Club Troppo

In politics you need a narrative about what you stand for, but you also need one – an ugly one – about the perfidy of your political opponents. As we can now see, the Coalition’s narrative of perfidy is in very good shape. In fact it’s over thirty years old. As it’s ad for the 2007 election “No offence Mr Howard” suggests, the Labor Party’s narrative is . . . well the best that might be said is that it’s pining for the fiords.

Narratives of perfidy are usually entrenched by an incoming government.

Whitlam’s narrative was that his opponents fancied themselves as “born to rule” an attitude that led them to any act, no matter how illegitimate to regain their inalienable right to power. The Fraser Government’s narrative of perfidy was the ALP’s economic and fiscal indiscipline, something that was true enough.

Hawke and Keating’s narrative – reinforced endlessly as question time was further and further reduced to political point scoring and humiliation of opponents – was how feckless and lacking in the courage of their own convictions the Libs had been. Where Whitlam’s caricature was a bitter one, Keating’s take on similar themes embraced the ‘Lucky Country’ critique of the mediocrity of Australia’s elites with high humour and mockery.

By the time the conservatives had finished, Australia was an ‘industrial graveyard’ as you’ll see if in the video above with PM PJK belting it out like one of his singing heroes Tom Jones.

Howard’s narrative was the old meme of economic indiscipline. It was much less justified than it was against Whitlam – indeed the Hawke/Keating Government’s economic achievements were much more impressive than Howard’s, but the Hawke/Keating Govt managed to be part of macroeconomic misjudgements that converted a record high surplus into a deficit, which had them leaving office with a gift to the conservatives which the Howard Government immediately dubbed Beazley’s black hole.

But around 2007 something strange happened.

(Continued)

There’s been a great deal in this election that has been unprecedented, and some of the precedents it sets are good, and some less desirable.

What I think is not particularly unprecedented is the swing. Quite a few commentators, have gone from the observation that first term governments are usually returned to thinking that there is an unusual censure in the swing against this government. Tony Abbott has made this part of his appeal to “legitimacy”.

Here’s a table of the past four federal elections by first term governments and the swing experienced – the 2010 data current as of posting.

Government and election	2pp Swing
Whitlam 1974	-1.0
Fraser 1977	-1.1
Hawke 1983	-1.46%
Howard 1998	-4.61
Rudd/Gillard 2010	-2.04

From this it appears that this election followed ample precedent. If you’re so inclined you’d (fallaciously given the low sample) read a reversal of a trend by which new governments have been censured more over time. The important pattern may be less about 1st term governments being returned than that new Federal Governments always disappoint. Whilst State governments have tended to turn narrow victories into landslides in their second elections, we never invest state governments with hopes for grand policies and plans for the future. If they prove tolerable they stay. We are promised and expect more from Federal Governments. (Continued)

Based on a good thread over at LP, I watched the Kerry O’Brien interview with Tony Windsor, Rob Oakeshott and Bob Katter.

Remarkable. I can’t remember the last time I so enjoyed watching politicians. Perhaps never. Intelligence, humour, apparent integrity and, more than anything, naturalness. It’s so refreshing as to be almost shocking.

The general buzz on the LP thread seems to be quietly optimistic, and very curious about what’s to come. Amen. If the independents keep it together, the high artifice that’s come to characterise party politics here might finally become the deadly handicap it always should have been.

Hard to see all this doing any harm, that’s for sure.

What if the Greens make amending the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918 to provide for at least some measure of proportional representation in the House of Representatives?  Should Bob Brown do so?  Should either major party agree?

The Greens would have to be tempted to use this possibly unique opportunity to force a long-cherished electoral reform that would give them (and/or other minority parties – and there’s one reason why Brown might hesitate) a permanently influential position in government.  If they don’t make PR a condition of supporting one of the parties, they will certainly retain their Senate balance of power position but their ability to influence which party actually forms government, or to actually participate in government if they wish, will almost certainly be fleeting.

