tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/victoria-elections-2014-8908/articlesVictoria elections 2014 – The Conversation2016-03-14T01:42:01Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/541662016-03-14T01:42:01Z2016-03-14T01:42:01ZNot so grassroots: how the snowflake model is transforming political campaigns<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/112639/original/image-20160223-16451-2zpshp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament's London to Aldermaston march, 1958: an early example of mass political mobilisation to achieve a specific goal.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.cnduk.org/about/item/437">CND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This article is part of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/democracy-futures">Democracy Futures</a> series, a <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/democracy-futures/">joint global initiative</a> with the <a href="http://sydneydemocracynetwork.org/">Sydney Democracy Network</a>. The project aims to stimulate fresh thinking about the many challenges facing democracies in the 21st century.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>Consider these five vignettes of contemporary politics in Australia:</p>
<ul>
<li><p><a href="http://www.greenpeace.org/australia/en/what-we-do/climate/Save-the-Reef/">environmental activists</a> start an online petition against a coal mine near the Great Barrier Reef;</p></li>
<li><p><a href="http://www.australianunions.org.au/saveourweekend_petition">trade unionists</a> organise against changes to weekend penalty rates;</p></li>
<li><p>a <a href="http://www.nab.com.au/about-us/corporate-responsibility/our-programs-and-initiatives/social-and-financial-inclusion">bank</a> promotes access to financial services for marginalised individuals;</p></li>
<li><p>volunteers knock on doors to promote their <a href="http://thisislabor.org">political party</a>; and</p></li>
<li><p>community groups work with a <a href="https://www.humanrights.gov.au/news/stories/finalists-announced-racism-it-stops-me-award-2015">government authority</a> to prevent racism.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>These diverse projects – undertaken by widely different groups, promoting different ends, in different locations – are all variations on an increasingly common mode of collective political action: they are all campaigns.</p>
<p>Long part of the repertoire of political parties, campaigning has broken out from the electoral context and <a href="http://trove.nla.gov.au/work/19369403">evolved into</a> a new tool for business, government and civil society actors.</p>
<p>Campaigning is now the dominant form of collective political activity in Australia. Waves of transformative technological change continue to morph campaigning into an intensely mediated activity. Dispersed individuals and locations are linked through television, the web, social media networks and most recently <a href="http://www.zdnet.com/article/you-better-watch-out-big-data-and-presidential-politics/">big data</a>.</p>
<p>Scholars have somewhat overlooked this transformation and its significance for politics and democracy. In particular its powerful internal tensions deserve closer attention. The campaign model is inherently divided between co-existing yet contradictory characteristics: bottom-up participation and top-down direction. </p>
<p>In this topsy-turvy form of politics, what looks to be grassroots-driven may on closer inspection be revealed as organised, coordinated and managed from the centre.</p>
<h2>The origins of the campaign</h2>
<p>It’s instructive to consider the etymology of this very political word. <em>Campagna</em> is Italian for field, plain or open country. The military recruited the word in the 17th century to denote the time an army spent in the field. So, campaigns were finite periods of intense fieldwork as armies mobilised in spring, fought in summer and stood down in winter.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/111904/original/image-20160218-1240-rzlgs2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/111904/original/image-20160218-1240-rzlgs2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/111904/original/image-20160218-1240-rzlgs2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/111904/original/image-20160218-1240-rzlgs2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/111904/original/image-20160218-1240-rzlgs2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/111904/original/image-20160218-1240-rzlgs2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/111904/original/image-20160218-1240-rzlgs2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The first campaigns involved mobilised armies.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">ResoluteSupportMedia/flickr</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In 19th-century America, the word was given civilian clothing and put to work in elections and commercial advertising, though it retained the sense of short-run mobilisation. With the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in 1958, the word began to denote a mass political mobilisation to achieve a specific goal.</p>
<p>A campaign is not a rally, protest, grievance or open-ended social movement. A campaign is a series, a finite short-run sequence, of activities.</p>
<p>Importantly, it is designed. A campaign is directed and managed rationally and strategically; it is not spontaneous, random or incidental. And it wants a particular result – not a generally improved state of affairs, but an identified and targeted outcome, an achievable end-point.</p>
<p>If a campaign is designed, the campaign manager is the designer, the strategist, the planner, the orchestrator of the activities that constitute the campaign. The campaign manager may not be visible or overt, but a campaign cannot function without a campaign manager.</p>
<h2>Language talks up grassroots role</h2>
<p>This observation sits uncomfortably with the strongly normative, almost emancipatory, language often used to describe campaigns. This typically involves words of participation and empowerment; words that celebrate individual efficacy and civic engagement; words that privilege the grassroots, with their authentic local knowledge, over the centre, the home of bosses and business as usual.</p>
<p>For example, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/greenpeaceusa/videos/10152907412764684/">Greenpeace declares</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Isn’t it amazing what we can do together? The driving force behind Greenpeace is a community of people like you – people who speak out and take action to make the world a better place. … Thank you for your courage. We are so proud to stand with you in this fight.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The Australian Human Rights Commission, discussing its anti-racism campaign, tends to <a href="https://itstopswithme.humanrights.gov.au/about-campaign">agree</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It’s often the people working on the ground within local communities or specific environments who have the best understanding of the issues and ideas of how to overcome them.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The Australian Labor Party, too, is increasingly using the language of empowerment as it develops its Obama-style campaigning skills. In the last federal election, campaign manager George Wright produced a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=044ziCWXYEE">YouTube video</a> that declared – too optimistically as it turned out – that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… the only thing standing between Tony Abbott and the Lodge is you, me, Kevin and thousands of supporters across the country.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Identifying the campaign targets (marginal seats and campaign donations), Wright called on “thousands of Australians to donate and … to volunteer”.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/044ziCWXYEE?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Labor’s plan to win is to get you involved.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>By the end of the campaign, Wright claimed Labor’s campaign had recruited 5000 “tele-campaigners” (call centre staff) and registered another 10,000 volunteers – more than could be used. The campaign made 1.2 million phone calls, conducted 250,000 “registered volunteer doorknocks”, sent out 3.5 million emails and raised $800,000 from online donations – a potential game changer for cash-strapped parties.</p>
<p>After the election, Wright <a href="http://www.blackincbooks.com/books/professionals">claimed</a> this “new approach to campaigning” was:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… pushing political power into the hands of the people who stand to lose or gain from the outcomes of elections … and reforming the party from the grassroots up.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Who really drives the campaign?</h2>
<p>But does contemporary campaign practice justify such claims? Is campaigning a celebration of individual empowerment, of democratisation, of dispersal of organisational power? Is it so “amazing”? </p>
<p>Or is there a less obvious, but nonetheless critical and even dominant role, for the centre? What can we learn from campaigning about the relationship between the grassroots and the centre – between campaign volunteer and campaign manager? Who controls the resources? Who makes the decisions?</p>
<p>Consider Labor’s campaign for the Melbourne seat of Carrum in the 2014 Victorian state election.</p>
<p>Carrum was a classic marginal. To wrest the seat from the incumbent Liberal MP, Donna Bauer, Labor hired a modest flat in the back streets of Seaford. The living room was converted into a call centre, equipped with computer screens linked to a database of voter statistics. It was filled with the buzz of volunteers making calls on behalf of their candidate, Sonya Kilkenny.</p>
<p>Other operatives in the flat directed fieldwork – which, harking back to the military origins of campaign, describes the coordination of doorknocking. Teams of volunteers were sent out from the flat with maps and clipboards, again using the database to reach out to voters identified as persuadable.</p>
<p>All of this is volunteer work, under the banner of the “<a href="http://thisislabor.org/">Community Action Network</a>”. But their work is far from spontaneous, random or even self-directed. It is structured, planned, scripted, targeted and managed from the centre.</p>
<p>Volunteers, whether talking to voters on their doorstep or over the phone, or at train stations and supermarket carparks, are trained in what to say and how to say it.</p>
<p>Computer-assisted phone callers are guided through their conversations by scripts: first, tell them your own story, what values motivated you to volunteer; listen for a connection between your own narrative and values and those of the voter; then turn the conversation to talk about the candidates’ values, achievements and plans; and finally draw a contrast between your candidate and the opposition. </p>
<p>Don’t talk party or politics or policy. Instead, make it meaningful in terms of how voting Labor will benefit the voter and the voter’s family.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/111889/original/image-20160218-1269-1q9ww68.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/111889/original/image-20160218-1269-1q9ww68.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=177&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/111889/original/image-20160218-1269-1q9ww68.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=177&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/111889/original/image-20160218-1269-1q9ww68.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=177&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/111889/original/image-20160218-1269-1q9ww68.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=223&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/111889/original/image-20160218-1269-1q9ww68.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=223&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/111889/original/image-20160218-1269-1q9ww68.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=223&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Labor’s Community Action Network claims to be a grassroots movement of more than 5000 activists in Victoria.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">This is Labor</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Each snowflake has a centre</h2>
<p>The campaign in Carrum – which succeeded in getting Kilkenny elected – has been matched by similar volunteer networks in Labor’s NSW and Queensland branches, as well as in the union movement. </p>
<p>They are all, ultimately, modelled on the successful Obama campaigns, themselves derived from older traditions of <a href="http://insidestory.org.au/rules-for-radicals-comes-to-carrum">community organising</a>, but turbo-charged by Big Data, as <a href="http://www.thevictorylab.com/">described by American journalist Sasha Issenberg</a>.</p>
<p>Obama <a href="https://my.barackobama.com/page/content/snowflake/">campaign literature</a> uses the metaphor of the <a href="http://www.cstreet.ca/organizing_snowflake_model_campaigns_in_nationbuilder">snowflake to describe the campaign structure</a>. Like a snowflake, it has a strong centre occupied by a campaign organiser. Around the organiser are the snowflake’s limbs, staffed by “team leaders” or “captains”. Each is responsible for recruiting and directing volunteers in a campaign task – fieldwork, phone banking, data management and so on.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/111902/original/image-20160218-1276-1szg52.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/111902/original/image-20160218-1276-1szg52.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/111902/original/image-20160218-1276-1szg52.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/111902/original/image-20160218-1276-1szg52.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/111902/original/image-20160218-1276-1szg52.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/111902/original/image-20160218-1276-1szg52.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/111902/original/image-20160218-1276-1szg52.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Like a snowflake, every campaign is beautifully orchestrated.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">yellow cloud/flickr</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The snowflake structure encourages accountability and results, and is designed for organic growth and replication. Making it work – maintaining the enthusiasm of volunteers and avoiding burnout and micro-management by captains – requires organisational commitment to training, development and the sharing of purpose. </p>
<p>But ultimately this is an effort by the centre to recruit, coordinate and control the periphery.</p>
<h2>So what are we to make of this?</h2>
<p>On one hand, political parties are supposed to be dying, or surviving as hollowed-out shells. Members have been leaving in droves; branches are closing; partisan attachments are withering; political efficacy – the sense that “I can make a difference” – is declining around the world.</p>
<p>The whole electoral contest is seen as an increasingly irrelevant exercise in spin and manipulation. Academic research, media commentary and internal reviews within the parties themselves all support this <a href="http://ppq.sagepub.com/content/20/2/205.full.pdf+html">dominant view</a>.</p>
<p>But if parties are dying, no-one told the volunteers in Carrum. If branch membership has been rendered meaningless, perhaps it was appropriate to repurpose the role into volunteer tele-campaigners. </p>
<p>Also, if parties’ reliance on large corporate donors and/or taxpayer generosity is problematic, the emergence of a new source of funding via social media is surely no bad thing.</p>
<p>On the other hand, perhaps the online campaign model provides a sense of efficacy that is illusory, even delusional. Can signing a petition make any difference to the real decision-making over, say, petroleum exploration on the Great Barrier Reef? Is scripted phone persuasion really the best way to communicate with our fellow citizens? </p>
<p>Are those who join an anti-racism campaign already more likely to embrace the cause than the <a href="https://www.humanrights.gov.au/news/opinions/vilification-adam-goodes-damages-everyone">actual racists</a>?</p>
<p>Certainly, all the essential elements of the contemporary campaign model – the centralised direction and co-ordination, the managerial delegation, the training and scripting, the capital-intensive nature of the resource base – seem at odds with, and serve as an necessary antidote to, the emancipatory language usually associated with such campaigns.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/54166/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stephen Mills does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Political campaigns today are presented as products of bottom-up participation, not top-down direction. But even if a campaign appears grassroots-driven, it’s likely to be run from the centre.Stephen Mills, Lecturer, Graduate School of Government, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/356662014-12-18T19:47:29Z2014-12-18T19:47:29ZFOI reform needed in Victoria amid East West Link fallout<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/67611/original/image-20141218-31043-30ps44.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">There is tension between the need for governments to be trusted to govern and the public’s right to know.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Mal Fairclough</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The disclosure of the <a href="http://www.premier.vic.gov.au/east-west-link-announcement">full business case</a> for the East West road link in Melbourne confirmed what many had suspected – the project is a dud. The release also unequivocally shows that the Victorian Freedom of Information (FOI) system failed on its most basic task – that is, to facilitate the disclosure of information that is in the utmost public interest.</p>
<p>It is hard to conceive, apart from the reasons for bringing the country to war, of what could carry a higher public interest than how a government proposes to use <a href="http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2014/12/15/east-west-link-business-case-revealed">A$5 billion</a> in taxpayer money for a major infrastructure project. The very least you would expect as part of engaging with the public is that the government is totally open about how the money would be put to use.</p>
<p>The disclosure of the business case by the new Andrews government revealed a number of staggering <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/comment/analysis-why-the-east-west-link-proved-such-a-hard-sell-20141215-127dfm.html">facts</a>, including:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>The initial business case showed that the benefit to cost ratio was only 0.45: so, for every dollar spent, the return would be 45 cents. This was consequently massaged by the former Napthine government using a number of dubious economic forecasting methods and what was eventually released to the public in the lead-up to the election was clearly misleading.</p></li>
<li><p>The road was so expensive to build (estimated total cost $15-18 billion) that it would take 56 years to pay off. This is significantly longer than previous projects such as CityLink, eight years, and EastLink, 20 years.</p></li>
<li><p>The most extraordinary revelation in the 9000-page full business case is a note to cabinet observing that a full submission of the business case to the independent umpire Infrastructure Australia disclosing the low benefit-cost ratio “may be used as a justification for not supporting the project”.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>The Victorian and Australian public clearly had a right to know these facts before the construction contracts were signed. Not disclosing these basic facts is akin to your super fund refusing to tell you how your super money is invested. You’d leave such a fund, wouldn’t you? This is exactly what the people of Victoria did in the <a href="https://theconversation.com/labor-wins-victorian-election-but-watch-for-upper-house-chaos-34796">recent election</a>.</p>
<p>In the best of worlds, governments can create a win-win situation proactively disclosing information needed for the public to make informed decisions. The win-win occurs when information disclosure is used as a trust-building tool between government and the governed. Independent access to government-held information makes the public feel trusted and more engaged in the political process.</p>
<p>In reality, however, there is tension between the need for governments to be trusted to govern and the public’s right to know. This is where FOI laws come in.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/vic/consol_act/foia1982222/s3.html">Section 3 (1) (b)</a> of the <a href="http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/vic/consol_act/foia1982222/">Victorian Freedom of Information Act 1982</a> states that the act’s intention is:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… creating a general right of access to information in documentary form in the possession of Ministers and agencies limited only by exceptions and exemptions necessary for the protection of essential public interests and the private and business affairs of persons in respect of whom information is collected and held by agencies.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The East West link debacle again clearly illustrates that the current FOI system in Victoria does not create this general right of access – at least not when it comes to controversial matters.</p>
<p>In the lead-up to the election, a number of local councils, members of the public, journalists and academic researchers lodged FOI applications. The most <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/contested-east-west-link-business-case-tantalisingly-close-20140813-103r2q.html">high-profile</a> application was submitted by the Victorian ALP. The then-opposition spokesperson for roads, Luke Donnellan, got the same reply as the other applicants: the documents could not be released as they had been prepared for and submitted to the cabinet and hence fell under the exemption clause for current cabinet documents.</p>
<p>The cabinet document exemption is one of the areas in the Victorian FOI law that need re-assessment. Should a public interest test apply to whether cabinet documents are released or not?</p>
<p>The last Victorian government promised extensive reforms to the Victorian information access system while in opposition, but delivered very little when in government. This pattern is unfortunately far too common. Let’s hope the new Andrews government will deliver more far-reaching information access reforms.</p>
<p>My comparative <a href="http://search.informit.com.au/documentSummary;dn=843684861149252;res=IELLCC">FOI functionality</a> research, spanning 15 years, shows that you can change the law until the end of days with little effect on the practical access to information. The legal changes need to be coupled to an FOI advocate – such as a well-resourced and vigorously independent FOI Commissioner.</p>
<p>There is some <a href="https://theconversation.com/transparency-trade-off-means-foi-will-get-more-expensive-26742">evidence</a> that FOI culture can be changed. The federal Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) has made some progress in this regard. Unfortunately, the OAIC has been nominated as a saving in the federal budget and will most likely be closed in 2015.</p>
<p>The failure of Victorian FOI to deliver access to the full business case provides the new Victorian government with a reason and window of opportunity to enact meaningful reforms. </p>
<p>These reforms would involve some legislative changes. But most importantly, the culture of the administration of FOI in Victoria needs to change from one of secrecy to one of facilitating access to the information that the government generates and holds on behalf of the people.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/35666/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Johan Lidberg does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The disclosure of the full business case for the East West road link in Melbourne confirmed what many had suspected – the project is a dud. The release also unequivocally shows that the Victorian Freedom…Johan Lidberg, Associate Professor, School of Media, Film and Journalism, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/354672014-12-14T01:07:25Z2014-12-14T01:07:25ZFinal Victorian Lower House Results<p>At the Victorian state election held on 29 November, <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/vic-election-2014/results/">Labor won 47</a> of the 88 lower house seats, a comfortable 6 seat majority. The Coalition won 38 seats (Liberals 30, Nationals 8), the Greens won 2 seats and an Independent won Shepparton from the Nationals. Compared with the Coalition’s 48-40 post-redistribution notional majority, Labor gained 8 seats from the Coalition, but lost Melbourne to the Greens, with the Greens also gaining Prahran from the Liberals.</p>
<p>The final primary votes were 42.0% for the Coalition (down 2.8% from the 2010 election), 38.1% for Labor (up 1.8%) and 11.5% for the Greens (up 0.3%). <a href="https://twitter.com/AntonyGreenABC/status/543242763764895744">Antony Green has tweeted</a> that the final statewide two party preferred (2PP) result is a Labor win of 52.0-48.0, a 3.6% swing to Labor from the 2010 election. In Labor vs Coalition two party terms, Labor won 48 seats to 40. Although the Greens won Prahran, Labor lost it vs the Liberals by a narrow <a href="http://www.vec.vic.gov.au/Results/State2014/TCPbyVotingCentrePrahranDistrict.html">25 votes or 0.03%.</a> Turnout for the election was 93.0%.</p>
<p>Four of <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/vic-election-2014/results/changing-seats/">Labor’s gains</a> (Bellarine, Monbulk, Wendouree and Yan Yean) came in seats that Labor already held, but which had been redistributed into notional Coalition seats. Labor made a clean sweep of the sandbelt marginals, gaining Bentleigh, Carrum, Frankston and Mordialloc.</p>
<p>Antony Green has published a <a href="http://blogs.abc.net.au/antonygreen/2014/12/victorian-post-election-pendulum.html">post-election pendulum</a>. This shows that Labor won Frankston, Carrum and Bentleigh by slender margins between 0.5% and 0.8%. However, Labor could have afforded to lose all three, and there would still have been a Labor/Greens majority (44 Labor + 1 Green). The clinch seat for a Labor/Greens majority was Mordialloc, which Labor won by 2.1%. This means that, on this election result, Labor actually required only 49.9% of the statewide 2PP to win a majority with the Greens.</p>
<p>This actual requirement for a Labor majority is less than the <a href="https://theconversation.com/victorian-election-preview-34572">50.5% estimated by </a>both Kevin Bonham and Peter Brent, but it is greater than the 49.3% if you use the raw pre-election pendulum. The major reason for why Labor needed a little less than what was estimated is that there were <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/vic-election-2014/results/electorates/">some small swings</a> to the Coalition, but most of these swings happened in safe Labor seats; none occurred in Labor or Coalition marginals.</p>
<p>The Greens only increased their statewide vote by 0.3%, but they performed very well in the inner city, increasing their vote by 9.5% in Brunswick, 8.9% in Melbourne, 4.4% in Northcote, 5.0% in Prahran and 2.9% in Richmond. The Greens would very probably have won Brunswick, Northcote and Richmond if the Liberals had preferenced them ahead of Labor in these seats. Despite the relatively low Labor prijmary vote in the four Labor vs Greens seats, Labor’s 2PP vs the Liberals is in the 70’s in all four seats; in Northcote and <a href="http://www.vec.vic.gov.au/Results/State2014/BrunswickDistrict.html">Brunswick</a>, Labor had over 79% of the 2PP vs the Liberals, more than in their traditional heartland seats of <a href="http://www.vec.vic.gov.au/Results/State2014/BroadmeadowsDistrict.html">Broadmeadows</a> and Thomastown.</p>
<p>With all upper house primary vote counting completed, two seats remain in doubt: either Labor or the Country Alliance will win the last seat in North Victoria, and either the Sex Party or the Greens will win the last seat in South East Metro. Vote 1 Local Jobs has a clear path to victory in West Victoria. I will post an article next weekend on the final upper house results.</p>
<h2>Poll Performance</h2>
<p>Below is a table comparing the final polls’ primary votes and Labor 2PP estimates against the actual election results. A poll estimate that was within 1% of the actual result is bolded.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/67143/original/image-20141213-6039-1ymdu6p.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/67143/original/image-20141213-6039-1ymdu6p.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/67143/original/image-20141213-6039-1ymdu6p.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=263&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/67143/original/image-20141213-6039-1ymdu6p.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=263&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/67143/original/image-20141213-6039-1ymdu6p.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=263&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/67143/original/image-20141213-6039-1ymdu6p.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=331&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/67143/original/image-20141213-6039-1ymdu6p.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=331&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/67143/original/image-20141213-6039-1ymdu6p.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=331&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">final Vic polls vs elec.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The clear loser was the final Morgan SMS poll, which was overly favourable to the Coalition. Morgan’s <a href="http://www.roymorgan.com/findings/5959-morgan-poll-victorian-state-election-november-28-2014-201411271232">previous Victorian SMS polls</a> had the Greens on an unrealistically high 18%, so I think his methodology needs work. In the end, all polls overestimated the Greens vote, with Newspoll erring the least.</p>
<p>Other than Morgan, other polls were right on the 2PP, but for the wrong reasons. Newspoll, Galaxy and ReachTEL all used 2010 preference flows to estimate the 2PP from their primaries. The actual preference flows were more favourable for Labor than in 2010; Labor would only have won 50.8% 2PP on the actual primaries under 2010 preferences. So these polls overestimated Labor’s primary vote performance, but their 2PP looks good because of changes in preference flows.</p>
<p>Ipsos was accurate on the Coalition primary, but missed on the Labor and Greens primaries by over 3%. Their headline 2PP figure used respondent allocation of preferences, and that is fortunate for them, as their previous election figure was a 50-50 tie.</p>
<p>Overall, there was no clear winner from the final Victorian polls, but Morgan is a clear loser.</p>
<p>Individual seat polls for <a href="http://blogs.crikey.com.au/pollbludger/2014/11/15/galaxy-52-48-to-liberal-in-bentleigh-54-46-to-labor-in-buninyong/">Bentleigh and Buninyong</a> by Galaxy taken over two weeks before the election were too pro-Coalition. The Liberals led by 52-48 in Bentleigh, compared with a Labor win of 50.8-49.2. In Buninyong, Labor led by 54-46, but actually won <a href="http://www.vec.vic.gov.au/Results/State2014/BuninyongDistrict.html">by 56.4-43.6</a>. A Galaxy exit poll of the early voters in the four sandbelt marginals that had <a href="https://theconversation.com/final-victorian-election-polls-have-labor-narrowly-ahead-34793">Labor leading 52-48 </a>was inaccurate; the Liberals won the early vote in all four sandbelt marginals.</p>
<h2>Labor Wins Fisher By-Election in SA</h2>
<p><a href="http://www.abc.net.au/elections/sa/2014/fisher/commentary.htm">Labor has won the Fisher by-election</a>, defeating the Liberals by 23 votes after eliminating Independent Dan Woodyatt by 226 votes at the point where either Labor or Woodyatt was excluded. The seat had been previously held by deceased Independent Bob Such. The final postals and rechecking increased Labor’s lead by a net two votes from what they held last Wednesday. <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/elections/sa/2014/fisher/result.htm">Final primary votes</a> were 36.0% for the Liberals (up 0.9), 26.7% for Labor (up 9.0) and 23.3% for Woodyatt (down 15.2% on Such’s performance). Labor won with a 7.3% two party swing in its favour.</p>
<p>The win returns Labor to majority government status in SA, after they had lost their majority at the March election. <a href="http://kevinbonham.blogspot.com.au/2014/12/fisher-state-by-elections-and-federal.html">Kevin Bonham</a> has researched state by-elections thoroughly, and he says that state governments beyond their first terms have not won a by-election from another party or Independent since 1973.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/35467/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
At the Victorian state election held on 29 November, Labor won 47 of the 88 lower house seats, a comfortable 6 seat majority. The Coalition won 38 seats (Liberals 30, Nationals 8), the Greens won 2 seats…Adrian Beaumont, PhD Student, Department of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/346462014-12-07T19:13:55Z2014-12-07T19:13:55ZLearning from Victoria’s TAFE mistakes<p>In the 40 years since its inception, rarely has TAFE featured as a central platform on which political parties win or lose votes. As such it seldom rates mentions in political campaigns as a distinct sector of education, unlike schools or universities.</p>
<p>But in the recent Victorian state election, cuts to TAFE funding were central to Labor’s campaign. Former Liberal powerbroker Michael Kroger in his election night preview highlighted TAFE as one of the key issues that he felt might count against the Coalition government.</p>
<p>In the election aftermath, federal National Party member for Gippsland Darren Chester nominated TAFE funding as a key state issue which <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/victorias-vote-a-clear-message-to-tony-abbott-20141130-11wzcm.html">affected the election outcome</a>. </p>
<h2>How TAFE became a major political issue in Victoria</h2>
<p>That TAFE became a political negative for the Coalition government in Victoria is a paradox, as expenditure on skills training <a href="http://www.vu.edu.au/sites/default/files/mitchell-institute/pdfs/Peter-Noonan-TDA-speech-2Sep2014.pdf">more than doubled during its term in office</a>.</p>
<p>Despite this huge funding increase in 2013, <a href="http://www.audit.vic.gov.au/publications/20140806-TAFE-Audits/20140806-TAFE-Audits.html">five TAFE institutes in Victoria were rated</a> as having a high financial sustainability risk and eight as medium risk with an accumulated deficit across the 14 institutes of more than A$16 million. This is despite widespread staff cuts, course cancellations and campus closures which had significant local impacts and consequential political fallout for the government.</p>
<p>However, reasons for the parlous position of TAFE in Victoria extend back before the Coalition government. In 2008, the Brumby Labor government announced the introduction of the <a href="http://www.education.vic.gov.au/Documents/training/providers/rto/securjobsfuture.pdf">Victorian Training Guarantee</a>. Under the Victorian Training Guarantee eligible students were able to choose their course from any VET provider, increasing TAFE’s competition. A similar policy is now being implemented in all states and territories.</p>
<h2>TAFEs have a public role to uphold</h2>
<p>TAFE’s “public roles” can include maintaining a wide range of courses even when there is low demand, maintaining campuses across Victoria and opening new campuses in areas of high population growth, enrolling students from diverse education and socio-economic backgrounds, providing specialist training in niche industry areas, providing counselling and library services, student facilities and meeting specific policy objectives of government, for example retraining workers in manufacturing industries.</p>
<p>While other providers can provide some or many of these roles they can opt in or out of them as they see fit. Most private providers also operate a very low cost delivery model with far less infrastructure and fewer services than TAFE. </p>
<p>Under the initial reform package introduced by the Brumby government, TAFE institutions were paid an additional rate per student relative to other providers and were allocated special funding for their role as public providers. This funding helped to cushion TAFE from the full impact of the new competition.</p>
<p>However, there was a strong view from economic agencies that there should be a level playing field in the VET market, and TAFE should just be seen as any other provider to be funded the same as other registered training organisations regardless of its obligations as a public provider.</p>
<p>This view fully prevailed in late 2011 when to help manage a cost blow out in the Victorian Training Guarantee, TAFE institutes with revenue of more than $100 million had their supplementary funding cut by the Coalition government. These cuts were then extended to all TAFE institutes in 2012. This resulted in funding cuts of more than A$300 million with widespread job losses, course cuts and campus and facility closures.</p>
<p>Subsidy levels for a range of VET courses assessed as low priority were also cut in 2012. Although these reductions applied to all providers, the impact on TAFE was felt more strongly than private providers due to its high fixed cost base in terms of campuses, facilities and ongoing staffing in areas such as hospitality.</p>
<p>Even though TAFE enrolments increased under the Victorian Training Guarantee, revenue from enrolments fell well short of the additional funding previously allocated for TAFE’s “public role”.</p>
<h2>Learning from Victoria</h2>
<p>The factors leading to the financial crisis in TAFE are complex and varied. They flow from the removal of funding for TAFE’s public role and changes in course funding levels but also the inability of many institutes and the TAFE system generally to capitalise on the significant growth opportunities provided by the Victorian Training Guarantee. </p>
<p>Other states have taken a more cautious approach in introducing competitive and student demand driven funding in VET and will have watched with interest the political fallout from Victoria. Most have initiated major reforms to TAFE in advance of the introduction of contestable funding and have far more explicitly recognised the importance of a strong TAFE system.</p>
<p>The lessons are clear. Governments should value and be clear about the role of TAFE as the public VET provider and be prepared to fund those roles. But TAFE’s future role should be as a high quality and highly responsive provider in emerging national and international VET and tertiary education markets, not as a government funded monopoly.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/34646/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter Noonan is Professorial Fellow at the Mitchell Institute for Health and Education Policy at Victoria University and Professor of Tertiary Education Policy at the University. The University receives VET funding from the Victorian Government.
