We agree on most things, right?

THE winner in Saturday's byelection was the party that didn't stand. The Liberals stood back to watch as Labor and the Greens fractured the alliance that is the alternative to them, with neither winning a real victory.

Labor held the seat, and with it came the end of the era when the Greens could expect preferences to favour them. Yet at the end of counting on Saturday night, Labor's vote was down 2.3 per cent on first preferences, and 4.8 per cent on the two-party-preferred vote. Melbourne was a safe Labor seat for 100 years, yet on Saturday Labor won just a third of the vote.

The Greens' vote rose by 4 to 5 per cent on both measures, but they lost again in an election they had expected to win. The results confirmed that preferences are now working against them. Without preferences, the Greens will not win lower house seats in future. Without seats, they will lose momentum. Without momentum, they will revert to the fringes.

It was a weird result. As of Saturday night, only 66 per cent of the voters had cast a vote, and 8.5 per cent of those were informal. In 2010, 84 per cent of Melbourne's electors cast a formal vote; this time, it will be around 64 per cent. One can assume that most of the absent 20 per cent would have voted Liberal: so had the Liberals stood, Labor's vote would have been lower still.

The Liberals must have been left chuckling when NSW Right powerbroker Sam Dastyari attacked the Greens his government's partners as loopy extremists akin to One Nation. The only thing voters can conclude from that is that the Labor-Greens alliance is a mismatch of enemies, an unstable partnership bound to fail.

All three parties need to step back and take a look at how they relate to each other. The Liberals dominate the federal scene, but their lead is brittle when the polls show half their own supporters want Malcolm Turnbull to replace Tony Abbott as leader. And while Ted Baillieu may have no plausible rival, his own polls are worrying for a first-term government that should be on its honeymoon.

Baillieu has enemies to the left and right, but fewer friends than he deserves when his government is mostly making sensible decisions. A prime example is its decision to reopen New Street, one of Brighton's main roads, by installing relatively cheap boom gates. It rejected the two bad options: to leave a main road closed, as Labor did, or to put in an expensive underpass, as some locals wanted. You just wish it would apply the same common sense by revisiting its excessive TAFE cuts and scrapping its wasteful policy to put two security guards on every railway station.

But, of course, Labor and the Greens can't praise any decision by the Baillieu government, because we seem to have a new rule that oppositions must oppose virtually everything a government does. The only Gillard government policy that Abbott supports is to send soldiers to fight in Afghanistan.

My thesis is that Australia, and Victoria, cannot afford the degree of political partisanship we now have. The centre needs to be strengthened. In reality, most of us agree on most things. We need political structures that reflect that.

There will always be partisanship: politics is a contact sport. But we need to create a second avenue, in which big long-term issues are dealt with on a bipartisan (or all-party) basis, so that business has certainty about future policy frameworks and can plan investments accordingly.

Last week I wrote on the impasse on infrastructure investment. We want better roads and public transport, but, egged on by whoever is in opposition, we oppose every means of paying for them: higher taxes, higher debt or user charges such as road tolls.

Past governments dealt with this by handing such issues to all-party committees to resolve on the understanding that they suspend hostilities on the issue and work for a joint decision, rather than split on party lines. It offers oppositions a partial share of power, so that decisions with big consequences are made by weighing up long-term costs and benefits, not short-term political ones.

Climate change is another issue on which a bipartisan approach is needed. Whatever system we adopt to tackle it, it will work only if business can trust future governments to honour commitments made by the current one.

The Liberal Party supported a carbon price under John Howard, Brendan Nelson and Turnbull as leaders. Climate change requires a long-term bipartisan policy so business can invest with confidence that the goalposts will not be moved. Kevin Rudd wasted his opportunity by trying to use the issue to divide the Liberals, ultimately causing his own downfall.

Australia deserves better. We won't get it from Abbott, who is partisan to the core. We won't get it from Gillard or Rudd either. But we could get it from Baillieu and Daniel Andrews. They could show the next generation of Australian political leaders the benefits of taking some big, politically difficult issues out of partisan politics to get the decision right.

Where would the Greens fit into this? In Tasmania and the ACT, they are working well in coalition or partnership with Labor governments, and accept compromise as normal. In Victoria, they seem to stand alone. Should they be islands of purity, or build bridges to become part of the main game?

