And the music plays on
The independents have decided.
"I conclude, then, that so long as Fortune varies and men stand still, they will prosper while they suit the times, and fail when they do not. But I do feel this: that it is better to be rash than timid, for Fortune is a woman, and the man who wants to hold her down must beat and bully her. We see that she yields more often to men of this stripe than to those who come coldly toward her". Niccoló Machiavelli, The Prince
As I wrote last week, those whom we elected to represent us were playing a high stakes game of musical chairs. The chairs have now been filled, in line with what, at the national level, Newspoll now says most of us wanted as the result, since the preference of those polled was that the independents should back Labor.
As The Poll Bludger observed, The Australian has published a Newspoll survey of 1134 respondents which finds 47 per cent of respondents want the rural independents to back Labor, compared with 39 per cent for the Coalition. There is, predictably enough, “almost unanimous partisan support among voters for the party they supported” – which can only mean primary vote support for the Coalition has taken a solid hit since the election, at which they polled 43.7 per cent. Hopefully more to follow.
It was hard to see how the independents could have made Tony Abbott happy.
If they had, they would have produced a less stable Parliament than by going Gillard’s way – 75 or 76 versus 74 and they would have lost credibility, because of the Coalition budget black hole. Also, they would have put in jeopardy the chance of getting high speed broadband and better infrastructure to the bush.
I had found it hard to imaging Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott doing this, given their constant preaching about integrity and stability in government, “for the sake of the national interest”.
Bob Katter surprised me…a little. I thought that Katter would know better than most that if he were to opt for the Coalition he would run the risk of being taken for granted. If Machiavelli – a Florentine, like me – were alive and writing for The Australian now, I am sure he would be saying that power will determine where the votes go and that for the independents there is more power to be had on the left than on the right side of politics, as things now stand. But Katter went his own way, as he usually does. However, on issues like broadband, Labor can expect his support.
Now what of the strategy attributed to Abbott by many journalists, that he would make mischief in Parliament with the objective of forcing a double dissolution? If I were advising Abbott, I would counsel against it and given his initial comments yesterday, others must have proffered the same advice.
For starters, the electorate may already be shifting its position, as Labor regains some of the votes that were not cast or were cast informally on 21 August – note that Essential Research now has Labor in front 51-49%.
Second, given that Tony Aboott had been promising us a better and kinder age of politics, a sudden reversal to form might cause the electorate to re-think its assessment of him and, more importantly, might cause the Liberal Party to return to the arms of Malcolm Turnbull.
Third, even in the troubled Whitlam years Gough managed to beat Snedden in 1974. It took Malcolm Fraser, the loans scandal and a wayward Governor-General to finally dislodge Gough from the Treasury benches in late 1975.
I can’t see Quentin Bryce tossing Julia out of office, can you? Or, for that matter, I can’t see her tossing Tony out either, should he prove me and Machiavelli wrong. I guess we will find out soon enough.
Patrick Callioni is a former senior public servant, with the Queensland and Australian Governments, and is now the Managing Director of consulting company, Enterprise Intelligence Pty Ltd, which specialises in helping business to do business with government and vice-versa. www.enterpriseintelligence.net.au His books Compliance Regulation and Financial Services & Waves of Change: Managing Global Trends in the Financial Services Industry are available at Amazon
olgabodrova
September 9, 2010 at 12:36 am
Not sure about the ‘electorate shifting its position’
I love statistics, but I don’t trust polls that much. As representative as a survey of 1,134 respondents can be in statistical terms, the 47 % of Labor supporters translates in only 532 individual voters against the 39% of Coalition supporters (442 people). What does matter is that only 19 days ago 5.5 million Australians actually voted for a Coalition government. I also don’t think that once their opinion is formed, people change it that quickly. And I personally haven’t seen anything different about Julia Gillard in the weeks following the election that would dramatically change my opinion in her favour. And I do believe that if we were to go to the polls again, the Coalition would have won. Ask Tony Windsor.