By Sean Healy
MELBOURNE — Most polls on the March 30 Victorian state elections put the Coalition at least 10 points ahead in the two-party preferred vote. Premier Jeff Kennett has an even bigger margin over Labor leader John Brumby as preferred premier.
Combined with the fact that the Coalition would need to lose 18 seats to lose government, this renders the campaign a lacklustre affair. Labor all but admits it can't win. Early in the campaign, Brumby released Labor's "6-12-18" targets: winning six seats would be a good result, 12 seats an excellent result and 18 seats an outstanding one.
Why is it that, at the first opportunity to dump one of the most reactionary state governments in Australian history, Victorian voters are unlikely to do so? There are more than enough issues to power a voter revolt: the City Link tollway project; the suspension of local government democracy; more than 300 schools closed; 50,000 public servants sacked; hospitals closed or "amalgamated"; councils forced to contract out services to private (often shonky) contractors; and the arrogance of a government which rides roughshod over any dissent.
Yet these issues haven't even dented the government in the opinion polls. The only exception, and then only temporarily, was the public anger that greeted the signing of the City Link project with the Transurban consortium in late 1995.
The reasons for this become clearer watching the media coverage. Both the Herald-Sun and the Age are campaigning openly for Kennett's re-election, Age correspondent Michael Gawenda going so far as to describe Kennett as a "revolutionary" who made the hard decisions that needed to be made.
While many in the community loathe the Kennett government, there are some who've prospered under it. The links between the moneyed pockets of Melbourne, the owners of Crown Casino and Transurban, and the cabinet have been strong, close and mutually beneficial.
But a large measure of the blame for the failure to transform the anti-Kennett sentiment into action has to be placed at the feet of the ALP. Defeated in a landslide of popular anger at continuous spending cuts and financial scandals, Labor is yet to recover.
Accepting the defeat as punishment for "bad financial management" and not cutting enough, Labor has gone out of its way to prove its commitment to "good government" and fiscal responsibility. Labor even codified this in the "Financial Principles" document adopted in 1994, which formally committed it to surplus budgets, a fiscal policy aimed at reducing the state's debt and restoring its credit rating.
Labor having committed itself to much the same economic policy that the Coalition has been introducing, it's no wonder that many Victorians see it as little more than a watered down Kennett.
Labor's record on policy since 1992 is equally damning:
- It (and its Trades Hall allies) actively demobilised the tide of industrial and public anger that greeted the Kennett government's first days in office.
- Its policy on privatisation amounts to little more than "stopping further sales" and explicitly rejects re-nationalisation.
- Its policy on education is little more than hot air, calling for added expenditure of $70 million compared to the Coalition's $50 million.
- Labor has committed itself to the abolition of the disastrous case-mix funding system, but only in small, rural hospitals. It has said little about the closure or "amalgamation" of several Melbourne hospitals.
- Labor has said it will repeal the draconian Employee Relations Act, but is also committed to "genuine enterprise bargaining".
- Labor hasn't said anything about whether a Brumby state government would repeal the voluntary student unionism legislation aimed at destroying student unions.
On City Link, the $1.6 billion tollway that will cut through Melbourne from Tullamarine airport to Dandenong, Labor has said it will renegotiate the contract with the builders to replace it with its own freeway plan, Melbourne Access 2000, to cost $900 million. Judging that some criticism of City Link was needed, especially to win the marginal seats along the route, Labor says that if Transurban refused to negotiate, it would use its power in parliament to get its way. This provoked howls of protest from the state government, business and the major newspapers, despite the fact that Labor's fundamental commitment remains to freeway building.
The only thing that could have saved Labor at the election was real advocacy of the issues that people believe in: decent health care and schools, accountable government and basic democratic rights. More than that, it would have needed real leadership of the many community, student and union struggles that continue around the state.
While the ALP has attempted to portray itself as a mouthpiece for all who are outraged at Kennett's "reforms", it has failed miserably. In the final analysis this is because, to be given the keys to the safe, it knows that it needs the trust of the state's elite, the media and the big corporate players.