BY SUE BOLAND
The question on everyone's lips is, are the Coalition parties on the skids? This question can be answered by looking at the voting patterns since Prime Minister John Howard's federal Coalition government was first elected in 1996.
In 1996, the Howard government was elected as a result of a massive protest vote against former prime minister Paul Keating's Labor government.
However, the protest vote which elected the Howard government and the protest vote which is being directed against the Howard government by voting for Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party and other right-wing groups is not identical.
The protest vote which resulted in the election of a federal Coalition government in 1996 was largely from non-unionised blue-collar and lowly paid white-collar workers, the traditional electoral base of the ALP, who had become disenchanted with the Labor government's anti-worker, economic rationalist policies.
The majority of former ALP supporters who voted for Howard in 1996 shifted their votes back to Labor in the 1998 federal election, although a significant minority of this constituency voted against both the major parties by voting either for One Nation and right-wing independents or for the Greens, socialist candidates and progressive single-issue candidates. The Liberal, National and Labor parties received their lowest ever combined primary vote in that election.
One Nation protest vote
The make-up of the protest vote has been different since the election of the Howard government because, today, the protest vote One Nation is attracting is mostly made up of the Coalition parties' traditional base of small business owners, small farmers, and independent contractors. While One Nation is attracting the votes of some unionised workers, its main base of support is the core voter base of the Coalition parties.Because this constituency is composed of people who own small businesses and farms, they tend to approach political issues from an individualistic and anti-union standpoint. Many of them supported the free-market rhetoric that was used by the major parties to justify privatisation, public sector cutbacks and industry deregulation in the 1980s.
However, the experience of these economic rationalist policies under a Coalition federal government has made the poorer section of this constituency aware that someone is getting rich out of these policies, but it's not them.
Also, the claim by the Hawke, Keating and Howard governments that private corporations would provide services more cheaply and efficiently than governments and would replace services which had been closed by the government, has turned out to be a lie. This understanding has been reinforced by the fact that the banks, which are all privately owned, have slashed their services, leaving many towns and suburbs without banks. This experience has increased opposition to any further privatisation of Telstra, hospitals and the ABC.
At times, the Howard government has been able to divert public attention away from its pro-corporate economic rationalist agenda and focus blame on the people it scapegoats as bludgers unionised workers, Aborigines, people on welfare and refugees. But the diversion only lasts until the government implements its next economic rationalist policy.
The issues which have sparked the most anger in the Coalition's small business and farmer constituency are: high fuel prices and the government's refusal to freeze the fuel excise; the huge amount of work involved in preparing the Business Activity Statement in order to claim GST credits; the loss of government services from rural areas; revelations that $2.9 billion of fuel excise money which was meant to be earmarked for road construction was siphoned off into consolidated revenue; crackdown on tax evasion through family trusts, plans to fully privatise Telstra; cutbacks in the ABC; dairy deregulation; and, national competition policy.
Public exposure of major scandals this year are also likely to have a further disillusioning effect on former Coalition supporters. These scandals include: the appointment of a drug industry lobbyist to the Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee; the revelation that government outsourcing of information technology led to a massive blow-out in departmental budgets; and revelations about pressure being applied to academics to upgrade the marks of full fee-paying university students.
Howard blamed the thrashing of WA Premier Richard Court's Coalition government on its decision to concede to a limit on logging in native forests, but WA Coalition politicians disagreed.
WA deputy Liberal Party leader Colin Barnett told ABC Radio's AM that We felt very disappointed with the news coming out about $3 billion of petrol tax not going into roads. That clearly was one of the factors that led to us losing the campaign. WA National Party leader Hendy Cowan agreed, saying There's no doubt fuel prices hurt but so too did a few other things for which the federal government has responsibility.
Damage control
The Howard government is now in damage control. The Coalition parties in Queensland were thrashed, as they were in NSW in 1999 and in WA on February 10. All of the national opinion polls released in January and February put the Labor Party ahead of the Coalition.Immediately after the WA election, federal cabinet made several announcements to reduce some of the concerns which are alienating the Coalition's small business constituency.
