Light on the hill dimmed by selfishness

By Louise Dodson
March 8, 2005

Claiming victory in the 1993 election, Paul Keating described it as "the sweetest victory of all", which he said was "for the true believers, the people who in difficult times have kept the faith".

These days, the political true believers - the "rusties", as Keating also liked to call them, because they were "rusted on" supporters - are dying out.

They are going the way of much else in politics, they are being blended and blanded. They are making way for a growing grey mass of in-betweens, of people without strong political allegiances.

In modern politics it is not belief that matters to voters anymore; it is benefits.

John Howard understands this perfectly. He frequently tells his party-room meetings that Australians these days do not have the strong political allegiances of yesteryear. This is usually the prelude to a pep talk about why Coalition MPs should never get complacent about their success and always work hard - including between elections - to ensure re-election.

Howard's election campaign last year, with its huge cash handouts aimed at empowering individuals to spend how they liked, reflected this kind of thinking. To many, Howard's success at capitalising on the breakdown in political allegiances was symbolised by the image of timber workers embracing him in Tasmania during the campaign.

Professor Ian McAllister, at the Research School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University, has just completed a study of the 2004 federal election. He identifies this trend of the declining true believer. Since 1967, the number of Australians saying they had no allegiance to a political party has doubled to 16 per cent, he says.

The number of those with very strong allegiances has dropped from 33 per cent in 1967 to 20 per cent last year while those with not very strong allegiances has increased from 23 to 32 per cent.

It is a worldwide trend, obvious since the 1970s and which gathered pace in the 1990s, says McAllister. The reasons that people here and elsewhere are not as strongly attached to political parties include a trend towards declining confidence in parties and a rising interest in individuals in politics.

There is more scrutiny of parties than ever before from the media, interest groups and academics. We may say we want vision, but what we want is accountability. The parties are commonly making more claims than ever before, such as to fix economic problems.Not surprisingly, people lose confidence when the claims are not delivered, McAllister says.

This must be what Labor's Kim Beazley and Wayne Swan are hoping when they continually point out that interest rates have risen just five months after Howard campaigned on "keeping interest rates lower". Needless to say, the focus on accountability often blurs policy differences between the main parties, negating many of the reasons for fiercely adhering to one or the other.

Another reason for the decline in allegiance to parties is the increasing focus on individuals in politics, the so-called "presidential" factor. Election campaigns are often head-to-head contests between the party leaders. Governments are frequently given the names of their majority party leaders such as the Howard Government or the Blair Government.

At the local level, being a well-known MP is an advantage. While Labor suffered a swing against it last year , many of its sitting MPs attracted swings.

Education is another factor behind the decline in political allegiance. When people get more educated, they pride themselves on becoming more independent of inherited political loyalties. Howard also argues that as Australians become richer they are less influenced by historical class allegiances. The rise of minor parties such as the Australian Democrats, the Greens and now Family First could also result in loosened party ties because they encourage voters to move from long-held loyalties.

Much about mainstream parties seems old-fashioned to younger Australians, such as the images of backroom powerbrokers and political-speak.

But, even though political allegiance appears to be in steady decline, the trend has not been as marked in Australia as elsewhere, McAllister says. This is not because Australians are more firmly ideological; rather, we have a lot of elections and voting is compulsory, so parties get a lot of exposure.

McAllister estimates that, including state elections, Australians have to go to the polls on average about every 18 months, giving political parties almost saturation coverage.

Even though elections these days - with their emphasis on the costs of promises - often contain as much excitement as an accountancy seminar, there is nothing like them for keeping a true believer true, it seems.

Louise Dodson is the Herald's Chief Political Correspondent.