He also undertook research and consultancy projects associated with the development and implementation of the Victorian Training Guarantee.</span></em></p>In the 40 years since its inception, rarely has TAFE featured as a central platform on which political parties win or lose votes. As such it seldom rates mentions in political campaigns as a distinct sector…Peter Noonan, Mitchell Professorial Fellow, Victoria UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/349812014-12-04T04:31:29Z2014-12-04T04:31:29ZPoliticians forget what public trust means – we must remind them<p>There cannot be a more important office or more challenging role than being a member of parliament. This is especially so for government MPs and ministers, including the newly elected Victorian ministry <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-12-04/daniel-andrews-sworn-in-as-victorian-premier/5935934">sworn in on Thursday</a>. As former federal Liberal minister Fred Chaney <a href="http://www.accountabilityrt.org/inaugural-art-lecture-fred-chaney-integrity-parliament-where-does-duty-lie/">has explained</a>, all persons elected to parliament bring with them values, loyalties and obligations to self, family and other supporters, and their parties, but also obligations to people in their electorate and the state – not to mention personal political ambitions and the pursuit of power. Much of the time, two or more of them will be in conflict.</p>
<p>Cabinet ministers have to add to the mix their loyalty and confidentiality obligations. Chaney observed that most decisions of policy that MPs and cabinet ministers must make involve issues for which there are competing solutions, none perfect, which will affect members of the community differently. </p>
<p>Chaney advised that the guiding principle to resolve conflicts must be what is in the public interest.</p>
<h2>Public office is a public trust</h2>
<p>The oaths politicians take as MPs and ministers commit them to compliance with the law but give little guidance. Guidance from the law can be found in a principle of law and ethics, which states that public office is a public trust. Regrettably, that principle has been largely forgotten.</p>
<p>Victorian MPs and ministers are covered by two <a href="http://www.parliament.vic.gov.au/publications/fact-sheets/1021-fact-sheet-e2-members-code-of-conduct">codes of conduct</a>. However, these focus on specific issues of conflicts of interest between their personal financial interests and public duties and roles in parliament and government.</p>
<p>Guidance could be found in the current benchmark for codes, the <a href="http://www.dpmc.gov.au/guidelines/docs/ministerial_ethics.pdf">Commonwealth Standards of Ministerial Ethics</a>, initially published by former prime minister Kevin Rudd. The code begins by stating:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>1.1. The ethical standards required of Ministers in Australia’s system of government reflect the fact that, as holders of public office, Ministers are entrusted with considerable privilege and wide discretionary power.</p>
<p>1.2. In recognition that public office is a public trust, therefore, the people of Australia are entitled to expect that, as a matter of principle, Ministers will act with due regard for integrity, fairness, accountability, responsibility and the public interest, as required by these Standards.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>While expressly based on the public trust principle, it does not appear to have revived that principle in the consciousness of those in government or the community.</p>
<p>When we entrust people with power over our lives, that power should be exercised in our interests; that obligation must always prevail over the interests of the people given the power. This is what the law recognises as a fiduciary relationship. </p>
<p>It follows that when a minister is making a decision and the common good of the people requires one decision, but his or her personal or political loyalties and future require a different decision, he or she must always give priority to the common good.</p>
<h2>An ancient principle fallen into disrepair</h2>
<p>This is not a new principle. It goes back to Plato. </p>
<p>About 100 years ago, that proposition that “public office is a public trust” was regularly used in public discussion of government and parliamentarians’ actions. It is not a metaphor: it is a fundamental ethical principle and a principle of the common law of Australia.</p>
<p>Former High Court chief justice Sir Gerard Brennan <a href="http://www.accountabilityrt.org/integrity-awards/sir-gerard-brennan-presentation-of-accountability-round-table-integrity-awards-dec-2013/">explained</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It has long been an established legal principle that a member of Parliament holds ‘a fiduciary relation towards the public’ and ‘undertakes and has imposed upon him a public duty and a public trust’. The duties of a public trustee are not identical with the duties of a private trustee but there is an analogous limitation imposed on the conduct of the trustee in both categories. The limitation demands that all decisions and exercises of power be taken in the interests of the beneficiaries and that duty cannot be subordinated to, or qualified by, the interests of the trustee.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Sir Gerard acknowledged that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… the fiduciary duties of political officers are often impossible to enforce judicially - the motivations for political action are often complex – but that does not negate the fiduciary nature of political duty.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Sir Gerard’s conclusion left little room for doubt about the obligations of public trust:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Power, whether legislative or executive, is reposed in members of the Parliament by the public for exercise in the interests of the public and not primarily for the interests of members or the parties to which they belong. The cry ‘whatever it takes’ is not consistent with the performance of fiduciary duty.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The courts <a href="http://www.accountabilityrt.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/Smith-T-2014-Lyceum-U3A-Speech-final-_3_.pdf#page=17">have applied</a> the legal principle in other areas. These include legality of contracts, common law criminal offences and the sentencing of convicted offenders whose offence involved a breach of their public trust obligations. </p>
<p>The courts have also applied the principle when interpreting legislation that gives discretionary statutory powers to ministers. The courts have held that such powers are <a href="http://www.accountabilityrt.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/Smith-T-2014-Lyceum-U3A-Speech-final-_3_.pdf#page=31">“conferred as it were upon trusts”</a>. They are to be exercised in the public interest to promote and not defeat or frustrate the objects of the legislation. </p>
<p>Court action can be taken to challenge the exercise of such powers relying upon the legal principle that public office is a public trust. One example is the powers held by planning ministers <a href="http://www.accountabilityrt.org/government-secrecy-and-urban-planning-the-forgotten-trust-and-reform/">to intervene</a> in planning applications.</p>
<h2>Issue of integrity affects all policy</h2>
<p>In the area of open and accountable government our public trustees – both elected and appointed public servants – inevitably have to deal with a conflict of interest arising from their obligation to give priority to the public interest over their personal and political interests. This is an area of policy that affects how all other policy areas are addressed. </p>
<p>Open and accountable government is critical to the operation of our democracy. If provided, it would also result in better government for the whole community, reduce opportunities for corruption of government and significantly help economic growth. In late 2013, British Prime Minister David Cameron <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/pm-speech-at-open-government-partnership-2013">said</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… the best way to ensure that an economy delivers long-term success, and that success is felt by all of its people, is to have it overseen by political institutions in which everyone can share. Where governments are the servants of the people, not the masters. Where close tabs are kept on the powerful and where the powerful are forced to act in the interests of the whole people, not a narrow clique.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>He acknowledged that transparency in government is not easy, that it “brings risks”. The risks are personal for our public trustees. Giving priority to the public interest by strengthening open and accountable government requires moral courage.</p>
<p>Probably the best-known recent failure in the government integrity system in Victoria has been the creation of the Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission (<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-to-turn-ibac-into-a-corruption-watchdog-that-works-as-promised-34709">IBAC</a>). If the creators of IBAC had been more aware of their obligations as public trustees, would the outcome have been different? </p>
<p>Would they have dealt with the conflict of interest they faced by including the community in the decision-making process, publishing draft legislation for discussion and involving relevant civil society groups in their deliberations? Instead, they lacked, at every critical stage, the benefit of input from the key stakeholders – the people of Victoria.</p>
<h2>How do we all repair government?</h2>
<p>The new Labor government made election commitments to strengthen the state’s integrity system. While their <a href="http://www.accountabilityrt.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10">proposals</a>, if carried out well, will make some important <a href="https://theconversation.com/its-hard-for-voters-to-trust-leaders-who-wont-promise-true-integrity-34710">incremental improvements</a>, much more could have been promised. For example, the government could replace our FOI legislation with the best-practice <a href="http://www.qld.gov.au/about/rights-accountability/right-to-information/">“Right to Know”</a> approach of Queensland and refer the <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/comment/political-donations-victorias-big-secret-20141014-115mgh.html">political funding</a> of parties and candidates to the Joint Electoral Matters Committee for inquiry.</p>
<p>Again, did a failure to properly consider the public trust principle contribute to the shortcomings of what has been promised? If so, that can be easily rectified.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/clb43hL_MA4?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>In his victory speech on election night, new Victorian premier spoke in terms that reflected the public trust principle when he identified two key objectives of his new government: serving the people and winning back their trust.</p>
<p>The government can win back people’s trust by demonstrating that it is serious about strengthening Victoria’s integrity system by implementing Australian best practice. There is no better way to serve the people and regain their trust than bringing them into the decision-making process on all integrity-related issues.</p>
<p>To change the culture to one that accepts and gives primacy to the public trust principle, it needs to become an accepted part of public discussion and expectation. Where does responsibility for this lie? The short answer is with us all: members of the community; the teaching professions; governments; parliaments and the media. </p>
<p>Ultimately, however, the buck stops with those who vote every four years.
If we want our democracy to work as it should, we cannot afford to disengage from it. And if we continue our disengagement, we must accept ultimate responsibility for the failures of our democratic system.</p>
<p>Is there hope? The rise of these matters as a political issue in Victoria and at the national and international level suggest there is. Australia has made commitments under the UN Convention Against Corruption (<a href="https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/treaties/CAC/">UNCAC</a>) and <a href="http://foi-privacy.blogspot.com.au/2014/11/g20-countries-to-lead-on-international.html#.VH_GimSUfC4">through the G20</a> and the <a href="http://www.opengovpartnership.org/">Open Government Partnership</a>.</p>
<p>And as Victor Hugo said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>All the forces in the world are not so powerful as an idea whose time has come.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The public trust principle’s time is here.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Tim Smith QC was one of the authors of this article. He chairs the Accountability Round Table and is a former Supreme Court judge and former commissioner of the Australian Legal Reform Commission and Victorian Legal Reform Commission. More of his speeches and writing on this issue can be seen <a href="http://www.accountabilityrt.org/?s=office+public+trust">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/34981/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Colleen Lewis has previously received funding from the Australian Research Council. She is a member of the Accountability Round Table.</span></em></p>There cannot be a more important office or more challenging role than being a member of parliament. This is especially so for government MPs and ministers, including the newly elected Victorian ministry…Colleen Lewis, Adjunct Professor, National Centre for Australian Studies, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/349122014-12-04T02:42:33Z2014-12-04T02:42:33ZGetting back on track: challenges ahead for the Victorian Liberals<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/66265/original/image-20141203-3625-1on59e4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Matthew Guy is the new leader of the Liberal Party in Victoria, but he faces battles on several fronts as the party begins a stint in opposition.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Julian Smith</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/victoria/matthew-guy-defeats-michael-obrien-in-liberal-leadership-ballot/story-fni0fit3-1227144608978">Matthew Guy</a> has been chosen to lead the Liberal Party in Victoria as it <a href="https://theconversation.com/labor-wins-victorian-election-but-watch-for-upper-house-chaos-34796">returns to opposition</a> after just one term in government. Guy, who was planning minister in the Napthine government, defeated former treasurer Michael O'Brien in a party room vote.</p>
<p>So, with Guy elected, what do the Liberals need to do to get back on track in Victoria?</p>
<h2>Whose fault was the election loss?</h2>
<p>The Napthine government’s defeat last weekend did not come as a surprise. The <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2014/nov/22/victorian-election-labor-could-win-51-seats-poll-predicts">polls</a> had consistently indicated that the Coalition was lagging behind the ALP on a two-party-preferred basis. These polls were vindicated at the ballot box.</p>
<p>In the post-election wash-up, the vanquished are typically brutal in their assessment of what went wrong. The veneer of discipline that ordinarily restrains political parties is punctured, even if only temporarily while parties try to come to terms with the disappointment of their loss.</p>
<p>There were as many as five (maybe even more) theories that emerged to explain the Coalition’s defeat. In no particular order, these are:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>It was the campaign’s fault. Many have <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2014/nov/30/victorian-labor-says-its-victory-has-revolutionised-politics">argued</a> that Labor and the unions simply outcampaigned the Liberals, waging a formidable grassroots campaign using modern techniques borrowed from the US. The Liberals, in contrast, stuck to a more traditional campaign format.</p></li>
<li><p>It was Geoff Shaw’s fault. There is no doubt that the Liberal-turned-independent Frankston MP played <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-11-30/geoff-shaw-fires-parting-shot-after-losing-frankston/5928560">no small part</a> in undermining one premier, Ted Baillieu, while causing significant embarrassment for his replacement, Denis Napthine.</p></li>
<li><p>It was the <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-11-30/election-win-a-mandate-to-cancel-east-west-link-contract/5928776">East-West tunnel’s fault</a>. Vocal anti-tunnel campaigners, not to mention the decision by the Napthine government to <a href="http://www.skynews.com.au/news/national/2014/09/29/vic-govt-signs--5-3b-link-contract.html">sign the contentious contract</a> just weeks prior to entering caretaker mode, created consternation even among those within the electorate who were not directly impacted by it.</p></li>
<li><p>It was <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2014/nov/30/tony-abbott-toxic-effect-victorian-election-say-former-premiers">Tony Abbott’s fault</a>. The federal government’s decision to announce a petrol tax hike, the confusion over the status of the GP payment, and its budget, conspired to torpedo the state Coalition’s re-election hopes.</p></li>
<li><p>It was the government’s fault. The state government, startled by its win in 2010, was too slow off the blocks in its first two years of office, with the result being that it failed to inspire voters and build momentum for re-election in 2014.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>There is some truth to each of these accounts. Yet election losses can rarely be sheeted home to a single issue or a single event. At best, a particular issue consolidates a sentiment that may have been building within the electorate for some time. </p>
<h2>Parliamentary discipline</h2>
<p>One of the big challenges for any leader, particularly a new opposition leader, is to ensure that their MPs do not become restless. Bored opposition MPs are inclined to ill-discipline. They may begin to turn their attentions to internal factional matters (which leads to in-fighting) rather than remain focused on taking the fight to the government.</p>
<p>Another task is for Guy to shake off the last four years in government. To do this, he must select a fresh shadow ministry.</p>
<p>It is often tempting for an outgoing government to fill its shadow frontbench with experienced former ministers and long-serving MPs: the party leader is often under considerable pressure to do so. But Guy will struggle to relaunch the Liberals if all of the faces that flank him are the same ones that stood alongside his predecessor.</p>
<p>Another challenge for the Liberals is to cultivate relationships with the minor parties in the Legislative Council. Good relations with the minor parties who hold the balance of power in the upper house are useful if they can be mobilised to make life difficult for the Andrews government. This may also pay dividends in the longer term if and when the Liberals are returned to office. </p>
<h2>Party unity</h2>
<p>Another matter for the Liberals to deal with is the Nationals.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-12-03/walsh-takes-over-as-nationals-leader-with-new-mp-as-deputy/5938974?section=vic">Nationals</a> indicated that they are keen to explore a new coalition partnership with the Liberals. It is less clear what the Liberals would gain by continuing with the coalition in the short term. </p>
<p>The Nationals lost seats, suffered a (further) decline in the party’s primary vote and appear to have lost their <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/nationals-could-lose-party-status-after-disastrous-showing-20141130-11x412.html">parliamentary status</a>, and with it those entitlements that resource the party. The Liberals can ill-afford to cross-subsidise the Nationals at a time when their own resources are diminished. Guy will require all the largesse he can muster simply to keep his own troops in line. </p>
<p>The final and possibly the most difficult challenge for Guy and the Liberal Party is to resolve the debate about the kind of party it needs to become in order to win the popular vote in Victoria.</p>
<p>This is a contentious matter for the Victorian Liberals. There are those who believe that the party must redouble its commitment to traditional “small l” liberal <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/comment/liberals-shouldnt-have-abandoned-their-principles-20141202-11xjpf.html">values and philosophy</a>, such as small, efficient government, choice and entrepreneurship. But <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/state-politics/why-the-liberals-are-losing-the-southern-state/story-fnqetyrp-1227140234573">others</a> within the party recognise that the policies and narratives that this more orthodox form of liberalism gives rise to are difficult to sell in a state that is moderate in its political and social inclinations. </p>
<p>The looming battle between the moderates, traditionalists and conservatives is unlikely to be a pretty sight.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/34912/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Narelle Miragliotta does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Matthew Guy has been chosen to lead the Liberal Party in Victoria as it returns to opposition after just one term in government. Guy, who was planning minister in the Napthine government, defeated former…Narelle Miragliotta, Senior Lecturer in Australian Politics, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/349622014-12-03T22:51:36Z2014-12-03T22:51:36ZAbbott’s Ratings Fall to Five Month Low<p><a href="http://blogs.crikey.com.au/pollbludger/2014/12/02/newspoll-54-46-to-labor-6/">This week’s Newspoll</a> had Tony Abbott’s satisfied rating down 3% to 33%, and his dissatisfied rating up 2% to 57%, for a net approval of -24, down five points from last fortnight. On all three measures, these were <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/polling">Abbott’s worst ratings since July.</a> His ratings had been very poor after the May budget, but had improved following MH17, and peaked in mid-September owing to the focus on terrorism at the time. However, since that September poll which had Abbott’s satisfied rating at 41% and dissatisfied at 52%, his ratings have worsened. As the electorate’s focus has shifted back to domestic politics, the polls have become worse for both the Coalition and Abbott.</p>
<p>Here is this week’s poll table.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/66132/original/image-20141203-17744-1cvfqs0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/66132/original/image-20141203-17744-1cvfqs0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/66132/original/image-20141203-17744-1cvfqs0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=104&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/66132/original/image-20141203-17744-1cvfqs0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=104&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/66132/original/image-20141203-17744-1cvfqs0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=104&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/66132/original/image-20141203-17744-1cvfqs0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/66132/original/image-20141203-17744-1cvfqs0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/66132/original/image-20141203-17744-1cvfqs0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">polls early Dec.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Newspoll’s pro-Labor run is continuing. For the last four fortnights, Newspoll has given a better Labor Two Party Preferrred (2PP) than Morgan, which is known to lean to Labor by at least a point. <a href="http://kevinbonham.blogspot.com.au/2014/12/poll-roundup-deeply-unpopular-by.html">Kevin Bonham</a> has noted that Newspoll’s non-major party vote is too high compared to other pollsters, which may partly explain the pro-Labor run; perhaps some people who nominate “Others” in Newspoll are soft Coalition voters in other polls.</p>
<p>Kevin Bonham’s poll aggregate is now at 53.1% 2PP to Labor, unchanged on last week. The <a href="http://blogs.crikey.com.au/pollbludger/2014/12/04/bludgertrack-52-9-47-1-to-labor/">Poll Bludger’s BludgerTrack</a> is at 52.9% 2PP to Labor, a 0.2% increase for Labor. Primary votes are 39.3% for the Coalition, 38.0% for Labor, 11.7% for the Greens and 2.7% for Palmer United Party (PUP). Last week there was a 0.6% swing to the Greens, with both major parties down slightly. Graphs on the right sidebar clearly show the decline in Abbott’s ratings.</p>
<h2>Notes on These Polls</h2>
<ul>
<li><p>Newspoll had Shorten’s net approval down two points to -4. Shorten’s ratings have been fairly stable for a long time, with net approvals between 0 and -10.</p></li>
<li><p>Morgan’s respondent allocated preferences showed a Labor lead of 53.5-46.5, a 2% gain for the Coalition on this measure, and 0.5% more favourable to Labor than the previous election preferences. </p></li>
<li><p>In <a href="http://essentialvision.com.au/documents/essential_report_141202.pdf">Essential</a>, 37% said micro parties holding the Senate balance of power was good for democracy, while 29% said it was bad for democracy. Labor and Greens supporters were more likely to say it was good, reflecting the Senate’s blocking of major Coalition initiatives. 56% disagreed with Abbott’s statement that he had “fundamentally kept faith with the Australian people”, with only 31% agreeing. A list of leader attributes generally had Abbott performing a little better than in May, and Shorten about the same, with Shorten still well ahead in a head to head comparison. Voters supported the Senate voting against listed government legislation, with the strongest support for the government occurring for the proposed introduction of a six-month waiting period before those under 30 can access the dole; this was supported by 39% and opposed by 48%, with all other measures having far stronger opposition. 42% thought the Defence Force pay increase of 1.5% was fair and 47% thought it was unfair.</p></li>
</ul>
<h2>Another Queensland Poll Shows a Close Race</h2>
<p>A <a href="https://www.reachtel.com.au/blog/7news-sunday-mail-queensland-the-state-were-in-2014-november2014">ReachTEL Queensland poll</a>, conducted on the 27 November from a sample of 1500, has Labor leading by 51-49, a 2% swing to Labor since the early October ReachTEL. Primary votes are 39% for the Liberal National Party (LNP), down 2, 37.5% for Labor, up 1, 8% for the Greens, up 0.5, and 6.5% for PUP, down 0.5. It is difficult to see how ReachTEL gets a Labor 2PP of 51% from these primaries, which suggest about a 50-50 tie given optional preferential voting in Queensland. Two other polls from Galaxy and Morgan that were taken in the last two weeks have also shown a very close contest in Queensland, and it is now plausible that Labor could win the next Queensland election, due early next year. After Labor was reduced to only seven seats out of 89 at the 2012 election, it is remarkable that they are now in a competitive position.</p>
<h2>Victorian Election Late Counting</h2>
<p>The Coalition has clearly won Morwell, South Barwon and Ripon, which were in a little doubt after election night. The Greens have won Melbourne, and an Independent has won Shepparton. In Frankston and Bentleigh, Labor has had its election night leads reduced by late counting, but it is likely that Labor will win both seats, since absent votes, which favour Labor, have not yet been counted. Prahran is the only truly doubtful lower house seat. In that seat, the Liberals have a large primary vote lead over Labor and the Greens. There is a close contest for who finishes second between Labor and the Greens. Whoever wins that contest will receive the preferences of the excluded candidate, and the final count between the Liberals and Labor OR Greens could also be close. The final result is still likely to be 47 Labor, 38 Coalition, 1 Green, 1 Independent and one unclear (Prahran).</p>
<p><strong>Update Thursday 12:40pm:</strong> With more absents counted in Prahran, the Liberals are clearly winning this seat, with the Liberal candidate now up by 265 votes on Labor after preferences. It is now very likely that the Liberals will hold Prahran.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, the Electoral Commission is wiping out the original count data when they begin their rechecks of all seats. In the lower house, the two candidate preferred counts are retained, but in the upper house very low percentages are now being shown as counted in all regions. Until the rechecked counts catch up to the original counts, sensible analysis of the upper house results will not be possible.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/34962/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
