POLL POSITION: A coalition will be good for democracy

Poll Position brings you the thrills and spills of the federal election campaign, with daily polling updates, until the Australian people have spoken. For full news and commentary coverage, click here.

August 23, 7am - A coalition will be good for democracy

When Poll Position first raised the prospect of a hung parliament three weeks ago (August 6, 6.30am – Ideology-free king makers), Adam Bandt seemed likely to hold much sway in the round of horse-trading necessary to form government.

Not so, said Craig Ingram, one of the three independents who helped clinch victory for the Bracks government in Victoria in 1999. Ingram was certain that the Greens would be the last party either side would court to form government – what mattered, he said, was stability and the ability to get things done. And the candidates best placed to deliver both were Tony Windsor, of New England, and north-coast NSW member for Lyne, Rob Oakeshott.

That should make Bandt, and his party leader Bob Brown, a little nervous in their round of negotiations today – especially as the historically left-leaning Bandt says he'll only talk to Labor, while Mr Brown says he'll talk to just about anyone.

But there was a second side to Ingram's comments that your correspondent did not report at the time – a hung parliament, and the consequent coalition government it creates, is good for democracy. "People fear minority governments," Ingram said. "But they can be very stable and the can get a lot done – it forces all sides to be pragmatic."

Media attention so far is focused on Windsor, Oakeshott and member for Kennedy, 'Mad' Bob Katter, as the power-bloc that will choose the nation's next PM. But they are, it seems, in no hurry to decide.

Importantly, however, Julia Gillard has said she's confident in the policies outlined during the campaign – particularly the NBN, and higher health and education spending, which the independents seem to like at this stage – and won't be compromising the party's principles to win government.

Conversely, Tony Abbott has indicated that he is ready to be "pragmatic" on the issue of national broadband – a sharp contrast to the party position that the NBN is a "white elephant". If the independents continue to see broadband as a means to deliver better health and education to their regional electorates, that may be just the elephant Abbott needs to ride to victory.

Meanwhile vote counting continues in the four undecided electorates: Hasluck in WA where the Coalition has a slight lead, Denison in Tasmania which is still expected to go to independent Andrew Wilkie; and Corangamite in Victoria and Lindsay in NSW, both of which look likely to go to Labor. If these predictions hold, the count will be 73 seats for Labor, 72 for the Coalition – and the nation's future will be in the hands for four independents and a Green.


August 22, 12.45am – Gillard's battle to retain power

You mean to tell me Poll Position stayed sober for five hours for that?

After hours of small talk with ALP operatives - the last of whom subjected this bloggers to a long list of reasons why she "can't stand that yummy mummy Sarah Hanson Young!" - and letting tray after tray of enticing beverages be carried past unmolested, the anticlimax of a hung parliament leaves this blogger ropeable.

The ABC's psephologists now put the count at 73 seats to the Coalition, 72 to Labor, one to history-making Greens candidate Adam Bandt and four to independents.

Tony Abbott, while not predicting that his team will form government, has said Labor now has no legitimacy to rule.

That's not going to stop it, of course. A short while ago, what seemed a half-empty recital hall at Melbourne Exhibition Centre quickly swelled with party faithful as word passed around that Julia Gillard was about to take the stage.

A chant of 'Ju-li-a, Ju-li-a' went up and cameras flashed furiously as the leader strode to centre stage. She stirred the crowd with the message that this ain't over: "We will continue to fight for a government in this country that understand the needs of the hard working men and women of Australia."

And so she will - before thanking those of her party whose seats have fallen, or indeed before acknowledging Abbott's impressive performance in taking the election to this knife's edge, Gillard congratulated the men she will now have to parley with in an attempt to form a minority government: independents Rob Oakeshott, Tony Windsor and Bob Katter, and the first Greens lower house member ever elected at a general election, Mr Bandt.

Gillard said there would be "anxious days ahead" as the party tried to negotiate its way back into power. But please, let's not make it too many days - this blogger now has some lost beer drinking time to catch up on.

August 21, 9.40pm – Did Rudd ruin Maxine McKew?

Were they tears in Maxine McKew's eyes as she conceded defeat in John Howard's former seat of Bennelong? Safe to assume they were. She explained to ABC host Kerry O'Brien that Labor had lost votes in her seat on the ETS climb-down, but that more generally Labor had failed to adequately get its message across in claiming credit for its response to the GFC.

Nick Minchin, in the ABC studios saw it otherwise: "Her career has been destroyed by the Labor Party knifing an elected prime minister."

A couple of ALP members around Poll Position's table don't agree. They say McKew would have lost her seat, Rudd or no, partly due to damage inflicted on her campaign by local anti-social housing activist group RAID (Residents Against Inappropriate Development), which they claim is a 'Liberal Party front'.

