks credibility and/or that it is in, some way, an instrument to “rescue” JWH. It is a business and its market research integrity must be paramount. For what it is worth, when I was telephone polled on Friday evening by a Galaxy interviewer, there was no “push polling”.
The two key factors in determining the outcome of the election will be the economy and the PM’s popularity. Those of you who have access to the Sydney Morning Herald will have seen that Nielsen also asked respondents to rate the two leaders against a number of attributes, like strength of leadership, vision, economic competence etc. Rudd naturally scored highly, but so did the PM; in fact, for someone who’s been in the job for 11 years his ratings are nothing short of phenomenal, and he blows Paul Keating out of the water (Keating’s ratings from 1995 are provided).
Importantly, the PM leads Rudd 78% to 53% on the issue of economic competence (he also led Keating 65 to 53 11 years ago). As long as the great economic data keeps rolling in – and it will – this lead will not diminish and will ultimately overshadow all other issues in the election campaign. And in the end the electorate will vote for the man who will maintain our prosperity.
Steven
As long as the great economic data keeps rolling in – and it will – this lead will not diminish and will ultimately overshadow all other issues in the election campaign.
Ok, we’ll take the PM’s rating on “economic competence” as a constant. I’m quite happy with that.
But if that’s the case,
(1) what’s driving the ALP’s lead in the polls now? And,
(2) whatever it is, is there any evidence that it will diminish?
Steven, you are perhaps forgetting that Rudd and Labor haven’t really taken Howard to task over economic issues yet. Howard has allowed quite a few myths and lies to propagate over many years about economic management.
A Rudd-led challenge in this area may still happen, or at least I hope so. As some suggest, this might be one area where Rudd is keeping his powder dry for later in the year.
While we’re on the economy, this says it all:
http://canberra.yourguide.com.au/opinion.asp?class=your%20say&subclass=general&story_id=597138&category=opinion%20cartoon
The economy is complicated. Economists don’t even understand it. Everybody judges Howard as being better on the economy, but in reality the only index of economic performance that Bruce Average Citizen understands is whether or not he has money is pocket. To Bruce, the equation is that simple.
In 2004, even Dr John Hewson mocked the idea that only a Liberal govt could keep interest rates low. it didn’t matter to the opinion polls.
Forget economic arguments. Perceptions are everything. And the perception is that Howard is better at “managing the economy”. The proof that this is a real perception is in the Consumer Confidence indexes, which show that Bruce thinks he has money to burn.
David Charles, nobody can say definitively whether or not there was something sinister behind Galaxy’s recent poll, but several matters came to the fore that at least made some people wonder.
1) The poll was outside the usual cycle of Galaxy polls and happened to give just the kind of boost required for Howard at a time when he was looking very vulnerable. It also came at a time when there were no other competing polls (for two weeks) that might have muddied the waters. A clear media-led narrative about a Howard comeback was therefore able to be created, and indeed this is exactly what happened.
2) There were some very dodgy questions that were designed to probe why people were intending to vote for Labor or the Coalition. Some of these were clearly loaded against Labor, as reported by Crikey and others. This suggested a hidden (or maybe not-so-hidden!) agenda of trying to elicit very negative responses about Labor.
3) There were some reports from people polled that they were given these dodgy questions before being asked for their voting intention, which were likely to influence their responses. These reports appeared on Crikey and on Ozpolitics. Of course, we don’t know if these reports were accurate, but they nevertheless surfaced.
I understand the assumption that a company would not want to threaten their credibility. But if they really wanted to maintain a high level of credibility, then why the loaded questions in the follow up polling?
Look, who knows what was really going on with that Galaxy poll. Maybe it was just a rogue and a big coincidence. We will never know, but it will be interesting to see how Galaxy fares in future polls compared to Newspoll and ACNielsen. In the end though, most people on the blogs were questioning the accuracy of the sudden change in voting intention that was represented in that Galaxy poll, and in light of today’s polls, I think it was a reasonable call, whether you are a conspiracy theorist or not.
A-C, I found your post interesting. Let me give my opinion as to why I think the government is in trouble.