This week’s Newspoll had Tony Abbott’s satisfied rating down 3% to 33%, and his dissatisfied rating up 2% to 57%, for a net approval of -24, down five points from last fortnight. On all three measures…Adrian Beaumont, PhD Student, Department of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/349192014-12-03T03:18:02Z2014-12-03T03:18:02ZOne down, two to go? Labor revival puts incumbents on edge<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/66043/original/image-20141202-20560-1byp1t0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Queensland Labor under Annastacia Palaszczuk has claimed a lead in the polls ahead of next year's state election.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Dan Peled</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The rule of thumb in Australian politics has been that voters are reluctant to throw out governments after a single term. And if they do, it’s during a major crisis.</p>
<p>Perhaps that’s a measure of Australians’ inherent conservatism. After all, Australia has had just seven changes of federal government since the end of the Second World War, compared to more than 60 in Italy. Or maybe it’s just Australia’s egalitarian sense of a fair go – a belief that everyone deserves a second chance no matter how inglorious the first.</p>
<p>But last weekend’s Victorian state election <a href="https://theconversation.com/labor-wins-victorian-election-but-watch-for-upper-house-chaos-34796">result</a>, and rapid public opinion <a href="https://theconversation.com/latest-state-and-federal-polling-34602">gains</a> for first-term oppositions elsewhere, may be turning that maxim on its head.</p>
<p>Victorian Labor’s Daniel Andrews scored a modest <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/vic-election-2014/results/">2% swing</a> on the votes counted so far, but it was enough to dislodge the Napthine Coalition government after just four years in office. The last time Victoria dumped a first-term government was in 1955 when Liberal Henry Bolte defeated Labor’s John Cain snr soon after the great Labor split.</p>
<p>The case of New South Wales is different. While Labor leader John Robertson has shaved up to 10% off the government’s vote, Labor <a href="http://blogs.crikey.com.au/pollbludger/2014/11/22/galaxy-56-44-to-coalition-in-nsw-2/">still trails</a> the Coalition by 12 points after preferences. Given Mike Baird also remains well ahead of Robertson as preferred premier, the chances of NSW voters ditching the Coalition after a single term next March are remote.</p>
<p>Then there’s the federal arena. On <a href="http://blogs.crikey.com.au/pollbludger/2014/12/02/newspoll-54-46-to-labor-6/">current polling</a>, Labor is eight points clear of the Coalition. This also suggests Australian voters are inclined to make the Abbott government the first one-term wonder since James Scullin’s Labor Party was dumped <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_federal_election,_1931">in 1931</a> in the depths of the Great Depression. Senior Coalition MPs will be relieved this parliamentary term has two more years to run.</p>
<p>The scenario in Queensland is different again. With only slightly more than one in four electors supporting Labor <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/elections/qld/2012/">in 2012</a>, Queensland Labor was reduced to just seven seats in an 89-seat chamber – the party’s worst result since in 1891. But Labor’s recovery under leader Annastacia Palaszczuk - deep within what is <a href="http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/opinion/opinion-lnp-government-in-poor-poll-position-ahead-of-stafford-byelection/story-fnihsr9v-1226932186650?nk=50ed887f9dcfd4b401e39588d02d3a31">arguably</a> Australia’s most conservative and masculine political culture – is perhaps the most staggering turnaround of all.</p>
<p>After a year in opposition, Labor’s vote had barely improved. By early this year, Labor had closed the gap to a few points. Last weekend, a <a href="https://www.reachtel.com.au/blog/7news-sunday-mail-queensland-the-state-were-in-2014-november2014">ReachTEL poll</a> echoed two other recent surveys that placed Queensland Labor level with – or even slightly ahead of – the LNP Newman government. </p>
<p>On these figures, Queensland is close to following Victoria in dumping a first-term government sometime early next year. If the LNP does fall, it will be the first majority government to lose after a single term in Queensland since the conservative Moore government in 1932 – again because of the Great Depression.</p>
<p>Identifying exactly why voters are growing so impatient with governments, and far more quickly, is not so easy. There are some obvious and very specific factors peculiar to the Commonwealth and to each state. Perceptions of broken promises and an exceedingly tough budget have <a href="https://theconversation.com/new-abbott-tone-but-one-day-does-not-a-political-revival-make-34886">hampered</a> Tony Abbott, just as a <a href="https://theconversation.com/napthine-government-stares-into-the-political-abyss-27564">chaotic Victorian parliament</a> and divided Liberal Party damaged Denis Napthine.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/66118/original/image-20141202-20598-30p0cm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/66118/original/image-20141202-20598-30p0cm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=877&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/66118/original/image-20141202-20598-30p0cm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=877&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/66118/original/image-20141202-20598-30p0cm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=877&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/66118/original/image-20141202-20598-30p0cm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1102&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/66118/original/image-20141202-20598-30p0cm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1102&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/66118/original/image-20141202-20598-30p0cm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1102&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Labor’s Daniel Andrews ousted the Coalition government in Victoria after just one term.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Julian Smith</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Liberal MPs embroiled in ICAC hearings have <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/national/liberal-party-puts-blowtorch-to-icac-mps-20141109-11jcg4.html">reined in</a> the New South Wales Coalition, just as <a href="http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/premier-campbell-newman-defends-austerity-budget/story-e6freoof-1226657694252">economic austerities</a>, rising <a href="http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/queensland/queensland-unemployment-rises-to-11year-high-20140807-101e52.html">unemployment</a> and clashes with powerful pressure groups (such as the <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-10-25/expert-lashes-newman27s-swipe-at-judicial-system/5047008">legal profession</a>) have damaged Queensland’s Campbell Newman.</p>
<p>But rapid opposition recovery is not always about what governments have or have not done. Oppositions, especially those comprehensively rejected by voters just three or four years before, must work proactively to re-cultivate support. Votes so early in electoral cycles rarely fall into opposition laps; support must be chiselled off governments that are usually far better resourced in public relations.</p>
<p>But the Victorian and Queensland cases offer the clearest lessons in how an opposition can win back voters. Incoming Victorian premier Daniel Andrews and Queensland Labor leader Annastacia Palaszczuk are at pains to emphasise the value of low-key, low-cost <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2014/nov/30/victorian-labor-says-its-victory-has-revolutionised-politics">grassroots campaigning</a> to reconnect with the very communities that so recently turned their backs. In spending hours doorknocking rather than dollars on advertising, voters see the human side of the political underdog.</p>
<p>As Palaszczuk <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-12-02/annastacia-palaszczuk-announces-labor-election-plans/5934542">suggested</a> on Tuesday at the Queensland Media Club, this has been especially critical in Queensland where lifelong Labor voters deserted the party in droves in 2012 over the Bligh government’s <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-03-27/quiggin--/3913872">sale of state assets</a>. The last two-and-half years have been a journey, Palaszczuk said, “back to basics”.</p>
<p>She added that numerous town hall meetings in far-flung parts of the state have allowed her to fulfil a six-point plan: to rebuild the party, reconnect with voters, restore trust, return to core values, keep the government accountable, and develop alternative policies.</p>
<p>Just how successfully Palaszczuk has met each of these objectives is yet to be determined, but the 11-point recovery in Labor’s primary vote in Queensland since 2012 suggests the reconnection has worked on some level.</p>
<p>Queensland Labor is still at long odds to win the coming state election due within months. But if it does dislodge another first-term government, we will have entered a new era of voter behaviour that will send a chill through governments everywhere.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/34919/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Paul Williams is a Research Associate at the TJ Ryan Foundation.</span></em></p>The rule of thumb in Australian politics has been that voters are reluctant to throw out governments after a single term. And if they do, it’s during a major crisis. Perhaps that’s a measure of Australians…Paul Williams, Senior Lecturer, School of Humanities, Griffith UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/349142014-12-02T19:22:36Z2014-12-02T19:22:36ZThe East-West Link is dead – a victory for 21st-century thinking<p>Labor’s state election victory in Victoria has fatally undermined Melbourne’s most controversial tunnel, the now-doomed <a href="http://www.linkingmelbourne.vic.gov.au/east-west-link">East-West Link</a>, with new Premier Daniel Andrews pledging to rip up the contracts for the project.</p>
<p>His decision is a victory for anyone who values 21st-century urban thinking over the outdated car-first mentality. </p>
<p>It’s also a financial relief, because – as the project’s back story shows – the East-West Link was always more about politics than economics.</p>
<h2>Courting cars</h2>
<p>For many years, the only groups calling for a tunnel to link Melbourne’s Eastern and Citylink freeways were the <a href="http://www.racv.com.au/wps/wcm/connect/racv/Internet/Primary/home">RAC of Victoria</a> and <a href="https://www.vicroads.vic.gov.au/">VicRoads</a>. The problem was that the tunnel never made economic sense when it was just a freight project, yet most attention in the transport planning system was on public transport, where demand was growing rapidly. The East-West tunnel needed a large dose of cars to justify it. </p>
<p>Enter Tony Abbott, who <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/federal-election-2013/tollfree-eastwest-link-preferable-tony-abbott-20130902-2t0ff.html">pledged A$1.5 billion</a> before last year’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/federal-election-2013">federal election</a> for the East-West plan, arguing that Australians love their cars and public transport was not in his federal knitting. </p>
<p>The East-West project grew in concept and soon became a massive capital cost, with the price tag for the whole plan, including the western extension to Melbourne’s port, threatening to <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/state-budget-2014-major-road-and-rail-projects-worth-24b-to-transform-melbourne-20140506-zr5mj.html">hit A$10 billion</a> and swamp the transport budget. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, in the waning days of the first <a href="http://www.infrastructureaustralia.gov.au">Infrastructure Australia</a> (on which I was privileged to serve for four years), it became obvious that the East-West tunnel and Sydney’s <a href="http://www.westconnex.com.au">WestConnex</a> would never be subject to the scrutiny of our process. They were to be seen as purely political projects and the case for their going ahead would depend on their popularity, not on value for money. </p>
<h2>Why tunnelling Melbourne was a bad idea</h2>
<p>The old shibboleth that building roads is vital for improving the economy is no longer true. Economic growth has divorced itself from car dependence (my new book with <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/jeff-kenworthy-15708">Jeff Kenworthy</a>, <a href="http://www.bibliovault.org/BV.book.epl?ISBN=9781610914635">The End of Automobile Dependence</a>, traces the fall of the empire of car-based planning). </p>
<p>Growth in the Victorian and Australian economies now depends on the growth in “knowledge economy” jobs. These jobs at the creative, productive, innovative edge of our economy are now firmly enmeshed in the dense centres of our cities. </p>
<p>As the US urban economists Ed Glaeser and Richard Florida have <a href="blog.ted.com/2012/02/29/cities-ed-glaeser-at-ted2012">shown</a>, the knowledge economy depends on close interactions between creative people and those who can deliver projects. This work requires intensive spaces in cities, which in turn need intensive modes of transport to enable them. This means that rail, cycling and walking are critical to the knowledge economy. Although heavily into digital communications, knowledge economy workers need face-to-face contact and are now shifting back into central and inner city locations to optimise this process. </p>
<p>In contrast, cars and trucks are dispersive modes of transport, and are needed for the consumption economy. These jobs are important too, but are essentially based in the dispersed spaces of the suburbs. These jobs are not the ones we are seeking as much as those in the knowledge economy, because they do not drive productivity growth as effectively. </p>
<p>It is no wonder that around the world, we are seeing <a href="http://www.scirp.org/journal/PaperInformation.aspx?PaperID=38472#.VH1FI2SUdgA">declining car use per capita and growing public transport use</a>, as well as a widespread return to formerly neglected inner cities.</p>
<p>The six most walkable US cities have <a href="http://urbanful.org/2014/06/20/walkable-cities/">38% higher gross domestic product than the national average</a>. Cities now compete on new measures such as <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/27/opinion/sunday/now-coveted-a-walkable-convenient-place.html?_r=0">walkability</a> and <a href="http://www.livablecities.org/blog/value-rankings-and-meaning-livability">livability</a>. Governments everywhere are aiming to build quality rail projects and make city centres more human in scale. Even <a href="http://www.canberratimes.com.au/act-news/canberras-780m-light-rail-line-gets-final-go-ahead-business-case-to-be-released-20140915-10gzr3.html">Canberra</a> and <a href="http://www.parracity.nsw.gov.au/work/business_in_parramatta/strategy/solving_transport_problems/light_rail_for_western_sydney">Paramatta</a> are joining in, as they work out how to build light rail. </p>
<p>Melbourne has one of the most attractive city centres in the world for knowledge economy jobs. It needs to ensure that this is not lost by tipping more cars into its walkable centre. Instead it needs to encourage commuting by rail, bike and on foot. </p>
<h2>Change in the air</h2>
<p>Victoria’s people have now spoken. The East-West Link will be scrapped, and should be replaced by more sensible transport planning. Melbourne does need to improve east-west access for people and freight, but it should not be beyond us to find some solutions that do not break the bank. </p>
<p>Clearly there are plans for upgrading rail access through several proposed rail projects, including the <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-11-19/melbourne-rail-a-better-deal-than-east-west-toll-planners-say/5902268">original Melbourne Metro plan</a>, and the <a href="http://ptv.vic.gov.au/assets/PTV/PTV%20docs/Melbourne-Airport/Melbourne-Airport-Rail-Link-Study-Overview.pdf">Airport Rail Link</a>. <a href="http://ptv.vic.gov.au/projects/rail-projects/doncaster-rail-study">Doncaster Rail</a> should remain on the table, hopefully not for another 100 years, as it is a simple and direct way to move passengers east-west. </p>
<p>The freight system seems to be amenable to much simpler concepts than the East-West Tunnel, like those <a href="http://habitattrustmelbourne.org.au">presented by the Habitat Trust</a>, using several inland rail interchange facilities.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.thefifthestate.com.au/spinifex/bays-precinct-five-principles-emerge-from-summit/69895">same principles</a> should lead New South Wales to modify the Connex West project, especially where it spills traffic into Sydney’s central and inner areas. Such traffic “solutions” actually harm the economy of inner urban areas, burying investment opportunities under bitumen for parking and road-widening, and congesting areas that already have too many cars. </p>
<p>The public can sense that we have to update the way we travel and how we build cities so they are not car-dependent. The road-building brigade needs to take a deep breath and see that their plans are old-fashioned. Perhaps the legacy of the East-West Tunnel will be that such projects will never again be foisted on the Australian public.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/34914/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter Newman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Labor’s state election victory in Victoria has fatally undermined Melbourne’s most controversial tunnel, the now-doomed East-West Link, with new Premier Daniel Andrews pledging to rip up the contracts…Peter Newman, Professor of Sustainability, Curtin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/348642014-12-02T03:15:14Z2014-12-02T03:15:14ZHow to make Australia’s upper houses truly democratic<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/66011/original/image-20141202-20572-17mbaas.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Parties who gained a very small first preference vote look set to be elected to Victoria's upper house.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Luis Enrique Ascui</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The final count for Victoria’s Legislative Council is still some days away, but it appears members elected from micro-parties will <a href="https://theconversation.com/labor-wins-victorian-election-but-watch-for-upper-house-chaos-34796">hold the balance of power</a> in the upper house. This will be a challenge for the new Andrews government, but is it undemocratic?</p>
<p>Counting is continuing, but as of December 1, the prediction of the result on the <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/vic-election-2014/results/legislative-council/">ABC website</a>, based on above-the-line votes counted so far was as follows:</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/66008/original/image-20141202-20588-15j8amt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/66008/original/image-20141202-20588-15j8amt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/66008/original/image-20141202-20588-15j8amt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=637&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/66008/original/image-20141202-20588-15j8amt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=637&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/66008/original/image-20141202-20588-15j8amt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=637&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/66008/original/image-20141202-20588-15j8amt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/66008/original/image-20141202-20588-15j8amt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/66008/original/image-20141202-20588-15j8amt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>The percentages of votes for the parties, compared with the number of seats predicted, were <a href="http://tallyroom.vic.gov.au/vtr/tallyroom.html">as follows</a>:</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/66009/original/image-20141202-20568-183lyoz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/66009/original/image-20141202-20568-183lyoz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/66009/original/image-20141202-20568-183lyoz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=546&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/66009/original/image-20141202-20568-183lyoz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=546&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/66009/original/image-20141202-20568-183lyoz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=546&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/66009/original/image-20141202-20568-183lyoz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=686&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/66009/original/image-20141202-20568-183lyoz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=686&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/66009/original/image-20141202-20568-183lyoz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=686&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>This result appears to be entirely fair, representing the breadth of opinion in the community at approximately the level that those opinions are held. As just under 18% of people voted for non-major parties (including the Greens and the Nationals as “major parties”), in a <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/federal-election-2013/results/senate/vic/">rather similar result</a> to the Senate in September 2013, it looks like the voters of Victoria have chosen to have a Legislative Council operating in a similar fashion to the Senate. </p>
<p>There is concern that parties with a very small first preference vote can be elected. This does not necessarily indicate the voting system is undemocratic. In an extreme case, the candidate may be the second preference of all voters. </p>
<p>The problem with the upper house voting system in Victoria is that candidates can be elected by “preferences” that are not the deliberate choice of voters. The preferences are being decided by parties and are not known to most of the voters.</p>
<p>These preferences, the <a href="http://www.prsa.org.au/history.htm#gvt">Group Voting Tickets</a>, were available online before the election, and some voters may have looked at them. But most people voted above the line and by doing so handed control of their preferences to whichever party they voted for.</p>
<p>Consider the Western Victoria Region. James Purcell, of the Vote 1 Local Jobs Party, received <a href="http://www.geeklections.com.au/2014-vic-election/uh-live-wvr.html">1.3% of the primary vote</a> and yet he may be elected as one of five members in that region. The quota – the percentage of the vote needed to be elected – is 16.67% (just over one-sixth of the vote). So Purcell has received most of his support from second, third, fourth and subsequent preferences.</p>
<p>That is also true for the ALP ticket’s number two candidate in the Western Victoria Region, Gayle Tierney, who will be elected. Her first preference support was much lower than Purcell’s. She is picking up a higher proportion of her quota from preferences than he is – most of them from ballots for the ALP’s number one candidate, Jaala Pulford.</p>
<p>Both candidates received a small first preference vote and both get elected as a result of other than first preferences. On the face of it, it seems to be equal. The difference, however, is that whereas we can expect most of the people who voted “1” for Labor above the line were aware that their preference would go to the next Labor candidate, most of Purcell’s preferences come from other parties.</p>
<p>Did the voters for Rise Up Australia, No Smart Meters and Australian Christians – all of whose preferences were first delivered to the Democratic Labour Party (DLP) and only later to Purcell – really expect Purcell to be the beneficiary of their vote?</p>
<p>Purcell’s election – if it happens – will be entirely in accord with the current law. And it would be entirely proper and democratic if the people who preferenced him had themselves explicitly decided those preferences. So, let’s reform the upper house so that voters do control their own preferences.</p>
<p>This has already been examined for the Senate by the Federal Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters. In <a href="http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Joint/Electoral_Matters/2013_General_Election/Interim_Report">its interim report</a>, the committee recommended the retention of above-the-line voting but the abolition of Group Voting Tickets. </p>
<p>That means that if you voted just “1” above the line, your vote would go only to the candidates of the party whose box you had numbered. If you wanted to express more preferences above the line, you would have to number from “2”, “3”, “4” – as few or as many as you like – party by party. Voters would explicitly decide the preferences among the parties.</p>
<p>The micro-parties could still recommend to their supporters a certain order of preferences, but they would have to communicate that message by handing out how-to-vote cards or by some other means. And if you didn’t like the order your party was recommending – if for example you were a Greens voter in South-East Metropolitan Region who didn’t agree with putting Palmer United Party ahead of Labor – then you would change the order to match your view.</p>
<p>Those who want to order individual candidates would continue to do so below the line – where currently you only have to number one to five.</p>
<p>These reforms, already suggested for the federal Senate by a cross-party committee, would end the backroom deals and preference harvesting and gaming. The only party preferences that would count would be those expressed explicitly by individual voters. And that’s democracy.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/34864/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stephen Morey is affiliated with the Proportional Representation Society of Australia (Victoria-Tasmania) Branch Inc. He is an Australian Research Council Future Fellow, at La Trobe University, in the field of Linguistics.</span></em></p>The final count for Victoria’s Legislative Council is still some days away, but it appears members elected from micro-parties will hold the balance of power in the upper house. This will be a challenge…Stephen Morey, Australian Research Council Future Fellow, Linguistics, La Trobe UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/343642014-12-01T02:59:18Z2014-12-01T02:59:18ZVictorian election: Labor triumph or Coalition disaster – or neither?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/65865/original/image-20141130-20565-1nv8c9k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Victorian premier-elect Daniel Andrews and his colleagues now have the chance to demonstrate unity, discipline and functionality to a swinging electorate.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Joe Castro</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>After Daniel Andrews and Labor’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/labor-wins-victorian-election-but-watch-for-upper-house-chaos-34796">decisive victory</a> in the Victorian state election at the weekend, there has been – not unexpectedly – a welter of post-election opinion trying to account for the rather unusual outcome in which a government was tipped from office after only one term. </p>
<p>In these analyses, the federal government has loomed large as a target. This suits Labor, which hopes to replicate the Victorian outcome at the next federal contest. But it also suits the Victorian Liberals, who would rather blame their New South Wales-based federal counterparts for this spectacular failure. </p>