In early August Crikey reported that: "The Liberals have been very quick to exploit the [development] issue at local, state and now federal level. Back in January, a RAID rally attracted a heavy contingent of Liberal politicians."

The middle of a convention centre swarming with ALP staff – more suits are beginning to appear now, somewhat diluting the young-Labor chic of an hour ago – is not the vantage point from which to assess these claims. But either way, many in this room will feel a pang of nostalgia as Maxine McKew's corner of the 'Kevin 07' empire falls.


August 21, 9pm – Silence as K-Rudd speaks

The excited chatter grows louder around the great hall Labor has occupied at the Melbourne Convention Centre for Julia Gillard' election night knees-up. But suddenly it drops to a murmur, then silence, as Kevin Rudd appears on the big screen to claim victory in Griffith.

Appropriately, he starts with a call for us all to acknowledge the two soldiers reported fallen in Afghanistan today – two "courageous sons of Australia". Hear hear.

The ALP throng has formed a respectful arc around the back of the hall, though its interesting to see ABC presenter Rhys Muldoon right at the front of the hall with one other party official. Muldoon, just a few weeks ago, stood accused in the national press of being Kevin Rudd's close friend – daring to visit the PM at crucial moments of the putsch that finally unseated him. Tonight it as was if he stepped forward to own that friendship. Refreshing at a time when Labor loyalities are questioned at every turn.

Rudd goes on to thank the good people of Griffith, though a short time later Kerry O'Brien's back on the screen saying it's clear that K-Rudd is clearly focusing on issues in Griffith and that "it could go on for some time" – much laughter, with one party member behind your correspondent commenting "he never could keep it short".

And then the latest seat results pop up as pie charts. La Trobe in Victoria, which was held on a margin of just 0.5 per cent has swung significantly to Labor, giving 50.9 per cent of the two-party-preferred vote to ALP candidate Laura Smyth.

Likewise, the former seat of 'Iguana-gate' star Belinda Neal looks like staying in Labor hands with 51.2 per cent of the 2PP vote staying with the ALP's candidate in Robertson, Deborah O'Neill.


21 August 8.40pm – Labor chic and lashings of beer

It's the kind of room Janet Albrechtsen walks into in a nightmare. She stops, feet glued to the floor, and shrieks 'inner city elites' repeatedly until waking in a cold sweat. The hall is still two thirds empty at 8.30pm, though a few of the party faithful are putting in a valiant effort at large tables to keep up with flow of canapes and good booze.

Suits are thin on the ground, ties even thinner – black is the colour du jour, and may be worn variously as a leather jacket, designer duffle coat or a casual-chic little-black-dress. Your correspondent grabs a can of the people's beer, VB, and unlike some of the party operatives resists the urge to drink it from a tall, stemmed glass.

Yes, Labor has a near monopoly on cool. Poll Position has never been to a Coalition election party (not many on the Labor side either, and certainly none on this scale) but no doubt the young ALP operatives gliding about the hall in Jarvis-Cocker-style glasses would imagine Abbot's soiree as a top-hat and tails affair, with perhaps the occasional pair of stirrupped riding boots.

And yes, your correspondent is a little bored. The young woman next to me, Samantha from Wagga, is in truth neither named Samantha nor from Wagga – she laughs and tells me she's not stupid enough to talk to the press, as she ticks off seats on her red-and-blue election pendulum sheet. She gives a copy to Poll Position, but this blogger is either too tired, too dense, or two influenced by the people's beer to know what to do with it.

The ABC puts the 8.40pm tally at 69 to 62 seats in Labor's favour, with three independents holding their ground. Time to try those little dumplings that keep coming past on platters.


August 21 7.15pm – Green Melbourne, Red Eden

Don't trust the figures at this stage, but a couple of early results are providing some excitement at the Melbourne Convention Centre – Julia Gillard's official election party.

In a cavernous hall better suited to classical recitals, party hacks strong about with beers, and party faithful slowly trickling, but the place is still mostly empty.

On a giant screen behind the stage, the two most interesting figures to flash up are for marginal inner-city seat of Melbourne and long-time bellwether Eden-Monaro.

With around 12.5 per cent of the vote counted nationally, Melbourne's first figure is an 8.4 per cent swing to Greens candidate Adam Bandt, probably on the back of significant Liberal preference flows. Keep in mind, however, that Bandt is on Labor's list of potential partners if a hung parliament eventuates, not the Coalition's. Still, in the tight contest anything seems possible.

The other early optimistic portent for Labor is Eden Monara, which has shown a 1.1 swing so far to Labor, keeping that seat red on the national map.

These are very early figures, so handle with great caution. But there are no signs for the Gillard party that this isn't still anyone's race.

Your correspondent feels the first flutter of excitement at the current total seat count from the ABC - 62 Labor to 49 Coalition. Let's see if that lead holds.

