“Expectations management” is something that all good campaign managers do, because if electors perceive that a certain outcome is likely that will influence their vote. As a result, all smart political operators try to position as the underdog.

Expectations management

I noted the other day that John Howard had slipped up on his positioning when he said that he was comfortably ahead in his polling in the marginal seats. His sentiments were confirmed in terms of Queensland marginals yesterday by The Australian. Mark Latham sought to capitalise on them on SBS last night. In a replay of my Queensland campaign in 1995, Latham said that Howard expected to win and that he was the under-dog. Full marks for the right ploy, although in Queensland we left it to the last moment to play that card because it could be countered if it was played earlier.
Watch your letter boxes for last minute pamphletts saying that John Howard expects to win.

More parallels with Queensland 1995

In the Queensland state election in 1995 one of the decisive turning points was a Labor lie. The Labor campaign asserted that the Liberals wanted to privatise the public hospitals, and relied on a small issue to do with outsourcing some services at the Nambour Hospital. My advice to Joan Sheldon who was Liberal Leader, Treasurer, and also close to the Nambour Hospital issue, was to let it go because it wasn’t “on message”. But Joan pursued it, insulted to be misrepresented.
She was right, and eventually we had the Courier Mail on side, and she was able to use the issue to derail Labor Treasurer, Keith de Lacy, in a face to face debate.
John Howard is also right to go after the Labor campaign branding him a liar. Some commentators repeat a variation of my advice to Sheldon – “answering it only draws attention to the issue”. That might be right, but if it is an issue that the other side will run with anyway, then there isn’t much downside in rebutting it.
I’ve now surveyed around 20 people at various dinner parties, or other evening gatherings, and I’ve found only one person who is concerned that Howard may have misrepresented the Children Overboard situation. I haven’t chosen these subjects because I think they are Liberal voters, so their response tends to underline the proposition that people accept that politicians will lie. If you can prove that your opponent is falsely accusing you of lying on a matter, that is prima facie proof to the public that he or she is a hypocrite, which I think is the greater sin in Australian politics.

Brisbane

Discussing the “dinner party test” leads to my suspicion that the Liberal Party might win the rapidly gentrifying electorate of Brisbane. One of my subjects was a constituent. He generally votes Labor, but told me very clearly that he was going to vote for Ingrid Tall, the Liberal, because Arch Bevis, the Labor incumbent, is an industrial relations dinosaur who hasn’t been seen in the electorate for years.
This progressive, who is also a man of letters, was relatively unworried about the “Children Overboard” issue, and while he didn’t like Howard didn’t see this as a reason to reward Arch. One to watch on election night.

Wentworth

Expectations management by the Liberal Party in Wentworth appears to be off the rails. They are talking up the prospects of a Labor victory and appealing to voters to keep the seat Liberal. There is no chance of Labor winning unless they have an outstanding candidate.
The greatest risk to the government is if King can end up in front of the Labor candidate, or if he can end up in front of Turnbull, in which case he will get enough preferences to win. The chances of Labor coming behind King is remote. Last election King, as the sole Liberal, won 52.08% of the total first preference vote and Labor won 29.52%. For Labor to come behind King he would need to pick up more than 50% of Liberal first preferences from last election, or a significant proportion of their voters would need to vote for King or the Green and not give their preferences to Labor.
So Turnbull needs to concentrate on keeping in front of King. He won’t do this by promising just to be a Liberal member because most voters will expect that King, even if he is an independent, will really be an independent Liberal. Turnbull has to prove that he will represent his constituents the best, which means targetting King on the question of performance at the same time as he plays the underdog. If he does that, and leaves the Labor candidate alone, he should win.