To my way of thinking PR would be a mixed blessing for Australia.  The obvious argument against it is that it may entrench unstable governing coalitions, although neither Tasmania nor the ACT have provided clear proof for such fears. Indeed the Hare-Clark system (partly devised by Andrew Inglis Clark who was the principal drafter of Australia’s Constitution) that prevails in both places seems to work fairly well.

It would certainly open up government to a wider and therefore arguably more truly democratic range of influences, and provide some check on the increasing focus group-driven cynical sameness of the two major parties.  However you can equally argue that PR is undemocratic because it is likely to give disproportionate power to tiny unrepresentative groups and individuals like the egregious Steve Fielding.

My major concern with PR is that the need to satisfy the wish list of minor parties and Independents to form a viable coalition would undermine the reasonably high levels of economic responsibility and moderation that have characterised the performance of both major parties over the last couple of decades,  a phenomenon which has largely underpinned Australia’s excellent economic performance through the Global Financial Crisis.

On balance I think there’s something to be said for a system that provides for (say) 25 of the 140 seats in the House of Reps to be elected by Hare-Clark PR from  a national pool of candidates.  On current Tasmanian rules that would generate a quota for election of 16.7%, which is not all that dissimilar to a Senate quota and should mostly ensure that only candidates with reasonably broad democratic support are elected.

Dated but you get the picture …

Given that the most likely state of play in the House of Reps after distribution of postal and prepoll votes is 73 Coalition and 72 ALP or vice versa, we might yet witness a Labor minority government .  The Greens’ Adam Bandt and independent/Green Andrew Wilkie will support an ALP government giving Labor 74 seats to the Coalition’s 73.  One might think that the Coalition will certainly be able to do a deal with the 3 conservative-leaning Independents Tony Windsor, Bob Katter and Rob Oakeshott but it might not be that simple.  Windsor and Oakeshott are both National Party rejects who hate their former party with a passion.  That’s especially true of Windsor who even gave some support to the minority Labor government of Bob Carr back in the 90s as a State MLA.  Julia Gillard proved herself very capable of cobbling together unlikely ad hoc coalitions by steering through Labor’s IR and educational reforms so one certainly shouldn’t discount her prospects of doing a deal with one or two of the conservative Independents.  Northern NSW looks set for an orgy of expedient pork-barreling in any event.

Election analysts far more knowledgeable than I will be examining these immediate developments microscopically over the next week or so.  I want to focus on what I see as the wider significance of this election.  The conclusion I draw is that it spells the collapse of any coherent distinction between federal and state issues.  It is abundantly clear that the States which registered major anti-Labor swings (and delivered seats to the Coalition) were those which are waiting for their Labor state governments with the proverbial baseball bat:  New South Wales, Queensland and to a lesser extent the Northern Territory. In other states where anti-state government sentiment is weaker or non-existent, voters were able to concentrate on traditional federal macro-management issues and rightly concluded that this had been a fairly good government which at least deserved a second term in office.

It has long been a truism that Australian voters can readily distinguish between state and federal issues.  But that certainly wasn’t the case this time. In Solomon where I live, the big issues were the dearth and high cost of housing and the perennial of laura norder, both clearly traditional state issues. However, the Gillard government effectively reinforced the perception that these were actually federal issues by promising 1200 affordable housing units, a GP super-clinic, trade training centres etc.  The CLP won in Solomon because it more effectively tapped into voter unhappiness in these areas and succeeded in blaming generic Labor for them. In other marginal seats Labor promised multi-billion dollar suburban railway lines, more super-clinics, more trade training centres and so on.  Both parties gleefully dispensed CCTV camera networks for any marginal seat where residents perceived themselves as suffering crime problems.  In the circumstances you can hardly blame the voters for failing to make the distinction between federal and state issues, and it’s only a short step from there to blaming the incumbent federal government for the failings of its state counterparts.

