May 17 Strange reporting on spending surpluses

According to Lenore Taylor in The Australian

"During the Howard years, surpluses were usually handed back to voters in the form of government payments and tax cuts. During the Rudd years, a lot of the surpluses will be spent as the Government sees fit."

I'm no economist, but ... simple maths suggests that if you "spend" or "hand back" a surplus, then you don't have a surplus.

In similar fashion, no less than the editor of the Wall Street Journal Asia (approvingly quoted twice in the Oz) complains that the government didn't "give (the surplus) money back in the form of tax cuts".

$21 billion more in tax cuts and a budget surplus of zero! The RBA would have loved that.

May 15 The AEC's permanent DROs

I have a wee paper at the Democratic Audit, explaining why it's time to get rid of the AEC's DROs. 

Here. (Did I mention it's not very long and easy to read?)

A philosophical question ... Should we feel sorry for politicians? No-one forced them to join an occupation so bruising on the ego.

It's probably like pitying teenage Hollywood starlets whose every inch is diagnosed on magazine covers around the world. It's sad, it screws them up, but it's part of being successful in their profession and it's unrealistic to expect them to choose another one.

So, yes, it is ok to feel sorry for Dr Nelson. He is our brother.

Tonight's script

I think we know the post-mortem: yes, he put in a good budget reply - Malcolm Turnbull says it was the best he's ever heard! - this should give him some breathing space, Kerry/Barrie, but I think it's still a matter of when, not if ...

May 13 Morgan says 58 to 42

The telephone survey more or less agrees with the latest Newspoll's 57 to 43.

From the outer to the inner stratosphere. Liberal supporters should be assured that earth will approach one day - but not soon.

Budget warning

It is my understanding that no other country in the world makes nearly such a fuss about its budget as Australia. 

Tomorrow there'll be liftouts and graphs and tables and interminable blaah blaah. It's largely just a bunch of aspirations and estimates for the coming year(s); governments actually make decisions all year round.

And in electoral/political terms, despite the hoo-haah, it's not greatly insignificant either.

Still, watching Swan and Turnbull afterwards should be interesting ... 

May 12 That eggshell-thin economic narrative

As you know, the Rudd government is, perhaps belatedly, trying to get an economic narrative going. It goes: Hawke-Keating Labor from 1983 to 1996 did bucket-loads of economic reform, the benefits of which we are enjoying today, while The Howard government (1996-2007) did bugger all. So from 2008 onwards it again falls to Labor to do the hard yards.

This is ok as far as it goes, but it is Story Telling 101. It has no versatility, no depth or reason, nothing to take hold in the imagination. It's just a line, which can't resonate unless it stands for something more. 

We need to know why Howard & co dropped the ball on economic reform. 

Dear Kevin, Lindsay and Wayne: a suggested story

So here's a possible story to start with. 

From the get-go in 1996, the Liberal government was obsessed with its leader. It talked about nothing but John Howard: how brilliant he was, and by extension how brilliant they all were. 

This unhealthy self-absorption led to policy paralysis, and if you are incapable of formulating policy, you do politics instead. They became very good at politics - the bells and whistles - which became the end in itself.

Wonderful international economic conditions, and the open economy left by Labor, allowed the Howard government to sit back, dole the money out, and of course talk about themselves.

In this way they were good at politics but bad at policy.

Who has the gift of the gab? Ok, that was just a suggestion. They need something, and someone to tell it. But who in this government is able to draw the strands together? Not Wayne.

How about Julia Gillard? It would have been a dreadful mistake to make her shadow treasurer, but government is different. 

From the government's point of view, it is a pity Julia's not front and centre of the economic story.

May 6 Newspoll says 57 to 43

Dennis here, tables here. 

Belated notes on London council elections ....

I. Finally, Lynton Crosby gets an election win under his belt. He and Mark Textor have had nothing but losses since 2004 - 11 by my count, including in the UK and NZ. 

Congratulations Lynton. Pop over to Wellington later this year and you'll find another.