<p>With the exception of the seat of <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/vic-election-2014/guide/shep/">Shepparton</a> – where Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s <a href="http://www.news.com.au/national/spc-ardmona-rejects-abbott-governments-blistering-attack-on-working-conditions/story-fncynjr2-1226817781267">insensitive comments</a> about workers at the SPC Ardmona food processing plant clearly helped re-align former National voters to the independent candidate – it is doubtful that the Victorian outcome was profoundly influenced by Abbott and his federal colleagues. Opinion polling showed that the Victorian coalition government was losing support from the moment it came to office in 2010 and this trend did not alter.</p>
<p>The causes of the result were essentially Victorian. The Liberal government <a href="https://theconversation.com/baillieus-bombshell-resignation-where-to-now-for-victoria-12676">lost its first leader</a>, Ted Baillieu, amid intrigues about a leadership challenge. Into the breach stepped the avuncular but not particularly inspiring Denis Napthine.</p>
<p>Far from solving the internal tensions, Baillieu’s departure seemed to indicate that the rogue Liberal-turned-independent member for the marginal seat of Frankston, Geoff Shaw, had a taste for upsetting the operation of his (now former) party and he was prepared to go on with it. </p>
<p>Angry about being pursued for allegedly misusing parliamentary entitlements, Shaw proceeded to pursue his former Liberal comrades in retaliation. On at least two occasions he threatened to bring down the government. Shaw was able to add the scalps of lower house speaker <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-02-04/victorian-parliamentary-speaker-ken-smith-resigns/5237488">Ken Smith</a> and corrective services minister <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-opinion/napthines-crew-in-the-sights-of-a-loose-cannon-20130427-2ilbe.html">Andrew McIntosh</a> – both forced to resign – to that of Baillieu. </p>
<p>With friends like this, the Liberal Party hardly needed enemies.</p>
<h2>Policy challenges</h2>
<p>The Liberal and National parties now have four years to reflect on their lost opportunity. Labor returns to government with a narrow majority and possibly facing an upper house in which the balance of power will be held by minor parties of the left (especially the Greens) and populist and socially conservative parties of the right. </p>
<p>The policy themes discussed during the campaign were standard Labor promises. This included putting <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/state-politics/victoria-election-2014-well-get-you-back-to-work-vows-daniel-andrews/story-fnqetyrp-1227138219259">more resources</a> into the public sector and trying to alleviate the industrial hostility in the <a href="http://www.danielandrews.com.au/policy/only-labor-will-end-the-ambulance-crisis/">emergency services sector</a> left behind by the Napthine government. </p>
<p>Arguably the most contentious matter to arise from the campaign was the question of transport policy. Both sides committed themselves to infrastructure projects. The major point of difference, however, was over the proposed East West Link between the Eastern and Tullamarine freeways by way of a tunnel to be constructed under the inner-city suburbs of Collingwood and Parkville. </p>
<p>These suburbs are part of the state seat of <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/vic-election-2014/guide/melb/">Melbourne</a> – the epicentre of concentrated support for the Greens. That may have led to the formerly Labor stronghold potentially <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/victoria-state-election-2014/victorian-election-2014-greens-win-melbourne-in-historic-victory-20141130-11wvc6.html">being lost</a>. </p>
<p>Alert to the electoral problem and anxious to attack the Coalition for the way it approached building the tunnel, Labor changed its policy from initially saying that it would honour any construction contract entered in to by the Coalition to instead taking a <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/victoria-state-election-2014/labor-says-no-to-the-tunnel-but-uncertainty-remains-20141122-11rxog.html">“no tunnel” position</a>. This was a high-risk strategy for Labor. The policy shift was roundly condemned by business interests and at least one of the state’s two daily <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/comment/the-age-editorial/coalition-has-the-best-policies-for-the-state-20141127-11vjq3.html">newspapers</a> as irresponsible and a poor signal to send to investors. </p>
<p>The election result, however, vindicated Labor’s strategy. Andrews can at least expect that the parliament – including the upper house, with what might be a phalanx of Greens – will support him in any legislative exercise to <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/victoria-state-election-2014/victoria-election-2014-daniel-andrews-to-release-east-west-link-documents-20141130-11wzn6.html">extricate Victoria</a> from whatever contracts the former government signed. </p>
<h2>A complex upper house</h2>
<p>The make-up of the Legislative Council will take some time to determine, but the key feature of the Victorian upper house election was that it replicated the voting behaviour of <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-2013-senate-contest-australia-lurches-to-the-right-17535">last year’s Senate election</a>. </p>
<p>Both major parties have <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/vic-election-2014/results/legislative-council/">lost ground</a> to the minor parties of the left and right. The re-alignment of former Labor voters to the Greens continued in this election. It seems that the Sex Party also took votes away. The Coalition has lost significant support in rural districts to the plethora of socially conservative and right-wing populist parties. </p>
<p>These parties will have the balance of power in the upper house, but this may not really matter to Labor as it has a lower house majority. The removal of the Legislative Council’s ability to block supply was one of the main consequences of the <a href="http://www.legislation.vic.gov.au/Domino/Web_Notes/LDMS/PubStatbook.nsf/51dea49770555ea6ca256da4001b90cd/75a044f7328eae28ca256e5b00214042/$FILE/03-002a.pdf">reform of the Victorian constitution</a> in 2003. To become law, an appropriation bill need only pass the Legislative Assembly.</p>
<p>Even on other legislative matters, the new government has some constitutional tools at its disposal to try to get its way, although negotiation and bargaining will still be the order of the day. After Andrews, the next most important person in the government could well be Gavin Jennings, who will lead the government in the Legislative Council and will be the negotiator-in-chief.</p>
<p>Labor is at the beginning of a guaranteed four-year term that can’t be disrupted by external forces. Andrews and his colleagues have the chance to demonstrate unity, discipline and functionality to a Victorian electorate whose swinging voters have shown that they value this above promises, circuses and vilifying opponents. </p>
<p>The Liberals, meanwhile, will have to undertake the painful task of rejuvenation. The National Party needs to re-connect with its constituents, lest the oft-made claim that Victoria really is something of a naturally Labor state proves to be true.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/34364/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nick Economou does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>After Daniel Andrews and Labor’s decisive victory in the Victorian state election at the weekend, there has been – not unexpectedly – a welter of post-election opinion trying to account for the rather…Nick Economou, Senior Lecturer, School of Political and Social Inquiry, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/348412014-11-30T09:07:00Z2014-11-30T09:07:00ZVictorian blame game brings more nasty static for end of Abbott’s parliamentary year<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/65872/original/image-20141130-20568-64c2s6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Victoria changing to a Labor government has provided a headache for Prime Minister Tony Abbott.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Lukas Coch</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In his statement on Labor’s Victorian election win, Tony Abbott referred to just one policy issue: the East West Link, which was a central Liberal promise.</p>
<p>The Prime Minister declared he was “determined to do what I can to ensure this vital national infrastructure project proceeds to completion”.</p>
<p>Abbott had previously said the state election was a “referendum” on the project, and warned the A$3 billion federal funding committed to it wouldn’t be available for any transport alternative in the state.</p>
<p>Victorians have voted in Labor despite its commitment, repeated on Sunday, to scrap the plan.</p>
<p>So what is Abbott now intending to do? And why would he bother anyway, other than to highlight that he won’t countenance the new state government’s transport priorities? Unless he hopes to capitalise on whatever difficulties Premier-elect Daniel Andrews runs into in getting out of the contract.</p>
<p>The Liberals are fighting publicly over the federal contribution to Denis Napthine’s loss (on a two-party swing, according to ABC analyst Antony Green, of about 3.5% although there is no exact calculation at this stage) and the implications for the Abbott government.</p>
<p>Jeff Kennett was <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-11-30/federal-liberals-blamed-for-coalition-victorian-election-loss/5928934">typically straight talking</a>. “We hear the call for Australians to come aboard Team Australia but as far as the federal government has been concerned there has been no Team Liberal,” the former premier said. “There is no doubt their performance on a number of issues, particularly their handling of their budget has caused great concern throughout the electorate.”</p>
<p>Federal Liberals were trying to minimise or deny the extent to which Victorian voters had cast a reflection on the Abbott government. They say the state polls didn’t shift much in three years – which was going back well before Abbott became PM.</p>
<p>The truth lies in-between. Voters were unimpressed with the state government’s performance and disgusted with its chaotic parliament. But the federal budget, with its array of nasties (many of which haven’t even been passed because of the Senate) and the general style of the federal government played right into Labor’s hands.</p>
<p>Then there were the federal grenades that lobbed in the immediate run up to the election – including the decision to implement fuel excise indexation by regulation and last week’s shemozzle over the Medicare co-payment.</p>
<p>And how do those arguing there was no “anti-Abbott” element account for the fact that he was, as much as practical, kept out of the campaign, and made no appearance south of the Murray in the closing days, in contrast to Liberal deputy Julie Bishop who campaigned in two marginal seats on Friday?</p>
<p>Abbott and some around him are out of kilter with Victoria and probably always will be. He and Treasurer Joe Hockey are not just from NSW but are Sydney-centric. As is highlighted by some Liberals, there is no Victorian in the federal leadership group.</p>
<p>Kennett suggested the federal government has two standards when it comes to NSW and Victoria. Referring to the fuel indexation regulation he said: “Tony was putting tax on [Napthine] after tax on him. He wouldn’t have done it in NSW.”</p>
<p>Victorian voters don’t like the cut of Abbott’s jib and Abbott would see Victoria as a left-leaning state. Even in last year’s federal election, Labor narrowly carried the two-party vote.</p>
<p>But while Abbott was a deadweight in the state election, federal Liberals are able to argue the picture is not as black in the two states about to face elections in the first part of next year.</p>
<p>Immigration Minister Scott Morrison, <a href="http://tenplay.com.au/channel-ten/the-bolt-report/2014/11/30">appearing on Ten</a>, pointed out that both the NSW and Queensland governments were ahead in polling. The “vast majority” of federal seats under 6% were in NSW or Queensland, he said. In other words, Victoria won’t matter as much as these states in the federal election.</p>
<p>But Abbott should not minimise his “Victorian problem”. Just as federal opposition leader Bill Shorten, publicly playing up the result, would be unwise privately to over-estimate the implications for him of Saturday’s Labor win – although it is important for Labor’s federal rebuilding effort.</p>
<p>The Victorian outcome is an object lesson in what can happen to a first term government that loses its way.</p>
<p>While federal Liberals are noting that the state government was behind for years, they must take account of the fact that in federal polling their trailing is becoming entrenched – although they would counter that it’s Victoria that drags them down.</p>
<p>A year ago Abbott might reasonably have hoped he would go into 2015 with all states in Liberal hands. Instead it is a four-two breakdown. South Australian Labor held on at its election earlier this year.</p>
<p>That will complicate significant issues on the national agenda including reforming federal-state relations and taxation. It’s hard to see the Labor states saying anything but no if Abbott wanted to urge changing the rate and base of the GST.</p>
<p>In the immediate term, the blame game will further disrupt the end of the federal parliamentary year.</p>
<p>This last week of parliament is unlikely to bring the government any joy. Its earlier hopes of a compromise being found that would see the higher education package through the Senate won’t be realised, on what crossbenchers are saying.</p>
<p>It remains hoist on the barbed wire fence with the co-payment, with no obvious way of getting it implemented but a big hole in the mid-year budget update if it admitted it was walking away from it.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/34841/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
In his statement on Labor’s Victorian election win, Tony Abbott referred to just one policy issue: the East West Link, which was a central Liberal promise. The Prime Minister declared he was “determined…Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/347932014-11-28T21:42:41Z2014-11-28T21:42:41ZFinal Victorian Election Polls have Labor Narrowly Ahead<p>The Victorian election will be held today, with polls closing at 6pm local time. The table below gives the final Victorian election polls by 2010 election preferences. Ipsos gave Labor a 52-48 lead as its headline figure, but this used respondent allocated preferences.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/65860/original/image-20141128-20572-1cxjqcr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/65860/original/image-20141128-20572-1cxjqcr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/65860/original/image-20141128-20572-1cxjqcr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=155&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/65860/original/image-20141128-20572-1cxjqcr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=155&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/65860/original/image-20141128-20572-1cxjqcr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=155&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/65860/original/image-20141128-20572-1cxjqcr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=195&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/65860/original/image-20141128-20572-1cxjqcr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=195&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/65860/original/image-20141128-20572-1cxjqcr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=195&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Vic final polls.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The poll table has three polls at 52-48 to Labor, and two with a 50-50 tie. The three 52-48 polls are all by experienced pollsters that have performed well when tested against election results. Ipsos has a good international reputation, but this will be the first election test for it in Australia. While Morgan has been conducting Australian polls for a long time, this will also be the first test of his SMS polls.</p>
<p>As a result, the polls showing 52-48 should be weighted more heavily, and it is likely that all three of them actually had Labor ahead by slightly more than 52-48. The <a href="http://blogs.crikey.com.au/pollbludger/2014/11/28/fairfax-ipsos-52-48-to-labor/">Poll Bludger’s BludgerTrack</a> is now at 51.8% Two Party Preferred (2PP) to Labor, from primary votes of 41.2% for the Coalition, 38.6% for Labor and 12.5% for the Greens. This is a 1.1% 2PP gain for the Coalition over the final week. <a href="http://kevinbonham.blogspot.com.au/2014/11/victorian-election-final-aggregate-and.html">Kevin Bonham’s aggregate</a> is at a similar 51.7% 2PP to Labor.</p>
<p>On these final polls, it is likely that Labor will win the election, but not absolutely certain. Assuming no Labor seats are lost to the Greens, BludgerTrack gives Labor a 48-40 majority, while Bonham gives them a 47-41 majority. As I noted in my <a href="https://theconversation.com/victorian-election-preview-34572">election preview</a>, preference flows from the Greens are likely to favour Labor more heavily than at the 2010 election, so I would expect Labor’s actual 2PP to be higher than predicted for given primary votes. However, if the late swing to the Coalition continues into election day, this could be a very close election.</p>
<p>We may not have a clear result tonight because about one third of the electorate has voted early, and these votes will not be counted until Monday at the earliest. A <a href="http://kevinbonham.blogspot.com.au/2014/11/victorian-poll-roundup-endless-52-48.html">Galaxy exit poll</a> of the early voters in the four “sandbelt” marginals of Carrum, Bentleigh, Mordialloc and Frankston has Labor leading by 52-48 across the four seats. In 2010, early votes in the sandbelt seats favoured the Coalition 53-47, so this poll represents a 5% swing to Labor. With more early voters, the composition of the early vote may have changed, but Labor would still expect to perform better on ordinary votes than early votes. This poll suggests that at least three of the four sandbelt marginals will fall to Labor. The poll was commissioned by Trades Hall Council and has a sample of 600.</p>
<h2>Notes on These Polls</h2>
<ul>
<li><p>I do not usually comment on preferred Premier/PM, but it is <a href="http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/victoria-state-election-2014/victorian-election-2014-voters-united-in-link-support/story-fnocxssc-1227137560265">notable in Galaxy</a> that Andrews has dramatically closed the preferred Premier gap with Napthine, from 16 points in late October to 12 points last week, and now the preferred Premier gap is only three points in favour of Napthine. This Galaxy found that 60% supported the East West Link, with 29% opposed. However, the <a href="http://electionwatch.edu.au/victoria-2014/polls-show-labor-lengths-ahead-spring-street-race">late October Galaxy</a> asked whether people would prefer the removal of level crossings to the Link, and found 58% supported removal of level crossings.</p></li>
<li><p><a href="http://www.roymorgan.com/findings/5959-morgan-poll-victorian-state-election-november-28-2014-201411271232">Morgan’s SMS polls</a> have had the Greens on about 18%, much higher than any other polls. His final poll had the Greens falling to 13.5%, which suggests that he may have wanted a Greens vote that was in better agreement with other polls. However, his final poll gives the Coalition a primary vote of 44%, which is higher than other polls.</p></li>
<li><p><a href="http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/victoria-state-election-2014/victorian-election-2014-result-likely-to-come-down-to-the-wire-20141128-11wb6b.html">Ipsos</a> had Napthine’s approval and disapproval both up 3 points to 49% and 40% respectively, for a net approval of +9. Andrews’ net approval was -1, down from +3. 33% said the Coalition was more likely to keep its election promises, while 30% selected Labor. Ipsos is the Greens’ best poll, with a primary vote of 15%. The last Ipsos poll was taken in early November.</p></li>
<li><p><a href="https://www.reachtel.com.au/blog/7-news-victorian-poll-27november2014">ReachTEL</a> had Napthine’s good or very good rating at 34% (up 4) and his poor or very poor rating at 36% (down 2). Andrews’ good rating was 28% (up 5) and his poor rating was 35% (down 4). 62% thought Labor would win the election, and 38% thought the Coalition would win. The last ReachTEL was taken in late October.</p></li>
<li><p><a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/state-politics/labor-on-brink-of-victory-in-victoria-newspoll/story-fnqetyrp-1227138930802">Newspoll</a> had Napthine’s satisfied rating down 5 points to 41% and his dissatisfied rating up 4 points to 45% for a net approval of -4, down from +5 in late October. Andrews’ net approval was up four points to -5. 52% think Labor will win, while 25% say the Coalition will win.</p></li>
</ul><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/34793/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
The Victorian election will be held today, with polls closing at 6pm local time. The table below gives the final Victorian election polls by 2010 election preferences. Ipsos gave Labor a 52-48 lead as…Adrian Beaumont, PhD Student, Department of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/347542014-11-27T19:27:23Z2014-11-27T19:27:23ZVictorian election spending spree shows a deficit of caution<p>Victorian voters go to the polls this weekend having been bombarded with myriad spending promises from the Coalition and Labor.</p>
<p>Major promises from the Coalition government include:</p>
<ul>
<li>$3.9 billion for 75 new <a href="http://www.denisnapthine.com.au/news-media-releases/rail-state-3-9-billion-a-new-train-every-month-for-10-years-and-3500-jobs/">trains</a>, 75 new trams and 24 new V/Line regional rail cars</li>
<li>An airport rail link - costed at up to $11 billion</li>
<li>$367.8 million over five years for <a href="http://www.denisnapthine.com.au/news-media-releases/hundreds-of-extra-frontline-police-and-specialists-under-a-re-elected-napthine-government/">policing</a></li>
<li>$100 million <a href="http://vic.liberal.org.au/Policies/StateOfOpportunity/RegionalCitiesInfrastructureFund">regional cities fund</a></li>
<li>$250 million on <a href="http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/victoria-state-election-2014/victorian-election-2014-250m-tullamarine-freeway-boom/story-fnocxssc-1227116492719">CityLink and road widening</a> (includes $200m from the federal government)</li>
<li>$178.1 million to improve V/Line <a href="http://www.denisnapthine.com.au/news-media-releases/79-extra-weekly-long-distance-vline-train-trips-with-part-of-traralgon-line-to-be-duplicated/">rail frequency</a></li>
<li>$150 million to <a href="http://www.premier.vic.gov.au/media-centre/media-releases/11277-record-investment-by-napthine-government-to-prevent-family-violence.html">prevent family violence</a></li>
<li>$78 million over four years to put <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/national/coalition-pledges-78m-for-more-primary-school-welfare-officers-20141109-11jbsu.html">primary welfare officers</a> in every state school</li>
<li>$77.5 million for the <a href="https://vic.liberal.org.au/News/2014-11-21/coalition-continues-the-fight-against-cancer-with-137-million-investment">Andrew Love Cancer Centre</a> in Geelong</li>
<li>$75 million to help <a href="http://www.denisnapthine.com.au/news-media-releases/coalition-invests-75-million-to-give-young-victorians-the-start-they-need/">long-term unemployed youth</a>, offering a $2,000 voucher to employers who take them on</li>
<li>$70 million towards a $120 million <a href="http://www.premier.vic.gov.au/media-centre/media-releases/11236-coalition-to-deliver-new-monash-heart-hospital.html">heart hospital</a> at Monash Medical Centre</li>
<li>$61 million for <a href="http://www.denisnapthine.com.au/news-media-releases/61-million-for-targeted-rural-hospital-capital-investments/">rural hospital capital works</a></li>
<li>$23 million over four years for a <a href="http://vic.nationals.org.au/kinda_rebate">$100 rebate</a> for every family with a child in kindergarten (not means-tested).</li>
</ul>
<p>And from Labor:</p>
<ul>
<li>$1.3 billion <a href="http://www.danielandrews.com.au/media-releases/labor-to-bring-back-tech-schools-and-save-our-tafe-system/">education and skills package</a>, including $320 million TAFE rescue fund</li>
<li>$1 billion for <a href="http://www.danielandrews.com.au/policy/1-billion-for-suburban-roads/">suburban roads</a></li>
<li>$800-$900 million on 30 new Metro <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/victoria-state-election-2014/victorian-election-2014-labor-promises-new-trains-for-metro-vline-20141029-11dge8.html">trains</a> and 20 V/Line rail cars</li>
<li>$510 million for government schools</li>
<li>$500 million <a href="http://www.danielandrews.com.au/policy/labor-to-get-ballarat-back-on-track/">regional jobs and infrastructure fund</a> for Ballarat</li>
<li>Up to $300 million for a <a href="http://www.danielandrews.com.au/media-releases/labor-will-build-the-victorian-heart-hospital/">Victorian Heart Hospital</a></li>
<li>$200 million for a <a href="http://www.danielandrews.com.au/media-releases/labor-to-build-womens-and-childrens-hospital-for-the-west/">women’s and children’s hospital</a> in Sunshine</li>
<li>$200 million <a href="http://www.danielandrews.com.au/media-releases/labor-announces-beds-rescue-fund-to-treat-more-patients/">“Beds Rescue Fund”</a></li>
<li>$100 million to <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-11-26/-labor-to-remove-asbestos-from-government/5920156">remove asbestos</a> from schools</li>
<li>$100 million to <a href="http://www.danielandrews.com.au/media-releases/only-labor-will-end-the-ambulance-crisis/">improve ambulance services</a>/facilities</li>
<li>$100 million to improve <a href="http://www.danielandrews.com.au/media-releases/labors-100-million-bus-boost-to-fill-the-gaps-in-growth-areas/">bus networks</a></li>
<li>$100 million over six years creating a <a href="http://www.danielandrews.com.au/policy/labor-to-make-cycling-and-walking-safer-for-all/">network of paths</a> for cyclists and pedestrians.</li>
</ul>
<p>Peter Martin and Sian Johnson <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/victoria-state-election-2014/victorian-election-2014-coalition-big-spender-by-51-20141126-11ue70.html">estimate</a> that the Labor spending is highly biased towards the marginal seats. Promised spending in these seats exceeds five times that promised by the Coalition. A cynical person would comment here about elections being more about buying votes than good policy.</p>
<p>The election promises of both sides have concentrated on big spending. There is little mention of any new taxes or charges or what cuts should be made elsewhere to pay for this spending. </p>
<p>In election campaigning, proposing tax increases is a definite no-no politically, although responsible government may demand it and fairly straightforward options are available to state governments. For instance, it is well known in economics that a payroll tax is virtually equivalent to a broad-based consumption tax (such as the GST). This relatively efficient and cheap way of raising revenue for the states may be economically sensible but is anathema to politicians, thanks to the widely held, but misguided, view that it is a “tax on jobs”.</p>
<p>Attention has mostly focused on budget deficits and accumulating debt at the Commonwealth level. However, more than 40% of total government debt is attributable to state and local governments. </p>