The Leaders Debate

Mark Latham is saying that John Howard is trying to dodge a “one on one” debate. Bad move Mark. You sound like you want to rough him up, which of course you do, but that raises all sorts of doubts amongst voters about your temper for government.
What you should be saying is that he is trying to dodge a “one on one” debate because he knows that the journalists won’t ask the tough questions on health and education. There’s a clear benefit to voters in those issues, and they perceive you as better to deliver in those areas than the government. And instead of daring him to get into the ring, if you say it needs to be done that way because journalists are so hopeless, no-one, apart from journalists, will disagree with that proposition. You won’t be a pugilist, you’ll be the voters’ champion.

I’m in the federal seat of Paterson at the moment, and as it is such a long drive from Brisbane I’ve been deprived my usual sources of news and had to even rely on commercial radio. That gives me an opportunity to at least hear and read more like a normal voter. So here goes with a post of what happens when a political apparatchik suffers sensory deprivation.

Election in general

“Stealing an election” is a phrase that is used when you win with less than 50% of the vote. It’s used in other contexts too, and it’s one of the charges made against George Bush. When you talk to a lot of US Democrats it is one of the major things that seems to have them energised.
John Howard has already stolen one election – the 1998 one on GST. How much anti-Howard hatred and division will it generate if he is about to steal another? This thought is prompted by yesterday’s Australian where Newspoll has the Coalition comfortably ahead in the marginal Queensland seats of Dixon, Longman, Bowman, Herbert, Hinkler, Moreton and Petrie, even though it is behind across the nation. Is this the result of the government carefully targetting policies at key groups of voters, or just the way that the demographics lie?

Guantanomo Bay with home detention

I see the Liberal Party half took my advice about Russell Galt – they’re not going to expel him while the election’s on. They are, however, still going ahead with their convention next weekend. That should provide an easy ride for the incumbent president Michael Caltabiano and douse the slim chances of challenger Jim Nicholls.
Still, don’t expect any rapid action on Galt even if they do refer him to the Disciplinary Committee. I was referred around 10 months ago, and have yet to hear anything. At that time Margaret Watts, who was teh GST whistle-blower against Ian MacFarlane told me that she had been referred two years before that, and also had yet to hear anything. However, while she hadn’t been found guilty of anything, she was being treated as though she had, with basic membership rights being denied her. Reminds me a little of David Hicks – even if he does win his case, they still won’t let him go home. Catch 22 is more a work of fact than Fahrenheit 9/11 because it actually happens.

Heads you lose, tails I win

That’s the game Jenny Macklin appeared to be playing yesterday. Early in the morning on my car radio I heard her panning Education Minister Brendan Nelson because the payment of $700 in tuition assistance for children with learning difficulties wasn’t going to happen. At first I thought the Liberals had reneged on a promise, but then I heard on a subsequent bulletin that the legislation had yet to pass Parliament – no legislation, no cheque. Then I found out that the reason the legislation hadn’t passed was because the Senate had referred it to a committee. As the Senate can’t do this without Labor support it confirmed my earlier suspicion that Labor didn’t approve of the policy anyway!
So here’s Macklin whinging about how much these children and their families need the cheques and blaming Nelson when all along it’s her fault! Not bad if you can get away with it, but just the sort of dishonesty that turns most voters off politics.

Is private versus public education such a big issue

I suspect that Ian Causley, the member for Page, a seat based around Grafton and Ballina, either has too much money or needs a little more direction in his campaign. Listening to commercial radio I heard an ad from his campaign a couple of times. The ad criticised the Teacher’s Union for running a dishonest campaign on school funding.
I’d have to agree with Causley that the Teacher’s Union actions are despicable. Here are the people who are supposed to be teaching our children critical thinking running a quite spurious campaign based on selective use of the facts.
But I don’t think that it is the major issue in this election, so I don’t think that I would be spending my money running ads about it. And if I were running ads I think that I would make sure that they weren’t just as dishonest as my opponents.
While it is wrong of the Teacher’s Union to infer that the only money going to schools comes from the Federal Government, it is equally wrong of Causley’s ad to say words to the effect that 76% of government money goes to public schools and only 24% to private schools. Given that 70% of children are in public schools, and many of them are quite expensive to run, the mix is not inequitable, as he in turn tries to infer.

