Here are some key metrics on the political dimension to today’s education announcement (such as it is).
After economic management, and health, education is consistently the third most important issue voters identify to Essential Research as deciding how they vote at an election. Whether that’s true or not in terms of actual behaviour (I suspect there’s a big difference between what issues voters say motivates their voting and what actually does), it at least identifies education as being an issue that voters are considerably more likely to take notice of than most others.
And across a consistent range of issues, including economic management, health, education, environmental protection, IR and several others, when voters are asked who they trust to handle them, Labor for the last year has trailed the Coalition by an average of 8-9 points. But on education, in June Labor trailed by just two points. The gap on health was six, on economic management 18. In terms of voter trust, education is Labor’s best, or least-worst, issue after environmental protection and industrial relations.
This is why Labor is eager to shift the debate to IR, to education, to health: they’re issues on which voters still think Labor is either ahead of or competitive with the Coalition, despite a primary vote languishing in the low 30s. It not merely means the debate is in territory that is less comfortable for the opposition, but that the government has a genuine chance of rebuilding its branding with voters. Whether that translates, eventually, into a high primary vote remains to be seen — but that’s unlikely to happen unless the rebuilding actually occurs.
It hasn’t always been the case on education. The Howard government brilliantly turned the tables on Labor on the issue — while presiding over a general decline in investment in education, it used private school funding as a wedge issue that transformed education into a positive for the Coalition. Or, at least, that’s what Labor thought. And its approach to Gonski has been driven by a concern to neutralise that wedge again.
There are some interesting metrics for that issue, too. At the end of July, voters overwhelmingly thought public schools should receive more funding than private schools, including a majority of Liberal voters. Back in February, there was strong, across-the-board support for the Gonski recommendations (although, Essential has spotted an emerging trend among voters to support big-picture reforms even if they admit they don’t know the details). Only 24% of voters thought it more important to stick to a budget surplus than provide additional funding for schools; 61% thought it more important to invest in education. And 73% of voters thought “wealthy elite private schools” shouldn’t get any additional funding.
Even assuming voters’ views on each of these issues are softer than those results suggest, it’s clear Labor has a stronger-than-normal reputation on the issue, it has a well-supported reform package, people aren’t hung up on the fiscal impacts, and the traditional wedge issue that has plagued Labor appears, at least for the moment, to lack potency. And fiscal impacts and the traditional wedge issue are the two cards the Coalition has to play. A third card, capitalising on the unpopularity of teachers’ unions, might be playable at the moment but it’s a card that sounds better in the media than it plays with parents, who by-and-large know teachers as individuals, not as part of a baying socialist mob.
Education also fits into several narratives: Julia Gillard’s own personal focus on education and skills, which isn’t probably the one characteristic that voters instinctively link to her; Labor’s longer-term reputation on the issue (Kim Beazley, it was said, wanted to be known as the “education prime minister” if he was elected); and the back-to-the-base charge led this year by Wayne Swansteen.
It’s part of Labor’s broader strategy to recover electoral ground by mimicking Howard’s strategy in 2001. Before Tampa, before 9/11, Howard had recovered from a truly disastrous polling position by rebuilding and securing his base, and then using that as a launch pad to bid for disaffected middle-ground voters. There was already a swing back to the Coalition before Howard so skilfully exploited the Tampa and then 9/11. Moreover, that rattled the then-opposition.
At the start of 2001, many Labor MPs thought they were on track to return to government. A few boasted of doing so by a landslide. But as Howard began to creep back in the polls, the doubts began to set in within Labor ranks. The government now will be chasing the same effect, especially given it’s increasingly obvious even to Coalition MPs that Tony Abbott struggles when he hasn’t got a negative message to hammer.
But Howard didn’t have the huge block of electoral concrete that weights down Gillard, the resentment and mistrust about her broken carbon tax commitment. Howard, like all leaders, broke plenty of commitments in his time as treasurer and as PM. Some, like “a fistful of dollars”, he carried with him, but none of them stuck to him like the “no carbon tax” commitment has stuck to Gillard. Go back to January last year, before the Prime Minister committed to a carbon price: Labor trailed the Coalition across that range of issues discussed above by just three points on average, and had decent leads on a number of issues, including education.
Nonetheless, this is the only strategy that stands a chance of working for Gillard Labor.
“But Howard didn’t have the huge block of electoral concrete that weights down Gillard,” So the GST doesn’t count?
The govt have planned this term much better than Rudd did the first, get the controversial reforms out of the way early (ie the Carbon tax and the MRRT) then once they are in and not living up to Abbott’s predictions start rolling out the stuff people like, NDIS, Dental Care and Education. The ALP have already seen a small swing back and with Abbott performing worse and worse in the media and trying to sell a “positive” message combined with the fact his repealing of the MRRT and Carbon Tax but keeping the spending has left him unable to match the govt in spending is only reinforcing people doubts about him.
If the ALP can get back just 1-2% more in the 2pp the libs will start to panic.
So that’s it? Gonski and education reform reduced to an unfunded smoke and mirrors political trick in a translucent attempt to cling to power? Labor’s cynicism is now wholly banal.
Prattle, prattle, prattle– last hope?
The Carbon tax is rapidly dying as an issue.
Gillard always has presented a team for re-election.
It is not now a presidential contest between John Howierd and John Howierd-lite.
The times no-longer suit the Howierd Heir, the economy no longer runs on debt, and intellectual endeavour and education is, as a result, no longer relegated to insignificance.
In short Abbott has no stragtegy and no chance because the times have moved on and no longer suit conservatism.
Unless these fools start WWIII, the usual fallback position in such declining circumstances for conservatism, then they are gone.
I’m surprised the figure was that low, if it was phrased as “wealthy elite private schools” – talk about pushpolling!
@Jimmy: I think they already are. (panicking) Witness the outputs from their sock-puppet army on Crikey.
Strewth you write some tosh on Sunday nights Bernard… what is it? you watching replays of the footie simultaneously or something?
How many times now have you written Gillard’s Government off? Given them a “last chance”? And assembling piles of cliches like “narrative” and cementing it all with citations from Essential’s market research… aw heck.
Of course far be it from me to suggest you are cynicked up your own date with these “wise” observations… but have you considered the possibility that Gillard wants to do Gonski because she actually thinks it’s important and significant? No that’s not how politicians think is it? It’s all votes and narrative and polling.
Do you actually talk to politicians when you are forming these views Bernard? Or is it formed through the smokey haze of the non-members bar with your fellow pundits?
Get out more – talk to people other than “wise” narrative-spinning journalists – and stop making predictions about the future course of events like some sort of Ourimbah oracle. You have no idea – NO IDEA – what the next election will be fought on this far out – what will be significant, what will become critical in the decision to cast a vote. Wanker.