II. My bet with Peter Tucker (made when Kim Beazley was ALP leader) still looks healthy.

III. Since 2000, elections for the the minority of Mayors in England and Wales who are directly elected have been by supplementary vote, a version of preferential voting. Similar to Queensland's 1890s contingent vote, it replicates the two round French/Russian etc system, but on one ballot paper. Sample ballot from the previous election looks like this.

April 30 Two Ex-Ministers In 1996, when the nation put in a five percent swing to replace one government with another, the Sydney seat of Hughes contributed a big 11.3 percent to unseat Aboriginal Affairs Minister Robert Tickner.

Twelve and a half years later, a  5.7 percent national swing changed government again, with Aboriginal Affairs Minister Mal Brough losing his seat of Longman with a 10.3 percent shift.

What is it with these guys? It is surely just coincidence that each was in the "sort of seat" that swung. Tickner's 1996 swing for example was smaller than in some of his neighbouring electorates, but that didn't stop lots of folks filling columns with all sorts of variations of the theme that the Hughes result was a repudiation of the Keating government's approach to Aboriginal Affairs.

Longman in 2007 didn't attract similar tales, probably because the NT intervention was quite popular (if seen as a political stunt), and also because the agenda-setting Australian remains besotted with Brough. 

As does Mal himself, from recent performances.

April 27 Expectations in Gippsland

Only once in history has a federal ALP government achieved a swing at a byelection, and that was when Carmen Lawrence went federal in Fremantle in 1994. It was a touch over one percent.

[Update: a reader points out in 1929, shortly after the landslide Labor win that (now famously) swept the previous PM out of his seat, the independent member for Franklin died, causing a byelection which the ALP won. I don't count that as a two party preferred swing.]

[Update: another reader adds an extra condition to my original assertion: the seat must be already Labor-held. For example, when Charles Blunt replaced Doug Antony in Richmond in early 1984 there was probably a miniscule 2pp swing to Labor (see Adam Carr). Preferences were only distributed back then when necessary.]

For example, in May 1983 (I'm quite sure, although I don't have the data) the still-popular Hawke government went backwards in Wannon after Malcolm Fraser's retirement.

Yet many expectations seem to be not only that Labor should get a swing in Gippsland, but that it will be more than the 5.9 percent margin. According to Michael Bachelard in the Sunday Age. "Labor should easily be able to achieve such a swing."

I've previously suggested Labor might win, but the context was the assumption that they wouldn't, because governments usually suffer byelection swings. That is, I reckoned the idea of a Labor win shouldn't be dismissed.

But given the current context - what seems to be a general assumption that Labor has a very good chance, or even "should" win the seat -  my message is the opposite. If I had to put money on it, I would give it to the Nats (or maybe even the Libs.)

Repercussions of the result

Expectations take on their own life. The result in Gippsland will have almost zero influence on future electoral outcomes, but it is seen as important. 

Bachelard may be right that a Coalition win would end Kevin Rudd's "halo", but that's just a meta-thing, something the political class tell each other. The end of the perception that Rudd is unbeatable does not influence reality, except in indirect and unpredictable ways - the framing of news stories etc. 

Yet many seem addicted to the idea that if you can get the media to believe you're doing well, it will become so.

And a Labor win would probably hasten Brendan Nelson's inevitable demise (if he's still opposition leader in June). The ultimate effect of that is impossible to tell.

April 25 First past the post on 24 November

Had occasion to look at seats, at last year's election, in which the candidate who won the primary vote lost the two party preferred one (and hence the seat).

There were eight in total, and all of them went to Labor. They were: Bass, Bennelong, Braddon, Corangamite, Deakin, Hasluck, Robertson and Solomon. We can crudely suggest that if Australia used the first past the post voting system, Labor would have won only 75 of 150 seats, the Coalition 73 and two independents. A fun result (hullo Bob Katter!), from votes of 43.4 to 42.2.

Until the last decade, seats used to go both ways after preferences. (From 1955 to 1972, the DLP days, they favoured the Coalition somewhat.) For the last two elections (and maybe three), it's all gone Labor's way. (Excluding three-cornered contests, although in none of these in 2007 did either Coalition candidate trail in primaries but win after preferences.) The reason is, of course, a high Green vote, of which 75 to 80% flow in preferences to the ALP.