. Governments that have been in power a long time end up accumulating a lot of baggage. (eg. Children overboard, AWB, Kirribilli house, private dining rooms etc).
. Economics. The polls tell us that we trust JH to run the economy better than KR. Nevertheless, we learnt in the weekend papers that lots of people are having to dip into their super to get themselves out of financial trouble. Of course it’s their own fault for over-extending themselves, but they probably don’t see it that way. I think there is some resentment towards the government when they tell us we’ve never had it so good.
. Out of touch on environmental issues, notably greenhouse. Everyone knows JH doesn’t really believe in it and is only going along for the ride because he has to.
. David Hicks. I know, I know. David Hicks is a shitkicking bogan who nice people like us would cross the road to avoid. But the perceived unfairness of his treatment caused a lot of irritation with the government, as well as exacerbating the next issue, which is…
. Iraq. Taking us into Iraq was such a dumb thing to do. Not because it was bound to turn into a disaster but because it exemplified Australian’s ambivalence to the US. We want to be the US’ friend but not its lap-dog.
. Finally, economics (again). Although KR and co haven’t pursued it yet, I think the government is seriously exposed on economic management. We have a terrible current account deficit at a time when we have a record commodities boom. We have interest rates that are among the highest in the developed world. Manufacturing is taking a pretty big hit. I don’t think Howard campaigning on economic management is going to get him out of trouble.
Anyway, I think it’s pretty obvious that the government is rooted. Some people erroneously say that we’ve never voted out a government in good economic times. Not so. 1949, 1972, 1996. Governments in Australia just naturally wear out. This one has had a good long run. It really lost its chance at serious renewal last year when it failed to replace Howard with Costello. As long as we can trust Rudd not to screw up the economy, we will happily say goodbye to JH and crew.
…. and of course Workchoices. Another seriously dumb idea…
Does anyone know if Galaxy are about to come out with another poll showing a big swing toward the Govt to save Howard the embarassment of this double-whammy of Newspoll & AC Nielsen? If not, someone better concoct one fast!
After the First World War, the French built the Maginot Line to stop the Germans invading again. The German just went through the impassable “Ardennes†in neutral Belgium. Extrapolation from past elections assumes that nothing else has changed. The so-called closing of the gap may simply be the bounce produced by the margin of error that all polls have. It may be a trend – it may not be. No one, including me, knows.
Kevin Rudd grabbed the initiative from the start of the year, and it would be foolish to think he doesn’t have a few more ideas up his sleeve. I think he performs badly in some interviews where he refuses to engage with the question she is asked, but he is not alone there. He needs to cease being prolix and adopt simplicity as his talisman.
Graeme,
For the sake of the record, I do not accept that the DLP was an anti-Labor Party, though it was an anti-ALP party. I accept that Family First is a morally conservative party, rather than an outright party of the Right.
Leopold,
I think you have summed it up well, which again raises the whole issue of dividing everything on Left-Right lines.
Ray,
That seems a fair statement. One difficulty new parties have is finding their own centres or coherence. Look a the Democrats, who have gone from the party of choice for “progressives†to almost extinction.
A-C
A clue to your being “dumbfounded†is contained in your post. You ask, “how could Australians possibly vote out one of the most competent government’s(sic) we’ve ever had, while re-electing without any qualms, a bunch of rotten to the core / completely inept State governments?†The failure of Liberal supporters to understand how Labor State Governments keep getting re-elected is a failure to understand voters. The Victorian Labor Government is far from inept and not rotten in the slightest. It has rebuilt the state’s public services after a very destructive period of rule by the previous Liberal Government; for example, it has already invested $1.4 billion in rebuilding schools, is well on its way to invest $1.9 billion in rebuilding 500 schools in its current term, employed an extra 5,193 teachers (after the Liberals got rid of about 9,000), funded schools to cap prep to grade 2 classes at 21 pupils to improve literacy and numeracy learning, brought back traditional academic disciplines like history and geography (after the Liberal mess of SOSE), introduced the most rigorous reporting system I have ever seen, brought democratic elections to the Legislative Council (thus implementing a promise made by the Liberals in 1973 in order to obtain DLP preferences and broken immediately) and constitutionally protected the auditor-general as an officer of the parliament. In my town, there are a brand new primary school, a brand new police station and a brand new CFA station; in the next town, there is a brand new police/ambulance/CFA station. This record of achievement is highly visible and proof that charges of “completely inept†and “rotten to the core†are laughable. If the Liberals were able to be more measured and specific in their criticisms, they might make some progress.