Their model should be Germany where the Green "realos" (realists) wrested control from the "fundis" (fundamentalists) to became part of the Schroeder government which transformed the country and form state governments with both sides. Compromise is not a dirty word.

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Carr no trailblazer on state-federal path

Bob Carr is hardly blazing a new trail. He will be the fifth premier of New South Wales to seek a new life in Federal Parliament - and the seventh former premier or chief minister to do so in the past 50 years.

But few former premiers have succeeded in Canberra. Federal politics is far more diverse, and newcomers can win partyroom support only by taking it from those already entrenched.

Some succeed. An example was Mr Carr's predecessor in Macquarie Street, John Fahey, who became a respected finance minister in the Howard government, until a cancer scare forced him out of politics in 2001.

Carmen Lawrence followed her stint as Western Australia's first female premier by becoming minister for health and human services in the Keating government. But her years in Canberra were dominated by a partisan campaign and court charges over the suicide of Perth woman Penny Easton. Lawrence was acquitted on all counts, but it crippled her politically.

Former South Australian premier Steele Hall went on to Canberra, first for the centrist Liberal Movement, then back in the Liberal Party. But despite his high profile, he ended up in the outer, not the members'.

One-time Queensland premier Vince Gair certainly made an impact. Dethroned as Queensland premier in 1957 after he broke with Labor, he was elected as a Democratic Labor Party senator in 1964 and took over as party leader. But after losing the leadership, he accepted an appointment from arch-enemy Gough Whitlam as ambassador to Ireland. His irate colleagues then joined the Liberals to force an election, in which the DLP was wiped out entirely.

State premiers used to have more clout. The first Federal Parliament had at least 10 former premiers, including the only Victorian premier ever to make the move, Sir George Turner, who became the first federal treasurer. But only former NSW Premier Sir George Reid became prime minister, and for a brief, precarious year.

The most successful was Tasmanian Labor premier Joe Lyons. He became a minister in the Scullin government, then acting treasurer when E.G. Theodore, a former Queensland premier, was bogged down by more muckraking. When Theodore was cleared and reinstated as treasurer, Lyons quit the cabinet, then quit Labor and took over as leader of the conservative side, becoming prime minister in 1932 until his death in 1939.

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Senate urged to block budget

THE Senate should refuse to pass the 2011-12 budget until the government redrafts it to make it conform to proper budgetary standards, former Democrat senator Andrew Murray has urged.

Mr Murray, who led the crusade for financial transparency and accountability during his 12 years in the Senate, said the "appalling" confession by former finance minister Lindsay Tanner of deliberate misrepresentation in government finance should force Parliament to make a stand.

"The 2011-12 budget has examples of significant new policies included in the ordinary annual services appropriation bill, such as the allocation of $1.3 billion over eight years to reward payments for great teachers," Mr Murray said in a lecture convened by the Senate. Yet both the constitution and a 1965 "compact" between the government and the Senate agreed that spending on new policies should be excluded from appropriation bills and proposed as separate legislation, which could then be amended.

"Short of rejecting the annual appropriation bills, there is presently no mechanism for resisting breaches of the compact by the executive," Mr Murray said.

"A direct challenge by the executive to the unambiguous intention of the constitution, and a blatant disregard for budgetary propriety, will likely again go unchecked by the Senate."

In 2008, Mr Tanner as finance minister commissioned then senator Murray to report on how to improve budgetary transparency and accountability. But last month in his book, Sideshow, Mr Tanner revealed that as finance minister he deliberately misclassified annual spending as capital allocations, mixed up figures from different accounting systems to confuse debate, and allowed spending to overrun the budget estimates.

"I became adept at these dark arts," Mr Tanner wrote.

Mr Murray told the Senate forum that of his 45 recommendations to make government finances more open and truthful, the government has accepted only 10, rejected 21, with the fate of the other 14 still in doubt.

He urged Parliament to be "more critical and assertive" to force the government to obey the rules. Specifically, he called on the Greens and the crossbenchers to demand that Parliament set its own budget and that of the Auditor-General saying governments of both sides had starved them of the resources they need as watchdogs.

"Parliament has to do battle against the dark arts, against that which is wrongly hidden, that which is not what it seems, and performance that is not good enough," he said.

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Minority rule quite workable

YESTERDAY was the end of the beginning. We now have a minority government, and a set of agreements about reforms it will make. The new ministry and those supporting it now face the long haul: making it work.

