For the Marshall government in South Australia the threatened collapse of the Whyalla steelworks couldn’t have come at a worse time. Actually, all times for the collapse of remaining industry in that rust bucket of a state are pretty bad, and not merely because they summon up the ghost of Craig Emerson singing “no Whyalla wipeout”.
Ah, you hadn’t thought of that for a while had you? Sorry, but if it’s going to be in my head, it has to be in yours.
But with an election next year, the first-term Marshall government are behind in the polls, and looking at being chucked. The question is, why are they behind in the polls? And the wider question is, why are Liberal parties collapsing at the state level almost everywhere in the country? Especially since they’ve had a lock on federal power for a decade. How has this become so split?
Consider the truly dire position of state liberalism. They were shellacked in Victoria in 2018, having lost after a single term in 2014, and have not recovered. They lost after a single term in Queensland, which had seen the Labor party reduced to maxi-taxi numbers. In WA it’s the Libs who have been reduced to Uber numbers (“unter numbers”, I guess). Now they’re looking at defeat in SA.
That would make a trio of single-term governments and two lockouts (in WA and Victoria). Taken together these results constitute an event. Something decisive has happened to make the Liberal party delegitimised as a candidate for state, development-based, service-delivery government. Interestingly, this seems to be independent of the particular style of the government.
Queensland’s one-termer Campbell Newman started with all the usual combo of big build and culture war. “Can-do” got dumped nonetheless. Ted Bailleau’s 2010 effort was more “can’t do”; a meandering government that never found form, trying to conform itself to a left-shifted electorate. In WA, well, who knows? That kid, whatever his name was, couldn’t find a clear direction so he went in all of them at once. After he said the party was going to lose, he should have gone the full gonzo, strangled a hamster on live TV and named a Mr Blowie as attorney-general in pursuit of an actual zero-seats result. Missed opportunity.
The Marshall government seems to be in the Bailleau mould. There appears to be nothing they very much want to do in terms of infrastructure delivery or new sector developments, and certainly very little that the public can see. That makes pointless shuffling with a culture war edge — such as folding the arts ministry into the premier’s department – all the more irritating.
The “sudden” possible collapse of Whyalla due to the vast over-leveraging of its owner corporation, has seen the Marshall government scrambling for federal assistance in a big government buy-in. The appearance of desperate improvisation will surely do further damage to their numbers. How has it come to this? State Liberal governments appear to have lost the ability to convince the public that they are capable of integrated, transformative leadership, of running major projects that are visible and create visible and marked improvements in their lives.
This is a great fall from the Liberal heyday, when it was Bolte in Victoria and Playford in SA and, eurrgh, Bjelke-Petersen in Queensland, pouring the concrete. Many of these are now judged as mistakes, from Melbourne’s (defeated) plan for an LA-style freeway system, to Playford’s “new town” of Elizabeth — or its subsequent use as a welfare dumping ground.
But hell, future generations will curse the Andrews government for turning Melbourne into a glass-tower forest student village, and the non-contiguous never-to-be-completed suburban rail loop (the road of excess leads to the Pallas of foolishness). What matters is a sense now that there is a direction of travel, a conception behind the plan.
Labor state governments have managed to combine that with a light authoritarianism and a progressivism on issues that have no great material cost. It’s a winning formula, though it represents Labor’s adoption of a corporatist-progressivist formula that is arguably more of the right than the left. The Andrews government is the past master at this, signing 86 Victorian “nations” treaties by day, trying to destroy the Djab Wurrung trees by night. But it works, and it draws on Labor traditions to do so.
The state Liberals have no access to a tradition to draw on. The developmentalist but socially conservative combo — yes to freeways and an arts centre; no to hundreds of banned books, from Portnoy’s Complaint to Peyton Place — is gone now, because Labor fused developmentalism with progressivism.
Judicious and cautious small government doesn’t work either. In an era of global cheap money, it just looks like indolence and missed opportunities. The Thatcherite ideal (very much not the real) of small government seems ancient now, more archaic than post-war state socialism. This lack of a philosophy or narrative, combined with opportunism, has left the state Liberals lacking a capacity for self-government — and so unlikely to be trusted with the government of others.