August 21, 6pm – The vote is cast ... and night is falling

"The world is a den of thieves, and night is falling" – from the film Fanny & Alexander by Ingmar Bergman.

Night is falling on the east coast and, in the eastern capitals at least, followers of politics, or just plain worshippers of Bacchus, are frocking up and heading off for election parties to drink their way to a new government.

In national hotspots, exit polls are starting to produce wildly disparate breakdowns of the vote – Sky News is putting the two party preferred vote at 51/49 in favour of Labor, but is showing a primary vote breakdown quite unlike the last Newspoll figures.

So far today, Sky gives Labor 42 per cent of the primary vote, the Coalition 45 and the Greens just nine. The last Newspoll put Labor at 36.2 per cent, the Coalition at 43.4 per cent and the Greens at 13.9 per cent.

Poll Position did an exit poll of its own at lunchtime – sample size one. An old friend, who for years has voted Greens 1, Labor 2, raged against the third major party: "I'm not giving the Greens anything," she said. "We'd have had an ETS by now if it wasn't for them!"

Poll Position's trusty margin of error calculator gives this conversation a 98 per cent chance of being completely unrepresentative of the electorate, but you never know. We agreed to resume the debate the following day.

More seriously, there is unknown support for Labor buried in that 14 per cent vote for the Greens – one Liberal party operative told your correspondent glumly, "there's not a single Liberal vote in that lot".

But Labor doubts that's true – disaffected 'Blue Green' voters are more than capable of voting Greens 1, Liberal/National 2. Either way, we'll know soon. Poll Position is off to charge a glass and join the party.


August 20, 3.30pm – Both leaders will face a grim dawn

It's done. The election juggernaut will now roll heavily under its own momentum towards the polling booths.

In its wake, the exhausted figures of Tony Abbott and Julia Gillard must know their chance to steer it has passed. Only their armies of how-to-vote foot soldiers can do anything further.

Win or lose, both leaders know this has been a very unusual campaign, and its aftermath will be unusual too. Whoever wins, we are likely to see both Tony Abbott and Julia Gillard remain on stage for a good couple of years at least. There will be no quick departures as with Beazley, Latham or – because his electorate willed it – the instant departure of John Howard.

For all the criticism levelled at Abbott and Gillard, they are at present the best leaders available to their parties. It would be madness to junk either of them. Both would make strong opposition leaders, and both have the potential to drive real change within their parties – not least by encouraging fresh blood on the front benches to provide a better crop of leaders for the future.

Drama will come later, of course, by way of challenges from Joe Hockey or Malcolm Turnbull on the Coalition side, and possible tilts from Wayne Swan (sorry, no chance mate), Chris Bowen or, most convincingly, Tony Burke if Labor finds itself in opposition.

This election has been constantly derided as politically homogenised and interminably dull by pretty well everyone save The Economist, which found the 'leaks affair' titillating enough to liken the campaign to "yet another antipodean soap-opera”.

But has it been dull? The frenetic manufacture of 'policy on the run' and frequent scrapping of once-pivotal policies, has been cast by the commentariat as two leaders lacking conviction, desperate to win at all costs.

But look at some of the action that was packed into five weeks (separated here into roughly chronological chunks for ease of digestion):

– Julia Gillard starts 'moving forward'. WorkChoices gets buried. 'Population' becomes a word connoting any problem in Australia.The Greens do a preference deal, but Bob Brown orders voters to renege.

– Andrew Forrest and AMEC rattle a rather small sabre over the MRRT. The opposition makes a flying visit to Nauru. Old cars jump in value under Labor's clunkers scheme. Labor plans to blame ETS inaction on a Citizens Assembly.

– Leaks and more leaks hit Labor's poll results. Kevin Rudd's rushed to hospital, but emerges more Labor-friendly. Abbott launches the big-tax-and-spend parental leave scheme. The 'real Julia' is launched to fix the polls.

– Both sides announce incentives for oldies and long-term unemployed to get jobs. The Coalition's health plans overshadowed by more Rudd leaks. Joyce uses a rodeo to bash the greens. GetUp wins a High Court case to reopen the electoral rolls.

– The Coalition launches a too-cheap alternative to the NBN. Labor announces pork-barrel train lines and roads in Sydney and Brisbane. Leaked emails reveal division within The Greens. A childish 'debate debate' erupts between Labor and Coalition staffers.

– Bob Hawke relives his war on Tories at the Labor campaign launch. Labor goes quiet on climate change and brings up the republic. Robots take over election polling at Fairfax. We get two useful town-hall meetings and one useless leaders' debate.

Phew.

Surveying this chaotic list, a pattern begins to emerge. Both sides have, if taken at face value, given their parties centrist makeovers that do at least address the fickle concerns of voters. Climate change is on the back burner for Labor. Business-demanded changes to the Fair Work Act have been abandoned by the Coalition.

