What really happened in last year’s state election

–  What are the lessons for 2011?

Keynote Speech by Peter Debnam MP
20th June 2008 at Parliament House

Why discuss the election now? 

Well, yes we lost the election and as they say, “history is written by the winners”. But it is worth putting at least some balanced comment on the record.

You may ask “Who cares and does it matter?”

Well, yes it does matter.

And it matters very much if we’re to understand last year and be able to apply lessons to win the next election.

When I realised even our friends were embarrassed to raise last year’s election with me, then I had firsthand evidence of the success of Labor’s post-election spin in which they were boldly and dishonestly spinning the history.

I realised just how important it is for the Liberal Party to correct the record and claim our achievements - because Labor and the media won’t do it for us.

As can be seen this year, the NSW Labor Government is a dead man walking to the next election and as we went into last year’s election, we knew they would use the considerable resources at their disposal to cover up as much as possible of the disaster they were running.

Our strategy was to take them head on. We were not going to sit quietly and wait for them to implode with people dying in hospitals, a shambles of a transport system and every fundamental Government role and responsibility in complete neglect.

We had to be an active and aggressive Opposition attacking the Government at every opportunity. In doing so, some mistakes were made and I’ll address those in a moment.

However as I will show you, the election results showed ours was the correct strategy.

But from the night of the election and despite the results we achieved, Labor’s spin doctors moved into high gear to denigrate our Coalition’s election efforts and achievements.

We had turned the tide against the Labor Party, but Labor’s spin doctors churned out their rhetoric day after day in the media in the weeks after the election.

Unfortunately Labor’s post-election spin wasn’t contested. (I was otherwise pre-occupied for the first week with a leadership challenge.)

Fight back against Labor’s election spin

It really is time we had a frank discussion about the state election and learnt the lessons for the benefit of the 2011 campaign.

Discussing reality instead of rhetoric will benefit the Liberal Party and we owe it to our supporters to fight back against Labor’s election spin.

For a year, Labor has been so successful with their spin it has even infected our own supporters.

The Labor Party spin and media comment of the last year won’t dent my ego – they did their best to do so in the campaign. But Labor’s post-election spin is damaging Liberal Party support.

Indeed, as I was writing this speech in Parliament a few nights ago, I had to listen again to one of our MPs talking on a bill in the Lower House and spouting Labor’s spin - talking down our achievements at the last election.

After a vicious election campaign from the Labor Party and then, worse still, the post-election Labor spin and deafening silence from our own Party, it’s now time to correct the record.

You know, given the history, our result was pretty damn good.

Lifting our vote and winning back seats was better than the NSW Coalition had done in the previous four elections.

Now as Sir Humphrey would say, we certainly did some “courageous” things in the run up to the 2007 state election – some I would do again but others - well .…. No Way!

But the courage of a lot of people was rewarded when we lifted our state-wide vote to 47.7%, making us competitive again with an increased vote for the first time since 1988.

We turned the tide against the Labor Party.

As you can see in the following graph, last year’s vote is slightly higher than Nick Greiner’s 1984 vote – which set him up for victory in 1988. 

The Greiner win in 1988 was NOT an overnight success - it was the result of many years of effort and momentum.

Contrary to the popular view, most state elections are not sporting contests which could go either way on the day.

Election outcomes are determined both by the campaigns and by the long-term trends in rising and falling voter support.

Nick Greiner took over the leadership mid-term in 1983 and it took five years and a further two elections of rising support to win office.

The ups and downs of campaigning

That 3.9% swing in our favour last year was achieved because we got a lot of things right and that swing began the rising trend for the NSW Coalition.

Some things did go off the rails in the campaign and one or two of our policies failed us.

But a lot of things worked well for us and pushed our result up.

• We relentlessly held the Government to account and that is critical for an Opposition.
• Our candidates were simply the best.
• The TV Debate worked for us.
• At the time, I believed we didn’t have enough funds to run our TV ads for more than a week nor to respond to Labor’s attack ads, but the limited amount of TV advertising we did was effective.
• Our IR policy did work against us, but almost all of our policies including our Water Recycling and Bureaucrat Freeze were well received.

As we hoped it would, 2007 gave us a viable launching pad to win the next state election.
There isn’t any guarantee we’ll win in 2011. But we should, if we learn some lessons and maintain the momentum we built up during the 2003 to 2007 parliamentary term.