(Continued)

Extraordinary: just extraordinary. Courtesy of the AEC, these are the seats in Australia with the most informal votes.  I had no idea the informal vote could be so high. All from NSW.

Here’s Annabel Crabb reporting on negative campaigning.

Fear Is The Winner

Of the 30 TV ads commissioned and aired by the Coalition, 29 attack Labor, and only 6 offer any positive reason to vote Liberal (thanks to Gruen Nation’s hardworking research bunnies Xtreme Info, for their analysis).

Of the 24 ads aired nationally by Labor, 19 are negative assaults on the Opposition, and just 10 give the viewer any positive encouragement to stick with the Government.

If you read it quickly it seems like they’re both at it doesn’t it?  Well they are both at it.  Negative ads work better than any other ads. But you don’t really need to understand David Ricardo’s theory of comparative advantage to think that what matters in assessing the issue is the comparative extent of negativity on either side (if one thinks it’s an important issue).

So let’s imagine that Annabel wanted to help us understand who was more negative.  She might mention the slogans – one lot of which are at least notionally positive even if they are obviously (axiomatically?) intended to conjure up a contrast with their opponents. One lot are “moving forward” and “a strong economy, schools and education” or whatever it is. The others is Stop the waste, stop Labor’s new taxes, stop the boats etc. Call me old fashioned, but the latter slogan is negative. It’s certainly more negative than the former ones.

Then there are the ratio of positive ads to negative ones as reported by Crabb above.  The ratio of positive to all ads for the Coalition is 3%, and for Labor is nearly ten times that at 26%. The ratio of ads with ‘some positives’ to all ads is 20% for the coalition and over twice that at 42%. That suggests a bit of a difference to me.

But what did we have on the ABC news last night?  Joe Hockey saying how negative Julia was. No criticism of him for spinning it that way. Good on him. And this isn’t an accusation of general ABC bias, or even of particular bias. It’s the more or less random result of media values and of a smart coalition strategy to try to ensure it’s opponent, and not itself was more spinned against than spinning.  And I have this fond, and old fashioned hope that the ABC News might (one day . . . ) amount to something more considered than the random outcome of a set of decisions based on nothing more than entertainment (even if I’ll concede that it also has to be as compelling viewing as the producers can make it).

But why would the ABC run that as a story – and only that – if they thought people might want to deliberate on negativity in the campaign? But we all know the answer don’t we? The news – including, deplorably, the ABC news, is no more nor less than a bunch of the most compelling ‘grabs’ the producers can throw together in a hurry on issues deemed to be ‘issues of the day’. Issues of the day are determined by what . . . ?  Well the default is the two parties’ planned ‘messages’ for the day.

Unless there’s an embarrassment. You know, something important like someone running through a shopping centre in speedos (the thrill here is that it’s not clear whose campaign is embarrassed – oh the suspense!), the leak of one person’s version of what someone said behind closed doors. Or Mark Latham barging through a media barrier to do a bit of promotion for his segment on 60 minutes. Or perhaps something even more telegenic, and thus important . . . like John Howard stumbling on his way off the speaker’s platform (this proves that he is old, which until now has been a ‘sleeper’. “So Michelle, how do you think this will play in the electorate”, “Fran, Howard is a seasoned campaigner, so he’ll be wanting to just walk off podiums for the duration of the campaign from now on. One thing’s for sure though. . . . he can’t afford any further stumbles” “Thanks Michelle, we’ll have to leave it there”. “Thanks Fran”.).

Oops: the table looks lovely in Wordpress’s rich text editor. Not so much in html. Sorry about that, but I think you can work out what it says. (I’ve now removed it and just written the important numbers into the relevant sentence.

One of the drivers of our modern world is the way in which public and private interest are being reconfigured.  In many ways it’s analogous to the rise of science.