Maybe there are no big issues

Down here in Paterson there don’t appear to be any major issues, at least not according to the bloke who was manning the campaign caravan. He thought euthanasia might be an issue. Paterson is a retirement area, but I think that was an example of last person syndrome, because the people he was talking to before me had a bee in their bonnet about it.
There was a petition about hospitals in the area lying on the table which seemed to be more likely to be Bob Baldwin’s major beef. In an area with retirees and young families, seems reasonable to try to leverage votes on the issue of local services, especially when they are provided by an increasingly unpopular state government.
It also shows a similar campaigning style to Gary Hardgrave in Moreton, a Queensland marginal. The Australian reports he is campaigning on the issue of trucks travelling through his area, even though this is a state issue.
Well, enough campaign ruminations. Time to go and visit my young son. When he was born his mother had to travel an hour to the Manning Base hospital, being the nearest maternity ward. If hospitals in Paterson aren’t an issue, they should be.

Yesterday Mark Latham signed “Labor’s Low Interest Rate Guarantee”. This was a variation on past themes from both sides of politics, and it was a mistake.
In 1993, needing a weapon to blunt the tax cut component of the Hewson Fightback! package, Keating legislated his LAW Tax Cuts. The message was that you can vote for Hewson and you will get his tax cuts, and the pain of the GST, or you can vote for me, and just get the tax cuts. Whenever Keating was challenged on whether his cuts were deliverable he would spell it out – of course, they are L.A.W. law.
After winning the election he had to scrap the cuts. They had never been deliverable, they had only ever been an evasive form of rebuttal.
Putting aside for one moment whether Latham’s undertakings are deliverable, they are still cut from the same paradigm – if it’s in writing and you can spell it out it must be real. Running an election campaign based on honesty and pulling a stunt that reeks of previous dishonesty by your own party is unlikely to earn you trust.
One of the side effects of that Keating promise, and the many other grandiose promises made by politicians, is that voters have become incredibly cynical about anything politicians offer them. Our focus group research in previous elections shows that there is virtually nothing that a politician can promise to deliver that will make electors vote for them. In fact, large promises actually turn voters off. An election campaign fought on the basis of large claims is heading for trouble in today’s climate.
Latham’s guarantee suffers from being a large promise. He is undertaking to:

At the same time he is making promises that will cost the government money, like rolling back Brendan Nelson’s changes to the University sector. When we asked our focus group on the Federal Budget whether they thought Latham could find the promised $8 Billion saving he was promising at the time, there was the online equivalent of laughter from the group.
I have no doubt that Latham intends to try to do all these things simultaneously, but I’m sceptical that he can. I’m also concerned that not all of them are particularly economically appropriate. Take the promise to keep the budget in surplus. If we remain in an expansionary phase for the next term of parliament, that makes perfect sense. It doesn’t if we move into a recession; and we easily could if oil prices remain high, or go higher, and if the US currency were to suddenly realign to a lower (and more realistic) value. If Latham wins, and there is a recession, then this document, his signature, and the “bond” that is his word, will all be held in evidence against him if he is forced to run deficits as a result of circumstance, particularly as he is running an election campaign based on truth.
It may also have immediate consequences with left of centre voters. These are Labor’s enthusiasts, because they are most motivated to depose Howard. They are also that sector of the community that wants to increase government services and that is most likely to tell pollsters that government spending and revenue should be a larger share of the economy. Making this pledge may rob Latham’s campaign of vital energy at the same time as it does nothing to convince centre and right voters that he can deliver.
It is also likely to unsettle more conservative voters who will probably suspect it is just another stunt, and that he doesn’t mean it, just as they suspected that Labor’s hard line approach to refugees at the last election was one they didn’t intend to stick to, and therefore an indication of untrustworthiness.
Of course, all these observations about what voters are likely to think are subject to the caveat that I am only speculating. Next week, after we have done the first of our focus groups, I will be in a much more knowledgeable position. If you’re interested in being involved, please fill in our questionnaire at www.ozelections.com