We have had many minority governments, and we have learnt a few things about them. First, and most important, they usually work. Second, they can take tough decisions. But third, like all relationships, to work and to take tough decisions, they require self-discipline and focus from both sides.

When that doesn't happen, the idealistic agreements gradually erode, the old ways return, and governments can fall.

But all Australian states have had minority governments in recent years. Except in Tasmania, all have seen out their terms and most have left lasting reforms.

Canberra itself has had nothing but minority government since 1989. South Australia has had minority governments for most of that time. We had one in Victoria from 1999 to 2002, which permanently changed the state to make government more accountable. There are now minority governments in Western Australia, Tasmania, the ACT, the Northern Territory and Federal Parliament.

Let's drop the idea that this is something extraordinary and unworkable. It's actually very ordinary and workable if all players want it to work.

The agreements Labor has signed with the Greens and independents simply guarantee supply and confidence to the new government. They do not assure that any particular legislation will be passed. That will have to be negotiated bill by bill.

Labor will need four votes from the six crossbenchers to pass any legislation opposed by the Coalition. Each side will have 72 members in the 150-seat House of Representatives, with four independents, one Green and one West Australian National.

From July 1 next year, Labor will also need the support of the Greens in the Senate to pass any legislation opposed by the Coalition. Labor will have 31 of the 76 senators, the Greens nine, the Coalition 34, with new DLP senator-elect John Madigan and South Australian independent Nick Xenophon on the crossbenches but without power.

It won't be easy. In 1999, like Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott now, Russell Savage and Craig Ingram were country independents who supported Labor. Today they have mixed feelings about it. Mr Savage feels bitter disappointment, Mr Ingram is more philosophical.

Their agreement with Labor leader Steve Bracks brought about major reforms: restoring the independence of the Auditor-General, fixed four-year terms, reform of Parliament, increased spending for regional Victoria and, most importantly, reform of the Legislative Council to elect members by proportional representation.

That has deprived the government of a majority, and turned the council into a real parliamentary check on the power of governments.

Ingram, still the MP for Gippsland East, feels proud of what they achieved. "Most of the outstanding reforms of Parliament came as the result of minority governments," he says. "We got a significant change of direction in spending towards the regions. The most positive thing about this federal election is that there will be much greater focus on regional Australia."

Ingram won the restoration of passenger trains to Bairnsdale, increased water allocations to the Snowy River and the Gippsland Lakes, and a pledge to rule out a dam on the Mitchell River.

Savage was less fortunate. He speaks bitterly about betrayal as Labor broke its promises to him. Passenger trains never came back to Mildura. Its hospital remained in private hands, and then Labor chose the Mallee for a toxic dump, sealing his defeat in 2006.

He has some pithy advice for Mr Windsor and Mr Oakeshott. "Don't trust anything they say get them to put it in writing," he says. "Watch your back all the time from both sides."


HOW THE NEW HOUSE WILL LOOK

150 SEATS

GILLARD

LABOR 72

INDEPENDENTS 3

GREEN 1

TOTAL 76

ABBOTT

COALITION 72

WA NATIONAL 1

INDEPENDENT 1

TOTAL 74

THE NEW SENATE

TOTAL SEATS 76

LABOR 31

GREENS 9

COALITION 34

DLP 1

IND (XENOPHON) 1

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Labor revives Aboriginal preamble vow

LABOR has pledged to invite the Coalition to join in a bipartisan initiative to rewrite the preamble to the constitution to recognise indigenous Australians.

Opposition Leader Tony Abbott reached out to indigenous Australians in another way in his policy speech, floating the idea of offering guaranteed jobs to young Aborigines and Torres Strait islanders if they gave up their rights to welfare payments.

But no details were released, and it was unclear what form this might take.

Former prime minister Kevin Rudd promised in 2007 that Labor would rewrite the preamble to recognise the first Australians, then hold a referendum to seek public approval for the change.

But while the idea won support from former prime minister John Howard and Mr Abbott, nothing was done in Labor's term, a fact sharply criticised by Aboriginal leaders.

Minister for Indigenous Affairs Jenny Macklin and Attorney-General Robert McClelland yesterday responded by proposing to invite the Coalition to join it in setting up an expert panel to work out how best to implement the pledge.