The half-way between the compulsory preferential and FPP is, of course, OPV. Such a system on November 24 would have produced a half-way result as well. 

April 22 Newspoll: 61 to 39

According to the poll in the Oz, most voters would prefer different Coalition leadership arrangements to the current ones, but the Nelson-Bishop combo is preferred by more voters than any other. This differs from the big headline, which comes only from the views of that rare species of respondent (one in three) who say they will vote Coalition. But the rusted ons are not the voters who matter, of course.

(Why has Newspoll lumbered Malcolm Turnbull with Andrew Robb ("Andrew who?", respond most voters) as running partner? The Peter Costello option, on the other hand, includes Malcolm as deputy.)

Worryingly for Wayne Swan, five months in he is seen as inferior to his shadow.

Graphic here.

[Update: naturally, the Costello beatup is doing the rounds of other papers, radio and telly. Read the opening par of this in the Tele. Newspoll actually has Turnbull as still the most popular choice as leader.]

Another leadership contender? Manoeuvring for the Liberal leadership is tricky. You don't actually want to be the next leader, but the one after that.  Lord Downer gave a bravura performance to the monarchists yesterday. But why are he and Peter Costello still hanging around? There seems little point to it all.

Perhaps they reckon this will be a one-term government. 

April 21 Two weekend TV lowpoints

(1) The whole 'Insiders' show, a-snickering and a-smirking like schoolchildren about the 20-20 Summit.

(2) Hugh Jackman at the Summit running around with microphone like Phil Donohue.

Perhaps Jackman and Andrew Bolt deserve each other.

My big idea: one constitutional change

"Fixing our federal system", as Great Leader desires, will be very difficult without a constitutional referendum. And I make this prediction: we will not become a republic until the British Monarchy has ceased to exist, and it is forced on us.

Yes, most Australians want a republic. But Australians don't pass constitutional referendums.

So here's my big idea. Get rid of this stinker, S128 of the Constitution, which stipulates the referendum requirement for constitutional amendment. A couple of decades ago, when I looked at the topic of in detail (since then many new countries have appeared, so the situation may have changed), only we and Switzerland required referendums to change our constitutions. Americans, for example, do it with large majorities both in national legislature and in a majority of state ones. 

Something like that would be good for us: sufficient barriers to ensure bipartisanship and that it isn't done at whim.

The Swiss practically invented the referendum. They treat it with consideration and maturity. Australians, on the other hand, are political babies. Referendums bring out the worst in our politicians. 

Maggie Thatcher called the referendum a "tool of demagogues and dictators". She had a point.

Too much democracy

I assert that none of the following reforms would pass a national referendum:  RBA independence, daylight saving, lowering tariff protection, floating the dollar, a GST, moving from dialup to broadband, ... most things you can think of (including, of course, recycled water).

People look at individual Australian referendum results and attempt to explain why they passed or failed. That's pointless. Those with bipartisan support nearly always pass, those without never do. In 1988, for example, four questions on as diverse a set of topics imaginable all got about the same 'yes' vote - around the 30s. Does that indicate consideration of the questions, or something else?

Of course, it's Catch 22: you need a referendum to get rid of the monstrosity that requires you need a referendum. 

But is the situation really hopeless? Isn't there anything wall to wall Labor governments can do? Or can her Majesty the Queen do it for us?

April 17 New ANU quarterly poll

This new ANU quarterly poll was launched yesterday by Andrew Leigh and other important people including the VC Ian Chubb. They're throwing lots of resources into it and it looks like something worth watching. See Andrew's blog. 

Media questions all focussed on the results of the first survey, see eg Canberra Times and SMH.

Furphy watch: Bill Clinton never actually said that (stupid)

Was reminded yet again yesterday of a popular misbelief: that Bill Clinton in 1992 used, as an official or unofficial campaign slogan, the phrase "it's the economy, stupid".

Not true. As anyone who saw the doco "The War Room" knows, it was instead a reminder on a note stuck on wall (or mirror?) in campaign headquarters. Its purpose was to keep the troops "on message".

It was not for public consumption. Politicians don't often call their audiences "stupid".

Thank you for your attention.