Matt Johnston: Kennett, Bracks and the lessons of history
Like or loathe them, former premiers Jeff Kennett and Steve Bracks are revered as gold-standard leaders. Is the tide turning to another 1999-style boilover, asks Matt Johnston.
Opinion
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It is 20 years since Steve Bracks dethroned Jeff Kennett, but the lessons of that state election boilover are still being felt.
With due respect to premiers past and present, “Jeff” and “Bracksy” are revered as gold-standard leaders — whether you liked or loathed them.
Neither was perfect and they had very different styles, but both shared qualities common to powerful leaders, such as decisiveness and vision.
The discussion between Bracks and Kennett, for the new Herald Sun podcast series Face Off, covered the pace and frenetic nature of modern political life.
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Both men considered how they would go in the age of social media, saying they hoped they would still do things “their way” rather than be dragged left or right by screaming minorities.
They also looked at the bigger picture and what their result meant for Victoria, following seven years of frantic reform by Kennett.
Bracks points to the fundamental restructure of the Labor Party undertaken by him and other key figures such as John Brumby, who led the party from 1993 to early 1999.
That included a conservative economic setting, complemented by delivering a “social dividend” when possible.
Kennett says his government’s hard work set up the incoming Labor leader, which Bracks doesn’t dispute.
The ALP has prioritised state budget surpluses since the Bracks and Brumby years, despite some worrying signs about spending today that Treasurer Tim Pallas — Bracks’s chief of staff — must rein in.
Andrews was a party official during the 1999 election and was deeply involved in the campaign.
He saw the tide turn in country Victoria. In 2014, when vying to be premier, he badged himself as a boy from the bush, like Bracks.
It was interesting to hear Bracks and Kennett rattle off regional seats that were Liberal-held or “in play” in 1999, including two each in Bendigo and Ballarat and the electorates in and around Geelong.
Since then, those seats have almost exclusively been held by Labor.
They also mentioned Seymour and Ripon, which are held by Liberals on narrow margins.
A state boundary review will complicate matters further, especially if new electorates expected in growth areas are notionally Labor-held.
Give the ALP already holds 55 of 88 lower house seats, that’s important.
The Coalition lost a swath of suburban electorates last year, but unless it can reconnect with some of the regional Victoria seats it lost in 1999, the party will struggle to find a path to victory in 2022.
Opposition leader Michael O’Brien is no boy from the bush, but he must develop a real and compelling connection with the regions.
Labor’s key advertisement during Bracks’s campaign featured two taps — one with a steady flow and one with a thin drip. The flow represented Melbourne and the drip was country Victoria.
Coalition MPs have started to flip that around already this year. They have contrasted the love shown for Melbourne by the Andrews Government — partially necessitated by massive population growth — with what is being delivered to country Victoria.
The Premier was targeted by the Nationals for failing to visit drought areas such as the Millewa in the northwest tip of the state.
Hearing this (and remembering the lessons of ’99) Andrews promptly took off to the Millewa and the northeast of the state to announce a drought-relief package last week.
There will have to be more of that to stem a potential perception problem.
Another lesson from ’99 was how Labor stuck to the centre.
At one stage last term Andrews strayed to the left, but corrected the ship to focus on what Bracks and Brumby showed him works.
Andrews needs to avoid drifting too far port-side this term, too.
On that subject, Bracks and Kennett delved into the Liberal Party’s predicament in Victoria since 1979. In that 40-year period, the Liberals have won only three state elections.
Two of those were led by Kennett, one of the party’s strongest leaders.
Federally, it has won the two-party preferred vote against Labor twice in recent decades, including only once during John Howard’s 11-year rule.
Bracks says that trend started after the Labor Party “healed itself” after a split last century.
Whether the Liberal Party needs to “heal itself” is debatable, but O’Brien would dearly love an end to recent civil wars.
Kennett says Labor’s build-up of debt and spending in recent years could leave it vulnerable to a strong 2022 campaign.
“That means the other side have got to get themselves ready and they’re not in that position yet, but there’s three and a half years to go,” he said. Kennett also says that “oppositions never win, governments lose”.
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Jacinta Allan, who emerged in 1999 and is now a senior minister, counters that by saying you still need a credible alternative to offer people who don’t often throw their vote away. Allan and Kennett saw first-hand what can happen to outsider oppositions if they put in the hard yards, particularly in regional Victoria.
No doubt Andrews will be waiting and watching, remembering 1999. He doesn’t want to have introduced reforms and spent big on infrastructure only to be sent packing with unfinished business after two terms.
No one likes being Jeffed.
Matt Johnston is state politics editor