Decks cleared, now let the ACT election campaign begin

Labor Party polling is tightly held among a core few but, judging by the dramatic change in the political landscape in recent weeks, as Chief Minister Andrew Barr jettisoned unpopular policies like confetti, and by the barefaced brutality with which he is attacking the Liberals, one would have to wonder whether polling has it worried.

Opposition Leader Jeremy Hanson's confidence is more difficult to understand. In his favour, it has given his team the ability to roll out its agenda with a sense of unruffled calm, largely ignoring the negativity fired its way by Labor. But it's an approach that ignores the fact that the Liberals are a long shot to win.

Hanson appears to believe he can win by cancelling the tram, capitalising on the unhappiness surrounding developer deals, and by rolling out what looks oddly akin to a traditional Labor platform on health and education, supporting the clubs, the community sector, more bus routes and new roads.

The result is politics turned on its head: a Liberal agenda that feels Labor at heart. And it is Labor that is campaigning, for want of a better slogan, on jobs and growth.

But if Hanson hopes to lead the second Liberal government in Canberra's history, it comes down to numbers: He must win three seats in at least three of the five electorates. That is no simple task. He needs to have Tuggeranong and Woden-Weston in the bag, and he needs to win Gungahlin – assuming the seat in Belconnen goes with Labor and the third seat in the city seat goes to the Greens.

Unless Barr is seriously on the nose, political history would say Hanson can only do this with the help of a high-profile, electable, Liberal-leaning independent, who would support his government, doing the same job for the Liberals as the Greens do for Labor. At the moment, the Liberals are one party fighting two; they must beat Labor and the Greens put together. And as political watchers will tell you, if after 15 years in opposition, the Liberals haven't found their own equivalent – a Paul Osborne, Dave Rugendyke or even Michael Moore – they probably don't deserve the prize.

While there is no evidence to date of a Hanson-friendly independent with the profile to get over the line, there are minor parties and independents lining up in droves, prompting Electoral Commissioner Phil Green to prepare for a wider ballot paper than the ACT has seen in years. Nominations open on September 9.

The latest independent is Marea Fatseas, who led the campaign against a big, new suburban development near Government House in Yarralumla, and who is typical of the politically active, centrist independents who are emerging, fed up with Labor. Michael Moore, Canberra's longest-serving and most successful independent historically (until 2001), believes there is fertile ground for independents this year, but their chances are slim. And getting elected will take more than being a reasonable person with appealing polices. It takes strategy, which none of the independents and few of the minor parties are showing any signs of grasping todate.

It takes 17 per cent of the vote to get a seat, which means a significant preference flow is needed. And while Barr is almost certain to cop a significant voter backlash, as the retired nurse fronting the pro-Labor union-funded advertising campaign epitomises, many people might lodge their anti-Labor protest by giving their first preference to an independent, even their second, and then reverting to Labor and the Greens. This is what Jude Dodd says she will probably do – show her displeasure at the tram by voting for an independent or Green, then heading down the preference line back to Labor. While this no doubt came as unwelcome news to the unions and Labor, Dodd's protest vote is a vote that will help return the Labor government. The only effective way for an independent or minor party to be elected is if almost one in five voters are savvy and determined enough to keep their vote with those independent and minor parties without straying into the major party columns.

A strong minor party would have a better chance, but there are 12 parties and the sheer numbers are likely to split the vote. For all the political track record of Richard Farmer in getting people elected, he is yet to come up with a candidate or present a coherent and comprehensive platform. The Sex Party likes its chances in Tuggeranong, but a win for it there would come at the expense of the Liberals, increasing the chance of majority Labor government.

While the most likely outcome on October 15 is 12 seats to Labor, 12 seats to the Liberals, and one seat to king-making Green Shane Rattenbury, there is much to be said for an active crossbench.

Assembly clerk Tom Duncan told a forum this week that more crossbenchers means more scrutiny. Using the number of completed committee inquiries as an indicator of scrutiny, Duncan said the seventh assembly had a big crossbench, with four Greens, and the result was 154 committee reports. In contrast, the current Assembly, with no crossbench (the sole Green having joined Labor in coalition government), has delivered 133 reports. Duncan said the membership of committees was locked two Labor and two Liberal, with anecdotal evidence that inquiries one side wanted to pursue, were blocked by the other.

Observers of the strength and fearlessness of the Senate committee system in the Federal Parliament might also like to see a more robust set of committee inquiries in the ACT.

But given the need for strategic and sophisticated voting in significant numbers to ensure a populated crossbench, it is not the most likely outcome. Labor is the frontrunner, not only because of the political proclivity of ACT voters and the crucial help of the Greens, but also because of its willingness to play politics ruthlessly.

We have seen this in the past few weeks with the untruths over Liberal job cuts and the appointment of Liberal Brendan Smyth to the plum job as commissioner for international engagement – an appointment that looked calculated to create a political headache for the Liberals – never mind the spending of public money. We have also seen it in the brazen deck-clearing.

Changes to liquor laws to address late-night violence that would have forced massive fee hikes on venues staying open after 3am were jettisoned at the last minute. Higher fees for bottle stores and other changes remained on the agenda an extra couple of weeks before they too were shelved.