<p>While Victoria is in better shape than most other states, particularly Western Australia, budget deficits and accumulating debt are still a fundamental problem. The state has been running deficits for almost 10 years. Victoria’s current deficit (as a percentage of total revenue) is estimated to be around 9%, a significant reduction on the previous financial year.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/65688/original/image-20141127-15827-19okq25.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/65688/original/image-20141127-15827-19okq25.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=473&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/65688/original/image-20141127-15827-19okq25.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=473&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/65688/original/image-20141127-15827-19okq25.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=473&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/65688/original/image-20141127-15827-19okq25.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=595&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/65688/original/image-20141127-15827-19okq25.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=595&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/65688/original/image-20141127-15827-19okq25.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=595&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The estimated deficit and return to balance (or surplus) depend, of course, on the assumptions on which they are based. One of these, importantly, is that the Australian economy doesn’t suffer any nasty shocks. This is quite a bold assumption since the international economy, particularly Europe, is still fragile, with another global crisis quite possible. China is not looking as stable as it has been, with slower (but still high) growth and asset bubbles looming. </p>
<p>The impact of car industry closures may be greater than expected, particularly for Victoria and South Australia. There is concern about a bursting of the “housing bubble”, particularly in Melbourne and Sydney, with consequent falls in revenue from property taxes. Perhaps most serious is the inability of the Abbott government to get many of its budget measures through the Senate, leaving an almost A$50 billion hole in the budget. </p>
<p>In the longer term, a <a href="http://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Budget_Office/reports/The_sensitivity_of_budget_projections_to_changes_in_economic_parameters">new report</a> by the Parliamentary Budget Office demonstrates the Commonwealth’s estimates of budget surpluses/deficits are highly sensitive to key assumptions. In a worst-case scenario, revenue could fall well below that projected. The implication for Victoria is the Commonwealth making greater cuts to payments to the states as it attempts to balance the budget. In such an environment, the state should take a conservative approach to spending.</p>
<p>I have argued before that there is an <a href="https://theconversation.com/australias-economy-is-healthy-so-how-can-there-be-a-budget-crisis-26036">unsustainable structural budget imbalance</a> at both the state and federal level. This is a result of irresponsible past spending policies of successive governments, both Coalition and ALP, at state and federal levels. New spending initiatives were brought in without plans to raise the revenue to pay for them, and often without due analysis.</p>
<p>One of the most powerful contributions that economists bring to the policy debate is the concept of opportunity cost – any increase in government spending comes at the expense of something else. Either another government program is given up or individuals have to reduce their expenditure on goods and services to pay higher taxes. It follows that any new expenditure by government must be carefully evaluated against alternative uses of taxpayers’ money. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, the plethora of new spending proposals in the Victorian election campaign suggests that economists’ concern about ill-informed policy has largely gone unheeded.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/34754/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Phil Lewis does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article. He also has no relevant affiliations. During his career he has received funding from many private and public sector organisations including most recently the ARC, NCVER, the AFPC and the Australian Industry Group.</span></em></p>Victorian voters go to the polls this weekend having been bombarded with myriad spending promises from the Coalition and Labor. Major promises from the Coalition government include: $3.9 billion for 75…Phil Lewis, Professor of Economics, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/346082014-11-27T19:27:17Z2014-11-27T19:27:17ZA job for Victoria’s next leaders: save the Central Highlands<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/65676/original/image-20141127-10179-1y4isb1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C16%2C3648%2C2615&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Logging has left Victoria's mountain ash forests in danger of collapse.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">David Blair</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Whoever wins power in <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/victorian-election-2014">Victoria’s election</a> tomorrow will no doubt have a long to-do list. Here’s an urgent item: protect the mountain ash forests of the state’s Central Highlands.</p>
<p>We have discovered that this ecosystem is at very high risk of collapse within half a century, driven by the effects of clearfell logging and bushfires. </p>
<p><a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/aec.12200/abstract">Our research suggests</a> that under business-as-usual management, there is a 97% chance that large, hollow-bearing trees will decline to less than one per hectare by 2067, leaving marsupials such as <a href="https://theconversation.com/sending-leadbeaters-possum-down-the-road-to-extinction-11249">the globally endangered Leadbeater’s possum</a> with almost nowhere to live.</p>
<p>The legacy of past logging practices, as well as current clearfelling, is driving the system towards collapse. Our modelling suggests that even if logging ceased today, and there were no bushfires, there is still a 92% chance of ecosystem collapse as defined above.</p>
<p>We suggest that the government needs to deliver a <a href="http://theconversation.com/why-victoria-needs-a-giant-forest-national-park-18452">Great Forest National Park</a>, covering <a href="http://www.greatforestnationalpark.com.au/park-plan.html">a far wider area of the Central Highlands</a> than the existing parks. This will ensure that one of the key collapse drivers – industrial clearfell logging – is removed from a significant part of the forest estate.</p>
<h2>Forests under threat</h2>
<p>The Central Highlands region contains about 157,000 hectares of mountain ash forest, the mature trees of which are the world’s tallest flowering plants. Our research assessed the state of this ecosystem with reference to the newly adopted <a href="http://www.iucnredlistofecosystems.org">IUCN Ecosystem at Risk protocol</a>, which involves identifying what species live in an ecosystem, and the factors they depend on (such as the presence of large trees as habitat).</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/65679/original/image-20141127-15827-v2bpvb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/65679/original/image-20141127-15827-v2bpvb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/65679/original/image-20141127-15827-v2bpvb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/65679/original/image-20141127-15827-v2bpvb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/65679/original/image-20141127-15827-v2bpvb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/65679/original/image-20141127-15827-v2bpvb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/65679/original/image-20141127-15827-v2bpvb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/65679/original/image-20141127-15827-v2bpvb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Gnarled old trees with hollows are a vital habitat for marsupials.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">David Blair</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Mountain Ash forests deliver other benefits too. This forest is the <a href="http://www.pnas.org/content/106/28/11635.long">most carbon-dense in the world</a>, and protecting it would double its carbon storage, potentially <a href="http://www.esajournals.org/doi/abs/10.1890/ES14-00051.1">delivering about 8% of Australia’s overall emissions reduction target for 2020</a>.</p>
<p>Forest catchments dominated by old-growth trees <a href="http://www.publish.csiro.au/pid/7111.htm">yield more water than logged regrowth forest catchments</a>. Meanwhile there are many animals that depend on the forest – particularly arboreal marsupials of which there are eight species in this ecosystem, including Leadbeater’s Possum, which is Victoria’s state animal emblem and is <a href="http://www.environment.gov.au/cgi-bin/sprat/public/publicspecies.pl?taxon_id=273">listed by the federal government as endangered</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/65680/original/image-20141127-19180-np2wj7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/65680/original/image-20141127-19180-np2wj7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/65680/original/image-20141127-19180-np2wj7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/65680/original/image-20141127-19180-np2wj7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/65680/original/image-20141127-19180-np2wj7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/65680/original/image-20141127-19180-np2wj7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/65680/original/image-20141127-19180-np2wj7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/65680/original/image-20141127-19180-np2wj7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Leadbeater’s possum: in danger of extinction, despite its state emblem status.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Dan Harley</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>What business-as-usual would deliver</h2>
<p>The forest delivers wood products, and jobs associated with this industry. These are important factors, and any revision in management needs to be mindful of the impacts on local people and the economy. It is estimated that there are <a href="http://www.vicforests.com.au/files/fqnpoinrpq/SCS-Preliminary-FSC-Assessment-Report-2014---Redacted.pdf">485 jobs</a> associated with the total area of native forestry (491,000 ha) in eastern Victoria, a subset of which would be in the Central Highlands. </p>
<p>The mountain ash forest is being damaged by the practice of clearfell harvesting, in which 60% of the total biomass remains on the site as waste slash which is burnt, and 40% is used as wood products. From these wood products, <a href="http://www.esajournals.org/doi/abs/10.1890/ES14-00051.1">72% is used to make paper</a>. This is despite the fact that wood chips to make paper can be <a href="http://www.randomhouse.com.au/books/judith-ajani/the-forest-wars-9780522854190.aspx">sourced from existing plantations</a>.</p>
<p>Making paper from plantation wood would be a win-win outcome for carbon storage. Carbon stocks in plantations would be maintained by ensuring they are not converted to grazing pastures. At the same time carbon stocks in native forests are increased by not logging them. </p>
<p>If we choose instead to carry on with business-as-usual, some of the ecosystem services discussed above would still apply, but at lower levels of carbon storage, water supply and biodiversity. However, our research indicates that the ecosystem as a habitat for many tree-dwelling animals will not be sustained over future decades.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/65682/original/image-20141127-15827-1f4qn7o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/65682/original/image-20141127-15827-1f4qn7o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/65682/original/image-20141127-15827-1f4qn7o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/65682/original/image-20141127-15827-1f4qn7o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/65682/original/image-20141127-15827-1f4qn7o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/65682/original/image-20141127-15827-1f4qn7o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/65682/original/image-20141127-15827-1f4qn7o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/65682/original/image-20141127-15827-1f4qn7o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Tree dweller: the yellow-bellied glider.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">David Cook</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A sustainable future</h2>
<p>The evidence that things are not well in the mountain ash ecosystem is overwhelming and compelling. If Australians want to retain this ecosystem, and continue to benefit from the ecosystem services that it provides for the next 50-100 years (and beyond), it needs comprehensive protective measures.</p>
<p>Management needs to change to avoid ecological collapse. It won’t be viable to continue with industrial clearfelling, which increases the risk that future fires will be crown-scorching ones that <a href="http://theconversation.com/victorias-logged-landscapes-are-at-increased-risk-of-bushfire-30611">kill old forest trees</a> and, by extension, animals like Leadbeater’s possum. </p>
<p>That is why we consider an enlarged conservation park to be so important for the Central Highlands, and the major parties should consider adding it to their <a href="https://theconversation.com/victorians-short-changed-on-environmental-policy-34587">environmental policies</a>.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, consumers of paper need to think carefully about their purchasing choices, lest they contribute to the collapse of the ecosystem and the extinction of iconic, emblematic species like Leadbeaters possum.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/34608/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Emma Burns' position is funded through the Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network (TERN). The Long Term Ecological Research Network (within TERN), of which she is the Executive Director, receives funding from the Australian Government.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Lindenmayer receives funding from the Australian Research Council, the Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network, and the Government of Victoria. He is a member of the Canberra Ornithologists Group and Birdlife Australia.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Heather Keith receives funding from Fujitsu Laboratories Ltd, Japan for environmental research.</span></em></p>Whoever wins power in Victoria’s election tomorrow will no doubt have a long to-do list. Here’s an urgent item: protect the mountain ash forests of the state’s Central Highlands. We have discovered that…Emma Burns, Executive Director, Long Term Ecological Research Network; Fenner School of Environment and Society, Australian National UniversityDavid Lindenmayer, Professor, The Fenner School of Environment and Society, Australian National UniversityHeather Keith, Research Fellow in Ecology, Australian National UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/347692014-11-27T19:26:37Z2014-11-27T19:26:37ZGrattan on Friday: In Victoria, Julie Bishop is the popular face of an unpopular government<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/65703/original/image-20141127-13289-1gmghnm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The federal government is on the nose, but Foreign Minister Julie Bishop is seen as a positive</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Lukas Coch</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>During Thursday’s extremely unruly Question Time, when Speaker Bronwyn Bishop ejected a record 18 (all Labor) members, Tony Abbott was asked whether he’d visit Victoria on Friday, the eve of the state election.</p>
<p>Abbott avoided the question, just talking about his earlier forays – one of which saw that awkward body language with Denis Napthine. The last thing the embattled Premier needs is a repeat embrace from Abbott.</p>
<p>But Foreign Minister Julie Bishop is another matter: she’ll be campaigning on Friday with Napthine. They’ll appear in Bentleigh – a key Liberal marginal seat on a swing of under 1%. Earlier Bishop will do a street walk in Mordialloc. The federal government is on the nose, but Bishop is seen as a positive.</p>
<p>The state government has made its own trouble but its problems have been exacerbated by Canberra. Apart from the unpopularity of the budget in May, the introduction by regulation of fuel excise indexation – which started from November 10 – and Abbott’s canvassing of possible changes to the GST were unhelpful. One federal issue coming through in Liberal focus groups has been the plan to deregulate university fees. State Liberal messages have also tended to get knocked out by federal stuff-ups.</p>
<p>Now we have had what can only be described as a shocker week for the feds, which included the continuing row about cuts to the ABC and SBS and the fracas over Defence Minister David Johnston’s outburst against the Australian Submarine Corporation.</p>
<p>From the Victorian government’s point of view, the most damaging federal issue this week has surely been the extraordinary contortions over the proposed Medicare $7 co-payment.</p>
<p>After prime ministerial sources on Wednesday were confirming reports the co-payment would be dropped, on Thursday Abbott and his ministers insisted the plan remained on the agenda in some form or other.</p>
<p>Senate leader Eric Abetz said: “The GP co-payment remains our policy.” Health Minister Peter Dutton said: “The government is pragmatic about the situation in the Senate – we will continue negotiations with the senators, but we will look at every option that is available to the government to make sure that we make Medicare sustainable.”</p>
<p>Asked whether the government was considering regulating rather than legislating, Dutton said: “I am not going to rule things in or out. I am saying that there are options that are available to the government.”</p>
<p>That invites the question: if there are other options, why hasn’t the government taken them already? The Senate’s view has been clear for some time, even though the legislation hasn’t even been introduced.</p>
<p>Abbott reaffirmed support for a price signal. Treasurer Joe Hockey said the co-payment wasn’t dead or shelved and would be taken to parliament; he wouldn’t go into what form this might take.</p>
<p>The numbers are not there for legislation and that is unlikely to change.</p>
<p>If the government resorts to regulation, that could be disallowed. The public could also feel that such a backdoor course, instead of legislation, added insult to injury.</p>
<p>The way the co-payment story was allowed to develop this week was one illustration of the government’s version of political “fat fingers”. It had plenty of time on Wednesday to kill the suggestion the co-payment was to be dumped, but did the opposite. After Thursday’s U-turn it refused to declare how it intends to act. </p>
<p>The kindest construction one can put on this is that the government doesn’t know. If it has a plan, it should announce what it is rather than treat the voters with contempt by playing games.</p>
<p>There was another case of political “fat fingers”, this time in the House of Representatives on Thursday, when Opposition Leader Bill Shorten asked Abbott whether Johnston would still be defence minister when parliament resumed next year.</p>
<p>Leader of the House Christopher Pyne jumped up to say this was hypothetical and could not possibly be in order.</p>
<p>The opposition was happy to have the question unanswered because that left doubt over Abbott’s position on Johnston. Pyne had not seen the implication of his intervention.</p>
<p>Abbott realised he was in a trap, tried to answer but things moved on. He was forced to use his reply to a totally unrelated opposition question to declare full confidence in Johnston.</p>
<p>Struggling all week, the government’s defensive tactic has been to step up its attack on the opposition. Abbott repeatedly refers back to Shorten’s knifing of two leaders of his own party. But as the time since the election increases, this is a dubious approach. The public want something more positive.</p>
<p>Next week will be the last for the federal parliamentary year and its atmospherics will be affected by the Victorian result.</p>
<p>While voters distinguish between federal and state governments, a Liberal defeat, expected on the strong evidence of the polls, would contain a federal element and certainly be seen that way. The Abbott government is deeply unpopular in Victoria.</p>
<p>Most immediately, a loss would bring some blame Abbott’s way. A change of government in Victoria would also be an unpleasant reminder that it is possible to lose after one term - although Abbott’s circumstances, with a big buffer of seats, are quite different from those of Napthine.</p>
<p>A Victorian loss would make the federal backbench more nervous. With the prosecution of the federal budget and reform agenda spectacularly unsuccessful this year, defeat in Victoria could weaken the Abbott government’s backbone for reform as it goes into 2015. On the other hand, it might encourage some federal reality check, which, God knows, is needed.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/34769/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>During Thursday’s extremely unruly Question Time, when Speaker Bronwyn Bishop ejected a record 18 (all Labor) members, Tony Abbott was asked whether he’d visit Victoria on Friday, the eve of the state…Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/347092014-11-27T04:56:12Z2014-11-27T04:56:12ZHow to turn IBAC into a corruption watchdog that works as promised<p>Before the 2010 election, the opposition – now the government – <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/11/22/3072444.htm?site=melbourne">promised</a> Victorians an anti-corruption commission. This was to be closely modelled on the New South Wales Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC). Instead Victorians got <a href="http://www.ibac.vic.gov.au/">IBAC</a>, the Independent Broad-based Anti-Corruption Commission.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.ibac.vic.gov.au/about-ibac/key-legislation-and-regulatory-framework/legislation">IBAC legislation</a> has a very narrow definition of corrupt conduct. It excludes the offence of misconduct in public office. IBAC’s jurisdiction is further limited by the very narrowly defined phrase “being conduct that would, if the facts were found proven beyond reasonable doubt at a trial, constitute a relevant offence”. </p>
<p>In contrast, the <a href="http://www.icac.nsw.gov.au/">NSW ICAC</a> has very broad powers to start an investigation. “Corrupt conduct” is defined in such a way as to include any activity that could adversely affect directly or indirectly the exercise of official functions by a public official. It covers a broad variety of other offences. </p>
<p>ICAC’s jurisdiction is so widely expressed that it can investigate any allegation that in the Commissioner’s opinion implies that corrupt conduct may be occurring, or about to occur. The power to investigate is virtually unlimited. ICAC is entitled to use its broad powers at any stage of an investigation.</p>
<p>Since 2011, in a departure from its position in government, the Labor opposition has not suggested that Victoria does not need or should not have such an anti-corruption commission.</p>
<p>Victoria’s IBAC cannot investigate, however, unless it is satisfied that the conduct is serious corrupt conduct. It cannot use its full coercive powers during preliminary investigations.</p>
<h2>Key steps towards making IBAC effective</h2>
<p>To make the IBAC an effective anti-corruption commission:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>the definition of “corrupt conduct” should be greatly broadened</p></li>
<li><p>the limitation to “facts which if proved beyond reasonable doubt at a trial would constitute a relevant offence” should be removed;</p></li>
<li><p>the offence of misconduct in public office should be included;</p></li>
<li><p>IBAC’s entitlement to investigate should be broadened and the threshold lowered;</p></li>
<li><p>IBAC should be entitled to use its broad powers from the outset of any investigation.</p></li>
</ul>
<h2>What the government has offered</h2>
<p>The present Coalition government <a href="http://www.accountabilityrt.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Clark-141116-ART-re-integrity-legislation-2.pdf">proposes to amend</a> the legislation as follows:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>to include the offence of misconduct in public office;</p></li>
<li><p>to permit IBAC to conduct preliminary investigations to determine whether to investigate a matter under the Act;</p></li>
<li><p>to conduct a preliminary inquiry, it will no longer be necessary for IBAC to articulate a state of facts that, if found proved beyond reasonable doubt at a trial, would constitute a relevant offence;</p></li>
<li><p>IBAC is, however, not entitled to use its broad powers during a preliminary investigation.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>A significant advance is the inclusion of misconduct in public office in the definition of either corrupt conduct or “relevant offence”. An amendment that formally authorises IBAC to make preliminary investigations is desirable, but of little real consequence. IBAC already acts on the assumption that it has this right.</p>
<p>The legislation will remain seriously defective in not permitting IBAC to use its coercive powers during preliminary investigations. Under the proposed amendments, so long as IBAC has no more than a suspicion that some unidentified corruption may be occurring, it will remain unable to use its coercive powers, since it will continue to be unable to identify facts that if found proved at a trial beyond reasonable doubt would amount to a relevant offence.</p>
<p>The government-proposed amendments will leave IBAC still inadequately armed to expose corruption and falling far short of the ICAC model. The narrow and constricted definition of corruption is wholly inappropriate to IBAC’s proper function. It will be unable to detect and expose hidden corruption unless authorised to use the full coercive powers of the legislation in preliminary investigations.</p>
<p>The thresholds in the <a href="http://www.ibac.vic.gov.au/docs/default-source/legislation/ibac-act-2011.pdf?sfvrsn=4">IBAC Act</a> prevent IBAC from conducting a full and proper investigation of any corruption unless it can articulate facts that, if found proved beyond reasonable doubt at a trial, would constitute a relevant offence. This threshold is completely inappropriate if IBAC is to have the ability to investigate corruption.</p>
<h2>Labor’s response also falls short</h2>
<p>In response, Labor <a href="https://www.viclabor.com.au/media-releases/labor-will-fix-napthines-toothless-ibac-tiger/">proposes</a> to lower the investigatory threshold to ensure that IBAC does not need to be satisfied (prima facie) of the existence of serious corrupt conduct before starting an investigation. </p>
<p>Labor proposes to include misconduct in public office in the list of relevant offences and to resolve jurisdictional issues between IBAC and other integrity bodies. It has also indicated a willingness to pass the Integrity Legislation Amendment Bill 2014, which the government had proposed but not brought forward for debate.</p>
<p>Labor’s proposals in opposition are no more satisfactory than those of the government. The legislation will still have a wholly inadequate definition of corrupt conduct. IBAC’s entitlement to investigate will not be broadened and there is no proposal to permit the use of its broad powers from the start of any investigation. Despite a vague mention of reducing the thresholds before an IBAC investigation can begin, no detail has been given.</p>
<p>Labor’s response to the inadequacies of the present legislation is vague and as unsatisfactory as that of the incumbent government. The Coalition can at least say that it established an anti-corruption commission.</p>
<h2>Greens offer to give IBAC teeth</h2>
<p>The Greens’ <a href="http://www.accountabilityrt.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/IBAC-Greens-issues-and-amdts-.pdf">response</a> is the most satisfactory. The Greens have broadly supported all of the Accountability Round Table’s proposed amendments. </p>
<p>The Greens indicated that the legislation should be amended to allow disclosures relating to members of Parliament to be made to IBAC. A separate body should be established to investigate police misconduct, including injury and death as a result of police contact. </p>
<p>The Greens say they will:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>broaden the definition of corrupt conduct along the lines of the ICAC Act;</p></li>
<li><p>remove the requirement that IBAC investigate only “serious” corrupt conduct; </p></li>
<li><p>not limit the definition of corrupt conduct to indictable offences;</p></li>
<li><p>provide IBAC with appropriate coercive powers to conduct effective preliminary investigations.</p></li>
