by-elections
3 Dec 2009
Labor Will Pay A Price For The No-Show In Higgins
Labor could have scared the Liberals badly in Costello's old seat this weekend, but by not even running they'll lose ground to the Greens there and everywhere, write Rebekka Power and Hugo Kelly
It’s happened!
Malcolm Mackerras has predicted that the Liberals will lose Higgins to the Greens. Malcolm has made a career of taking wild guesses at election results and when he occasionally gets one right (as chance would decree), he’s proclaimed a prophet.
Sorry Malcolm, you’ve got this one wrong. The end of the world is not scheduled to take place until 2012.
Sure, Labor gifted the Greens a PR bonanza by not running in Higgins. And now the Abbott partyroom coup has turned Saturday’s by-election into a micro-referendum on climate change — very bad news for the Liberals in an inner suburban seat like Higgins.
But luckily for Liberal candidate Kelly O’Dwyer, and sadly for Mackerras, the Greens are still enthusiastic amateurs … otherwise O’Dwyer’s fledgling political career would be toast.
The situation has been made possible by Kevin Rudd’s decision not to run a candidate. But that decision will come at a cost to Labor and the price may be paid at several levels of politics.
Locally, this was the party’s first live chance since Federation to win this iconic piece of Liberal heartland which the Libs currently hold by 7.1 per cent. Labor’s chances for the seat would have only been improved by the promotion of Tony "Climate Change Is Crap" Abbott, whose party leadership will go down like a lead balloon in Melbourne’s leafy east. It will be interesting to see whether he pays a visit to the electorate this week — local Libs would probably toss mocha-flavoured Trampoline-brand gelati at him from the windows of their Range Rovers as they cruise along Glenferrie Road to that gorgeous Malvern organic fruit shop.
With the Greens running a harder line on climate change than Higgins voters might like, a Labor candidate would have had a better than even money chance of winning this seat. Another thing in their favour was that when the outgoing member, Peter Costello, finally spat the dummy, the party locals had a credible candidate lined up.
Local barrister Dr Paul Vout already had a good local profile via a solid earlier campaign for the state seat of Malvern in 2006. With a by-election for Higgins on the cards, several candidates had been mooted internally, but locals favoured him as the pick of the bunch, and the party’s Higgins federal electorate assembly executive, led by Labor tribal elder Race Mathews, put the case for running a candidate strongly to new state secretary, Nick Reece.
At the very least, a Green/Labor wedge would have scared the smartly pressed suit pants off Kelly O’Dwyer and her smug local Liberal supporters who take "ownership" of Higgins for granted. (That complacency was typified at a local function a couple of weeks ago when Camberwell’s RSL chief introduced O’Dwyer as the "member designate" for the seat, "representing Peter Costello".)
Labor’s view federally was that the party would either run a significant big-budget campaign — or wouldn’t run at all. The likelihood, in their opinion, was that even if Labor pulled off a miracle win, the seat would immediately revert to the Liberals at next year’s general election.
But that is not always the case and recent history in Higgins itself shows this. In 1999, Labor won Jeff Kennett’s own seat of Burwood (which sits inside Higgins) with a swing of 10.4 per cent and doughty local campaigner Bob Stensholt still holds Burwood a decade later.
But now Labor’s decision to cede Higgins is likely to damage John Brumby’s attempt to win power in his own right at next year’s state election. Simply put, the increasing profile and resources being garnered by the Greens in Higgins will be used to attack vulnerable inner city Labor seats at the state election.
Labor’s decision not to run has given the Greens the perfect platform to parade their climate credentials. It will put a handy $60,000 or more from taxpayers into their war chest, courtesy of the 30,000 primary votes they expect to pick up on Saturday.
Green candidate and climate change guru Clive Hamilton’s run in Higgins looks like a warm-up for next year’s campaign for the state seat of Prahran which lies within Higgins. That’s the seat where Clem Newton-Brown has declared himself the Liberal candidate on a bicycle. The Greens primary vote in Prahran in 2006 was 20.13 per cent. In some St Kilda booths the Greens outpolled the Libs. A preference deal between the madly pedalling Newton-Brown and Clive Hamilton might just give Hamilton the victory over Brumby’s Cabinet Secretary Tony Lupton.
But the proof that Labor can win blue-ribbon seats around Higgins and hold them was not enough for Rudd, the consummate big picture politician who cares less about gifting the Greens cash and oxygen on a crucial election issue than crushing the Coalition at next year’s federal poll. On this assessment, it was better to save scarce campaign resources for the bigger battle ahead.
However, that all spells big longer term trouble for state and federal Labor. Because once the ragtag Greens get their act together and start winning inner city seats, they will be harder to blast out than the cockroaches that lodge themselves in your kitchen over summer.
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Doug Evans
I’m afraid Kelly and Power may be right (about the outcome of the Higgins by-election) but how fantastic would it be if McKerras was right and CH won. Even if Clive gets close but still fails Higgins marks the point at which the good ship OZ starts to slow and alter course in the hope of avoiding catastrophe on the climate change reefs ahead. Go Clive I believe in miracles (you sexy thing).
