A long march for voters this year

THERE will be a spate of state and federal elections across Australia this year, but most incumbent governments are safe.

AHEAD lies a long march towards multiple elections for most Australians. The results from no less than four state elections and the federal showdown in the 12 months beginning in March will shape the destiny of the new decade.

If Labor can retain government in most states, as well as press home its advantage federally, it will put enormous pressure on a Liberal Party already under financial and philosophical strain. Which side of politics wins state and federal elections will also have a profound effect on the policy directions pursued, and whether or not commonwealth-state relations will be co-operative or combative.

Tasmania, South Australia, Victoria and the commonwealth are all due to go to the polls before the year is out. That's half of the states and the federal government, and the largest state, NSW, will finally give voters a chance to change the government after a frustrating period of factional Labor warfare when its fixed election date comes up in March next year. The last time so many elections were held in one calendar year was 1996. At that time Tasmanians re-elected the Ray Groom-led Liberal government in February before voters threw out the government of Paul Keating federally in March, replacing it with John Howard's conservative Coalition. Later that same month Victorians comfortably re-elected Jeff Kennett as premier, just as Western Australians did for Richard Court in December to round out the year.

In 1996 there were four elections with only one change of government and the same result could be on the cards this year. Much hoopla for not much change. However, a newly elected (and popular) Kevin Rudd-led Labor government suggests the one change that appears likely this time won't be at the federal level (no first-term government has lost an election since 1931).

If change happens it will be in the smallest state, Tasmania. The David Bartlett-led Labor government has lost two deputies and been beset by scandals. The relatively new Premier is trying to push through difficult budget measures to secure the state's finances that are anything but popular. Even with a proportional electoral system that favours the parties of the Left, the Hare-Clark system, Labor is unlikely to win a fourth term in office.

In SA and Victoria the existing strong Labor majorities will probably be reduced, but few analysts expect more than that to happen. While Mike Rann was embroiled in an alleged sex scandal late last year, and while John Brumby in Victoria faces infrastructure bottlenecks with the state's growing popularity, both premiers remain popular and their parties are ahead in the polls. And in both states the Liberal oppositions have been mired in internal fighting.

So what will be this year's order of proceedings? Tasmania and SA go to the polls first, before the end of March, having last faced the voters in March 2006. SA has fixed four-year terms and even though with hindsight Rann might have wanted to go to the people earlier last year, he wouldn't have been able to.

While technically Rudd could wait until early next year to go to the polls (three-year terms start from when parliament resumes, not when the election was held), in November it will have been three years since Labor was elected and after having baited Howard to call an election when the equivalent date passed him by in 2007, Rudd won't want to be accused of delaying tactics (and polling suggests he won't need to, anyway).

Victoria moved to fixed four-year terms after the 1999 election and is therefore due to go to an election in November this year, having last gone to the polls in November 2006.

When the year of the election finally wraps up, it may end up having been little more than an expensive exercise in democracy in terms of change.

The most recent federal election cost $163 million, according to the Australian Electoral Commission. That included private donations raised, public funding and associated costs. It was a significant increase in costs from the previous federal poll, and state elections for their population sizes are similarly pricey.

While the cost of the election year will put a burden on state and federal budgets, it is the political parties that will especially feel the fiscal strain.

With disclosure provisions active across jurisdictions, parties find it difficult to secure large-scale donations, especially if they don't look like being successful. That will make it difficult for the conservatives, in particular, to compete with the union-funded Labor Party, but both parties will also have to temper their take from developers after recent bad press for favours and deal-making on the back of such funding.

The Labor machine will be keen to avoid a scenario where voters change government at the state level just to balance the new partisan alignment federally. That was Howard's fate. For most of the time he was prime minister, his state Coalition colleagues were stuck on the wrong side of the Treasury benches. While internal divisions kept them there for a total of more than 20 consecutive state and territory election defeats, the initial losses by Liberal governments in states such as Victoria and WA were unexpected.

Colin Barnett finally broke the state Liberal losing streak in WA in September 2008 when he secured an against-the-odds victory against a Labor premier, Alan Carpenter, who was popular despite the scandals surrounding his government. When Carpenter called an early election to try to take advantage of the disunity in the Liberal Party, it backfired badly.