Generic oracle,
Good points. It’s too late for me to hide my political views. Posting under my own name would make that impossible.
not “question she is asked”, but “questions he is asked”.
Has anyone put their thought to one of the factors in play at the moment are petrol prices?
All this talk about jobs for anyone who wants one, improving house prices, soaring wages – but at the end of the day, are people peeved because they’re having to pay more and more to fill up the car?
Family First’s Steve Fielding, based on his own doorknocking, reckons it’s a real issue biting with voters…
Chris, when you’re conducting unpaid advertising for the Bracks Government it’d be best not to sound as though you’re reciting some facts found from the nearest 2006 ALP election brochure. You know as well as I do that Kennett was faced with a situation massively different (courtesy of Joan Kirner) from the one inherited by Bracks. Funding was cut mainly because the State was bankrupted by the stunning incompetence of Cain/Kirner and Co. You also omit the fact that cuts to *public* education corresponded with a significant increase in the number of students enrolled in the private sphere.
The ineptitude of the current Victorian government is underscored by the there has been a massive increase in violent crime (ironically this has corresponded with the complete rooting of the police force). Every single major project the government has proposed as been delayed. Our dams are below 30% and the government has balked at every opportunity presented to them over the last 8 years to rectify the situation – their excuses for not building new dams in the North of the State are laughable (either there is not enough water or when there is, it would have adverse environmental effects). The VCE curriculum is an absolute joke – highlighted by the requirement that students “dissect†the meaning of text-messages in the year12 English exam. I almost forgot Victoria’s negative public sector cash flow (the worst in the nation) and the $ 3 billion+ net public sector debt recorded in the 2007 year.
Btw: I must thank you for displaying the utmost maturity after placing a (sic) after a quoted typo.
Kids above.
There is no inconsistency between Galaxy and these two polls. Galaxy’s survey, statistically speaking, said Labor’s primary vote was somewhere between 41 and 47 at a 95% confidence level. The ACN says (I think) somewhere between 45.5 and 50.5 at a 95% confidence level.
They overlap at around 46/47. Which, curiously enough, is where two of the last 3 Newspolls have put Labor’s primary vote.
It’s still not totally clear whether Labor are at 46/47 or still up around 49 (all surveys bar Galaxy are consistent with that as well). But these polls do not discredit Galaxy in any way, shape or form. They are all within each others margins of error. The balance of probabilities in my view favours 2/3 Newspolls being right, and Galaxy and ACN being right as well, giving us something like 47-39 as a population position. But the case is not yet watertight.
The 2PP is calculated differently in all 3 cases, so can’t really be compared in terms of margins of error. But even if you did, a range of 53 to 57 is easily reconciled.
By the way: to stick my neck out, my gut feeling remains that Rudd will lose. I don’t say it dogmatically, but that is my feeling and has been since December 4.
I see I’ve rediscovered the OzPolitics comments section… (“Rage, rage against the dying of the light”)
Leo, of all the ex OP POsters (how palindromically clever I am), yours is still up with the most analytical. I do miss Bushfire Bill’s posts, not necessarily for analysis, but they were such lovely analogies / stories. I agree that the story is fairly consistent at the moment, but at 56-57 IMO (I do think Galaxy was likely a bit low). Nevertheless, this is down a little from a fairly consistent 58-42 +/- noise picture we had a couple of months ago. As you suggest, it’s the slight fall in primary that is of most importance. It’s holding up OK though, from stratospheric heights.
And I strongly support Alan H’s comment of 2:09pm!
Leo, if you had to pinpoint the reasons why you believe Rudd will lose (despite his stratospheric poll numbers) what are they? I wish I could share your same optimism (or pessimism) but it does seem as though the Australian people have this peculiar infatuation with him that shows no signs of abating.