NSW is counter-cyclical, as it had been since federation, and in Tasmania, the opposition has fallen apart because its radical Hare-Clark-Robson system (the last eponym refers to the randomising of ballot order within tickets) makes party leadership more difficult with each passing cycle. (Matthew Denholm of the Oz thinks Tasmanian Labor are in for a WA-style collapse. Matthew, if you’re going to cover the Apple Isle, a familiarity with how Hare-Clark works would help.)
These exceptions simply prove the rule. So, if Labor has worked it out on states, why is it still on the back foot federally? The short answer is that states merely govern, while federal governments exercise sovereignty, a different thing. From sovereignty, people expect some sort of projection of an ideal, a possibility, of a new life and a new world – even if, quiet Australians style, it looks like the old one. Labor is still trying to campaign for sovereignty with a state-style eschewing of such projection. It will lose so long as it sticks to that plan.
But hey! They get to run the trains, and award tidy town status! As government looms again in SA, that’s gotta be worth something, right? Right?
I suspect another factor in the problems the Libs have in Victoria is the infiltration of the party by Christian fundamentalists, and the cynical pandering of some party operatives to that tendency in pursuit of short term advantage.
Agreed, that, to me, was a large part of their problem in WA. Of course they will not admit that because of their cultish situation in federal politics.
Also was a significant factor in recent WA and ACT elections, and in the past it cost the WA and NSW Liberals dearly in 2005 and 2007 respectively (though in each case they learned, moderated, and won the very next election).
Totally. That’s why they almost lost the old money in Brighton to a spotty-faced uni student who’d joined Labor a mere two weeks before the election.
Braah-ton, FFS!
“From sovereignty, people expect some sort of projection of an ideal, a possibility, of a new life and a new world – even if, quiet Australians style, it looks like the old one.”
Does the current federal government have a “projection of an ideal”?
Yes, to stay in power for life. And that’s all they have.
The business as usual, no change, no looming problems, future. All the data shows they’re out of time but a load of the electorate have their heads in the sand and Do Not Disturb on their backs. The ALP is playing this very badly and is ignoring the ammo from abundant expertise on the progressive side. Tiny triumphs in Estimates and great solos by Keneally don’t make up for the lack of sound and fury that we need. In NSW, the irrelevance of the ALP means a dinosaur government will win again.
Yes, Wayne Cusick, & I agree, -by inference, -the fed. govt. has no “ideal” since it is not even a human being! And I quote (pls. excuse caps.): WHERE THERE IS NO VISION, THE PEOPLE PERISH. (Prov.29:18) It is a very “cunning” – which means knowing-from-experience” – article from Guy Rundle! But, when it comes to the crunch, -as it is nowadays, -just what would politically-retarded, (-not to mention govt. policy towards the population itself!!-), genetically under-privileged & convict-mentality-types know about TRUE SOVEREIGNTY… anyways?!?!?! And, as to responding to your specific question, I suggest the federal government couldn’t recognise “an ideal” if it tripped over it in the street. As for Guy’s “projection of an ideal” – this requires some collective imagination as well as courage, & There is next to nothing of these human qualities in Canberra, I suggest. In fact, it seems increasingly to me, to be a kind of public toilet, where the turds go to get flushed with their success.
I’m not saying it was overall a bad article, but this part did not make much no sense to me, “Labor is still trying to campaign for sovereignty with a state-style eschewing of such projection.” Labor shuns projection of some unnamed ideal, that looks like the old one, that… something, something?
Aren’t Australians in reality pretty conservative? They will not change their ‘big’ Federal government until it looks like they have had their go (whether in success or failure) eg. Labour-Keating in ’96, Howard 2007, Rudd-Gillard 2013 and that the opposition has made a better offer.
Is 7 years of controversy enough of a ‘go’?
Jimeny I am glad i’m not the only person who read Guy’s piece and finished with a “What the…?”
So we have Labor ruling the states – except for NSW which has “always been counter-cyclical”….with no further explanation.
Tasmania is somehow hobbled by the Hare-Clark system which somehow means that they don’t need to have a Labor government to support Rundle’s case either – because…
it’s the exceptions that prove the rule!
Clear as mud?
Dismissing South Australia as a “rust bucket state” is just lazy filler material stand-up comics use to get a cheap reaction from the audience.
“The state Liberals have no access to a tradition to draw on’…. nope, not a clue how that is a cogent anything.
Federal Labor destined to lose because they are eschewing sovereign vision? The very definition of the Morrison government is one completely lacking any grand vision, any greater purpose other than just staying in power for its own sake.