Remember that just like this year, 2004 was the usual Labor collapse in the post-election year.

It was best remembered for Costa’s political mismanagement when the rail system was in meltdown and the year also closed with Treasurer Egan resigning from Parliament.

In 2005, both Premier Carr and Opposition Leader Brogden resigned their leadership positions and then both resigned from Parliament.

Morris Iemma and I were elected unopposed to lead our parties in August and September.

2005 finished with the Government in turmoil, the Cross City Tunnel saga, the Lane Cove Tunnel collapse and the Coalition leading 52% to Labor’s 48% in the polls.

We continued to lead Labor in the polls until April 2006 when Workchoices was building up a head of steam and Labor’s taxpayer funded advertising started to bite from June.

2006 was tumultuous. It drew to a close with the dumping of Carl Scully, the Orkopoulos disgrace, the backfire of our Debus questions and finally the election of Saint Kevin as Federal Labor Leader.

2006 was again a year we took every opportunity we could to hold the Government to account.

Our job is to keep the pressure on Government Ministers but as we showed with the Debus questions, some of our punches missed.

Yes, we made a mistake but our job was to keep punching that week and every week.

It is important the Opposition doesn’t resile from pursuing difficult issues nor become unnecessarily risk averse and some of our punching will inevitably backfire politically.

In December 2006, the Rudd ascension was just surreal and swept away any community interest in state politics.

We tried the “Rotten to the Core” TV Commercial to cut through and Labor resorted to early advertising targeting me to cut through the community’s fascination with Kevin Rudd.

2007 opened with us campaigning hard while the Labor Government was invisible - except for their advertising.

We had such a good run in the media in January and early February 2007 that after a good response to the Debate, journalists were quietly noting we had had a good couple of months.

Then a few days later, published polls hit us hard showing nothing mattered other than Labor’s commercials.

Before we discuss the trials and tribulations of the 2007 election and the lessons for 2011, let’s briefly view NSW elections from a historical perspective.

Navigating Unchartered Waters – 2003 was an Historic Low in Voter Support

After the 1991, 1995, 1999 and 2003 elections, we were navigating unchartered waters in terms of primary vote support.

Since the Greiner win in 1988, primary vote support for the NSW Liberal Party had collapsed and, as we prepared for the 2007 election, I was aware that falling trend could continue.

In the 1999 election, the Liberal Party’s primary vote had fallen to an historic low and then in 2003 it hit a new low at 24.72%.

Critically, that was the lowest primary vote since the Liberal Party first contested NSW elections sixty years ago in 1947.

(The Nationals also slumped in 1999 but managed to slightly lift their vote in 2003.)
 
I knew the 2007 election would be a defining moment for the State Liberal Party and the very real question was simply - would our vote continue to sink as it had for the previous four state elections OR had we finally been reduced to our “rusted on” voter support?

If so, would our 2007 vote remain steady at the previous election’s level or would we finally turn the tide and increase our vote?

Coming off an historic low, a win in 2007 was virtually impossible. But, at the same time, somehow we had to keep the aspirations of our supporters alive.

The Rudd Factor

As we fought to lift our vote, we were not only subject to the usual power of an incumbent government but in the last four months of our campaign we also had to find a way to cut through unprecedented voter fascination with the new Federal Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd.

In the absence of significant advertising dollars, we tried everything to tell the electorate that the March 2007 election was about State Labor NOT about Kevin Rudd.

The Rudd factor undoubtedly also skewed polling, which tended to underestimate our vote - as demonstrated by the 4.2% difference between the actual 2PP election results and the Newspoll two days before the state election.

In any year, it’s always difficult to get voters to focus on state politics as opposed to federal but it was next to impossible given the electorate’s new love affair with Kevin Rudd.

Despite Kevin 07 and Workchoices, we did manage to cut through several times:

• In June 2006, our Budget Reply was well received and our polling showed us equal 50% / 50% with Labor in key seats;
• After the February Debate on ABC TV, we cut through again with our polling that weekend showing us temporarily moving to a strong position;
• A week before the election when we used a published poll to jolt the community telling them they were about to let Labor walk into office again; and
• In the last week of the campaign when we could finally afford to advertise on TV.

But, let’s step back a little to gain the perspective of recent decades.