As Paul David’s history of the emergence of open science argues, the precondition for ‘take-off’ in modern science was the culture of peer review within a community of openness. David asks where such a culture might have come from given the ancestry of science in the secretive cultures of alchemy and military engineering. He argues that science emerged from the conjunction of various princes seeking to aggrandise their court by attracting to it ‘stars’ of natural philosophy and the arts. Subsequently, the public good of the culture of openness arose not from anyone’s altruism or far-sightedness, but the self interest of the actors. It arose in the first instance from emerging stars need to advertise their achievements to distant princes in the hope of patronage. And the culture of peer review emerged from the need princes had to ensure that those they hired were truly the most worthy and not cranks whose presence might reflect more embarrassment on their patrons than glory.

Likewise the culture of open source emerged partly from the political activism of people like Richard Stallman, but also from the self interest of hackers, and today is driven by the self interest of large corporations that have their own problems to solve (a patch, a feature they need in some open source program) which it then becomes worth their while to donate back to the project (so as to obviate the need for them to reinstall it into the next distribution of the software.

A lot of blogging is also motivated privately. Bloggers want to express themselves.  Why should they do it? Well why do we talk to each other? Some of it is practical, but a lot of it is because we like to. But blogging takes a lot of time. And regarding Government 2.0, why should someone like Craig Thomler provide us with all the value he does on his blog – in his own time. Well he likes to do it. But as I’ve been arguing for a while now, we’re over the hump when such things were a millstone around the neck of a public servant. (Well we’re not in all cases, but I’m thinking – well hoping – that for Craig this is true.)

So what happens if you’re a good blogger is that benefits come – all sorts of benefits - serendipitously. You were expressing your own private interest in blogging for one reason, but if you do a good job, the chances are that other benefits will come along. Most particularly other people can see how good you are.

And today I got a nice factoid to illustrate my point.

(Continued)

The Australian fiscal stimulus package has been controversial, with some Australian economists and visiting UK historian Niall Ferguson arguing that it was unnecessarily large or wasteful, and other Australian economists and visiting US economist Joseph Stiglitz arguing that it was well designed and a model for other countries.  The Reserve Bank, however, seems to agree that the stimulus was important in sustaining economic activity.

OECD figures show that the total Australian fiscal stimulus package was the third highest in the developed world over the period 2008 to 2010, with only the United States and Korea spending more on discretionary stimulus. The OECD figures also show that the spending component (compared to tax cuts) of the fiscal stimulus was higher in Australia than any other OECD country.

However, OECD statistics also show that when you add in the effects of the GFC on tax revenues and public spending, the total impact on the Australian budget is forecast to be the 11^th lowest in the OECD between 2007 and 2010, as shown below.

Difference in general government financial balance, % of GDP, 2007-2010 (projected)

This figure is calculated from the latest OECD Economic Outlook, and a couple of explanations are in order.  The figures shows the difference between 2007 and 2010, not the size of the deficit in 2010.  Australia had a general government financial surplus of 1.7% of GDP in 2007, and the forecast for 2010 is a deficit of 3.2% of GDP, hence a difference of 4.9% of GDP.

A lot of the countries where the budget balance has deteriorated less than Australia started off with larger deficits than Australia, so in Greece the 2010 deficit is forecast to be 8.1% of GDP -  much higher than in Australia but less of a deterioration, since in 2007 their financial deficit was 5.4% of GDP. In passing, this calculation also ignores the fact that their 2009 deficit of 13.5% of GDP was much worse than their projected 2010 figure – and it also assumes that they achieve their projections, and ignores the costs of achieving these projections, as Spiegel Online has recently illustrated. It is also notable that Iceland and Ireland have had the largest declines in their government financial balances despite their harsh austerity measures.

Combined with the very strong budget position inherited from the Howard government, this has meant that Australia’s net debt remains amongst the lowest in the OECD. The starting point of low government debt is very important, but so is the fact that the overall impact of the GFC on the deficit in Australia has been lower than most other countries.

So how is it that we can spend more on stimulus than just about any other country, but still add less to the deficit than most other countries? (Continued)