</ul><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/34709/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stephen Charles is affiliated with the Accountability Round Table.</span></em></p>Before the 2010 election, the opposition – now the government – promised Victorians an anti-corruption commission. This was to be closely modelled on the New South Wales Independent Commission Against…Stephen Charles, Senior Teaching Fellow, Melbourne Law School, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/347102014-11-27T02:38:21Z2014-11-27T02:38:21ZIt’s hard for voters to trust leaders who won’t promise true integrity<p>The Accountability Round Table (ART), a non-partisan organisation, <a href="http://www.accountabilityrt.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/ART-Victorian-Elections-2014-attachment-and-appendices.pdf">wrote</a> to the three major political parties two months ago seeking their position on three important arms of Victoria’s integrity system: Freedom of Information, the Independent Broad-Based Anti-Corruption Commission, and political donations. </p>
<p>While the <a href="http://www.accountabilityrt.org/art-seeks-accountability-committments-prior-to-victorian-state-elections-promises-so-far/">responses</a> promised to remedy shortcomings, in several areas they fall well short of <a href="http://www.accountabilityrt.org">what is required</a> to ensure transparent and accountable government. </p>
<p>One could be forgiven for thinking that successive governments imagine they are doing the community a favour if they agree to deliver, in an incremental fashion, modicums of accountability and transparency. Well, they aren’t, and voters are acutely aware of this.</p>
<p>We elect people to represent our interests, not their individual interests or the interests of their party machine. Our taxes pay the wages of our elected representatives and contribute, in part, to the bank accounts of political parties. We contribute to the latter because under Victoria’s <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/comment/political-donations-victorias-big-secret-20141014-115mgh.html">political funding rules</a>, taxpayers give A$1.20 (adjusted for inflation) for every first-preference vote a party receives. There is a 4% eligibility requirement.</p>
<p>If for no other reason (and there are others), paying taxes gives us the right to know not just about the decisions made in our name, but also the processes that led to those decisions. In exchange for taxes paid, we are asking for greater transparency and accountability on public sector matters. That includes government-business relations that involve the spending of taxpayers’ dollars.</p>
<h2>Secrecy leads to corruption</h2>
<p>We are asking this for a very simple reason: transparency and accountability matter. They matter to the ethical health of Victoria and every other state. They matter to the <a href="http://www.transparency.org/topic/detail/politics_and_government">functioning of our democracy</a>.</p>
<p>Transparency and accountability are the cornerstones of a democratic political system; they distinguish it from dictatorships and totalitarian regimes. They matter, too, for economic growth, which is needed to meet the social needs of Victorians.</p>
<p>And, of course, they matter to voters. Transparency and accountability lift the veils of secrecy that shroud many aspects of government and public sector decision-making. Unless the veils are lifted, voters cannot make an informed choice.</p>
<p>To return to the issue of economic growth, profit is not a dirty word. However, the means by which it is obtained can be dirty. Secrecy leads to corruption; it is a fertiliser for corrupt practices. Extensive <a href="http://corruptionresearchnetwork.org/rss/datasets">research</a> confirms the strong connection between secrecy and corruption.</p>
<p>To ensure that we don’t reach a point where unethical, even illegal, means are used to achieve ends that benefit the few and disadvantage the many, Victoria’s integrity regime needs to be strengthened. The refusal by successive governments to do this explains, in part, the fundamental lack of trust the community has in members of parliament, political parties and the political system.</p>
<p>We need to be able to trust them all to deliver fair outcomes for all citizens. Having trust does not mean that all members of the community will agree with all government decisions. But if they trust the people making the decision, and the processes used to arrive at that decision are transparent, people are much more likely to understand the reasoning behind a policy and perhaps accept why it has to be so.</p>
<p>The electorate does not speak with one voice. Voters’ wants and demands are contested public policy areas. For example, at this election, people differ on: whether they want the <a href="http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/victoria/herald-sungalaxy-poll-reveals-airport-rail-link-our-top-priority/story-fni0fit3-1226843123689">East-West Link</a> to be built; how government should go about improving the education and health systems; and what are the best ways to deliver economic growth, tackle climate change and reduce crime. MPs and the governments they form have to thread their way through the minefield of public opinion.</p>
<p>But one area is largely uncontested: the need for greater transparency and accountability.</p>
<h2>Public united on need for open and honest government</h2>
<p>I feel confident that any poll that asked the electorate, “Do you want the government you elect to be open and honest with the people they represent, to be transparent in their actions and accountable for them?”, would receive an overwhelming “yes” response. I say this because I can’t recall any group of people coming together to campaign for less transparent, more unaccountable government.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/65643/original/image-20141127-4228-e5cb9q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/65643/original/image-20141127-4228-e5cb9q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/65643/original/image-20141127-4228-e5cb9q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/65643/original/image-20141127-4228-e5cb9q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/65643/original/image-20141127-4228-e5cb9q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/65643/original/image-20141127-4228-e5cb9q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/65643/original/image-20141127-4228-e5cb9q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Auditor-General John Doyle and his predecessors have condemned the lack of ‘follow the money’ powers.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">VAGO</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>If promising a more secretive state was a vote winner, the leaders of the major political parties would have announced it at their campaign launches. They would have issued press releases guaranteeing, first, that IBAC will continue to operate with one hand tied behind its back; second, that Victoria will never adopt the Queensland <a href="http://www.qld.gov.au/about/rights-accountability/right-to-information/">“right to know” approach</a> to Freedom of Information; third, that members of the parliamentary wing of political parties vow never to have open and continuous political donation laws; and, fourth, that the Auditor-General’s office will continue to operate with the same inadequate <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/victoria-state-election-2014/four-auditorsgeneral-fear-watchdog-powers-failing-victoria-20141115-11nadk.html">legislation that has hampered it for years</a>.</p>
<p>In other words, MPs and political parties would give a core, written-down, unconditional promise that symbolic politics, which pays lip service to transparent and accountable government, will remain for the next four years. No MP or political party ever utters such words and for a very good reason: it would be political suicide.</p>
<p>So why do they continue to ignore reasoned arguments for greater transparency and accountability, especially when their doing so is contributing significantly to the lack of trust people have in MPs and governments? This, in turn, is starting to negatively affect people’s belief and trust in the political system.</p>
<p>MPs and the governments they form need to remember that people do not vote them into office to do what is in MPs’ personal or party-political interests. They are our elected representatives and therefore their decisions must align with the public good. But this is not happening to the degree it should in Victoria and beyond.</p>
<h2>Breach of trust is poisoning our democracy</h2>
<p>People’s opinions of their elected representatives are transforming from healthy scepticism into harsh cynicism. Unless we can find a way to break the potentially poisonous circle of mistrust, public disdain will escalate and ultimately infect the health of the institutions that form the foundation and framework of our democracy.</p>
<p>It is worth recalling the words of former Chief Justice of the High Court, Sir Gerard Brennan, at the <a href="http://www.accountabilityrt.org/integrity-awards/sir-gerard-brennan-presentation-of-accountability-round-table-integrity-awards-dec-2013/">presentation</a>` of the ART’s 2013 Integrity Awards and of Raimond Gaita in his 2004 <a href="http://books.google.com.au/books?id=oRb9AAAAQBAJ&pg=PA1&lpg=PA1&dq=Breach+of+Trust:+Truth,+Morality+and+Politics&source=bl&ots=kuE42bZ2RQ&sig=7Zu8u1G5Hlu6ena1pOkLKSP9Yqc&hl=en&sa=X&ei=-2h2VIDgLc7i8AW06YG4Aw&ved=0CCEQ6AEwATgK#v=onepage&q=Breach%20of%20Trust%3A%20Truth%2C%20Morality%20and%20Politics&f=false">Quarterly Essay</a>, Breach of Trust: Truth, Morality and Politics.</p>
<p>Sir Gerard raised the <a href="http://www.accountabilityrt.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/Smith-T-2014-Lyceum-U3A-Speech-final-_3_.pdf">public trust</a>-fiduciary duty principle, which goes to the heart of restoring the community’s faith in our MPs, governments and the democratic political system. As he explained:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It has long been an established legal principle that a member of Parliament holds a fiduciary relation toward the public and undertakes and has imposed upon him a public duty and a public trust. The duties of a public trustee are not identical with the duties of a private trustee, but there is an analogous limitation imposed on the conduct of the trustee in both categories. The limitation demands that all decisions and exercises of power be taken in the interests of the beneficiaries and that duty cannot be subordinated to, or qualified by, the interests of the trustee. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Gaita’s arguments are perhaps even more pertinent today than they were 10 years ago. He wrote:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>To trust someone, you must do more than believe him. You must believe in him. You must believe that he is essentially truthful.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Gaita observed that there needs to be a “moral dimension” to government policies. How strong is the “moral dimension” of the policies that constitute Victoria’s integrity regime? When held up to Sir Gerard’s and Gaita’s mirror, the words that come to mind are hazy and distorted.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/34710/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Colleen Lewis has previously received funding from the Australian Research Council. She is a member of the Accountability Round Table.</span></em></p>The Accountability Round Table (ART), a non-partisan organisation, wrote to the three major political parties two months ago seeking their position on three important arms of Victoria’s integrity system…Colleen Lewis, Adjunct Professor, National Centre for Australian Studies, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/347042014-11-26T19:32:20Z2014-11-26T19:32:20ZVictoria votes: more hospital beds doesn’t equal better health<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/65578/original/image-20141126-4217-y7evcp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">For patients, the availability of beds is more important than the overall number. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/ejorpin/7350874702/in/photostream/">Emily Orpin/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Scanning through the media coverage of the major parties’ health policies one could be forgiven for thinking that hospital beds are the key to health. </p>
<p>Sure, hospital spending dominates the health budget. But hospitals are not the most frequent point of contact with health care providers. And beds are declining in importance as a measure of what hospitals do. </p>
<p>In 2012-13, <a href="http://www.aihw.gov.au/publication-detail/?id=60129546922">more than half</a> (57%) of patients admitted to Victorian public hospitals were in and out on the same day, sometimes occupying a bed, sometimes a trolley in the emergency department, and sometimes a dialysis or chemotherapy chair.</p>
<p>Trust is an important issue in politics and keeping commitments made about the number of beds to be opened is important. But there is an art in counting beds. </p>
<p>When I worked in Queensland Health, we had to develop clear rules about how to define an “open” bed (what does it mean for a bed to be “available”?) and how to count “bed equivalents” (which include not only chairs but hospital services in the home). </p>
<p>Basically, the more horizontal a patient is, the more the media <a href="http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/hospital-chairs-counted-as-beds/story-fn6e0s1g-1226056360790?nk=5f9321c190e5d62441d37b5095f54e49">will accept</a> a bed equivalent as a genuine bed.</p>
<p>Yet from a patient’s point of view, what matters is not the absolute number of beds but whether one is available when they need it. </p>
<p>Promises ought to be about access – waiting times, for example – and about outputs such as the number of treated patients rather than inputs such as beds. Ideally, we should be aiming to measure outcomes (was my pain relieved; did I get well) but this is not the stuff of election campaigns.</p>
<h2>More beds ≠ more beds ≠ more access</h2>
<p><a href="http://www.aihw.gov.au/publication-detail/?id=60129546922">Hospital activity</a> in Victoria increased marginally over the four years to to 2012-13 (see below). Over the four-year period, the number of patients treated increased by 3%, though it declined by 7.6% in the year 2011-12 to 2012-13. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/65581/original/image-20141126-4240-7m39ne.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/65581/original/image-20141126-4240-7m39ne.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=301&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/65581/original/image-20141126-4240-7m39ne.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=301&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/65581/original/image-20141126-4240-7m39ne.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=301&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/65581/original/image-20141126-4240-7m39ne.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=378&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/65581/original/image-20141126-4240-7m39ne.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=378&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/65581/original/image-20141126-4240-7m39ne.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=378&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Hospital activity increased marginally.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Grattan Institute</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Public hospital beds increased by 4% over the four-year period.
Over the same period Victoria’s <a href="http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/DetailsPage/3101.0Mar%202014?OpenDocument">population increased</a> 11%, so per capita provision went backwards.</p>
<p>The picture for public sub-acute care – rehabilitation care, for example – is much better, with an increase of 25% in patients treated over the four years to 2012-13. Yet national growth was 37% in patients treated over this period, following a <a href="http://www.health.gov.au/internet/nhhrc/publishing.nsf/content/nhhrc-report">major drive</a> to improve sub-acute care. Victoria is falling behind other states here and had fewer sub-acute admissions than Queensland in 2012-13. </p>
<p>Victorians also wait too long for access to hospital care. Using <a href="http://www.aihw.gov.au/publication-detail/?id=60129549064">elective surgery</a> as the example, in 2013-14 3.2% of Victorian public hospital patients waited more than a year for surgery, up from 2.8% in 2009-10. The national average was 2.4%. New South Wales improved its performance from 4.9 to 1.8% over the same period.</p>
<h2>The major party promises</h2>
<p>The Liberal government has a <a href="http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/victoria-state-election-2014/victorian-election-2014-both-parties-vow-to-build-australias-first-cardiac-hospital-in-melbournes-southeast/story-fnocxssc-1227132140379">comprehensive policy</a> that involves a new “heart hospital” at the Monash Medical Centre, redevelopment of the <a href="https://vic.liberal.org.au/News/2014-11-07/deputy-premier-announces-75-million-pledge-for-goulburn-valley-health">Shepparton hospital</a>, and <a href="http://www.heraldsun.com.au/leader/north/state-election-2014-victoria-liberals-pledge-northern-hospital-cash-boost/story-fnglenug-1227115955293">expansion</a> at the Norther Hospital in Epping. All this is part of a <a href="https://vic.liberal.org.au/Policies/HealthierVictoria/BoostingHospitalCapacity%5D">near billion-dollar splurge</a> (A$944 million) on “boosting hospital capacity”.</p>
<p>Labor has also promised a bed bonanza, adding a <a href="http://www.danielandrews.com.au/policy/labor-announces-major-expansion-of-casey-hospital/">Casey hospital expansion</a> and a <a href="http://www.danielandrews.com.au/policy/labor-to-build-womens-and-childrens-hospital-for-the-west/">new hospital</a> in the western suburbs for women and children. Labor has also not only matched but <a href="http://www.weeklytimesnow.com.au/news/national/vic-alp-pledge-to-build-heart-hospital/story-fnjbnvyg-1227132082593">doubled</a> the Coalition’s heart hospital promise.</p>
<p>Both parties continue to focus on inputs – more beds – rather than make promises directly related to patients’ needs. These include adopting targets to ensure disadvantaged groups can access quality care, as recommended by the National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission, and <a href="http://www.health.qld.gov.au/news-alerts/news/141123-wait-time-guarantee.asp">guaranteed maximum times for access to care</a>, as Queensland has recently promised.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/65574/original/image-20141126-4244-zos40e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/65574/original/image-20141126-4244-zos40e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/65574/original/image-20141126-4244-zos40e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/65574/original/image-20141126-4244-zos40e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/65574/original/image-20141126-4244-zos40e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/65574/original/image-20141126-4244-zos40e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/65574/original/image-20141126-4244-zos40e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Some Victorians still wait too long for access to hospital care.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/bb_sara/4210519868/in/photolist-7q51S9-4FQHeu-6abPXw-5sKh6-6NNo9-rxXkG-6NNoa-99rW2E-6NNo8-6NNo7-63xsgN-4URW9Y-4VgAED-63td8g-9W29Ks-58kwRj-hkwxa6-bvvFL2-4QgnYX-cf7Fao-5NnnHd-66kjq1-7RyQpu-bs8aZr-a1inhs-dGvoR2-bEnBCe-4vFGQo-63tdcM-63tdhg-63tdoP-4tnfum-a1inos-k7nhiM-pEMaCg-6HggQX-cAJWQ7-9R1Cie-8XrBTg-3x8ghj-977S7a-8V2D32-8u1zv6-cAJWyj-8AJr5-7GEws3-cAK3JA-cAJWG3-cAK3CJ-cAK3hb">BB/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Both parties have missed an opportunity to provide more contemporary acute-care options, such as a significant boost to hospital services in the home. Western Australia, for example, has a <a href="http://www.silverchain.org.au/wa/health-care/home-hospital/">650-bed equivalent</a> home hospital providing an “emergency care” visit within four hours, ordinary acute care and rehab care.</p>
<p>Although the hospital promises have received the most attention, both <a href="https://vic.liberal.org.au/Policies/HealthierVictoria/CommunityMentalHealth">Liberal</a> and <a href="http://www.danielandrews.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Labors-Plan-for-Mental-Health.pdf">Labor</a> have articulated comprehensive visions for mental health. Both have promised improvements in ambulance services, with Labor pledging a shake-up in <a href="http://www.danielandrews.com.au/policy/only-labor-will-end-the-ambulance-crisis/">ambulance service management</a>. Both have promised to expand medical research. </p>
<p>Both the <a href="https://vic.liberal.org.au/Policies/HealthierVictoria">Liberal policies</a> and <a href="http://www.viclabor.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Victorian-Labor-Platform-2014.pdf">Labor’s platform</a> address building communities and primary care but these commitments have attracted little media attention. That is unfortunate since a critical issue in health care is how the health system repositions itself to address the increased prevalence of chronic illness and people with multiple chronic diseases. </p>
<p>The system will need to be reinvented to focus on multi-disciplinary care teams, building community capacity to help patients to manage their own conditions and strengthening <a href="http://www.risen.org.au/CDSM/CDSM_Program_Wagner.asp">patient empowerment</a>. Such policies require cooperative action between the Commonwealth and state governments, which seems sadly lacking at present.</p>
<h2>The elephants stampeding into the room</h2>
<p>Regardless of who wins, there is an A$8 billion elephant, or herd of elephants, in the room. This is the amount the federal government cut from its funding to states in the <a href="http://www.vha.org.au/docs/20140514_federal-budget.pdf">last budget</a>. The cut will put enormous pressure on the Victorian budget. </p>
<p>The good news is there is still room for some improvement in hospital efficiency. Although 20 years of <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/016885109594014Y">activity-based funding in Victoria</a> helped make Victorian hospitals the most efficient in the country, recent <a href="http://grattan.edu.au/report/controlling-costly-care-a-billion-dollar-hospital-opportunity/">Grattan work</a> shows savings could be made from tightening up on hospital efficiency through improved pricing strategies. </p>
<p>More <a href="http://grattan.edu.au/report/unlocking-skills-in-hospitals-better-jobs-more-care/">can be saved</a> by improving role allocations in hospital through greater use of health-care aids and expanding the role of nurses. Yet <a href="http://www.danielandrews.com.au/policy/labor-guarantees-nurse-to-patient-ratios-in-law/">Labor’s promise</a> to enshrine current nurse-patient ratios in legislation may make this a challenge.</p>
<p>As important as these changes are, they won’t make up the Commonwealth-imposed funding gap. Further system reform will be required. This will demand innovative thinking, careful negotiation with affected interests and engagement with the public. Getting the Commonwealth to pay its fair share will also be necessary. </p>
<p>These are the big challenges for Saturday’s winner. Announcing beds and buildings is easy, but developing new and better ways to provide health care and improve efficiency is not.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/34704/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stephen Duckett was a National Health and Hospitals Reform Commissioner. </span></em></p>Scanning through the media coverage of the major parties’ health policies one could be forgiven for thinking that hospital beds are the key to health. Sure, hospital spending dominates the health budget…Stephen Duckett, Director, Health Program, Grattan InstituteLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/346692014-11-26T01:21:12Z2014-11-26T01:21:12ZThe road ahead: why infrastructure should not be used for political point scoring<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/65455/original/image-20141125-2393-gb2kak.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Protesters rally against Victoria's East-West Link project</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtney Biggs/AAP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Infrastructure projects are ripe for political point scoring. None more so than Private Public Partnerships (PPPs), which allow private companies to profit from key infrastructure. Yet political debate, especially during an election, overlooks why key projects actually need PPPs.</p>
<p>As governments face shrinking revenues and increasing infrastructure needs, PPPs can be used to harness private sector finance and increase the total spending on projects.</p>
<p>These structures enable governments to provide key infrastructure such as roads, schools and hospitals that might otherwise be unaffordable, or provided over a substantially longer time frame if traditional public debt financing was used.</p>
<p>The primary argument for PPPs is they provide a better value-for-money proposition. Privately financed projects, incentivised by the “profit motive”, are better able to bring projects to completion on time and on budget. <a href="http://www.infrastructureaustralia.gov.au/publications/files/National_PPP_Forum_Benchmarking_Study_Ph2_dec08.pdf">Studies within Australia</a> show PPPs experience lower cost over-runs (4.3% compared to 18%) and less construction delay (1.4% compared to 25.9%) than traditionally procured infrastructure.</p>
<p>PPPs also need to source their revenue, and recoup their costs, from customers who are willing to pay for the use of the infrastructure. This need to attract users helps ensure consumers are given a greater value proposition with respect to service and quality.</p>
<p>For the private sector, PPPs offer a potential conceded revenue stream. However, in order to capture this “reward”, the private sector bears a number of risks. These include completion, maintenance and demand risk. Only if the asset performs to its contractual specifications is the private sector able to realise the investment.</p>
<p>In order to complete due diligence, debt financiers spend a lot of time and money on understanding and pricing risk. Other costs are incurred in the planning and design phase of tendering for projects such as geotechnical work, engineering design and market analysis. Altogether they represent a significant investment by the private sector, often in the vicinity of A$15 to $25 million. </p>
<p>Once a bid is awarded, the winner often is tied to the outcome of that single project. The majority of bidders do not have the ability to diversify over multiple activities; they invest their resources in a small number of projects or even a single PPP.</p>
<p>Consequently, once a PPP is determined as being the best tool to finance a desired piece of infrastructure, it is important that the playing field over which the risks and responsibilities will be assigned is stable. Any changes to the rules of the game can leave the private tenderer out of pocket and highly exposed to further losses. For this reason, the private sector negotiates compensation clauses should the government position change. </p>
<h2>The East-West link fallout</h2>
<p>The announcement in Victoria that, if elected, a Labor government will scrap the East-West link is an example of why such clauses are included. It is also an example of what can happen if infrastructure decisions are made for the wrong reasons. </p>
<p>Should the East-West link be abandoned, Victorian taxpayers stand to lose in excess of A$1 billion in compensation payments to the private entities involved in the winning tender. This compensation significantly erodes the benefits of a PPP’s structure, such as the ability to free up public capital to spend on other government services and to avoid levying higher taxes to finance infrastructure investments. </p>
<p>These losses are not confined to the current project. Realised political risks will have a cascading effect across the portfolio of infrastructure requirements. </p>