“Anyone other than Labor or the Coalition”

By 2003, the NSW Coalition had lost almost a third of primary votes since 1988 and voters had also withdrawn a third of their primary votes from Labor over the period since the 1978 Wranslide.

So as we approached the 2007 election, we knew that during and since the Wran and Greiner Governments, NSW voters had increasingly parked their primary vote with anyone other than Labor and the Coalition.

As you can see from the Elections 1947 – 2007 Graph, a quarter of NSW voters now say “a pox on both your houses” and park their primary vote in the middle. Their second preferences decide elections.

Patronising Politics

The voters’ move away from major parties over the last thirty years undoubtedly reflects the patronising policies and rigidity of Party Politics as opposed to Representative Politics.

Labor’s current privatisation of electricity is a case in point. The community doesn’t want privatisation but the Government patronisingly says it will be good for the community.
The patronising policies of both parties have failed to inspire voters who choose to seek refuge with other Parties or MPs/Candidates who will at least voice their concerns, even if those parties or MPs will never govern.

The difference between the primary vote and second preference is of course the protest vote against the major parties.

As a result, we put a huge amount of effort into working with industries, communities and interest groups behind the scenes to establish partnerships with as many as possible.

Whether NSW Clubs, horse-riding clubs, sporting groups, health networks, environment lobbies or many others, we sought to fully understand their concerns and seek their co-operation.

That effort not only served to win quite a few votes but also neutralised a number of potential political difficulties.

The Political Cycle

Back to the big picture.

History and the graph show you can generally predict which party will win NSW Elections because votes have settled into a long cycle with a wavelength of six to eight elections.

It usually takes two to four elections of falling votes for State Governments to lose office and conversely Oppositions will experience two to four elections of rising support at the ballot box before winning an election.

For example, Labor’s Bob Carr won office after two elections of increasing Labor votes and Nick Greiner won office after three elections of increasing Coalition votes.

So, in the run up to the 2007 state election, we knew we wouldn’t win.

But the media still wanted to play their usual horse race game.

Game, Set and Match – before play begins!

There was one media commentator who consistently pointed out that Labor’s seats and margins were simply too large for the Coalition to win the 2007 state election.

Month after month, as talk-back callers raged against the Iemma Government, you had to give it to Ray Hadley who seemed to be the one commentator always calmly pointing out to his listeners that Labor had a majority of 16 seats and the margins in those Labor seats were just too damn big for the Coalition to win.

Game, set and match and before play begins!

But we knew our job in the 2007 state election was to make up ground, pull back the margins in Labor seats and pick up as many seats as we could.

We did that.

The 2007 election was the first time in 19 years and 5 elections that we increased our vote against the Labor Party with a swing to the Coalition of 3.9%.

(Later in the year, Kevin Rudd would achieve a swing of 5.6% with the full advantage of Workchoices and not only a total lack of scrutiny but almost affectionate media.)

Key Seat Campaigning

A review of NSW election history also shows the Labor Party has done better in key-seat campaigning.

Labor's focused campaigning was demonstrated in 1981 when there was a state-wide swing to the Coalition but another swag of seats went to Labor.

Labor’s campaign in 1991 also demonstrated the same key-seat focus and they won the 1995 election with minimal popular support.

The 1995 Labor win was truly extraordinary given the Coalition’s power of incumbency and the fact the Coalition Government had just won the Olympics for NSW.

Despite these assets, the Coalition managed to lose the 1995 election.

Labor won the election with only 48.8% of the vote, scraping over the line with less than a hundred votes in two seats.

But last year in the 2007 election we fought back in key seats.

Overall, we reduced Labor’s primary vote from 42.68% (2003) to 39% and increased our Coalition primary vote to 37% (up 2.64% from the 2003 low point).

We lifted our state-wide 2PP vote to 47.7% and, despite Labor’s campaign fortress around key-seats, we achieved swings to the Coalition in 79 of the 93 seats.

Some of those swings to the Coalition were as high as 14%.

We turned the tide against the Labor Party across the state, increased our vote significantly, won three seats from Labor, won back another three from Independents and turned many safe Labor seats into marginal targets for 2011.

A complete list of swings in each of the 93 seats is provided on my website peterdebnam.com.au under the section “2007 Election Results”.

What worked and what didn’t work in the 2007 Campaign?

Why did the campaign work for us? Well there were many factors including candidates, our policies, our advertising and the TV Debate.