Cos to win the election Rudd needed to (really not faux) distance himself from the unions
But to keep his position within the ALP he needs to embrace the unions.
A great irony
I think voters are always looking for reasons to vote against a government in any democratic system, especially after a couple of terms. However, Oppositions need to give them a reason to do so. Look at the early year polls of all of Howard’s re-elections, and it was also largely true during Labor’s term in office and also during the long Tory rule in Britain (and indeed Labour now). This phenomenon appears to get stronger the longer a government is in power.
However, when it comes time to actually vote, people weigh up the choices in front of them, and voters will generally go for who seems more credible. In those elections referred to above, people made the gut choice about which side would do better. The overwhelming mass of people don’t hold the firm opinions of those who post here, and aren’t much interested.
This year Labor looks as good as they have since they lost office. Rudd appears to be a politician of some substance, and the front bench doesn’t look so bad to me – Gillard, Tanner and others are more than competent, and there is some talent coming in (eg Combet). It doesn’t take that many “stars” to make a reasonable government, as with Howard government and more particularly the State governments.
The biggest risk for the government is that Howard is clearly coming to end of his time, and voters sense that. Why wait another eighteen months for him to go when they can change now?
Labor looks ready to govern at about the same time that the government is getting tired. It doesn’t necessarily follow that the government will lose, but this may be THE sleeper issue of the whole campaign.
Coota
Yes. The petrol one in Australia is one I have always failed to understand in the mindset of Aussies. I think they must think in “liquids”.. what is the price of petrol? Milk? Beer? Water?
In understand FFP has pushed the petrol barrow since the first HTV card was handed out but I don’t always see how 10c a litre or even 35c a litre (most of the excise removed) would make a lot of real difference to the average family. At 50L a week this is $16.50. One packet of cigarettes, 2/3 of a carton of beer or 1/20th of an average mortgage payment!!
Now their idea to offer householders Tax relief on mortgages is sound and one which is common in Asia (especially Singapore and HK where housing is expensive like Sydney). This (apparently) would save about $100 a week. Now that is starting to talk!!
I also like the discussions of the Majors with PVs for electricity and wish we could consider a model like Germany’s, where ANYONE can bung up a PV panel and get paid 0.30 Euro a kWh and get charged .20 Euro kWh for electricity. So it is an incentive to produce. So if we could get free electricity AND get paid to produce AND get tax relief on our Mortgage… some of us might just be able to afford private health insurance!! 🙂
Edward, let me get this straight. The Labor Party has to become another Liberal Party to beat them in the election. Hmm, why bother with an election at all?
A-C,
I do not make a practice of correcting other posters’ grammatical mistakes. If I had not quoted you directly, I would not have bothered to note yours either. I placed the “sic†after your typo to indicate what it normally means; viz., that I was quoting accurately and had not made a mistake myself. I do make typos and I will not be offended if you place a “sic’ after one of them if you ever quote me. It’s standard practice and is not meant to reflect on the person whose words get the “sicâ€.
The facts I quoted are the result of my own research and knowledge and are not from any “ALP election brochureâ€. The return of academic disciplines to our schools, the rigorous reporting system, the reform of the Legislative Council and the constitutional protection of the auditor-general are not matters of expenditure. At the time the cuts to education expenditure were made, they were not justified on the grounds of a shift to private schools or on the grounds that the budgetary situation made them necessary. Had they been on the latter grounds, the government would have said that they were to be temporary.
Victoria was a wealthy low tax state. Victoria’s per capita Gross State Product – that is, the total value of our production of goods and service – was, far as I can make out from the statistics, as healthy in the ‘nineties as it was in the ‘eighties. The 1992-93 Australian national accounts show that total Victorian GSP in 1981-82 was $45.87 billion, or approximately $94.859 billion in 1994 dollars. A population of 3,968,000 meant a per capita GSP of $23,906. In 1992-93, GSP was $106.936 billion, or approximately $108.967 billion in 1994 dollars. A population of 4,456,000 meant a per capita GSP of $24,454. That is, over those eleven years we enjoyed a 14.1 percent growth in real terms for GSP and a 2.3 percent growth in per capita GSP. We were well able to afford high class education.
