The Advertiser Editorial: Electoral boundary changes alone will not deliver State Liberals victory
STATE Liberals need to focus less on whining about seat boundaries and more on positive change for those who live inside them.
- Redrawing of boundaries could hand Liberals extra seat
- Electoral boundaries should be changed: political scientist
IF the state Liberals were looking for a guaranteed election victory from the redrawing of electoral boundaries, they have been found wanting.
Sweeping seat changes were laid out in yesterday’s draft plan, released by the Electoral Districts Boundaries Commission.
One of the key aims is to ensure that a party gaining more than 50 per cent of the vote wins government.
There is some thought that the Liberals were relying excessively on this fairness measure to catapult them into government, particularly given the 53-47 per cent two-party preferred vote in their favour at the 2014 state election.
There is a reasonable argument that, instead of winning only 22 seats to Labor’s 23, the Liberals should then have secured power.
State Liberal director Sascha Meldrum says the latest seat boundary proposal remains unfair, because the party still could get more than 50 per cent of the two-party preferred vote and lose. But, as the Liberals have discovered since being thrown out of office in 2002, there is more to gaining victory in the polls than electoral boundaries.
The winning formula includes developing substantial and innovative policies, effective candidates and a well-executed campaign.
This case was reinforced in June by former Liberal prime minister John Howard, when he declared the Liberals could not rely on electoral boundary change to seize government in March, 2018. As Mr Howard once famously warned, when it comes to developing policies, you can’t fatten the pig on market day.
The political climate is ripe for the Liberals. By the next election, Labor will have ruled for 16 years. Premier Jay Weatherill, should he still lead the state, will have held the top job for more than six years. For some time, he has presided over nation-leading unemployment.
The Liberals must focus less on whining about seat boundaries, considered unimportant by voters, and more on positive change for those who live inside them.
BOLT TURNS IT ON
SPRINT king Usain Bolt is an athlete who makes us love the Olympics.
The 29-year-old Jamaican is all showman yet he backs up the pizzazz with breathtaking success. In a sport riddled with drug cheats, he’s as clean as they come.
Bolt yesterday won his third Olympic gold medal for the showcase 100m sprint. Incredibly, he is on track for a third successive Olympic treble – winning the 100m, 200m and 4x100m relay.
His premier event, the 100m, passes by in less than 10 seconds. But if the Melbourne Cup is the race that stops a nation, the 100m is the race that stops the world.
Astoundingly, Bolt declared he expected to go faster yesterday – he broke the world record in Beijing and the Olympic record in London – but he remained proud and happy with victory.
If he is not already the greatest sprinter the world has ever seen, Bolt now has the chance to cement this place in history by winning the 200m and 4x100m relay.
As the champion himself said in the wake of yesterday’s spectacular victory, with two more gold medals he can sign off as an Olympic immortal.