Best Candidates

In the run-up to last year’s election, we put a lot of blood sweat and tears into choosing the best candidate in every one of the ninety three lower house seats.

In those pre-selection contests, I openly used the weight of the Party Leader’s position to convince pre-selectors to vote for the best candidate.

In a number of cases I incurred the private and public wrath of local powerbrokers and subsequently paid the price in the party room after the election. But I was happy we went to the election with the best people in the best spots and that clearly showed in the results.

That intervention gave us at least four of our new MPs. It also retained four other well-respected sitting MPs.

Fundraising

Political campaigning must be well funded and fundraising is critical. We did well at the local level across the state and the quality of candidates was one of the reasons local communities contributed so much to our campaigns.

Advertising

In terms of advertising, I remember well the first week of June 2006 as the beginning of Labor's TV advertising onslaught.

The Government’s pre-election budget on the Tuesday received an unprecedented panning.

My Budget Reply speech received good press, including a “Bonus for Home Owners” front page of the Telegraph.

Then Labor stepped up their TV advertising extolling the supposed virtues of key government programs including rail, police and water strategies.

The positive government ads continued through to February 2007 and cost taxpayers about $90 million.

Those taxpayers funded ads were complemented by $6m of Labor Party ads and $10m of union negative ads.

Our TV ads were largely restricted to the last week of the campaign due to perceived funding constraints and we only spent about $2 million on TV ads - but they worked.

For a year, we had the TV ads in the can but when Carl Scully was dumped for misleading Parliament in October 2006 we had to go back and remake our TV commercials.

Our TV ads highlighted three Ministers – Tripodi, Sartor and Costa – who best reflected a tarnished Government.

While voters despised Bob Carr, they had bought the story that Iemma had “unfairly” inherited Bob Carr’s problems.

Voters thought Iemma deserved at least a chance and Labor blamed Carr as often as possible and encouraged the sympathy for Iemma.

Morris Iemma didn’t feature in our ads because we couldn’t find a way to break through the extraordinary sympathy vote he was receiving from voters.

Nevertheless our TV ads were effective.

After the election, Labor apparently had the hide to tell some senior media people “We don’t need you.”

What they meant by that was they had found during the campaign, as we did, that voters were taking notice of TV Ads and direct mail.

Media comment was largely being ignored.

As a result TV ads and fundraising for them are increasingly critical to the success of any campaign.
 
But after the election I was stunned to be told the Liberal Party ended up with a very substantial election surplus. I couldn’t believe it!

Those surplus funds could and should have given us another week of TV advertising, which would have increased our swing.

A slightly bigger swing would have won Miranda, Dubbo and Menai and may have helped win Wollondilly and Camden.

It would have also further reduced the margins of most Labor seats for the next election.

TV Debate

With limited advertising, we needed an opportunity to make our case direct to voters without a battalion of spin-doctors and without media editing.

After a tremendous struggle, the Premier reluctantly agreed to a TV debate.

But, it would not be a proper stand up debate. Among his more ludicrous demands was that we conduct the debate sitting down.

I was hoping for a rigorous and frank exchange of views. All we got was a fireside chat.

To minimise their risk, Labor strategists demanded it be on Friday night on ABC and be limited to one debate covering agreed topics.

But to us, it was an hour’s TV time, which would receive significant coverage through other media including commercial TVs.

Before the start of the debate, I was very surprised to see just how nervous Morris seemed.

The debate worked really well for us. The media was positive, supporters felt boosted and we got a lift in fundraising.

The debate gave us cut-through that weekend and the community liked what they saw with our polling showing a bounce putting us 51% to Labor’s 49%.

Then on the Sunday, Labor revved up their advertising again.

Debates are invaluable to Oppositions. Don’t’ expect to see them again in NSW.

Campaigning – Do the homework

Our Land Tax Announcement was one example of campaigning going off the rails for a day or two.

It was unfortunate and highlighted the lack of homework done in preparation for the announcement.

During the course of the press conference it became apparent our investors owned quite a few properties instead of one or two.

It was one of our few public stuff-ups and was definitely unhelpful.

“Peter Debnam will transfer IR Powers to Canberra”

Throughout the campaign Labor’s mantra was “Peter Debnam will transfer our IR powers to Canberra”  

The saturation advertising signified that Labor saw this issue as their biggest opportunity to attack us.