What would a federal election in Queensland be like without an expulsion? On my watch it was Pauline Hanson who was despatched. This time around Russell Galt is threatened with the axe. My advice to the Queensland Libs is “Don’t do it.” There were good strategic, tactical and ethical reasons for disciplining Hanson; there are none for doing anything to Galt.
Indeed, it is a little ironic from my perspective that Galt is the potential subject of retaliation, given that he was one of those who voted to refer me to the Disciplinary Committee for writing about the Liberal Party as part of my work as a commentator. Still, I would defend his right to free speech just as strongly as I would mine, and I am happy to give him and the party the benefit of my long reflection on just exactly when and why people should be expelled.
The first reason that they should not do it is a practical one. Galt has no media standing in his own right and has the narrowest and flimsiest of issues to run on. Stop talking about him, and he will disappear. He is like a Boggart (no idea what I’m talking about, check out Harry Potter III). He feeds on your fears. Think happy thoughts and he will vanish, with a pop.
The next reason is also practical – what is expelling him going to do to his capacity to create trouble? As far as the media are concerned he will move from whistleblower to martyr. Not only will he still be able to say all the things that he can say now as a member, but he will be less constrained, and his voice will be magnified even more in the media megaphone.
Another practical reason is that an expulsion will demonstrate once again that the Queensland Liberal Party is an angry, vindictive, self-indulgent organisation, completely lacking in tactical and strategic sense and with no capacity for self-discipline or focus on the things that really matter. (Although I should make honourable mention of new State Director, Jeff Greene, who was quoted in the papers as suggesting the whole matter should be allowed to pass.)
These comments assume that there is a legal basis for expelling Galt, but I doubt that there is, unless it can be proven beyond the balance of probabilities that he was lying. The grounds on which someone can be expelled are:

;

; and

.
Is it disloyal to blow the whistle on someone in an organisation of which you are a member? I wouldn’t have thought it was in any legally actionable way. Whistleblowers are generally held to do the organisation a service.
Has Galt breached confidentiality? You can only breach it in a case where there is a duty to maintain it. The meeting Galt describes appears to be an unofficial one with the purpose of plotting the preselection victories of Brandis and Mason. No duty to the party here. In fact, if there is confidentiality that has been breached, Brandis may well be the offender. If he said what he is alleged to have said, then the way in which he came by that information might well give rise to grounds for expelling him!
Has he brought the party into disrepute? Only if he has lied. If Brandis said what he did say, then it is Brandis who is bringing the party into disrepute. It might also be that John Howard has as well. To suggest that the person who observes and reports on this is themselves bringing the party into disrepute is a variation on the old mistake of “shooting the messenger”.
There are good philosophical reasons why Galt has not committed an expellable offence. The Liberal Party champions freedom of speech, and as a political party is an agent of the people in the democratic process. As such it must support the ability of people, including party members, to say what they think, as well as being open to as broad a membership as possible. Of course they have to have last resort powers to discipline people who campaign against the party or undermine it in a fundamental way, but it would be inconsistent with their objects and functions to have the power to discipline for any but the most serious offences.
Fraud and illegality are both sound reasons for expelling a member. So would campaigning against the party, or failing to honour undertakings given to the party (as was the case with Hanson). But the times when a real case exists must be very few and far between, and even when a theoretical case exists, acting on it may still do more damage than leaving well enough alone.
George Brandis has made many criticisms in the last 36 hours of Russell Galt. Including that he is “small time”. He is. Throw him back. He’s not worth the trouble or the damage to your reputation, or to the word “liberal” that you sport in your name.