Doug, this is one occasion on which I’d be more than happy to be proved wrong!
Like Doug I’m afraid that Kelly and Power may be right, and so do hope that CH wins. It seems like a rerun of Labor tactics at the last election, when they managed to get Steve Fielding into the Senate. What a boost to our democracy that piece of stupidity turned out to be! I’m not overfond of our rarely seen PM but are you sure the Higgins decision was his doing? I thought the back room boys made clever strategic decisions about things like this, don’t they?
It will also be interesting to see how the Australian Sex Party does on the weekend.
The arrogance of Labor in not running a candidate deserves a backlash that reverberates for years.
I don’t think of the greens as ragtag - more a once-minor Party now revealing their true potential. The idiotic two-party preferred system has excluded true alternatives in Australian politics and will continue to do so while the “Australian” electorate continues to demonstrate why it is the butt of jokes around the Pacific region.
My Asian friends have told jokes that outdo ours about NZers one hundredfold
Child Protection in Victoria is suffering from Costello’s notion: one for Mum, one for Dad, and one for the State. And I’ll give you a baby bonus to assist - that’s the Liberal Higgins for you. Doctor’s wives - stand up!!! Christopher
I agree martyns. I’ve just started reading the Latham diaries, reading about the back room boys while the NSW boys are coincidently displaying their talents. I’d much prefer a bunch of ‘enthusiastic amateurs’ than a group of political thugs that only care about the power and the control. Go Clive and the Greens. Helen
phermon, how can you possibly construct assuming you’re going to LOSE an election as “arrogance”?
Hi Rebekka,
It’s a secret but I may share it with you on Sunday, Christopher
That was a rhetorical question - I assume the only way you can construct that as arrogance is by not understanding the meaning of the word arrogance.
Oh Rebekka,
I really didn’t want to have to reply until Sunday - but you are corresponding with a Latin scholar who, by dint of not understanding the rules of on-line auctions, is the proud possessor of two copies of the New Shorter Oxford - one for me and one for Ron.
Christopher
PS by scholar, I mean I got a compensatory pass at matric to give me the language I needed to read Arts
I don’t need to wait until Sunday, RebekkaP, I was wrong. Labor was right to presume that their non-attendance at the By-elections would change nothing. Had the Greens been able to push the Libs to a distribution of preferences, the ALP arrogation of their position in the current political landscape would have been under some threat. As it is they are sitting pretty to my despair. Forgive me. Christopher
As my partner reminded me this morning: it was the cream of society voting yesterday - the rich and the thick.
Well put Helen, I like the “rich and thick” - clever and funny.. give your partner my congratulations. As far as Higgins is concerned I’m in the next electorate and I know a rusted on ALP member who lives there. He was voting Green. He’s not thick and sadly not rich either and was disappointed the ALP didn’t run. If the Greens were serious in Higgins they should have had someone who lives there standing for them. No offence to CH but you can’t expect people (creamy or not) to vote for someone who isn’t a resident of the area. In CH’s case he’s Canberra based. Having said that I believe the Greens picked up some money because of their efforts, raised their profile and are probably satisfied. The Liberals will learn nothing from these by-elections. They are like the Bourbons who learned nothing and forgot nothing. I hope the Greens try and stand “credible” candidates when they next contest an election, if they want to be a party and not just a pressure group, they will have to do this.
He’s an old Prestonian Martyns - grew up in Preston. He says the line isn’t his but no doubt picked up from fellow Prestonians.
You’re right about CH not being from the area. I’ve had enough of that from the ALP - Delahunty and Ferguson when I lived in Northcote and Preston. Neither of them could find their way around the electorate. ‘Queen Mary’ was famous for not going further north than her electoral office in High Street Northcote while she lived in Elsternwick. And Ferguson lived in Surry Hills. The Greens shouldn’t repeat these mistakes.
And the really scary thing about all this: the Higgins woman bears a striking resemblance to Bronwyn Bishop.
You know Helen, I wondered who the new Liberal lady reminded me of (I know that’s rottten grammar.) I just knew she looked like a real Liberal. Of course, that’s who it is. The other Bishop. I’ve just reached for the chuck bucket whilst I try to still my knocking knees!
That’s exactly the same reaction I had martyns when I saw Abbott in his speedos. Still feeling a bit queazy. Couldn’t they put out warnings?
33% primary vote, says Clive Hamilton is Da Man, and the Greens are Da Party.
Thanks Tom. It’s reporting as usual by the media as they downplay the vote the Greens got in Higgins. Not bad for ‘enthusiastic amateurs’ (the Greens, not the media. I could never call the media enthusiastic).
A letter in The Age today said the Greens are always called a single issue party. The writer, apart from pointing out that the Greens have a vast range of policies said: ‘If you’re going to call the Greens a single-issue party because of their emphasis on the environment, then you have to call the ALP and Liberals single-issue parties too because of their emphasis on money.’