Victorian government outlays for the three years to 1991/92 were 12.1 percent of GSP compared with NSW at 13.0 percent (“Audit Commission report a political exercise”, Kenneth Davidson, The Age, 8/5/1993). Victorian current revenues over the same period were 11.2 percent, compared with NSW at 13.6 percent. In other words, Victoria taxed its economy less than NSW and spent less than NSW, but it borrowed more. If its taxes had been as high as NSW’s, it would have been in surplus and have been able to provide even better services.
In 1992, Victoria had the smallest public sector workforce of all the states, 17.9 percent compared with an average of 19.6 percent (The impact of Liberal/national policies on employment and public sector spending, Michael Salvaris). The lie of the overtaxing, overspending, overstaffed, inefficient Victorian public sector is well and truly past its use by date.
Nonetheless, this lie was combined with nonsense that defies common sense to undermine our education system. By selective comparisons with some other states in particular years and by ridiculous claims such that class sizes don’t matter (when professional expertise, research and commonsense say they do), the government was able to convince the media that education spending could be slashed. Victoria in fact spent less per head on education than the ACT, the NT, Tasmania and South Australia in 1991-92, and less per student than the ACT, the NT and South Australia in 1990-91. Education spending fell from 31.2 percent of the state budget in 1981/82 to 24.9 percent in 1991/92.
Pupil-teacher ratios tell a similar story. Victoria’s secondary pupil-teacher ratio was 10.8:1 by the end of the previous Labor Government in 1992, compared with 11.1:1 in SA and 10.9:1 under the Thompson Liberal Government in 1981. There is no doubt that the wealthier state Victoria was in 1992 could afford the less than one per cent improvement in secondary school staffing compared with the poorer state it was in 1981.
Poll driven blog? Politics should not be about polls but policy and having vision.
A-C,
Of course, the financial facts show that the reason for the cuts to education was not a lack of funds. The reason given at the time was “provider captureâ€, a weird notion imported from America as a result of a book about rowing and steering (Re-inventing Government), as the quotations below make clear:
‘…teacher unions have “captured†the operation of education services in regard to staffing and working conditions so that the education system has become unduly teacher-driven.’ (Institute of Public Affairs, Schooling Victorians, 1992)
‘There is extensive over-staffing of teachers, inefficient work practices and “union†capture of education expenditure.†(IPA, Schooling Victorians, 1992)
‘The schools are simply a racket and a rort for teachers who use it as a fully salaried system of outdoor relief.’ (Peter Ryan, “Teachers fail to get the pointâ€, The Age, 1/8/1992)
‘Socialist Left ideology…is nicely entrenched throughout the state education administrative system, thanks to a continuing infiltration of the faithful throughout the Cain/Kirner years.’ (Michael Barnard, ‘Labor could not learnâ€, The Age, 28/8/1992)
‘The perks and privileges of this cosseted profession were absolutely sacrosanct.†(“A lesson in anarchyâ€, Herald Sun (editorial), 19/11/1992)
‘Schools…appear to be run more for the benefit and convenience of their employees than for their users.’ (Claude Forell, “A reckoning unions had to haveâ€, The Age, 25/11/1992)
‘The Kennett Government is pledged to a course that promises to break the debilitating union stranglehold…’ (Michael Barnard, “Teachers in a state of intellectual undressâ€, The Age, 27/11/1992)
‘A strong moral case for the present Government unilaterally renouncing all agreements entered into by the previous Government with its employees can be made on the grounds that they were not arms-length agreements.’ (Professor Ross Parish, “Let the Public Service pay towards cutting the ranksâ€, The Age, 11/12/1992)
‘Mr Kennett…set out to break the power of the education unions which had been running the system…’ (“A hundred high speed days†(editorial), Herald Sun, 11/1/1993)
‘The present system has allowed education to become captive of its bureaucracies and powerful lobbies.’ (“A testing year in education†(editorial), The Age, 25/1/1993)
‘Money for schools was channelled into creating more jobs and better conditions for teachers.’ (“School lessons in economic necessity†(editorial), The Age, 27/1/1993)
‘The emergency teacher system…had not existed before 1980…’ (Don Hayward, quoted in Denis Muller, “Schools already feel bite of education cutsâ€, The Age, 1/3/1993) [As a school daily organiser, I knew this was untrue because I had employed emergency teachers without restriction in 1978.]