What happened in WA is a reminder of how quickly things can change in politics. The Liberal opposition leading up to that election could hardly have looked more dysfunctional, not unlike how the federal Coalition appeared before Tony Abbott's ascension to the leadership. But during election campaigns, many voters switch on to the issues that matter to them. The WA lesson is that if an opposition can avoid making itself the issue and focus on the failures of government, it can elicit from voters a reaction that can change the government.

It is also no coincidence that WA shifted back to the conservatives after Howard lost the federal election. In Queensland, the post-federal state election also delivered the conservatives a significant swing, but not enough to prevent Anna Bligh from becoming the first elected female premier anywhere in the country.

Despite the recent dominance of Labor administrations at the state level, especially in states such as Victoria and SA, party insiders are fearful of a change in the political winds this year.

Internal Labor polling in Victoria shows that support is soft for the government and voters are ready to shift their allegiances if the opposition becomes credible. Liberal research presents similar findings, one of the reason's party powerbroker Michael Kroger has come out so strongly and called for renewal and change at the top of the Victorian Liberal Party.

A factor Brumby won't be able to control in an election year is the release of findings from the Teague royal commission into the bushfires of early last year. It should be made public by midyear, and if it reveals significant failures in policy, the opposition will try to use it to damage the government.

In SA, Rann has appeared invincible for years. But the alleged sex scandal late last year put him on the back foot for the first time, and the latest opinion polls show that while he still enjoys a healthy lead, his margin has been halved.

New Liberal leader Isobel Redmond is a fresh face and gives South Australians an opportunity to elect their first female premier. The home of the Liberal Movement and the first state anywhere in the world to award women the vote (in 1894) would not like it's slowness in progressing to gender balance in leadership.

While it is more likely that Redmond will narrow Rann's margin but not overhaul it, strange things can happen in the festival state.

In 2002, Rann narrowly won office with less than 35 per cent of the primary vote. SA has an unusual system of redistributing its electoral boundaries after each election, retrospectively aimed at ensuring the seats that are won reflect the voting margin. In theory it sounds fair, but in practice it can leave a government with a more difficult equation at the coming election.

Labor's most vulnerable administration, in Tasmania, is elected according to the Hare-Clark system. It is the only lower-house electoral system that sees MPs elected proportionately.

It is not a winner-takes-all individual member system as in other states (and federally). Electorates are multi-member electorates.

The system makes it more likely that a strong minor party can win seats in the house of government, in the case of Tasmania the Australian Greens.

While the Liberals should win more seats than the Labor Party, it is possible the Greens would choose to support a minority Labor government if they secured the balance of power.

But if voters turn away from the government in droves it will make it politically difficult for the Greens to be seen to have ignored the shifting voter sentiments and back a stale government for a fourth term in power.

Recent reports of factional divisions inside the Tasmanian Liberal Party, where the moderates and conservatives have been at war for years, looks to be the only thing that can save the Labor government.

The competition for media attention in a year that will include four elections will be fierce, perhaps forcing the parties to do more than the usual spin they engage in to get heard.

But it might also have the reverse effect, setting up a situation where the usual lowbrow generic advertising is replaced with more detailed policy announcements to attract voters' attention.

If that were to happen, it would be a welcome shift from the growing trend by political parties to operate in sound bites and as small targets to avoid scrutiny.

The final factor this year that will be fascinating to watch is how the dynamics of the changed Liberal leadership federally affects electioneering, not just at the federal level but in the states as well.

Abbott has already made it clear he intends to accentuate the differences between the Coalition and the government, unlike the man he replaced, Malcolm Turnbull, who had looked to mirror the government on issues such as climate change to take it off the agenda.

Abbott's tactic is designed to put pressure on the Rudd government across a range of policy scripts, and some of those include policies that would see the commonwealth either take over state responsibilities (such as health) or recalibrate its own responsibilities (such as taxation collection), with a significant effect on state governments.

The new federal dynamic, if the Coalition can become more competitive, could see tensions grow between state and federal Labor administrations if the premiers feel Rudd is putting his own re-election ahead of their state political interests.

The kind of friction that might beset the Labor Party internally would undo the love fest Rudd has been keen to promote in forums such as the Council of Australian Governments.

The long march to election after election this year will be expensive, time-consuming and attention-getting. But at the end of it all we might not be left with a political landscape much different from the one we already have.