I agree.

In 2005 we underestimated the political impact of our IR policy.

In early 2006 when Labor’s attack on Workchoices took hold, our IR policy was swept into the firestorm. It became an easy weapon for Labor.

I wasn’t able to get any research on the impact but when Labor were able to connect our IR with the community’s genuine concerns about Workchoices, it must have cost us a critical percent or two or three in the election result.

Our decision to hand our IR powers to Canberra was made two years before the election and reflected the Party’s belief that business was hamstrung by different state IR jurisdictions.

While it would have been difficult to strain relations with Canberra, the sad reality was the Howard Government was in decline and would shortly be out of office largely due to Workchoices.

So our IR transfer gesture simply handed Labor a big club to beat us. Our IR policy effectively put us on a hiding to nothing.

Policy Development

In the year and a half before the election, we announced a coherent set of policies and more than previous Oppositions had done.

It actually got to the point where journalists wondered publicly whether we would have any policies left to announce in the remaining weeks of the campaign.

As a result, the Government and media were never able to call us a policy free zone. We neutralised that issue.

Lessons for 2011

As we move towards the next election, let’s remember some lessons.

Build on our successes from 2007

Lesson 1 is don’t let Labor spin away our successes from the last election.

Remind everyone that we turned the tide against Labor, the seats we won and the Labor members who are now vulnerable to the next election swing.

In Parliament, remind Labor MPs every day of the swing we achieved last year in their electorate and what will happen next time.

Hold them to Account

Most of the job of Opposition is to relentlessly hold the Government to account in every portfolio. The minute you back off doing so, the public will react.

Candidates

We must repeat last year’s success in positioning the best candidate in each electorate. It took a lot of effort last time and will again.

Many of the candidates who were unsuccessful last year will again be the best candidate.

Leadership Rotisserie

The Liberal Party unfortunately has a bad habit of burning off their Leaders.

I was the third Opposition Leader in three successive state elections and Barry O’Farrell is now the fourth Opposition Leader in the run up to the fourth election.

The community wants stability with an Opposition Leader they can get to know.

As difficult as it is, it takes a couple of elections for voters to get to know the alternative Premier - as Bob Carr and Nick Greiner found out.

My colleagues must stop the leadership rotisserie!

Maximise funding for TV Commercials

Until NSW gets proper reform of campaign finance then fundraising and using as much as possible of that funding for TV commercials is critical to a successful campaign.

Focus on Key Seats

We must continue to direct our efforts to key seats where the election is won and lost.

Last year we did well in focusing on key seats and next time we can be even more focused.

To win last year’s election was always going to be like climbing Mount Everest.

But we achieved a good result and brought the 2011 election within reach.

Meanwhile, as the Iemma Government goes through one of its regular and widespread melt-downs, we must ruthlessly hold them to account for their failures but, we also need to remember we won’t cruise into Government solely on the back of Labor failures.

We must be a strong alternative. We must stand for something and we must have a strong party organisation.

This month of turmoil in NSW Labor represents another opportunity to attract further support to the Liberal Party as people turn their backs on Labor.

Fight Back against Labor’s Spin

From today talk to others in the Liberal Party and the community about last year’s election.

One of the lessons is to be proud of our achievements and get our message out to the community.

Reinforce last year’s decision by NSW voters to move towards the Coalition. Tell them they did the right thing.

You know one of the very real satisfactions from my time in the leadership of the Party and especially in the months running up to the state election was seeing and feeling the on-street enthusiasm of people across the state.

People who love this state as much as I do and wanted to change things.

In community meetings, on the streets, at the Dapto dogs, at football games, in shopping centres, in clubs and pubs from Albury to Tweed and from Bondi to Broken Hill, people wanted to talk about changing state government for the better.

There was a groundswell of enthusiasm as people rose to exercise their democratic right to vote.

One of the strengths of last year’s election campaign was that we were able to harness that surge of enthusiasm on the streets as people volunteered to help our Liberal candidates get elected.

Encourage that Momentum

We always knew it would be a very tough campaign, with little chance of an outright win given the enormous margins we had to overcome.

But we also found out early on that the vibes on the street were good and indicated we would get a swing.

The community enthusiasm was infectious and in each electorate hundreds and sometimes thousands of people assisted our campaigns.

We need to encourage that momentum on the march to 2011.

Thank you.