‘Money which could have been saved by reduced teacher numbers has been used to improve teachers’ working conditions…the education budget has been allowed to become unnecessarily bloated…Throwing more money at a problem, by itself, can never be guaranteed to achieve the desired result.’ (Kevin Donnelly, “Why we’re inefficientâ€, Herald Sun, 3/5/1993
‘That structure is prone to “capture†at the centre and the extremities by organised interest groups such as teacher unions…’ (page 9, Vol. 2, Report of the Victorian Commission of Audit, 1993)
‘The powerful public sector unions were permitted by default to run…education…’ (“Jim Kennan scratchesâ€, Herald Sun (editorial), 29/6/1993)
‘…during the 1980s, the union movement “captured†the operation of the public sector. This led to considerable over-staffing and restrictive work practices…’ (Des Moore, “Why government needs to be rolled backâ€, The Age, 5/7/1993)
‘…cosy deals with teacher unions…wasteful school work practices.…It is understandable that some union officials who rode the Labor gravy train are resistant to reform.’ (Alan Stockdale, “Education’s future depends on savingsâ€, The Age, 22/9/1993)
‘Unions have focused on industrial relations to build up a cosy bracket of work practices rather than concentrate on professional standards.’ (Don Hayward, quoted in Felicity Dargan, “100 schools to goâ€, Herald Sun, 30/9/1993)
This line of thought was nothing more than teacher-bashing, but it was rarely permitted to be challenged in the mainstream media. In its decision on teacher workload on 24 February, 1995, the Australian Industrial Relations Commission recognised that teachers were overworked, consequently took away the Victorian government’s right to unilaterally damage teaching conditions in the state and gave the lie to these claims:
“One observation which must be made relates to an assertion made earlier in proceedings before the Commission about allegedly favoured or special treatment afforded to teachers in Victoria by a previous State government. There is no foundation in fact for such an assertion…”
The one thing all polls are telling us is that Howard is in trouble right now. To say this will or won’t continue is pure speculation. We will just have to wait and see.
A-C,
I could now spend some hours researching crime statistics to see if your claim that there has been “a massive increase in violent crime†is true, but instead I will ask you to provide some figures of crime rates over, say, the last 20 years.
I do not know if “every single major project†has been delayed. It looks to me like Eastlink will be finished ahead of time, but my impression over the last 40 years of observing politics is that all governments have projects that are over time and over budget. If you want to quote some facts and figures to show that the current Victorian Government is any worse, please do so.
Victoria has had a budget surplus for every year of the Bracks Government. Just as ordinary people take out mortgages to buy houses, so sensible governments borrow money for capital works. They do so because the investment will add to economic growth and thus the overall wealth of the community. In addition, that economic growth will increase government revenue and allow the debt to be paid back. It is also a fair thing to do because the assets so built are of benefit to future generations, not just the current generation of taxpayers.
I do not agree that the VCE curriculum is an absolute joke. I say that as someone who has actually taught it and can see value in the study of literature, the development of writing skills and the analysis of the way language is used to present arguments. However, I do agree that the standard to pass is woeful, something which we will both agree is the fault of the previous Kirner Labor Government, but which you may or may not be willing to agree the previous Liberal Government did nothing to fix in its seven years in office, though between 1994 and 1996, it did reduce the number of marks required to get an A in English assessment tasks. At least, the current Labor Government has introduced the Victorian Certificate of Learning as an alternative to the VCE. It is also the case that the criteria for judging VCE are quite rigorous. The problem is that they are not enforced. Indeed, in 1999, under the Liberals I must add, when I went to an inservice on the new VCE, we were told that the Board of Studies, as it then was, still expected a 95 per cent pass rate, indicating clearly that the criteria did not mean what they said. If text messages are to be a significant part of the English exam, I would regard that as absurd. If they simply form part of a language analysis task along with more substantial uses of the language, I do not see a problem.
