Shaun Carney: Balanced campaign is the key to success

AS wonderful as the Australia Day long weekend was, it marked the definitive end of the summer holidays, and now an election year is truly upon us, writes Shaun Carney.

AS wonderful as the Australia Day long weekend was, with its traditional blend of irreconcilable differences over what was being commemorated and mind-snapping heat, it marked the definitive end of the summer holidays. From this week, there is nowhere to hide, no more excuses: the political year — an election year, no less — is truly upon us.

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Tasmania is off to the polls already, South Australia will follow soon after and the Victorian state election is scheduled for November 24. There’s also a decent chance of a federal election in September.

What sort of election year will it be? Here in Victoria, will we enter next summer feeling that our democracy has been revived, even invigorated, by the contest or will we feel as flat about the show as we do now?

The early signs aren’t promising. What we all have to accept is that election campaigns don’t run the way they used to, with the five weeks leading up to polling day being when the parties joined battle. Nowadays, with our state elections scheduled for every fourth November, it’s all one long campaign right throughout each election year. There won’t be any “normal” politics in 2018.

The Liberals and Nationals under Matthew Guy have a fair chance of tipping out the Andrews Government. Picture: AAP

Victorian politics has reached a curious point where both of the major parties are consistently competitive. In 2010, voters flipped a coin and elected the Liberal-National Coalition led by Ted Baillieu. In 2014, they flipped again and gave Daniel Andrews a shot at being premier. This year, the contest is just as open. It looks like even money to me right now: The Liberals and Nationals under Matthew Guy have a fair chance of tipping out the Andrews Government. The audience at the Australian Open is not exactly heartland Labor but the Premier couldn’t have felt uplifted by the raspberry the crowd gave him when he attended on Sunday night.

The problem with excessively long election campaigns is that they encourage the worst instincts in politicians. Far too much of what they say is said for effect more than enlightenment. The level of debate too often resembles a bunch of rival football supporters late on a Saturday night after half of the keg has gone. The antagonism ramps up and then it gets personal. Only the true believers on either side stay tuned in. For the rest of us, it’s a turn-off. The promises mount up to the point where they can’t possibly be honoured, even during a four-year term. And in the end, the whole thing starts to look like a lot of talk aimed more at winning an election than governing.

The East West Link hasn’t killed Daniel Andrews but it’s weakened him. Picture: AAP

There’s a long way to go but the state Opposition is certainly going pedal to the metal on the negative campaigning. Everything’s a mess or a crisis, especially law and order, which is potentially fruitful territory. But it can be overdone. On the weekend, the government announced a trial of a smartphone app to be incorporated into the myki ticketing system. The response from the Opposition transport spokesman David Davis was utterly dismissive. There was no detail, the plan was half-baked, credit card technology should be available and anyway “the truth of the matter is it was always a dog of a system and still performs well under par with the best in the world”.

What he says about myki is true. But here’s the thing: 10 months from now he could well be transport minister. Will he have a viable, affordable plan to fix myki? That’s what voters will expect from him. Will he, as minister, say, “I’m in charge of a rotten system and I won’t rest until it works”? If not, what was the point of his critique?

There can be problems when oppositions decide that going fully negative offers the best path to victory. It has powerful attractions. Negative politics worked well for Malcolm Fraser in 1975 and Jeff Kennett in 1992 when there was a genuine sense of crisis. But it can create problems.

Negative politics worked well for Jeff Kennett in 1992. Picture: Adam Head

Law and order is a good example. It’s a subject ripe for exploitation but it had better be fixed pronto on the other side of the election, should the Coalition win office. That is, really fixed, because the political auction on law and order is never over. We’ve seen what happens with governments that over-promise and underdeliver: voters get sulky, lose faith and put them in the ejector seat.

DANIEL Andrews said the East West Link contract wasn’t worth the paper it was written on and three years and a billion dollars later, he’s still carrying a stain he can’t quite get out. It hasn’t killed him but it’s weakened him.

Hopefully, the state Opposition will give us a bag of coherent policies inside a positive, persuasive framework later this year. All political leaders tell you that when you’re in opposition you have to bring down a government before constructing your own and they’re right. But ultimately, it’s about balancing the negatives with positives. If you win office chiefly by getting people to vote against the other guy and not for you it can be hard to govern effectively. This is because you’ve spent most of your time encouraging voters to be finicky political consumers — reflexively critical of all governments and expecting instant gratification.

And they’ll be reluctant to get on board when you have to ask them to back you on some of your own tough policy decisions, as all governments inevitably have to. Just ask Tony Abbott.

Shaun Carney is a Herald Sun columnist