The Attack Dog

As far as the Liberal Party is concerned, Bill Heffernan is a necessary evil.

He has no major following of constituents, no portfolio to attend to, and doesn’t have to worry about re-election to the Senate until 2010. What’s more, his connections in the NSW Liberal Party, including a close friendship with John Howard, will ensure that he’ll get in on the top of the NSW Senate ticket. And no matter how unpopular a major party is, the person on top of each state’s Senate ticket gets elected.

With his place secure, Bill Heffernan has nothing to do but political dirty work. With Barnaby Joyce stalling on the sale of Telstra last year, it was Heffernan who brought him back into line, no doubt at the suggestion of the Prime Minister. But with the need for an united front this election year, Howard’s beloved attack dog has decided to focus his aggression on the other side of the Parliamentary chamber, specifically, Julia Gillard.

So in an interview with PBL’s The Bulletin, nominally about agriculture in the Top End, Senator Heffernan made a comment about Gillard that was little more than an aside.

He was picking off flaws in the Labor Party’s frontbench, and his comment about Julia Gillard was one that was little else but sexist. He stated that Gillard’s decision to remain “deliberately barren” made her unfit for leadership.

"One of the great understandings in a community is family, and the relationship between mum, dad and a bucket of nappies,” Heffernan said.

As shocking as it was to most of the population, Heffernan’s comment may well have been rather shrewd. Heffernan is rather insignificant in the grand scheme of things, being little more than a loud-mouthed backbencher, and his comments won’t sabotage the Coalition’s bid for re-election. But what it did manage to do was activate some deep down levels of chauvinism in some sections of the Australian population.

The comments were condemned by the media, the newspaper letter-writers and the Opposition, but not by everybody. A silent segment of the community may forget about the economy, education and climate change and decide on voting Liberal so that they don’t have a woman as Deputy Prime Minister. Heffernan’s comments may galvanise the chauvinists like Pauline Hanson did the racists.

The argument that a childless woman is unfit to be Deputy Prime Minister will hold no water in political circles, but Heffernan was appealing to the talkback radio crowd rather than the academics. In a Labor Government Julia Gillard would hold the same position as Mark Vaile does now. Does the average Australian know if Mark Vaile has children? Would the average Australian be able to select Mark Vaile from a line-up?

The most successful thing about Heffernan’s comments was not the effect they will directly have on the voters, but the way they diverted attention away from the ALP National Conference. The other big politics story of the week was all about Kevin and his dream team, and the Coalition seemed powerless to stop it. All it took was for a pig-headed backbencher who doesn’t have to worry about re-election to take the spotlight away from the conference and point it somewhere completely trivial.

The Coalition has been throwing plenty of mud at the Opposition this year, but little of it has stuck. Senator Heffernan certainly doesn’t seem averse to doing some of the Government’s dirty work. After all, a bit of political dirt pales in comparison to a bucket of nappies.

Have a Seat: North Sydney

According to Mike Bailey, it’s a ‘huge challenge’ and an ‘uphill battle’, but the weatherman must be kidding himself if he thinks he will come close to winning. Sure, the polling suggests nothing less than a Coalition annihilation, but Joe Hockey remains in one of the safest Liberal seats in Sydney, and there’s a couple of dozen seats that would fall before North Sydney.

As far as the ALP is concerned, Mike Bailey is doing a rather noble thing for his side of politics. Mike Bailey is either genuinely hopeful of winning the seat, taking one for the team, or devising a rather noble way to retire for the ABC. Regardless, this whole notion of dropping celebrity candidates in seats held by frontbenchers seems to be one of the cleverest political strategies that the ALP has come up with. This is no parachuting Garrett into Kingsford-Smith plot. It’s something more significant.

Who knows whether Bailey would make a good parliamentary MP? He’s been doing the weather for longer than Joe Hockey’s been doing politics, so he’s a familiar face to Sydneysiders, especially those on the North Shore more inclined to be watching the ABC. But aside from anticipating cold fronts and reporting on rainfall, what more is he good for? Tony Abbott remarked that journalists don’t necessarily make good politicians, and I think the same applies to weathermen. Predicting Bailey’s political talent would be like predicting the weather for this day next year.

But if Labor wanted Bailey as a MP, they would have put him someplace safer. They don’t want Bailey as an MP specifically. They just want him as a candidate. Somebody to threaten Joe Hockey enough so the big man is overstretched between spruiking IR laws he didn’t put together, and trying to present himself as a good local member. North Sydney is merely a miniature Bennelong, the odds and the stakes are much lower.

Back to you, Juanita.

Attack Ads

When the Coalition failed to win back the NSW Government after the disaster that was Iemma’s first term, they steadfastly put the blame on the Labor Party’s “attack ads”. It was a convenient way to divert attention away from the Opposition’s shortcomings, and that of Liberal leader Peter Debnam. And while the ALP would still be in office in New South Wales without the ads, it certainly took the sting out of the electorate’s swing.

Television has been involved with the political process for half a century, and attack ads in the United States have been around nearly as long. They are usually nasty, often untrue and tap into the fears of the undecided voters. But forty-five years of attack ads have shown that they work.