And far from Labor being out of the race, I think they’re making significant inroads…Morrison is doing all the hard work for them, shredding the government’s standing with scandals, a stuffed-up vax roll out and we haven’t even felt the economic effect of the withdrawal of Jobkeeper.
I do enjoy reading Guy’s pieces, but this one didn’t seem to gel at all.
Grundle is very much a curate’s egg – occasionally, some parts are excellent.
Too often, in the last couple years, I finish yet another article of self conscious smart-arsery that said little and than badly.
Time & again, he just recycles stuff from his Dave Spart daze with the names changed and the current PC verbottens elided.
I completely agree with your observation on the “rust bucket” State comment. Lazy stereotype was the first thing I thought of too.
Apologies, make that 8 years! All the scandals just muddy the waters of the already muddy water.
Their ideals depend on what’s in it for them.
Guy, as far as federal politics goes you forget the golden rule, OPPOSITIONS DONT WIN ELECTIONS governments lose them and Scomo is on track to lose his, Labor leading at 52% 2 party preferred, a 1 seat majority government and in in shambles and as corrupt as Tammany Hall yet the Murdoch grovellers carry on as if the opposite was true, when Murdoch decides to do a Turnbull on Scomo then the writing is on the wall, just imagine if the situation was reversed, the Murdoch media would be screaming out about a collapse of the Labor government regardless of how big a majority of seats Labor had..
Problem is that it was ALP 52 and the governing Liberals 48 with a small (1 or 2 seat?) majority and their party in a shambles back in May 2019. I fear we will see re-run.
Unlikely if Clive doesn’t kick in another $90m worth of lies, disinformation and smear. Scum shearing a sheep, picking some carrots, shovelling shit and hitting and kicking balls of varying sizes and shape isn’t going to win the next election.
People are getting very impatient with the vaccine fiasco and are sheeting it home to Scotty From Announcements.
They’re also getting sick of the constant stream of sex scandals, corruption, pork barrelling and rorting.
I sincerely hope that you are correct.
I fear that you are not.
As Madame Pavlova demonstrated, “give ’em muck” and you cannot go wrong.
It was only a change in electoral boundaries that got the Liberals elected in SA.
Sort of, but they’d got an overall majority of votes in the previous two elections, just in the wrong seats.
Don’t interpret this as support for them, though – Marshall has been slightly less hopeless than I expected, but that’s a pretty low bar.
Labor were previously winning elections with 47% of the 2PP vote, and the revised boundaries saw them lose with 48.5%. I’m not actually convinced the boundaries were the problem Labor faced, but the fact that they couldn’t convince more than half of South Australians to vote for them. Ironically, the other side being in power for a term may be just what they need to get to, or nearer to, that magic 50.
Agree. Marshall has also had a lot of problems with his ministers’ corruption and incompetence and now he wants to indulge in IPA/Liars wet dream of privatising everything in sight. Not a popular choice in SA.
Plus Cambridge Analitica’s last fling before going under. Overlooked & underestimated. SA Libs using the newest latest version of CA style citizen surveillance now…..
Good piece, but needs an explanation for the relative success of the Libs in NSW.
Wran was elected partly for his opposition to freeways and Bob Askin’s old-school developmentalism; Nev’s arts and urbanism focus was pretty novel and pretty popular in the 70s. Bob Carr was a fiscal conservative and failed badly on infrastructure (apart from Olympic Park); his successors couldn’t find a new direction and were sunk by ongoing corruption in the party and elsewhere.
Meanwhile the Libs from Greiner to Gladys focussed on development and privatisation while stealing bits of Labor progessivism. By founding ICAC Nick Greiner put distance between the Libs and the crooks. The Libs period in the wilderness came when the Howard/Abbott crew were on top, making them unelectable.
The Libs do what developers suggest – support unsolicited proposals like roads and tunnels, new and expanded coal mines including under Sydney’s water catchments, whilst also having the odd minister who is actually future-oriented like Kean. The Premier’s personal reputation has been trashed but there’s no penalty. The Libs seek to change the law to suit development interests and are a disaster for the environment. Sydney residents have had enough of urban growth but the ALP takes the same donations, plays in the same clubs and lacks any profile at all. One party state.
So Gladys is popular solely because Labor lacks profile? I don’t think so. I think a big spend on urban infrastructure (not just roads and tunnels) has definitely helped her. Not all Sydneysiders ‘have had enough of urban growth’.