A Victorian election loss would be humiliating for Napthine, and a slap in the face for Abbott
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Version 0 of 1. The conventional wisdom is that Australians are perfectly capable of distinguishing between state and federal politics. We know that Denis Napthine can’t do much about foreign affairs, and Tony Abbott’s isn’t responsible for running Melbourne’s hospitals. Wild claims about state election results being a serious blow to Canberra tend to fade quickly. Yet in the final stages of this strange Victorian election campaign, the unpopularity of Abbott’s government is a constant low rumble. He’s here, even though he’s not here. John Howard and Julie Bishop have come to help out the government, only serving to underline that neither of them are the prime minister, who is not really welcome. The Victorian government is in trouble. If its fortunes fail to flip around in the next few days, it will be the first Victorian administration to suffer the indignity of a first term defeat since 1955. Victoria is the first state to face an election since Joe Hockey’s deeply unpopular budget in May. Many key measures remain unresolved more than six months later. Tasmanians turned conservative in March, sweeping Labor from power after 16 years in office. If South Australians had done the same – the Labor government hung on in a minority administration – the entire country, state and federal, would have had a conservative hue. A Labor win in a big state like Victoria, against a government that won an election just four years ago, would be humiliating for Napthine. But it is hard to deny that it would be a slap in the face for Abbott too, a sign that anger about unpopular policies and broken promises have not faded with time. An election loss is an invitation to blame, and there are already whispers from the Coalition that their federal colleagues have damaged their chances. The Napthine government has made many errors of its own, but it has a point. Day after day, the government is swept off course by another federal controversy. This week, there’s been the ABC cuts to regional radio stations and state editions of 7.30, following $254m in federal budget cuts. Regional seats around Geelong and Ballarat are critical and country people rely on and love the ABC. Coalition sources say people in focus groups specifically mention the prospect of $100,000 degrees if university fees are deregulated, saying it’s one reason they won’t vote Liberal. At the start of the campaign, the federal government announced it would bypass parliament to re-introduce twice-yearly fuel excise increases. Then Hockey added salt to the wound by suggesting the money raised by petrol price rises would help pay for the controversial East West Link. Napthine is normally polite, but even he snapped a little. “This is a situation where any increase in the cost for fuel for Victorian families and Victorian business will hurt those families and businesses,” he said. “And I would believe these sorts of things should go through the proper parliamentary processes. I will let Tony Abbott know that when I speak to him next.” Victoria is a proud state, alert to any perceived NSW favouritism, and there are grumbles that Canberra would have been more careful about the timing of its decisions if an election were being held in NSW. “I almost wonder if they want Napthine to win or not,” said one Coalition observer. If Labor is victorious, it could be dismissed as another example of the peculiarities of a progressive state which didn’t really mean to vote for the Coalition in the 2010 election. Abbott’s popularity has fallen across Australia since last year’s election, but in Victoria it has collapsed. Napthine seems to recoil whenever the prime minister is mentioned. The hug Abbott gave the Victorian premier early this month was painful to watch. Abbott’s only other foray into the campaign was when he declared the election a “referendum on the East West Link”. Napthine flinched. He doesn’t want that, because he knows Victorians want public transport too – something the federal government refuses to fund. The truth is that the ideological interests of the federal government are not matched by the Napthine government, which has no choice but to be moderate in Victoria. One reason is that state politics is mostly about service delivery these days, with little cause for ideological fervour. The coalition is mostly in the small “l” liberal mould, particularly in its in its support for multiculturalism. It has expunged old criminal records for homosexuality and campaigned against the Abbott’s government’s failed attempts to water down the Racial Discrimination Act. There will be some truth in blaming Abbott if the Victorian government loses on Saturday, but it won’t be the whole story. This election seems somehow shrivelled up, a long list of set piece promises, many tiny, without a larger story. On Tuesday, Napthine spoke at the Melbourne press club. He listed off promises with little context, an airport rail link one minute, first aid courses for year nine students the next. Labor couldn’t be “trusted” to manage the economy and would be “beholden to the CFMEU and the unions”. There was something dispiriting about it. At one point he was asked where the charisma had gone in state politics. “It’s here!” he said. “On Saturday I was managing a horse that was rearing at the mounting yard at the Ballarat Cup. We’ve been out and about doing a number of things that people may see as charisma.’’ Then he blamed the media for the lack of “fun” in politics, because anything said off script was over-played. Right now, he is being as polite as he can about his federal colleagues. Does he support the ABC budget cuts? He wouldn’t say, repeating that he thought the ABC was Sydney-centric. Does he believe university deregulation would hurt Victorian students and families? He wouldn’t bite on that, either. “We want to make sure education is affordable for all Victorians.” Does he agree with Western Australian premier Colin Barnett that Australia needed to be bolder on climate change action? He skirted around that, too. He was also asked whether Tony Abbott was killing his government’s chances. “I believe the Victorian people are very smart and intelligent voters and I’m sure they’ll vote on Victorian issues,” he said. It was a pat answer and he said it without conviction. If the government loses on Saturday, there may well be, at last, some truth telling. |