Farrer By-election post-mortem – Where to now for the Coalition?
There are lessons to be drawn for current politics from One Nation’s second Queensland election in 2001. A collapsing Labor government called a snap election and played the instability card. Labor’s campaign included a memorable ad (inside this post) comparing Pauline Hanson to a back seat driver interfering with a Coalition government. Labor was re-elected in a landslide, even sweeping Gold and Sunshine Coast seats for the first time.
Saturday’s Farrer by-election has revealed the scale of the threat One Nation poses to the electoral prospects of the Liberal and National Parties.
One Nation polled just short of 40% of the primary vote. At 12.4% the Liberal Party lost three-quarters of its vote from last year’s election. The Nationals polled only 9.7% of the primary vote and struggled to reach 15% at the western end of the electorate where it has traditionally dominated. All this in a seat that for eight decades has been one of the Coalition’s safest.
Labor chose not to contest the by-election which might have disappointed local party members and supporters. It was an easy decision to make given Labor hasn’t passed 20% in the seat for a decade, or reached 30% for three decades. Labor’s absence left the seat open for the slim chances of Independent Michelle Milthorpe.
But the main advantage for Labor is the by-election left no measure of One Nation’s impact on Labor’s vote. It is the Liberals and Nationals left picking through the wreckage of Saturday night’s result.
Farrer has given us a true measure of One Nation’s support. But it creates a series of new questions on how the Liberal Party, National Party and One Nation will engage with each other in the run-up to the next Federal election.
If repeated elsewhere, the Farrer result will come close to destroying the National Party and reduce its representation in the House of Representatives to a rump. The same existential threat applies to rural and regional Liberals.
We know that One Nation has always polled more strongly in rural and regional seats than in city seats. Last month’s South Australian election provided hints that One Nation could be a threat to Labor in some city seats.
But where One Nation is an electoral threat to Labor, it is an existential threat to the Liberal and National Parties. One Nation is a threat to their relevance, their chances of ever governing again, and to their continuing existence.
Labor’s current strength in the House of Representatives is from crushing the Liberal Party in urban seats over two Federal elections. The Liberal position was made even worse with the loss of previously safe seats to Independents.
Defeating Labor at the next election will not be achieved in rural seats like Farrer. It will be determined by whether the Liberal Party and One Nation can capture Labor seats in metropolitan areas.
Will the Liberal Party and One Nation co-operate to do this? Will they come to a non-compete arrangement as currently exists between the Liberals and Nationals? Will they swap preference recommendations, either by agreement or by disagreement but shared self interest?
In the last couple of weeks I’ve written several posts comparing One Nation performance at the 1998 Queensland election with recent results for the South Australian election, the Nepean by-election in Victoria last weekend, and now the Farrer result.
Post-Farrer, and looking towards the 2028 Federal election campaign, I’m moving forward three years to look at One Nation’s impact on the 2001 Queensland election.
In late 2000, the scandal-plagued Beattie Labor government adjourned parliament to avoid relying on the votes of Labor members expelled over various scandals. Beattie called a snap election for February 2001, and instead of being brought down by the scandals, achieved one of Queensland Labor’s biggest victories.
And in the week before election day, Labor released a campaign ad it called “Who’s driving”. I’ve included the ad inside this post. It played on the campaign chaos of the non-Labor parties and helped deliver the first Beattie landslide.
I would not be surprised if the message of this 2001 ad is replicated by Federal Labor over the next two years.Read More »Farrer By-election post-mortem – Where to now for the Coalition?