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Richardson: Solve the insoluble problem or lose the unlosable election – again

How do you solve a problem like the South Australian Liberal Party?

Jan 13, 2017, updated Jan 13, 2017
SMALL TARGETS: Steven Marshall with Rob Lucas during the 2014 election campaign. Photo: Nat Rogers / InDaily

SMALL TARGETS: Steven Marshall with Rob Lucas during the 2014 election campaign. Photo: Nat Rogers / InDaily

And on that point, how do you catch a cloud and pin it down?

The question, and the challenge, is Steven Marshall’s to solve, and one supposes he is a better than even chance of doing so, assuming that the solution to the perpetual Liberal dilemma is as deceptively simple as winning government in 2018.

But still. I just don’t know what to make of the Marshall Opposition anymore. I’m genuinely perplexed as to the appropriate response.

I don’t know whether I should be annoyed – outraged, even – at their wilful retreat from sensible policy, nixing any semblance of debate about industries that could provide both jobs and economic growth for a state in desperate need of both in order to play a nakedly populist hand a year out from an election.

Or whether I should be applauding the fact that they’ve finally, belatedly, grown something resembling a political antenna, and determined that there is little point remaining ideologically pure (or even cogent) in perpetual opposition.

We have now entered the last full calendar year before Steven Marshall’s second crack at the premiership. Within a few months it will be abundantly clear whether he will again push a small-target agenda as Opposition Leader or opt to paint a broader vision – a promise of sorts of what a Marshall Government might mean for this state.

There is a time and a place for big-picture policy platforms and a time and a place for small targets

Four years ago – and eight years ago – I was critical of the Liberal Opposition for largely, deliberately, opting out of the battle of ideas.

And so it is again in the lead-up to 2018 – no debate on nuclear, a fracking moratorium in the South-East that essentially puts up a ‘Closed for Business’ sign to the gas industry.

Sure, the Libs can argue that these are pipe dreams (no pun intended) that would not have borne fruit in any case. And sure, they can assert that the nuke dump was a policy red herring dangled by Weatherill to distract from more pressing problems ongoing under his watch. And sure, the Libs have just won back Mount Gambier for the first time in over a decade and would rather not give it straight back again, thanks very much.

But these moves also betray a mindset that we can expect to see continue: no policy, even those for which many in the party have advocated long and strong, will take precedence over political point-scoring.

And here’s the rub.

There’s nothing wrong with a small-target strategy per se. It’s like any other tactic in the political playbook: when used properly, it can be very effective. It’s just a question of knowing when to use it.

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Can Steven marshall a Liberal victory? Photo: Nat Rogers / InDaily

Oppositions of all hues and tiers in Australia have been loath to outline detailed blueprints for government ever since John Hewson infamously lost the unlosable federal election of 1993, when Paul Keating masterfully undermined the Libs’ Fightback platform.

Then, when John Howard followed that up with a landslide win predicated on promising little other than to not be Labor, the die was cast: conventional wisdom dictated that small-target campaigns won elections.

Funnily enough, while it’s fashionable (still) to cite these examples as definitive, few ever point out the litany of elections lost by Oppositions who promise little and fail to inspire their electorates. And they similarly fail to acknowledge that Hewson’s big picture policy platform was actually the right strategy when it began. If he had faced Bob Hawke at the ’93 election – as he did when Fightback was first unveiled – he would have won easily. Instead, Hawke was usurped by Keating, who stopped trying to critique Fightback as a policy document and instead attacked it as an ideological manifesto – a strategic shift so profound that it frightened a generation of politicians off enunciating detailed economic policy from Opposition.

In short: there is a time and a place for big-picture policy platforms and a time and a place for small targets. The SA Libs gambled on Labor’s entrenched unpopularity in 2014, believing that to surf into office they needed to promise little more than to not be Labor; and while they seized a comfortable statewide majority it wasn’t enough to form government.

It can be argued that this was the result of biased boundaries, but this opens a can of worms: had the Libs, for instance, never lost Frome nor let an embittered Bob Such leave the fold, they would have formed their own majority.

I felt at the time, and believe more fervently now, that the electorate was looking for hope at the last election, and the Liberals doggedly refused to sell it.

In Hawke’s last days, his Government – then eight years old – was tired and directionless. Eight years. Our state’s Labor administration has governed for almost double that.

While it is fair and fashionable to lament the general ineptitude of the Liberal Opposition for much of that time, it is time to genuinely consider the unique idiosyncrasies that could yet see Labor govern for 20 consecutive years.

Voters credibly have a range of compelling reasons not to vote for a Labor State Government, but as yet they have been offered few compelling reasons to vote for a Liberal one

In six of the last seven elections in South Australia, the Liberals have won the two-party vote. They have won a parliamentary majority just once (and formed Government twice, relying – as Labor has many times since – on conservative independents to seal the deal in 1997).

And yet, in all that time, Labor’s statewide vote has fallen below 48 per cent just twice: once in the post-State Bank poll of 1993 – an outlier in every sense, and the only state election since 1985 in which the Libs have won an outright parliamentary majority. And once in 2014, when the ALP’s 47 per cent two-party return was nonetheless enough to retain power. That’s right, Weatherill’s own version of Keating’s sweetest victory was predicated on the party’s worst electoral performance since the State Bank.

What does all this mean? It could mean, as I pondered late last year, that there are more Liberal voters than Labor ones in SA. But it could also mean that those who do vote Labor are effectively rusted on, and that it is a very rare thing for the ALP to return less than 48 per cent of the statewide vote.

And if so, that is a big problem for Steven Marshall.

Voters credibly have a range of compelling reasons not to vote for a Labor State Government, but as yet they have been offered few compelling reasons to vote for a Liberal one.

In a two-party system, the distinction should be much of a muchness: if you can convince enough people not to vote Labor, it saves the considerable trouble of convincing them to vote Liberal.

But while Labor’s malaise appears terminal, it was in similar disrepair at this point in the cycle four years ago, and despite returning its lowest statewide vote in two decades it still hung onto its battleground seats.

Moreover, the 2018 poll may be a far cry from a traditional two-cornered contest. Labor’s vote may be rusted on, but the loyalty of traditional Liberal voters could well be tested by the insurgence of the Xenophon Team.

So the burning question remains: how does Steven Marshall solve a problem like the SA Liberal Party?

Is the time and zeitgeist right for another small-target Liberal campaign? Or is it finally time for the Opposition to engage in the battle of ideas, and sell hope to a jaded electorate?

Will the 2018 election be won by the party whose greatest asset is simply being ‘Not Labor’, or does Steven Marshall need to provide a compelling argument to become SA’s 46th premier?

I can’t say I know the answer. But I’m not sure the Libs do either.

Tom Richardson is a senior reporter at InDaily.

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