<p>When done properly, PPPs create an efficient and productive working partnership between the public and private sector. The erosion of good faith in PPP negotiations will have a detrimental impact on subsequent private sector investment.</p>
<p>The private sector already views infrastructure as a risky prospect without the government fickleness. A government backtrack on the project will have a negative impact on any hope of increasing private sector engagement in the space, including harnessing superannuation funds.</p>
<p>Reneging on signed agreements will also send a signal to the market that Victoria is a risky place to do business. It will make it difficult to attract PPP tenders without significant price increases to compensate for the increased risk.</p>
<p>The scenario highlights why infrastructure decisions should not be used as a political football. </p>
<p>Good infrastructure is important for economic growth, job creation and living standards. Victoria would be wise to adopt a more systematic approach to prioritising and selecting good infrastructure projects.</p>
<p>A considered approach to infrastructure decision making will provide better certainty for both the market and the community, enabling future decisions to be made with more confidence.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/34669/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Matthew Beck does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Infrastructure projects are ripe for political point scoring. None more so than Private Public Partnerships (PPPs), which allow private companies to profit from key infrastructure. Yet political debate…Matthew Beck, Senior Lecturer in Infrastructure Management, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/341282014-11-25T19:21:01Z2014-11-25T19:21:01ZExplainer: five key seats to watch in the Victorian election<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/65393/original/image-20141124-19633-1mhritt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">What seats will decide the political fortunes of Daniel Andrews and Denis Napthine at the ballot box this weekend?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Tracey Nearmy</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Victorian election is just days away and the campaigning is reaching a final crescendo. Both the Labor and Liberal parties are saturating the local airwaves with advertisements. </p>
<p>All of the polls <a href="https://theconversation.com/victorian-election-preview-34572">point to a Labor victory</a> at this stage. But what are the key marginal seats most likely to determine who holds power in Victoria for the next four years?</p>
<h2>Wendouree</h2>
<p>Margin: held by Labor, but it is now a notionally Liberal seat <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/vic-election-2014/guide/wend/">by 0.1%</a>, adjusted for redistribution.</p>
<p>Wendouree, formerly known as Ballarat West, covers Ballarat’s central business district and the area to the north of the regional centre. Following the redistribution, the Labor-voting suburb of Sebastopol was lost, making the seat notionally Liberal by 0.1%. Wendouree is held by Labor’s Sharon Knight. </p>
<p>Wendouree has long been a crucial political battleground and is one of the few regional seats that Labor has been able to claim. In <a href="https://www.vec.vic.gov.au/Results/state1999resultBallaratWestDistrict.html">1999</a>, the seat of Ballarat West helped Labor leader Steve Bracks assume the premiership. Knight’s Liberal opponent is Craig Coltman, who is back to challenge again after running in 2010. Despite it being a tight contest, the feeling in Ballarat is that <a href="http://www.thecourier.com.au/story/2666637/victorian-election-2014-wendouree-candidates-talk-infrastructure/">transport</a>, <a href="http://www.thecourier.com.au/story/2648611/victorian-election-2014-wendouree-candidates-talk-employment/">youth unemployment</a> and education have been overlooked by the current Liberal-National government. </p>
<p>Prediction: Knight holds the seat.</p>
<h2>Monbulk</h2>
<p>Margin: held by Labor, but it is now a notionally Liberal seat <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/vic-election-2014/guide/monb/">by 1.1%</a>, adjusted for redistribution.</p>
<p>Monbulk consists of Dandenong Range and outer eastern suburbs including Olinda, Tecoma, Kalorama, Montrose, Mt Dandenong, Sassafras, Monbulk, Upwey, Ferny Creek, Selby, Macclesfield, Menzies Creek and parts of Kilsyth and Mooroolbark. Lost to Monbulk in the redistribution were The Basin and sections of Bayswater and Boronia. </p>
<p>Since 2002, the seat has been held by current deputy opposition leader James Merlino. However, the redistribution has made the seat notionally Liberal based on the 2010 count. Merlino’s opponents include Liberal candidate Mark Verschuur and the Greens’ Michael Clake. </p>
<p>Local issues will be especially important in this contest. The <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-04-07/controversial-mcdonald27s-restaurant-opens-in-dandenong-ranges/5371408">grassroots anti-McDonald’s campaign</a> in Tecoma gripped the electorate in recent years and garnered widespread media attention. The <a href="http://www.heraldsun.com.au/leader/east/vcat-will-be-forced-to-consider-community-objections-under-labor-government/story-fngnvlxu-1227096211456">anti-development sentiment</a> in Monbulk will likely aid Merlino. </p>
<p>Prediction: Merlino will hold the seat by a slightly larger margin. </p>
<h2>Albert Park</h2>
<p>Margin: held by Labor <a href="http://www.heraldsun.com.au/leader/east/vcat-will-be-forced-to-consider-community-objections-under-labor-government/story-fngnvlxu-1227096211456">by 0.9%</a>, adjusted for redistribution.</p>
<p>Albert Park is a diverse and rapidly changing electorate. It includes the suburbs of St Kilda, St Kilda West, Middle Park, Albert Park, Port Melbourne, South Melbourne and Southbank. The electorate, created in 1889, is a largely affluent district that contains isolated pockets of social and economic disadvantage. </p>
<p>As a result of population growth in Albert Park, the district boundary shrank by two square kilometres in the latest redistribution. Elwood and parts of St Kilda have been lost and consequently Labor’s 2.1% margin has fallen to just 0.9%. Incumbent Labor MP Martin Foley retained the seat in 2010 despite trailing by more than 8% after the first preference count. </p>
<p>For Foley to hang onto the seat, he must again rely on a strong preference flow from Greens voters. His opponents include Liberal Shannon Eeles, the Greens’ David Collis and celebrity rocker Tex Perkins, who is <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-11-09/victoria-election-2014-musician-tex-perkins-to-contest/5877466">standing as an independent</a>. Perkins is campaigning for the restoration of the Palais Theatre in St Kilda and has <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/victoria-state-election-2014/labor-promises-134m-to-save-the-palais-theatre-20141118-11orss.html">directed his supporters</a> to vote for Foley after Labor committed A$13.4 million to save the iconic venue. </p>
<p>Prediction: Foley will retain the seat. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/65409/original/image-20141125-19618-1p4vbdz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/65409/original/image-20141125-19618-1p4vbdz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/65409/original/image-20141125-19618-1p4vbdz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/65409/original/image-20141125-19618-1p4vbdz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/65409/original/image-20141125-19618-1p4vbdz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/65409/original/image-20141125-19618-1p4vbdz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/65409/original/image-20141125-19618-1p4vbdz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">St Kilda’s iconic Palais Theatre is a key election issue in the seat of Albert Park.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Joe Castro</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Carrum</h2>
<p>Margin: held by the Liberals <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/vic-election-2014/guide/carr/">by 0.3%</a>, adjusted for redistribution. </p>
<p>Carrum includes the southeast Melbourne suburbs of Carrum, Carrum Downs, Bonbeach, Patterson Lakes, Skye, Sandhurst and almost all of Seaford. The electorate has lost the increasingly affluent areas of Aspendale, Mordialloc, Chelsea and Edithvale. </p>
<p>In 2010, Liberal candidate Donna Bauer defeated Labor’s Jenny Lindell with a significant 8.7% swing. It was only the second time in the last 45 years that the Liberal Party had scored a victory in the district. This was a key Liberal gain and helped to oust the Brumby Labor government. The redistribution has turned the seat into one of the tightest contests in Victoria with the margin falling from 2% to just 0.3%. </p>
<p>It will require a herculean effort from Bauer, who has <a href="http://www.heraldsun.com.au/leader/bayside/carrum-mp-donna-bauer-is-on-a-mission-to-spread-the-word-about-bowel-cancer-as-part-of-bowel-cancer-awareness-month/story-fngnvli9-1226944173702">battled cancer</a> this year, to hold the seat for the Liberals. Labor candidate Sonya Kilkenny, a commercial lawyer for the ANZ Bank who stood for the federal seat of <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/federal-election-2013/guide/dunk/">Dunkley</a> at the 2013 federal election, has run a strong, well-resourced local campaign. </p>
<p>Prediction: This is a tight two-horse race that Kilkenny will win. </p>
<h2>South Barwon</h2>
<p>Margin: held by the Liberals <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/vic-election-2014/guide/soba/">by 4.9%</a>, adjusted for redistribution.</p>
<p>The South Barwon electorate includes the southern tip of Geelong and also the Surf Coast Council region. Bells Beach, Jan Juc and Torquay straddle the southern area of the district while Moriac, Mount Moriac, Barrabool and Gnarwarre rest to the north. </p>
<p>South Barwon is traditionally a Liberal district and is held by Liberal MP Andrew Katos. The Labor candidate is Andy Richards. Greens candidate Lisa Ashdowne will likely claim nearly 10% of the vote and her preference flow will make the seat a tight contest. South Barwon is crucial to the Liberal cause and must be held if the Napthine government has any hope of retaining office. </p>
<p>Prediction: Liberal hold.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/34128/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dustin Halse does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The Victorian election is just days away and the campaigning is reaching a final crescendo. Both the Labor and Liberal parties are saturating the local airwaves with advertisements. All of the polls point…Dustin Halse, Researcher, Swinburne Institute for Social Research, Swinburne University of TechnologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/345302014-11-25T19:20:40Z2014-11-25T19:20:40ZVictorian election: on education, the parties’ priorities are muddled<p>The Victorian Labor opposition’s recent promise to change the state’s licence plates to <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/victoria-state-election-2014/victorian-election-2014-daniel-andrews-to-change-number-plates-to-the-education-state-if-labor-wins-20141105-11h4ke.html">“Victoria: the education state”</a> is emblematic of the way both Labor and the Napthine Coalition government have made education a major focus of their election campaigns.</p>
<p>But just days before Victorian voters go to the ballot box, the promises both parties have made, including the number plate pledge, are misguided. They won’t necessarily give the state the education outcomes its children need.</p>
<h2>Napthine government’s education report card 2014</h2>
<p>To “balance the budget”, more than A$600 million was cut from public school education and $1.2 billion from TAFE over the term of this government. The Napthine government has <a href="http://www.education.vic.gov.au/about/department/Pages/refocusvet.aspx">focused</a> on private providers and “user pays”. Student support staff, Koori education specialists and literacy and numeracy coaches have been removed. Amalgamating nine regional and metro regions into four mega regions reduced regional support staff, especially in rural areas. </p>
<p>Capital works funding has been halved. This has left many public schools in deteriorated and dilapidated conditions. Many <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/victoria-state-election-2014/asbestos-in-victorian-schools-needs-urgent-removal-demands-worksafe-20141122-11rso8.html">school buildings</a> still contain dangerous levels of asbestos, while private and Catholic schools continue to receive ever-larger amounts of public money.</p>
<p>Given Martin Dixon is a former school principal, principals, teachers and school communities should have had a state education minister who genuinely understood education. Before the 2010 election, the Baillieu-Napthine government promised to make Victoria’s teachers the best paid in Australia. </p>
<p>After more than 12 months of industrial strife, strikes and negotiations, Western Australian teacher pay still far outstrips that of Victoria. Victoria <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/national/education/alp-must-program-for-success-in-schools-20140728-zxm2p.html">invests less per student</a> than any other state or territory.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/65318/original/image-20141124-19612-1ojlrbh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/65318/original/image-20141124-19612-1ojlrbh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=180&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/65318/original/image-20141124-19612-1ojlrbh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=180&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/65318/original/image-20141124-19612-1ojlrbh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=180&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/65318/original/image-20141124-19612-1ojlrbh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=226&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/65318/original/image-20141124-19612-1ojlrbh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=226&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/65318/original/image-20141124-19612-1ojlrbh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=226&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Victoria invests less per student than any other state or territory.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Flickr/Michael Fawcett</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Dixon has introduced a number of policy initiatives. The <a href="http://www.education.vic.gov.au/about/department/pages/teachingprofession.aspx">From New Directions to Action: World-class teaching and school leadership</a> and the <a href="http://www.education.vic.gov.au/Documents/about/department/learningcommunity.pdf">Towards Victoria as a Learning Community</a> policies outlined the government’s vision for excellence in school leadership and for a high-performing teaching workforce to help raise student achievement in Victoria to match the very best worldwide. But school communities and principals have tended to ignore these policies as just another top-down directive without substance.</p>
<p>Under Dixon, Victorians have witnessed the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/secularschools/posts/752112574850605">chaos and confusion</a> over <a href="http://www.education.vic.gov.au/about/department/legislation/Pages/sri.aspx">Special Religious Instruction</a> in schools, with Dixon seemingly <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/schools-face-please-explain-on-religious-instruction-20140811-102uay.html">beholden</a> to <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/schools-face-please-explain-on-religious-instruction-20140811-102uay.html">fundamentalist</a> religious groups over the wishes of principals and parents. As a result of her objections to breaches of the secular principle, a single mum of a prep child has been issued a Trespass Warning Notice by a school principal who supports ACCESS Ministries.</p>
<p>Using religious chaplains instead of qualified youth or social workers in secondary schools has led to the <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-10-26/victorian-school-fights-to-keep-its-welfare-officer/5842488">unemployment</a> of many valued social workers. The ratio of social workers to students in Victorian schools is <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/victoria-state-election-2014/demand-for-school-social-workers-at-catastrophic-level-20141118-11p4rd.html">blowing out</a> from the recommended one worker to every 500 students to 10,000 and higher.</p>
<p>The employment of primary welfare officers has been an important initiative of the Liberal Party, which has pledged to put one in every primary school in Victoria. But the removal of <a href="http://www.aeuvic.asn.au/89838.html">Reading Recovery</a> and <a href="http://www.aeuvic.asn.au/814672.html">Literacy, Numeracy and Technology</a> tutors, ending the funding of VCAL and scrapping the Education Maintenance Allowance has hit the most disadvantaged students in government schools. </p>
<p>And what are schools meant to do with the <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/victoria-state-election-2014/napthine-promises-3d-printers-for-every-government-school-20141027-11c9i2.html">3D printers</a> promised by Napthine? They will soon be made redundant by newer technology.</p>
<h2>Election promises – are they meaningless?</h2>
<p>Labor has made education its top priority with a <a href="http://www.viclabor.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Victorian-Labor-Platform-2014.pdf">detailed</a> policy statement. The Liberals’ education <a href="http://www.premier.vic.gov.au/our-commitment/education.html">policy</a> is very difficult to find – the only link to it seems to be on the Independent Schools of Victoria <a href="https://www.is.vic.edu.au/independent/pubs/election/2014_election_liberal_policy.pdf">website</a>, not on the official Liberal Party of Victoria <a href="https://vic.liberal.org.au/OurPlan/HospitalsAndSchools">policy platform</a>.</p>
<p>Both parties have been involved in outrageous pork-barrelling in marginal electorates. In <a href="http://www.premier.vic.gov.au/media-centre/media-releases/9795-coalition-commits-21-million-package-for-frankston-students.html">Frankston</a>, the Liberals have promised $18 million for Frankston High School when the school wanted only $2.2 million. </p>
<p>In an ongoing <a href="http://www.heraldsun.com.au/leader/south-east/liberals-commit-almost-64-million-to-four-bentleigh-electorate-schools/story-fngnvmhm-1227129604422">bidding war</a> for Bentleigh, millions of dollars have been promised to primary and secondary schools in the seat. The Liberal <a href="http://www.heraldsun.com.au/leader/central/state-election-decider-for-prahrans-20m-public-high-school-plans/story-fngnvlpt-1227125916277">promise</a> to build a standalone secondary school in Prahran is contrary to the recommendations of <a href="http://www.education.vic.gov.au/Documents/about/research/prahranschoolprovision.pdf">two independent reports</a> commissioned by Dixon. </p>
<p>The second more detailed report was not released. I am reliably informed by insiders that the inquiry was not in favour of a new school in Prahran. In 2012, government schools in the City of Yarra had an <a href="http://www.yarracity.vic.gov.au/DownloadDocument.ashx?DocumentID=10040">unfilled capacity</a> of 1045 places.</p>
<p>Caulfield Liberal MP David Southwick promised more than $600,000 to Jewish schools in his electorate, only to later <a href="http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/victoria-state-election-2014/liberal-mp-in-funding-uturn/story-fnocxssc-1227130081719">delete</a> the announcement from his website and Twitter account.</p>
<p>The Liberals’ promise of a <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/victoria-state-election-2014/coalition-promises-residential-college-in-melbourne-for-gifted-regional-students-20141120-11qbdr.html">residential academy</a> for gifted children from regional Victoria is an innovative and needed initiative. But the <a href="http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/victoria-state-election-2014/victorian-election-2014-kinder-children-get-100-in-liberal-pledge/story-fnocxssc-1227117362144">promise</a> of a non-means-tested $100 for all families to fund four-year-old kindergarten is ill-conceived.</p>
<p>Both major parties have ignored public schools in safe seats. Local community groups under the umbrella of <a href="http://www.ourchildrenourschools.com.au/">Our Children our Schools</a> have been campaigning to have primary and secondary schools re-opened around metropolitan Melbourne. Neither major party will commit to their requests – only the Greens have endorsed these grassroots mum-and-dad campaigns.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/65291/original/image-20141124-19639-1lfxbzz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/65291/original/image-20141124-19639-1lfxbzz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/65291/original/image-20141124-19639-1lfxbzz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/65291/original/image-20141124-19639-1lfxbzz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/65291/original/image-20141124-19639-1lfxbzz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=525&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/65291/original/image-20141124-19639-1lfxbzz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=525&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/65291/original/image-20141124-19639-1lfxbzz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=525&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The plan to bring doctors into schools would be a bonus for the most disadvantaged kids.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Flickr/Myfuture.com</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Labor’s plan to have more than <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/victoria-state-election-2014/labor-promises-doctors-for-schools-20141119-11pzjv.html">100 doctors</a> available for disadvantaged schools is innovative and will certainly help the most disadvantaged communities. A healthy child can certainly learn better. Promised support for families on pension cards with additional funds for <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/victorian-state-election-labor-promises-150m-to-help-pay-for-school-camps-20141031-11f0lb.html">school camps</a> is another well-targeted Labor policy. </p>
<p>Labor has also promised a review of the way children with <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/victoria-state-election-2014/victoria-state-election-labor-promises-help-for-students-with-autism-and-dyslexia-20141111-11ki7f.html">learning difficulties</a> are assessed after reports by the Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission and Auditor-General revealed the education system was failing students with disabilities. The current policy leads to many children missing out on needed additional funding. </p>
<p>However, Labor’s promise of <a href="http://www.skynews.com.au/news/national/2014/11/10/vic-labor-promises-free-young-driver-training.html">free driver education</a> for all year 10 students is poorly targeted and non-means-tested.</p>
<h2>Key educational priorities for government</h2>
<p>One of the issues neither party is prepared to discuss is the public funding of non-government schools – which receive 7% of their funding from the state and 29% from the federal government. </p>
<p>Every year, more than $600 million is allocated from the state budget to support the Catholic ($410 million or $2200 per student) and independent ($190 million or $1700 per student) school sectors, in addition to more than A$2.2 billion a year from the federal government (Catholic $1.5 billion; independent $700 million), according to the <a href="https://www.is.vic.edu.au/independent/pubs/funding_details_2014.pdf">Productivity Commission’s 2014 report on government services</a>. Paying elite Scotch College <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/victorian-government-gives-54-million-to-scotch-college-for-land-previously-valued-at-1-million-20141116-11nr17.html">$5.4 million</a> for a useless narrow strip of land under a freeway is emblematic of the Napthine government’s priorities.</p>
<p>According to the Department of Education and early Childhood Development <a href="http://www.education.vic.gov.au/Documents/about/department/vlc_fundingfact.pdf">website</a>, these arrangements will continue while it consults with stakeholders to:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… develop a long-term funding road map to better target resources to student need.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This is the Gonski money that is yet to be delivered to our schools. Many principals are asking where the Gonski money is – and so should the electorate. Remarkably, Labor has <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/labor-promises-120-million-for-catholic-and-independent-schools-20141024-11bcis.html">promised</a> an additional $120 million to Catholic and independent schools.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/65286/original/image-20141124-19624-1r7q8q8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/65286/original/image-20141124-19624-1r7q8q8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/65286/original/image-20141124-19624-1r7q8q8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=455&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/65286/original/image-20141124-19624-1r7q8q8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=455&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/65286/original/image-20141124-19624-1r7q8q8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=455&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/65286/original/image-20141124-19624-1r7q8q8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=571&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/65286/original/image-20141124-19624-1r7q8q8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=571&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/65286/original/image-20141124-19624-1r7q8q8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=571&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Independent schools receive state and federal funding despite public schools being in greater need.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Flickr/elycefeliz</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Victoria needs to <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/labor-promises-new-high-school-for-richmond-20140804-10038a.html">build public schools</a> (not private religious schools) in the growth areas. There is also a need to re-open schools previously closed in metro Melbourne where population changes demand it. Research by the <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/victoria-state-election-2014/victoria-needs-up-to-550-new-schools-by-2031-grattan-institute-20141017-117lv6.html">Grattan Institute</a> has shown that Victoria would need an extra 550 schools within the next 20 years. </p>
<p>This process needs to be done transparently, with public contributions and support. Genuine workforce planning policy for teachers needs to be implemented to eliminate the current oversupply of teaching graduates who are only able to get casual or <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/twothirds-of-new-teachers-on-contracts-20140804-100bdv.html">short-term contract</a> employment.</p>
<h2>Key issues facing Victorian education in the next decade</h2>
<p>Why do public schools need to sell raffle tickets and run fetes or even resort to <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/schools-crowdfund-to-make-ends-meet-20140725-zwzea.html">crowd-funding</a> to make ends meet?</p>
<p>It’s time to stop using education as a political football. Schools, teachers and parents want more stability and a coherent, long-term, bipartisan, evidence-based education policy beyond the election cycle.</p>
<p>This process has started in Queensland, with all stakeholders – government and opposition, teacher unions and parent associations – coming together to discuss education priorities. </p>