Attack ads work best for incumbents, simply because the incumbent is better known than the opposition in most cases. The incumbent will have faced such scrutiny before their election, so the dirty laundry has usually already been washed and hung out to dry. Since the opposition is usually less known, the attack ads directed at them can expose skeletons in closets, reiterate uncertainties and in some cases, mislead the public. The 2004 ‘Swift-Boat Veterans for Truth’ ad campaign did critical damage to presidential candidate John Kerry’s campaign, despite being downright incorrect. The Bush/Cheney team expressed public disapproval at the advertisement, but the ad still stuck in voters’ minds.

Attack ads are not as vicious in Australia, nor as popular, but the L-plate campaign against Mark Latham did the ALP’s campaign considerable damage.

Every attack from the Coalition against Kevin Rudd this year has backfired, but in the desperation of fighting a losing battle, the incumbents will try to tear strips off the ALP as the election looms. It bears less of a chance at backfiring simply because attack ads are never voiced by the candidates. They are voiced by sinister-voiced and faceless baritones and presented in such a way that it seems the Government has nothing to do with it. But the electorate will see through it if the ALP don’t fight fire with fire.

Labor has been running successful advertisements all through the year. When they started back in January it was unusually early, but the opinion polls showed that it really worked. The ads were positive and optimistic about the future. They were also contained, focused on the personality of Rudd and of his fiscal conservatism. It was simply to inform voters that Rudd was a safe and friendly option. The Coalition couldn’t have a go at him for it, also The Chaser managed quite well.



The moment the ALP tries out an attack ad against the Howard Government, it will make the medium open slather. If the ALP tries such an attack it will justify a retaliatory response from the Coalition to the electorate.

In order to maintain their position in the polls during the actual election campaign, the ALP need to counter any of the Coalition’s attack ads with the positive ones they’ve been running this year. It allows them the moral high ground, and makes the Coalition seem desperate, vicious and struggling to maintain a sense of dignity and order.

Annihilation?

When John Howard told his parliamentary colleagues that the Coalition faced annihilation at the election, he wasn’t kidding. Howard was aware of the truths behind the polling, and while most commentators were taking the Labor Party’s popularity with a grain of salt, Howard couldn’t afford to.

Two opinion polls came out this week, one from Newspoll and the other from Morgan. Newspoll put Labor at its lowest two party preferred poll since February, 55 to 45, when the Rudd and Gillard team were still new and were yet to really get their message out. The Morgan poll showed Labor in an improved position from last time, 60 to 40.

While Labor may be viewing the Newspoll result as being bad news (the awaited budget bounce perhaps?), so will the Coalition. An election with a TPP of 55 to the Opposition would be the biggest swing since Malcolm Fraser’s victory in 1975. If the swing was uniform across the country, it would see Howard lose his seat, as well as frontbenchers Peter McGauran, Fran Bailey, Malcolm Turnbull, Mal Brough and Jim Lloyd. Presumed Opposition Leader Peter Costello would be retaining his seat with a buffer of 1.1%.

Going off Morgan’s results, the situation would near wipe the Coalition off the face of the planet. The Labor Party could pick up an additional 61 seats, and presuming the swing is uniform (though it never really is), would take out Costello, Abbott, Ruddock, and Hockey, as well as the aforementioned frontbenchers. The Liberals would be left with Brendan Nelson, Julie Bishop and Alexander Downer, as well as scarcely two dozen seats. The good news is that the vacancies give a chance for Wilson Tuckey to re-enter the cabinet at long last.

Have a Seat: Macquarie

John Howard visited both Bathurst and Lithgow yesterday for the first time as Prime Minister. Why Howard is wasting his time campaigning in the seat of Macquarie is nothing short of a mystery. The Coalition would need a TPP vote of 53.3% their way to retain the seat, and it would take nothing short of a miracle for that to happen. The fundraising lunch at the Carrington wine bar in Bathurst was the location for the announcement of an audacious but sly election promise.

A promise of $10 million for a feasibility study into the Bells Line Expressway, a significant local concern for Macquarie voters, was met with cheers of approval at the fundraiser. The catch? Well, aside from the fact that the study does not carry any obligation to actual road improvements, was that the State Government would have to match the price. Something that Howard knew wasn’t going to happen.

The Bells Line of Road was one of the biggest election issues for the people of the seats of Bathurst and the Blue Mountains in March’s State Election, yet there were no such election promises made there. The NSW Government is running at a deficit, and the incredibly costly project was just too big to deal with. Howard’s promise yesterday makes him out to be the hero, and the NSW Government out to be the bad guys.

The electorate won’t fall for it. The redistribution of seats has seen the Liberal-voting areas of Macquarie shorn off in favour of the hardcore Labor towns of Bathurst and Lithgow. What’s more, Labor is running former state minister Bob Debus in the seat. If I were sitting member Kerry Bartlett, I would be actively looking for a job somewhere else, because he stands no chance of keeping is seat. Ben Chifley’s seat is heading back to Labor for the first time in 11 years.