Month: December 2006

Beauty in politics

~ Andrew Norton ~ 19 Comments

According to a paper released today (pdf) by Andrew Leigh and Amy King, better-looking election candidates receive slightly more votes than unattractive election candidates.

Being good-looking is not, however, always a benefit in politics. In the beauty ratings, Ross Cameron did considerably better than most other male politicians. Unfortunately, perhaps, this also made him attractive to women other than his wife, eventually leading Genevieve Cameron to chuck him out of the house during the 2004 election campaign. Julie Owens, rated as OK by the beauty panel, took his place in Parliament.

It’s hard to imagine too many women throwing themselves at Australia’s least-attractive MP, Labor’s Dick Adams, which should save him from at least one type of political scandal.

Whitlamite nostalgia in higher education

~ Andrew Norton ~ 21 Comments

Jenny Macklin may not survive as the ALP Shadow Education Minister, but if recent statements from the Dreaming Team are any guide, her 1970s worldview will continue to drive Labor higher education policy. Both Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard appear to be Whitlamite nostalgists. According to Rudd, he

was inspired to improve the quality of and access to education because he was the first member of his family to attend university, largely because of the Whitlam government’s free tertiary education policies.

And in his weekend broadening of his image, he told ALP supporters that:

“it makes my heart bleed when I have young kids come into my office in Brisbane and say to me ‘I don’t think we can afford to go to uni, the HECS is to much’. I think we’ve got to a stage where that has to be turned around.”

In today’s Australian (can’t find a link, sorry, but the original text is at p.49 of yesterday’s Hansard) Julia Gillard is reported as saying, in the process of lamenting the bad job schools were doing (surely the responsibility of Labor state governments?), that

“…courtesy of the Whitlam government, I then went to university and obtained two degrees. I fear that it is harder today for a girl from a working class background to make that journey than when I was young.”

Continue reading “Whitlamite nostalgia in higher education” →

Rudd wins

~ Andrew Norton ~ 12 Comments

So Rudd gets the job, 49-39. Once the challenge was on, this was the only politically plausible result – with anything less than a crushing Beazley majority, he would have been a lame duck, and Labor were better off trying to at least kill leadership speculation as an issue, even if there are other risks attached to Rudd as leader.

This morning’s polls showed that among electors Rudd was preferred Labor leader by 36% in the SMH/ACNielsen poll and 43% in a Newspoll reported in The Australian – up 15 percentage points in a week.

The ACNielsen poll also reported Labor leading on the two-party preferred 56-44, regardless of who was leader. I agree with Simon Jackman that this is implausibly high. It will probably go the way of the 9.5% that Beazley was supposedly going to bring to Labor when he became leader in early 2005. But its general direction does suggest that there was no need for Labor to panic and change leader (again).

It will be interesting to see how the Coalition deals with Rudd as leader. Expect Kim Beazley’s comments on the importance of experience to be regularly recycled by the Liberals.

The limits of Green identity politics

~ Andrew Norton ~ 23 Comments

It’s not often that, during a state election, voters receive letters from an interstate federal Opposition backbencher. But that’s what happened to electors in the seat of Melbourne during the recent state election campaign, when letters from Peter Garrett arrived warning of the preference deal that the Greens had done with the Liberals.

This is the ALP and Garrett using their knowledge of left-wing politics to political advantage. While handing out how-to-vote cards for the Liberals, I overheard several voters asking the Green campaigners about the so-called deal with the Liberals (it’s actually quite rare for voters to ask questions). In reality, as can be seen on the Green website (pdf), the Greens were preferencing Labor in the vast majority of seats, and not directing preferences in other seats. And of course Green voters are free to preference any way they choose.

But Garrett and Labor know that left-wing politics is not just about achieving political outcomes, but also about personal identity and making a statement. For many left-leaning voters, opposing the Liberals is a matter of principle, and they are attracted to the Greens because they appear to be a party of principle, free of the compromises the ALP must make as a party relying on mass support.

The political reality, however, is that the Greens must do deals if they are ever to be more than a fringe cause. Even in their best hope, Melbourne, their primary vote was only 27%, just 5 percentage points ahead of the Liberals who ran only a token campaign. They were only in the race because the Liberals were preferencing to them. In the upper house, the Liberals decided to preference against the Greens, jeopardising Green prospects in a number of regions, as the Green website rather bitterly notes:
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Just how crazy is the Rudd challenge?

~ Andrew Norton ~ 36 Comments

The Labor Party’s capacity to talk itself into a crisis is quite amazing. Here they are, tracking reasonably well in the polls, and what do they decide to do? Yes, have a leadership spill. Though there have been rumblings of discontent over low satisfaction ratings for Kim Beazley, the trigger seems to have been a Newspoll (not on their site yet) published in The Australian on Tuesday which found 52% support for a Kevin Rudd/Julia Gillard team, compared to 27% for the current Kim Beazley/Jenny Macklin team.

But political parties should be very careful of polls like this. There is a very loose relationship between leadership polls and the vote. Howard was behind Keating as preferred PM just prior to Keating’s landslide loss. And there is no guarantee that a new leader will deliver support.

Back at Catallaxy, I noted that a Morgan Poll around the time of the last Labor leadership change suggested that Labor’s suport would improve by 9.5%, when in fact there was no change. And if we look at the table in The Australian, Rudd has barely improved his standing in the electorate since the Latham changeover – up 4 percentage points to 28%, 1 ahead of Gillard and 4 ahead of Beazley. The masses aren’t exactly calling for Rudd to take over.

Perhaps this is because they don’t yet know him very well. But there is no guarantee that they will approve of him more when they do. He’s brighter than Beazley – this is a man who confuses Michael Oakeshott rather than Karl Rove with someone else – but he is less likeable. As a fellow nerd, I have tried hard to like Rudd, but the most positive feeling I can muster is respect for his intellect – and even that has taken a battering with his recent weak arguments on ‘market fundamentalism’ etc. He’s going to remind everyone of that annoying smartarse in school who was first to answer all the teacher’s questions.

Whoever wins, I reckon John Howard has an early Xmas present. Rudd wouldn’t challenge if he didn’t think he had a reasonable chance, so even if Beazley hangs on we’ll all know that even much his own party doesn’t think he is fit to be PM. If Rudd wins, the ALP will have as leader a man without the common touch.