People are busily trying to disect why the Labor Party in the NSW State Election at the weekend got thumped so comprehensively. The media seems to be playing some line that it's all a great shock to them, even though some outlets had predicted the number of seats post-election at as low as eleven. Yet as George Santayana wrote in his 1905 book "The Life of Reason, Vol 1" and which is oft-quoted: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
Cast your mind back to 1996. Coming into the election the Labor Party had held government since 1983. In the meantime, the stock market crash of 1987 happened; followed by in the words of the then PM Paul Keating "the recession that Australia had to have", and the sale of Qantas, the Commonwealth Bank amongst the trophies in the family cabinet flogged off in a fire sale. Not surprisingly, Labor's primary vote in that 1996 election was the lowest recorded by the ALP since 1934.
So why is that important? There are obvious parallels between Federal Labor of 1996 and NSW State Labor of 2011.
We have just passed through a "Global Financial Crisis" following a "market correction" and although the country as avoided falling into a recession, NSW most ingloriously slid there. The electorate was angered Federally by the sale of assets in 1996 but that wasn't a shade on the outrage displayed when Premier Kennealy sold off the state's electricity companies and then shut down the parliament to avoid serious questioning. On that note, Kennealy herself was the fourth Premier during the term of office whereas in 1996, Paul Keating had come off of the supposedly "unwinnable" election in 1993 after replacing Hawke himself (though it must be said that Dr John Hewson shot his 1993 campaign in the head by trying to introduce a 15% GST, and then couldn't explain it - the Cake is a Lie*).
There are 3 critical reasons why Labor lost this election:
1. It has been generally said that in a Westminster system, people do not vote Governments in: quite the contrary, they vote Governments out.
2. Privatisation of Assets is never something which the electorate swallows easily; in many people's eyes it is akin to theft. On the flip side, in the Australian experience, once those assets have been sold, they never return to public hands again. I can not even think of a single example of a re-nationalisation of any public good or service.
3. When Premier Keneally did sell off the electricity companies, the process was very much behind closed doors and the parliament was dissolved thereafter; this is probably the most disgusting thing of all. Dissolving the parliament after a $5.3bn decision is a direct affront to the workings of democracy. Especially when you consider that the policy was never brought before the people of NSW in the 2007 election either.
The 2011 NSW State Election had nothing to do with a Carbon Tax, Mining Tax, or whatever Mr Abbott or Ms Gillard might think of it. Julian Morrow on Q and A summed it up brilliantly: it was to do with Labor's "toxic incompetence"; perhaps if we add the word "criminal" in there as well it might be approaching the truth.
Or maybe we can hark back to the words of almost 80 years ago. Very simply, Labor had offended "the decent and respectable people of New South Wales"... and that's terrible.
*The Infamous Birthday Cake Interview - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WndWM71-jSQ
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