But look at those two issues, for a moment, from the other side of their respective debates: much as Kevin Rudd wished to share his planet-saving vision with the Australian public in 2007, it now seems, post-GFC, that enough swing voters would have buckled to the opposition's 'big new tax on everything' argument to have booted him out of office. Gillard's apparent climb-down on this issue is what the people want, right now – building momentum for change can be done after the election.

Likewise on the reforms some business leaders have demanded from Tony Abbott. Business Spectator's CEO Pulse Survey conducted at the start of the campaign found only a third of business leaders long for a return to WorkChoices-style IR – most just want stability at this time, and Abbott has found it doubly easy to resist criticism on this score because he knows that in this economic climate, workers won't wear it. Any such reform must wait for better times.

And both leaders know more than they let on during town-hall meetings – that better times may be several terms of government away. Australia did enter the GFC in unusually robust shape due to the Howard-Costello aversion to national debt. And it did avoid recession because the Rudd government had a budget surplus to scatter to the nation's households, and was able to splash out on stimulus programs knowing the final debt would be small by world standards.

But whoever wins on August 21 will face a very different three years. The murmur that the GFC isn't over grows louder by the day as the US tips slowly into a protracted cycle of deflation and desperate, possibly doomed, government reflation measures.

Commodity prices are conveniently booming as Gillard and Abbott grin and wave on their way to the polls, but iron ore prices in particular (See What Hockey and Swan won't debate, August 9) have a cloud over them that could obliterate a large chunk of projected tax revenue, particular under Labor's MRRT.

Rocketing house prices, with their concomitant wealth effect, are all but over for Australia – lending data for owner-occupier has slumped and forecasts of falling house prices are multiplying.

It is this gloomy vista that the triumphant leader will wake up to – hopefully on Sunday morning, if we can avoid the agony of a hung-parliament – and it is in this environment that a softened, centrist Abbott makes sense.

Likewise, it is in this economic climate that once left-wing Gillard can make tough choices to keep businesses alive, where a weaker leader might buckle and sink the Australian economy – throwing loaves to the populous, while driving the bakeries out of business.

Poll Position deems it a great privilege to have observed this process, at door-stop interviews, before dozens of televised speeches and debates, on the campaign trail with the incumbent PM and, yes, even listening to the impassioned whispers to young apparatchiks and old party hands alike trying to bring the other side tumbling down.

So if this campaign has been too boring for some, if the pragmatism shown by both sides has riled old-style class warriors, Poll Position will not pretend to offer any sympathy.

This was the election the GFC made. There's a good chance the next election will be shaped by 'GFC II'. If, in between, the worst we suffer is a little more 'cynical' policy pragmatism and boredom, we'll be doing a lot better than most.

Let the wheels of democracy turn. And may the best woman or man win.


August 20, 7.30am – Frantic bets on our new PM

Now that's a footy match. Going into the final minutes of the game, The Australian's Newspoll puts the teams 50/50 on a two-party preferred basis.

The Greens continue to hold an astonishing 14 per cent of the primary vote, but they have not taken much of Labor's lost supporters this week. It is the Coalition primary vote that has moved up 3 percentage points as Labor dropped 3 points in the four day interval between polls.

The Poll Position crystal ball still suggests a Labor victory – your correspondent feels he can now go out on a limb and predict that the polls will be confounded and Gillard will be the next PM.

At the time of writing, $21 is available on the Betfair exchange for a Coalition win at prices of $3.60, but the 'market depth' of bets for Labor to win, at around $1.38, changed rapidly before your correspondent's eyes – in the space of about a minute it went from $740, down to $526, back up to $1,407 and then down to $45. Money is changing hands at frantic pace.

More later on what a Gillard or Abbott win will mean, but for now readers should note that after a long, fair-minded appraisal of both leaders, The Australian has fixed its gaze on the other end of the ground: "It comes down to a question of trust in a contest between a leader who learned his trade under Mr Howard and one who served under Mr Rudd. On those grounds, we endorse Mr Abbott as our 28th prime minister.”


August 20, 12.10pm – Betting flurry update

Well the odds are coming in and the volumes of cash changing hands is increasing. At the time of writing the Coalition is paying $3.05 for a win, and Labor is priced at $1.47.

Keep in mind that they have been closer – ten days ago they were $2.62 and $1.59 respectively.

The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald have now endorsed Gillard as their preferred PM – as mentioned early, The Australian has endorsed Abbott.

The betting action and last minute punditry is building to climax – if the media has whinged about a boring race for the past five weeks, it's hard to believe there's a journalist or politico in the land who doesn't feel the excitement building in this neck and neck race. Let's hope the punters agree and at least see the sense in rejecting Mark Latham's call for an informal vote, and fully exercising their democratic right tomorrow.


Read previous Poll Position posts here.