<p>Why not Victoria too?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/34530/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Zyngier receives funding from the Australian Research Council.</span></em></p>The Victorian Labor opposition’s recent promise to change the state’s licence plates to “Victoria: the education state” is emblematic of the way both Labor and the Napthine Coalition government have made…David Zyngier, Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Education, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/346022014-11-25T08:10:36Z2014-11-25T08:10:36ZLatest State and Federal Polling<p>I mentioned Morgan and Galaxy polls in Saturday’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/victorian-election-preview-34572">Victorian election preview</a>. <a href="http://roymorgan.com.au/findings/5944-morgan-poll-victorian-voting-intention-november-24-2014-201411240214">Morgan has published</a> another SMS poll, this one taken from last Friday to Monday from a sample of 1170. The results show a 3% swing back to the Coalition from the poll released last Friday, with Labor’s lead reduced from 55-45 to 52-48. Primary votes are 39.5% for the Coalition (up 4.5), 33.5% for Labor (down 2) and 17.5% for the Greens (down 2). It is clear, given last week’s Galaxy, that the previous Morgan was a pro-Labor outlier, and that Labor’s lead has been reduced since the Coalition’s ad blitz began. Morgan’s Victorian SMS polls have had the Greens too high, Labor too low and the Coalition a little too low compared with other Victorian polling.</p>
<p>I expect that there will be many Victorian polls out on Friday and Saturday. I will have a new post on the final polls on Election Day 29 November, and a post on the actual results the following day.</p>
<p><strong>Update Wednesday afternoon 26 November:</strong> An <a href="http://blogs.crikey.com.au/pollbludger/files/2014/11/Essential-Report_141125_Victoria.pdf">Essential Victoria poll </a>gives Labor a 53-47 lead from primary votes of 40% for the Coalition, 39% for Labor and 13% for the Greens. However, this poll was done over the last three weeks, so it is not really a final poll. The sample size was 790. </p>
<p>In NSW, <a href="http://blogs.crikey.com.au/pollbludger/2014/11/22/galaxy-56-44-to-coalition-in-nsw-2/">Galaxy gives the Coalition</a> a 56-44 lead, and Ipsos a 54-46 lead, with the Coalition leading Labor by 12% on primary votes in Galaxy and 8% in Ipsos; both polls give the Greens 11%. Mike Baird has a 60% approval rating in Ipsos, with just 18% disapproving for a net approval of +42. An Ipsos question on which <a href="https://twitter.com/GhostWhoVotes/status/536512003041263616">party is most trustworthy</a> finds Labor lagging in third place with just 17% rating it most trustworthy, compared with 33% for the Coalition and 19% for the Greens. The high Greens vote in NSW would make it closer if compulsory preferential voting was used, but as it is, the Coalition should win the next NSW election in March 2015 easily.</p>
<p>For a Queensland Galaxy that had a 50-50 tie, go to the end of my last <a href="https://theconversation.com/poll-trend-to-labor-continues-34367">Federal polling report</a>. A poll from Tasmanian pollster EMRS has the Liberals on 42%, down 9% on the election. This gives some validation to the small Morgan SMS samples from Tasmania that I have previously reported. <a href="http://kevinbonham.blogspot.com.au/2014/11/emrs-liberals-fall-to-four-year-low.html">Kevin Bonham</a> has much more on the EMRS poll.</p>
<p><strong>Update Wednesday afternoon 26 November:</strong> <a href="http://www.roymorgan.com/findings/5948-morgan-poll-state-voting-intention-november-2014-201411260447">Morgan has now released</a> results for all states from SMS polls conducted from last Friday to Monday. Comparisons are with a Morgan state SMS poll in late October. In NSW, the Coalition led 55-45, a 1% swing to Labor. In Qld, the Liberal National Party (LNP) led 50.5-49.5, a 1% swing to the LNP. In WA, the Coalition led 51.5-48.5, a 1.5% swing to Labor. In SA, Labor led 51.5-48.5, a 1% swing to the Liberals. In Tasmania, Labor’s primary surged 7.5% to lead the Liberals 41.5-39, with the Greens on 13%. Sample sizes were 1250 in NSW, 1180 in Queensland, 500 in WA, 490 in SA and 280 in Tasmania. The Tasmanian sample should particularly be taken with a large grain of salt.</p>
<h2>Federal Polling</h2>
<p>A <a href="https://www.reachtel.com.au/blog/7-news-national-poll-20november2014">ReachTEL robopoll</a> survey of 3600, conducted last Thursday night 20 November, has Labor leading by 53-47, a 1% gain for Labor since the October ReachTEL. Primary votes were 40% for the Coalition (steady), 38.5% for Labor (up 1), 11% for the Greens (down 0.5) and 3% for Palmer United Party (PUP) (down 2). 31% gave Abbott a good or very good rating, and 52% a poor or very poor rating, with Abbott’s very poor rating of 36% his <a href="http://kevinbonham.blogspot.com.au/2014/11/poll-roundup-g20-no-help-to-government.html">highest since June</a>. Shorten’s ratings are very “meh”, with 41% giving him a “satisfactory” rating, up from 37% in October. 34% thought Abbott did a good job at the G20, and 42% thought he was poor. The proportion rating Abbott poor at the G20 was almost double the proportion who said the G20 produced negative outcomes for Australia (22%). 43% thought Jacqui Lambie should leave PUP, with 18% disagreeing.</p>
<p><a href="http://essentialvision.com.au/category/essentialreport">Essential</a> this week is 52-48 to Labor, unchanged on last week, with virtually identical primary votes. Essential has a tendency to not move when other pollsters do move. 55% said the G20 was an expensive talk fest, while 26% said it delivered real outcomes; a survey before the G20 had expensive talk fest up by 62-16. 31% said that Abbott performed well at the G20, while 37% said he was poor. 57% had little or no trust in the government’s handling of international relations, while 38% had at least some trust; in October it was 53% little trust, 40% some trust. 42% thought that Australia is taking the wrong approach to climate change, while 28% thought that Australia is taking the right approach. 51% approve of the Free Trade Agreement with China, with 20% disapproving, up from a 44-18 spread in favour of approval last week. By a 52-25 margin, voters disapproved of the funding cuts to the ABC.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/34602/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
I mentioned Morgan and Galaxy polls in Saturday’s Victorian election preview. Morgan has published another SMS poll, this one taken from last Friday to Monday from a sample of 1170. The results show a…Adrian Beaumont, PhD Student, Department of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/345872014-11-25T04:26:13Z2014-11-25T04:26:13ZVictorians short-changed on environmental policy<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/65396/original/image-20141124-19615-1seewv3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">One of the hottest topics for the upcoming election is a new forest national park to protect the critically endangered Leadbeater's Possum, Victoria's faunal emblem. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/greensmps/8052227631/in/photolist-dgxLJT-dgxNdo-dgxLBK-dgxLqM-dzSv4d-dgxMTG-dzM1z8-dzSuFh-fi8o7F-finEgj-9M5EG5-fi8mQk-dzSuc7-finGb1-fi8Dk4-fi8FsB-dzM1K2-ebZP6T-cVb9vo-finNym-fi8tai-fi8qb6-finKK3-fi8Ci4-finK9j-finHfy-fi8Ba8-finUXN-finX47-fi8wkn-finPMU-fi8vgB-fi8A36-dzM2tz-dzM1S6-dzSuLw-cVb9e9-cVb9pC-cVb9Gj-bNtGLV-cVaZeA-cVbohu-cVbjwS-cVbdWY-cVb2ud-cVaWGJ-cVbgc9-cVb4Co-6n3cJk-6RJcs8">Greens MPs/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Less than a week out from Victoria’s state election, both major parties have been largely silent on environmental policy. </p>
<p>Neither the Coalition nor Labor has released comprehensive documents. It also seems very unlikely that either will support one of the hottest topics on the environment agenda — a new national park to protect mountain ash forests in central Victoria. </p>
<p>We were in a similar place with the Coalition before the previous election. So how do the major parties compare?</p>
<p>Last week I spent 10 days at the <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/iucn-world-parks-congress">World Parks Congress</a> in Sydney, a once-in-a-decade gathering of 3,500 people discussing national parks and other protected areas.</p>
<p>The two major trends identified at the congress were the emerging critical importance of privately managed protected areas and the urgent need to substantially increase the number of marine national parks.</p>
<p>In Victoria — where incidentally this congress <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/environment/conservation/baillieu-shuns-green-summit-20111017-1lten.html">was to be held</a> before the Coalition gave it up to Sydney — we have only 5% of our coastal waters in high-protection reserves. We have nowhere near the policy or dollar commitments to privately protected areas that countries like the United States and Canada have. </p>
<h2>What was promised</h2>
<p>Coming into the 2010 state election the two major parties took quite different approaches to environmental policy. The Labor government, consistent with their past practice, prepared a <a href="https://www.viclabor.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/2010-Victorian-ALP-Platform-WEB.pdf">detailed statement</a> covering the full range of environmental matters from national parks and nature conservation, through climate change and coastal management to environmental protection and waste management.</p>
<p>The Coalition — unlike the Liberals who had produced a detailed environmental policy document leading into the 2006 election — took a different tack, which effectively re-wrote the environmental policy handbook. </p>
<p>Their “policy statement” was a loose series of media releases spread over the previous 12-18 months on a motley range of topics — an address to the Mountain Cattleman’s Association promising the return of cattle grazing for a privileged few to the Alpine National Park, a promise not to amalgamate catchment management authorities, a promise to review marine national parks and another to open parks to gold fossickers. It also promised to ban wind farms within two kilometres of towns. </p>
<h2>What happened</h2>
<p>The Coalition won and followed through on its election promises. These included: </p>
<ul>
<li><p>allowing cattle <a href="https://theconversation.com/science-the-loser-in-victorias-alpine-grazing-trial-3">back into the Alpine National Park</a> despite all scientific evidence to the contrary</p></li>
<li><p>without any proposal before the election, changing the National Parks Act to <a href="https://theconversation.com/our-national-parks-must-be-more-than-playgrounds-or-paddocks-14389">allow 99-year leases</a> over national park land for private development, with Point Nepean being the first to succumb</p></li>
<li><p>reviews of marine parks and <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/gold-and-gem-hunters-get-national-parks-pass-20130607-2nv9c.html">fossicking</a> in national parks</p></li>
<li><p><a href="https://theconversation.com/regulating-wind-farms-out-of-victoria-3125">bans on wind farms</a> within two kilometres of towns, and within five kilometres of selected centres. </p></li>
</ul>
<p>And days before the government entered caretaker period for the current election, commercial management of the state’s western forests was transferred from the Department of Environment and Primary Industries to <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/victoria-state-election-2014/vicforests-given-control-of-commercial-logging-before-state-election-campaign-20141124-11sr5m.html">state-owned timber company VicForests</a>. </p>
<h2>This time around</h2>
<p>This time around, neither the Coalition government nor the Labor opposition has published a comprehensive environmental policy.</p>
<p>To be fair to Labor, its <a href="http://www.viclabor.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Victorian-Labor-Platform-2014.pdf">election platform</a> does include five pages on environmental matters — albeit the final five of an 88-page document.</p>
<p>These focus on undoing the most destructive of the Coalition’s environmental actions of the past four years, such as removing 99-year leases from national parks, removing cattle from the Alpine National Park, and reviewing native vegetation clearance changes, among others. </p>
<h2>No new parks</h2>
<p>We have also seen a new tactic in this election — “wedging” your own party. </p>
<p>One of the hottest topics coming into Saturday’s election is the community-driven push for a <a href="http://www.greatforestnationalpark.com.au/">Great Forest National Park</a> in the central highlands close to Melbourne. In part this is driven by the latest attempts to <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-victoria-needs-a-giant-forest-national-park-18452">save old-growth forest trees</a> as habitat for the Victorian faunal emblem, the <a href="https://theconversation.com/sending-leadbeaters-possum-down-the-road-to-extinction-11249">Leadbeater’s Possum</a>. </p>
<p>But it is also about the fact that mountain ash forests are one of the <a href="http://www.pnas.org/content/106/28/11635.long">world’s greatest carbon sinks</a> and that the ecosystem services yielded by these forests — including some of the <a href="http://www.publish.csiro.au/pid/7111.htm">best natural water catchments</a> in the world — are priceless. </p>
<p>Yet before Environment Minister Ryan Smith could make any statement on the Liberals’ environment policy, the senior minister in the Primary Industry and Environment portfolio, Peter Walsh of the Nationals, a former president of the <a href="http://www.parliament.vic.gov.au/members/details/1588-hon-peter-walsh">Victorian Farmers Federation</a>, <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/victoria-state-election-2014/coalition-tensions-simmer-over-unexpected-no-new-national-parks-policy-20141101-11fefu.html">announced</a> at a timber industry function that no new national parks would be declared by a Coalition government in the next term of office. </p>
<p>This was, in a way, reinforcement of the fact that this government is the first since the National Parks Act was declared in 1975 to declare no new national parks in a term of office. It appeared that this statement was made to gazump the junior minister so that he would be unable to make any positive park announcements.</p>
<p>One would have thought this left it wide open for the Labor opposition to promote a coordinated environmental policy, pointing out the ALP commitment to not only new national parks but also to their acceptance of climate change and encouragement of renewable energy targets. </p>
<p>The Labor <a href="http://www.viclabor.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Victorian-Labor-Platform-2014.pdf">election platform</a> does include the latter two areas, but not the first. Labor reportedly <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/environment/conservation/state-labor-dumps-great-forests-park-plan-ahead-of-victorian-election-20141114-11n243.html">backed away from the plan</a> after the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union, apparently learning quickly from Peter Walsh’s tactic, said there would be no national park in the central highlands — presumably to head off any possible promise by Labor to trump the Coalition on this issue. </p>
<h2>Small differences</h2>
<p>Were these isolated examples, they might be taken as the rough and tumble of internal party politics, but we Victorians have also witnessed a declaration from both parties that there will be <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/anglers-call-for-more-boat-ramps-and-access-to-marine-national-parks-20141103-11fzxx.html">no new marine national parks</a> in the upcoming term. On both sides of politics this was announced by the agriculture, rather than the environment, spokesperson. </p>
<p>It appears that the Coalition has essentially left environmental policy to the National Party. Labor has based its approach on just countering these proposals. It is a low bar in terms of new initiatives, but why promise more when the Coalition offers so little?</p>
<p>There are differences beyond this between the parties — the East West tunnel, if built, will devastate Melbourne’s Royal Park, the “<a href="http://vnpa.org.au/page/publications/park-watch/park-watch-june-2014-_-no-257%E2%80%94%20Royal%20Park">lungs of the city</a>”. Labor has stated it will <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/victoria-state-election-2014/victorian-state-election-labor-wont-build-east-west-link-under-any-circumstances-20141119-11pery.html">not support</a> the project if elected. </p>
<p>And the parties also differ on where the <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/hastings-port-expansion-to-overburden-melbournes-roads-and-rail-lines-report-finds-20140709-zt0i5.html">next major port expansion</a> should be: the Coalition wants it in Westernport; Labor wants it in Port Phillip Bay. Both locations have serious environmental, social and economic limitations, which deserve an independent, considered and transparent assessment — but neither side of politics has committed to this. </p>
<p>Throughout the campaign, the Greens have focused more strongly on the “brown end” of environmental policies, including strong policies on <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/victoria-state-election-2014/victorian-state-election-greens-to-shut-down-dirty-coal-plants-if-it-wins-balance-of-power-20141119-11px1r.html">coal power stations</a>, <a href="http://greens.org.au/policies/vic/climate">climate change</a>, <a href="http://greens.org.au/policies/vic/transport-and-freight">public transport</a> and long-term opposition to the East West Link. On nature conservation (the “green end” of environmental policy), the Greens are solid but not as vocal as on the above issues. </p>
<p>In conclusion, Victorians have been short-changed by both sides of politics on environmental policy. There is no visionary, hopeful, long-term view of the future, nothing bold for the younger generations to enjoy and be excited by and nothing around the new frontiers — private land conservation and marine national parks.</p>
<p>For now, visionary proposals have been left to the community campaign for the Great Forest National Park. Maybe next time around the major parties will be able to match this vision.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/34587/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Geoffrey Wescott is the current President of the Australian Coastal Society, member of the Victorian Coastal Council and the Board of Zoos Victoria.</span></em></p>Less than a week out from Victoria’s state election, both major parties have been largely silent on environmental policy. Neither the Coalition nor Labor has released comprehensive documents. It also seems…Geoffrey Wescott, Associate Professor of Environment, Deakin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/338312014-11-24T19:36:20Z2014-11-24T19:36:20ZVictoria votes: where will the growth and jobs of the future be?<p>Victorians will soon go to the polls to decide who will be responsible for the management of the state for the next four years. Voters are confronted with many issues on which they must pass judgement, with roads, railways and ports all prominent in the debate. But what are the key characteristics of the Victorian economy? </p>
<p>Economic modelling at Victoria University’s Centre of Policy Studies tells us about the types of jobs Victorians can expect to be doing over the next few years. The Victorian economy employs around 2.9 million people. In line with growth in both the population and the economy, this is set to increase by around 300,000 people by 2020.</p>
<h2>Which industries are winning</h2>
<p>In Victoria, as in Australia as a whole, the vast majority of jobs are in the service industries. This is a diverse group of industries including (but not limited to) retail trade, health and social assistance, professional and technical services, transport and warehousing and public administration and safety. The non-service industries – agriculture, mining, manufacturing, utilities and construction – comprise just below 23% of jobs in Victoria. For the remainder of this decade, the proportion of jobs in service industries will increase only slightly, to almost 78% of jobs by 2020.</p>
<p>At a more detailed level, greater change is revealed. As the construction phase of the mining boom draws to an end, employment in the construction industry will fall from its present level of 8.5% of jobs to just 7% of jobs in 2020. This partly reflects the transitory impact the mining boom has had on the construction sector. The “release” of many construction workers into the economy over the next couple of years could be a boon to major government-backed infrastructure projects.</p>
<p>Construction is the only sector in which employment is forecast to fall. Manufacturing, agriculture and transport and warehousing are forecast to expand, more than compensating for the fall in construction activity. These sectors have a similar skills profile to construction, employing relatively large proportions of workers with no post-school qualifications or Certificate I-IV level qualifications.</p>
<h2>Manufacturing surprise</h2>
<p>The positive forecast for manufacturing may seem surprising, given the high-profile announcements of closures of the last motor vehicle manufacturing plants in Victoria. Manufacturing in Victoria employs around 270,000 people, of which 10% work in the motor vehicle and parts sector. </p>
<p>On the whole, manufacturing is a very trade-exposed activity. Products are either exported (for example, processed food products, wine and pharmaceuticals) or they compete against imports in the domestic market (for example, textiles, pharmaceuticals, motor vehicles and various types of appliances). Because of this, movements in the exchange rate have a very significant impact on manufacturing. Throughout the “boom” years, with the exchange rate very high, manufacturing has been uncompetitive, a phenomenon known as “Dutch Disease”. Motor vehicle manufacturing has been a conspicuous casualty.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/65351/original/image-20141124-19612-16ii7uc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/65351/original/image-20141124-19612-16ii7uc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/65351/original/image-20141124-19612-16ii7uc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=611&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/65351/original/image-20141124-19612-16ii7uc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=611&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/65351/original/image-20141124-19612-16ii7uc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=611&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/65351/original/image-20141124-19612-16ii7uc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=768&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/65351/original/image-20141124-19612-16ii7uc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=768&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/65351/original/image-20141124-19612-16ii7uc.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=768&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>As the boom unwinds, the effects of Dutch Disease will also unwind. A large fall in the Australian dollar will revive the competitiveness of manufacturing, more than compensating for the loss of the motor vehicle plants. Export-oriented sectors like agriculture and education will also benefit from a fall in the Australian dollar.</p>
<p>The professional and technical services sector is forecast to expand the most, gaining 44,000 jobs by 2020. This sector includes activities such as legal and accounting services, architectural, engineering and technical services, and computer services. </p>
<p>Almost half of all people working in professional and technical services hold a bachelor degree or higher qualification. By 2020, this is estimated to have grown to 53% of people working in the sector. In Victoria as a whole, 28% of people employed hold at least a bachelor degree.</p>
<p>Another significant source of employment growth is the health and social assistance sector. Although only <a href="https://theconversation.com/australias-g20-growth-challenge-protecting-our-standard-of-living-33837">weak growth is forecast for domestic incomes</a>, leading to weak growth in domestic demand, health and social assistance is a significant expenditure item for older Australians. While the average household spends just over 5% of their budget on medical care and health expenses, households where the reference person is aged over 65 spend almost 10%. Government spending on health care will also increase as the population ages.</p>
<h2>State of the regions</h2>
<p>Melbourne accounts for 75% of employment in Victoria. Two-thirds of growth in Melbourne will be concentrated in five sectors: professional and technical services, manufacturing, health and social assistance, transport and warehousing, and education and training.</p>
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<iframe width="100%" height="500" scrolling="no" frameborder="no" src="https://www.google.com/fusiontables/embedviz?q=select+col0+from+1UANDn2137hWLFt9rWBr_1ZXjmaflYTix9WhPmHIF&viz=MAP&h=false&lat=-37.3&lng=144.8&t=1&z=7&l=col0&y=2&tmplt=2&hml=GEOCODABLE"></iframe>
<p><em>Click on the map above to view the growth forecasts for each region.</em></p>
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<p>Differences in the underlying structures of regional economies mean that overall performance is varied. </p>
<p>For example, in Barwon, an area including the regional city of Geelong, the manufacturing sector has a relatively large representation of motor vehicle manufacturing. As a result, Barwon’s manufacturing sector is forecast to grow more slowly than the state average, and Barwon is forecast to be the slowest-growing regional economy. However, for the reasons given above, growth is still positive in Barwon manufacturing.</p>
<p>Strong forecast growth in the agriculture sector is the main contributor to growth in several regional economies. In the Wimmera, Western Districts, the Mallee, Goulbourn, East Gippsland, Gippsland and Ovens-Murray, growth in agriculture will contribute between 20% and 50% of regional employment growth. </p>
<p>In the Wimmera, the Mallee and the Western Districts, the agriculture sector currently accounts for a fifth of jobs. However, the Wimmera and the Western Districts are the regions with the highest forecast growth rates, while the Mallee is one of the slowest. Although all agricultural economies, the nature of agriculture in these regions is quite different. The strongly growing agricultural activities sheep, beef, grains and dairy are well represented in the Wimmera and Western Districts. However, Mallee agriculture includes a sizable portion of fruit growing, an activity with a relatively low growth forecast.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/65326/original/image-20141124-19627-10m4ak0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/65326/original/image-20141124-19627-10m4ak0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/65326/original/image-20141124-19627-10m4ak0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/65326/original/image-20141124-19627-10m4ak0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/65326/original/image-20141124-19627-10m4ak0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/65326/original/image-20141124-19627-10m4ak0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=531&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/65326/original/image-20141124-19627-10m4ak0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=531&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/65326/original/image-20141124-19627-10m4ak0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=531&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>Agriculture is relatively less important in the economies of the Central Highlands (including Ballarat) and Loddon (including Bendigo). While agriculture will account for around 10% of employment growth in these regions, health, education and manufacturing are forecast to be of greater significance, accounting for around 40% of growth in employment.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/33831/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Janine Dixon does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Victorians will soon go to the polls to decide who will be responsible for the management of the state for the next four years. Voters are confronted with many issues on which they must pass judgement…Janine Dixon, Senior research fellow, Victoria UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.