Federal treasurer Peter Costello announced on February 13 that cabinet had agreed to the substantial simplification of the Business Activity Statement. Prior to the WA election, Costello had stonewalled on this issue.
In the Sydney Morning Herald's February 10 edition, Howard was quoted sheeting home the blame for the road funding bungle to his deputy prime minister and transport minister John Anderson.
There was a failure by a minister under my government, said Howard, hoping that would immunise the rest of the government from blame. Anderson responded by sacking two of his staff members for not informing him that the National Audit Office report into road funding was about to be released.
In the week before the Queensland election, on February 13, telecommunications minister Richard Alston botched an attempt to woo votes. When announcing that Telstra had won the contract to provide untimed local phone calls and untimed internet access to customers in remote areas, Alston also mentioned that the government was still pursuing the full sale of Telstra.
Worried about the impact on the Queensland election result, Howard stepped in to play down the prospects of Telstra being sold before the federal election.
It is possible for the Howard government's fortunes to improve. Throughout 2000 opinion polls showed seesawing support for the Coalition and the Labor Party.
But any improvement is only likely to be temporary because the Coalition parties are committed to carrying out policies which benefit the economy (read: big business) at the expense of these parties' small business and farmer constituency. For example, the next stage of national competition policy is set to target the sugar industry, newsagents, pharmacies, and the legal and medical professions for deregulation.
Something which will impede the Coalition parties' attempts to win back their voter base is that industry organisations such as the Small Business Association and farmer organisations have previously been used as the mechanism for convincing small businesses and small farmers to support industry deregulation and other economic rationalist policies.
Now that these policies have brought ruin on thousands of small businesses and farmers, the industry organisations have lost their influence.
The Howard government also failed in its bid to kill the campaign by motoring groups and farmers for the February fuel excise increase to be cancelled. On November 27, Anderson announced that the federal cabinet had approved a $1.2 billion funding package to upgrade roads.
The road funding package was meant to bribe voters into forgetting about the fuel excise increase. However, a Herald ACNielsen poll published in the Sydney Morning Herald on February 14 reported that 63% of respondents preferred a freeze on fuel excise over increased road funding. The poll was conducted on the weekend of the WA election.
Alienation
While the alienation of the Coalition parties' core constituency is a new feature of Australian politics since 1996, concentration on this can mask the fact that the protest vote is split between the right and the left. An increasing proportion of the electorate is disenchanted with both the major parties.In the WA state elections, for example, the right-wing One Nation attracted an average vote of of 9.5%, while the leftish WA Greens averaged 7.6%. In some rural seats, One Nation won up to 20% of the vote and in Fremantle, the WA Greens scored 17%.
Commentators for the establishment press have been puzzled by the failure of the Queensland ALP's electoral rorts scandal to electorally damage Premier Peter Beattie's Labor government. But it's not surprising when you consider that each time there have been allegations about one of the major parties engaging in rorts (travel rorts, electorate allowance rorts, telecard rorts, branch stacking and electoral roll rorting), evidence has been produced showing the other major parties engaging in similar rorts.
Judging by which party receives more money from big business, it appears that the corporate elite have made the assessment that the federal Coalition government, with the protectionist One Nation party breathing down its neck, is not capable of completing the task of economic deregulation.
Australian Electoral Commission funding figures for 1999-2000 show the Labor Party received more funding from the corporate elite $29.5 million than the Liberal or National parties $18.5 million and $4.9 million respectively. The previous published figures showed the Coalition parties receiving more funds from big business than Labor.
The big-business barons are undoubtedly worried that preference deals between the Coalition parties and One Nation could result in a Coalition government being dependent on One Nation for support. Such a government would find it almost impossible to continue pushing forward with the corporate elite's economic rationalist policy agenda.
From the corporate elite's point of view, it would be better to have a Labor government implementing their policy agenda, albeit at a slower pace. After all, a new Labor government might get a honeymoon period from voters in which it could begin implementing these policies before a voter backlash set in.