That leaves the question to dams. I agree that the Labor Government should have been quicker to act on the lack of water, though I would not dismiss the issue of environmental flows as you appear to do. If Liberals can produce actual facts and figures and reasons rather than rely on hyperbole, they will have a chance of cutting back the lead that the Labor Party enjoys in every state and territory.
The basic point I am making applies to the ALP too. Many Laborites cannot understand how people can vote for the Howard Government. Yet, to win those votes back, they must make the effort to understand.
Coota Bulldog,
Is it just me or is Steve Fielding become quite good by focusing on simple meat and potato issues rather than on religious issues in the last twelve months. On that he deserves another term.
Fielding isn’t up for re-election until 2011. Maybe he is doing tghis so he can become the next Brian Haradine after the Election if the lib Majority is lost, especially with Ron Boswell being in deep doo doo for the Nats and Rod Kemp and Kay Patterson retiring for the Libs.
THanks for that insightful and comprehensive discourse about the Victorian education system. Errr, isn’t this thread about Federal opinion polls?
The basic point I am making applies to the ALP too. Many Laborites cannot understand how people can vote for the Howard Government. Yet, to win those votes back, they must make the effort to understand.
That one’s simple.
They voted for him in ’96 because they didn’t like Keating.
They voted for him in ’98 because … well, they didn’t actually vote for him. He got back in thanks to a quirk of the system, though he didn’t actually get the majority of votes.
They voted for him 2001 because there was a war on, and as the graphs on ozpolitics.info show, the Opposition took a massive dive around Sept 11 and never recovered.
They voted for him in 2004 because too many people correctly sensed that Opposition Latham was a lunatic.
Sounds like the luck of the devil? Not really. Governments rarely change in Australia. I read recently that we’ve now had some 10 consecutive elections in this country (state and federal) without a single change of government.
Hugo,
You are right. This thread is meant to be about federal politics, but sometimes state affairs intrude, and I respond.
Labor is way in front federally. The Australian spins everything in a Liberal direction. This is not 2001 or 2004, so extrapolating from those election years is no guide at all as to what will happen this year. I still tip Kevin Rudd to gain 22 coalition seats. Come the end of July, when the voters have their tax cuts in their pockets, I will revise my prediction, but I do not expect that money to cut the Labor vote at all.
It is not Glenn Milne’s 1969 either, but if it were, the 7 per cent swing of that year would give Kevin Rudd a solid victory. What Mr Milne is forgetting is that in 1969 there was a significant DLP vote, transferring Labor votes to the coalition. This is no longer the case.
Adam,
You said earlier in the year that if Labor were still polling high votes come May/June, you would start to feel more confident. Do you?
Looks like those displaced by Bryan’s diaspora are find new homes here. I can’t say I’m pleased in all cases.
The Australian has an article today about how strongly voters are attached to each party. They have used this chart:
The story goes that this is bad for the Government, becuase 57% of supporters being strongly attached to a party is quite rare this far out from an election campaign. But hasn’t the reporter missed the more important point, that there are 13% of voters likely to change their vote? Isn’t this where elections are actually won and lost, the election campaign is all about swaying this group of people to one side or the other, whcih would be more than enough to change the result?
Nostradamus and other Liberal supporters are entitled to post comments here. I don’t have a problem with that. I’ll happily admit to being an ALP supporter.
Last night on the 7.30 Report, Michael Brisenden was comparing the polls with those at the same stage in 2004.
2007: ALP(56-57), COALITION(43-44)
2004: ALP(52), COALITION(48)
So, Labor is doing 4-5 points better than this time 3 years ago.
I’m a natural pessimist when it comes to the ALP(probably because I’ve suffered through too many defeats since 1996). I’d never underestimate the possibility of Howard making another comeback. Rudd will need to be on his toes, use the winter break to release some comprehensive policies, and rein in the Unions. In my opinion, the ALP will need to be as conservative as possible to get elected in October/November.