They said the panel would include indigenous leaders, MPs and constitutional lawyers, and be asked to come up with "options on the form of the amendment, and guidance on the information needed for public discussion".

"We are optimistic that this reform can happen," Ms Macklin said in Nhulunbuy.

"We are hopeful that this is an issue that can unite Australians and be above partisan political interests."

She also said Labor would give $20 million to support remote communities in implementing plans to reduce the supply of alcohol and drugs, and prevention programs to tackle alcohol, drug and substance abuse.

"This abuse can have a devastating impact on indigenous communities, leading to high levels of substance-fuelled violence," she said.

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Control fetish stifles ALP

OPPOSITIONS don't win elections, governments lose them. It's an old saying but a good one. Governments are well-resourced, oppositions poorly resourced. So governments normally win re-election. If they lose, it's usually because they made a bad mistake.

Were it not for WorkChoices, our prime minister now would be John Howard or Peter Costello. Had the Kennett government kept its promises to regional Victorians instead of cutting their services, our premier might still be Jeff Kennett.

Longevity is a factor, too. I recall Dick Hamer reflecting that every decision you make in government costs you support from someone, and eventually you end up with more opponents than supporters. But that shouldn't trouble a first-term government.

So why is the Rudd government at risk of becoming Australia's first one-term government since the Great Depression? What big mistakes has Labor made that has cost it so much support in the polls?

First, an essential caution. I've looked back over 25 years of polling, and in every one of the past eight federal elections, the opposition was leading in the polls at or around this stage. But in only two of those - Howard in 1996, and Kevin Rudd in 2007 - did the opposition win the election. In the other six, voters came back to the government by election day in sufficient numbers to re-elect it.

That's not a forecast of what will happen this time. But it's a strong reminder that what we tell opinion polls months before the contest may not be the way we vote in the polling booth. Opinion polls at this time are a verdict on the government. Our votes on election day are also, in part, a verdict on the opposition.

A Newspoll yesterday implied that voters could be already turning back to Labor, which led by 52 to 48 in two-party terms. But that lead was due entirely to Newspoll's incorrect assumption that the 25 per cent of Australians now supporting the Greens or minor parties will distribute their preferences in the same way as the 15 per cent who voted that way in 2007.

The Age/Nielsen poll instead asks those supporting smaller parties which major party they prefer. In its last poll, a third of Greens preferences were going to the Liberals (up from a fifth in 2007), as were half of those from minor parties and independents. Replace Newspoll's wrong assumption with Nielsen's data, and its bottom line should read 50-50.

Labor is still in trouble. What went wrong?

Opinions will differ. To me, it's a combination of four specific policy failures, with a related set of broader underlying problems about how this government operates.

The first problem was the lack of qualitative controls in Labor's stimulus spending, which opened the way for rorts and poor workmanship by contractors on the insulation and school building programs. This has left Labor looking incompetent, and many voters don't forgive that.

Second, as the refugee boats returned, Rudd vacated the policy debate on how they should be treated, leaving the ground free for the Coalition and the shock jocks to fan Australians' fears that we are being swamped by refugees, and that the only solution is to keep them out of Australia.

Third, the dumping of the emissions trading scheme was an act of breathtaking cynicism from a Prime Minister who had told us that tackling global warming was the great moral issue of our time.

In part, the ETS was sacrificed to meet the government's self-imposed 2 per cent spending cap, a prime case of the tail wagging the dog. It mattered, because it cost Rudd and Labor respect. It told Australians that what this government cares about is keeping power, and anything else is expendable to that end.

The fight over emissions trading, like the fight over the resource rent tax, erupted because Rudd and his inner circle had no political strategy to get difficult reforms through the Senate - and for an opposition, the easiest choice is always to oppose.

A reforming government has two choices: accept battle, and fight like tigers to educate the public and win the debate - or bring the opposition into negotiations early, sharing the credit for reform, but also the responsibility. Rudd did neither.

By instinct, the PM is a manager, and a hands-on, untrusting manager. His ministers are not free to make policy in their areas, as in the distant past. They are advisers before policy is made, then sales reps afterwards. Like Paul Keating, like Howard, Rudd makes the decisions, using cabinet at best as a sounding board, or at worst - as when deciding to ditch the ETS, and impose a resource rent tax - ignoring it completely.