Accusations by Russell Galt, a former Liberal Federal Electorate Committee Chairman that Senator George Brandis called the Prime Minister a “lying rodent” over the children overboard affair shed more light on Howard’s problems with the Queensland Liberal Party than they do on what he knew and when he knew it.
The accusations don’t prove that Howard knew the children overboard accusation was wrong, just suggest that Brandis may have implied he did. Brandis denies them, but then it is his statutory declaration against Galt’s. There are good reasons for believing neither of them.
Brandis is from the “whatever it takes” school of politics, and a supporter of the leadership ambitions of Peter Costello. He has been agitating for Howard to stand aside for Costello, including frequent briefings of the media, and part of his stock in trade has been to criticise the Prime Minister. “Rodent” is a word that Brandis uses, as is “lying”.
But Galt’s credibility is not particularly good either. He has been criticised for sharp practice as lieutenant to branch stacking MHR for Ryan Michael Johnson. In his legal challenge to the Moggill preselection he partly relied on at least one member of the preselection council voting when she wasn’t entitled to. The presiding judge was not impressed when evidence showed that the offending preselector had been signed up by Galt supporters and cast her vote for him!
For me the more interesting question is why Galt should be doing this at all. Plenty of people lose preselections, but few of them turn on their party so strategically. The answer seems to lie in the machinations of the Queensland Liberal Party, and Howard is probably responsible himself in two ways.
The first is that he has slighted Galt directly. When Galt challenged it was with the explicit approval of the powerbrokers who control the Queensland Liberal Party. The Prime Minister tried to intervene to stop the challenge. He failed.
Then there appears to have been an understanding that the Liberals would underwrite Galt’s costs. That underwriting is likely to have influenced his decision to challenge.
After the court case Moreton MHR Gary Hardgrave offered to use a fundraiser featuring the Prime Minister to help pay Galt’s costs. Howard objected and told the Queensland Liberals that he only raised funds for election campaigns. I am reliably informed that Galt has still to receive any money for his legal expenses from Liberal Party sources. If so he has another reason for ambushing the Prime Minister.
The second is that Howard has failed to control the Queensland Liberal Party, which has allowed the internecine fighting, of which Galt is but one symptom, to continue. After the 2001 state election debacle, where the state team was reduced to only three members, the federal organisation intervened and took control. The intervention should have led to reform of the preselection system and marginalisation of those behind the debacle, principally the Santoro forces, and those allied with them, including people like George Brandis, and Michael Johnson.
Instead, Howard put Senator John Herron in control. Herron was a long-standing friend of Howard’s, but he was beholden in many ways to Santoro and also to Brandis, and he was also angry with Howard because he thought Howard had reneged on the promise of an overseas posting. As a result, little changed in the party, warfare broke out between the party hierarchy and reforming state leader Bob Quinn, and the feds eventually upped stakes leaving the previous disastrous status quo more or less in place.
If Howard had reformed the party when he could have, Michael Johnson would never have become the member for Ryan, and Galt would still be an aspiring party official rather than a wounded has-been. Michael Johnson only became the member because it suited the personal ambitions of both George Brandis and Santo Santoro who appear to run on the maxim that “if you can’t run it, wreck it”.
From Howard’s point of view, the consequence of his failure to control the state branch when he could have is that the organisation has deteriorated to the stage where it is now endangering his reelection chances. Galt’s accusations are likely to mean little to voters – most I talk to, unless they are dedicated Howard haters, are tired of hearing about an issue that is three years old and which had no influence on their votes at the time anyway. What will damage Howard is that they reinforce perceptions that the local Liberals are weak while diverting branch resources to damage control and faction fighting.
When you look at an electoral pendulum there are 5 Liberal held seats with a margin less than 4%, and a redistributed Bowman, which is notionally Liberal, makes 6. On top of that, as this is likely to be an election of uneven swings, the Liberals have good chances of winning Brisbane and Bonner, and may need to so as to offset possible losses.
While Howard is portraying himself as tough on terror and national security he has not been tough on his own party. He also not been tough on “friends” even when they have been acting against his interests. The Liberal Party has a lot riding on this federal election. If they lose power federally, then it is likely that there will be many more Russell Galts and that the whole non-Labor framework in Queensland may tear apart under the pressure, then they will all be overboard.