The common thread to all this is an overriding desire to control events. The ministerial press flacks consult at 5.30 each morning, having already read the papers, to decide what the government's lines will be, and to ensure that all ministers say the same thing. The stifling of individual initiative is one reason why the government is so ineffective at selling its message.

Labor, the party of reform, needs to reform itself. It needs to stand for the things it believes in. It needs to have the courage to go out and confront a sceptical public, and make the case for the reforms it knows we need. It needs to free up its frontbench and backbench talent, and use it better.

It needs to convince Australians that it stands for something more than just staying in power.

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On average, a beautiful set of numbers for Abbott

IF THE weekend's Age/Nielsen poll numbers are right, and the swing against Labor is uniform in all seats, then an election today would install Tony Abbott as prime minister.

More than that. On these figures, the Coalition would win all 15 seats in Western Australia. The Greens would win their first seat in the House of Representatives, unseating Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner in Melbourne.

He would not be the only senior minister thrown out. With Labor's support in the west down to just 25 per cent, Foreign Minister Stephen Smith would be turfed out in Perth.

Of course, it's just an opinion poll. And anyone who remembers opinion polls knows we've been here before. In 2001, and again in 2004, John Howard was trailing in the polls at this stage. He won the elections.

But then, he could spend his way out of trouble. Labor can't.

Nielsen pollster John Stirton cautions that a poll this size has a margin of error of up to 2.6 per cent. That could yield a wide range of outcomes. As Michelle Grattan wrote yesterday, on these numbers the election result is too close to call.

But this was not a rogue poll. Of five polls conducted in May, four have found the Coalition polling at least 50 per cent of the two-party vote. And Labor has more voters in very safe seats, so a 50-50 split of votes tends to mean the Coalition wins most of the seats and government.

Assume a uniform swing in each state and, on these figures, Labor would lose 18 of the 88 seats it notionally holds after the redistribution.

It would be left with just 70 seats of the 150 in the House of Representatives, while the Coalition would win 76, with three independents and one Green. Mr Abbott could govern with the narrowest of majorities.

Who are the voters deserting Labor? For a more reliable picture, we have aggregated numbers from the past two Nielsen polls, and compared them with the same polls a year ago.

The swing against Labor has been massive: 7 per cent on primary votes, and 4.5 per cent in two-party terms. But the swing to the Coalition on primary votes has been just 2 per cent, with the Greens picking up 3.5 per cent and independents and minor parties the other 1.5 per cent.

The polls show the anti-Labor swing is almost universal. Only the 18-24 age group is moving the other way. But it is stronger in the resources states than in the south-east, stronger among women than men, and stronger in the cities than in the rest of the country.

The swing has been most intense of all among the 25 to 39-year-olds, the age group whose aspirations to home ownership have been assaulted by soaring house prices and interest rates. A year ago, 59 per cent of them backed Labor after preferences. Now, only 52 per cent of them do.

Geographically, the biggest hit has been in WA, where Labor's primary vote, even averaged over two polls, has slumped to 30 per cent, down from 42.5 per cent a year ago. After preferences, it is down from 49 per cent to 43 per cent.

The swing in Queensland is almost as bad, down 5.5 per cent in a year, although a year ago, Queensland was Labor's strongest state.

In NSW the swing is 4.5 per cent, while in South Australia the damage has been minor. In Tasmania and the ACT, the numbers polled are too small to be reliable, but they look horrible for Labor.

In Victoria, Labor's primary vote has slumped 6.5 per cent in the past year. Most of that has gone to the Greens, cutting the two-party swing to 3 per cent. Even so, the Liberals would reclaim Deakin and Corangamite, while the Greens would take Melbourne.

The other surprise is that the gender gap is back. A year ago, men and women as groups voted the same, but in the past two polls, men have come down 52-48 for Labor while women have opted 51-49 for the Coalition.

Those who thought Tony Abbott was a turnoff for women were wrong.


WHERE LABOR IS LOSING

% CHANGE IN VOTE IN PAST YEAR


BY STATE

1ST PREFS 2-PARTY

NSW Down 8 Down 4.5

Victoria Down 6.5 Down 3

Queensland Down 8.5 Down 5.5

WA Down 12.5 Down 6

SA/NT Down 6 Down 1.5


BY SEX

Male Down 6.5 Down 3

Female Down 8 Down 6

SOURCE: AGE/NIELSEN POLLS, MARCH-MAY 2009 AND APRIL-MAY 2010

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