Plans to allow bailed defendants to be held in custody were scaled back and "anti-consorting" laws were dropped altogether. A law change that would have gagged public servants from saying anything that damaged the government's reputation was also dropped at the last.

Now, the government has begun a review of the Land Development Agency's methods for buying land, headed by a former national auditor, as it seeks again to defuse election anger. Barr was talking vaguely last week about a different way of consulting Canberrans on major developments, saying the system failed to include the views of "significant chunks of the community". As an aside, while the theme of this thought bubble is consultation, it looks likely, if it leads to anything at all, to be aimed at downplaying the views of the vocal and motivated people who successfully fought the Manuka Oval redevelopment and the new Yarralumla suburb, and are gearing up to do the same on West Basin.

Much of this speaks of panic, unsurprising given the apparent electoral mood. What is more of a mystery is why Barr waited so long to heed the upset.

Barr is shaped in the ungentle political playground of the ACT parliament where he has worked as a staffer and politician for 14 years (before that also mostly as a local and federal political staffer). He's a creature of politics, which gives him the strategic edge, but could also backfire if he continues to treat the electorate as though they will swallow anything.

One of the problems of a party jaded by long-time incumbency is they think the goal justifies almost any tactics in the fight. Political parties have a habit of this kind of end-justifies-the-means thinking, telling themselves they are more caring/reliable/competent than their opponents so the voter will be in much better hands if they win. Therefore winning is the point and virtually anything goes in the pursuit of that goal. It didn't matter to federal Labor whether the Coalition did intend to privatise Medicare, nor that Malcolm Turnbull denied it flatly and vehemently over and again; what mattered was to plant the doubt in voters' minds. It was a plausible thought that a Liberal government would do such a thing; perhaps they will after all.

By the same token, the nonsensical "costings" of Liberal "promises" coming out of Barr's office in the past few weeks can be as silly and meaningless as anything – and they are. The point is that they raise a question. Barr sets up a straw man, erroneously attributes a $400 million budget black hole to the Liberals, and makes it gospel.

The figure came from an adviser in Barr's office, who trawled through every suggestion the Liberals have made this term, every call the party has made on the government to do something, and collected these ideas and suggestions with the election promises made in the past few months. Lumped together, they were then "costed" (although without Treasury's input), and added to a grand figure over four years of $400 million.

The Liberals have now come up with their own tally, of $230 million over four years, including the government-estimated $223 million compensation payment for scrapping the tram.

But costings debates are notoriously un-useful and while clearly it is incumbent on both parties to cost their promises and identify some savings or accept a likely impact on the bottom line, confusing the numbers with promises the Liberals haven't even made simply makes it more difficult for voters to make head or toe of the result. Costings scorecards are little more than a tactic.

More ridiculous, though, was Barr's extra "analysis", which concluded that spending $400 million over four years meant Hanson would sack 2000 public servants.

"More than 2000 Canberrans will lose their jobs if the Liberals win the next ACT election, " Barr trumpeted.

"Health will be hardest hit, with around 680 staff to go – and with most staff working on the front line that means hundreds nurses disappearing from hospital wards.

"Next on the Liberals' hit list will be our teachers. More than 530 education staff will be sacked, so hundreds of teachers will be torn from our classrooms. And with the ACT government funding non-government schools, the Liberals' cuts will be felt in Catholic and independent school classrooms too."

The first assumption is that the Liberals must save $400 million to pay for the promises they haven't even made. Then, Barr's wacky analysis went like this: The Liberals will share the "savings" across the budget evenly. About half the government's budget goes on wages, so $195 million must be saved in wages. These cuts will be made pro-rata across the public service, which is how they got to 680 jobs from health and 530 from teaching.

None of which bears any connection at all with the world we live in. But worse still, the numbers were wrong anyway. If the Liberals did want to save $195 million in wages over four years, they would cut 500 jobs, not 2000. Barr's people had made the elementary mistake of simply dividing $195 million by an average of about $100,000 per job, forgetting that the person who costs $100,000 a year, costs $400,000 over four years. Five-hundred jobs gets you there. Except that the Liberals have no intention, they say, of cutting any jobs, and are busy announcing more nurses.

The Liberals don't look vulnerable on jobs, no matter how hard Barr pushes his line on this. They are, however, perhaps more vulnerable to another line of attack from Labor: That their ranks are populated by some deep conservatives. Barr is fond of saying the ACT Liberals are the most conservative branch in the country, a claim designed to strike fear into the heart of Labor voters who might be inclined to punish Labor and looking warily towards the Liberals.

The Liberals are sensitive about this issue. Hanson has already said there is "no desire from me or my colleagues to change the social fabric of this city in a significant way". He has repeated the statement in an interview with The Canberra Times, and emphasises that he personally is anything but a social conservative – he is pro-choice on abortion, voted for a republic at the referendum, and supports same-sex marriage.

His deputy, on the other hand, is firmly in the conservative camp, holding the opposite views to Hanson on each of those issues. Alistair Coe says his conservatism shapes him as a person, but he says it is not what motivates him as a politician – he is focussed on the economy, efficiency in delivering government services, health, education and public transport. He has no intention, he says, of embarking on a social agenda of his own in government. Asked how the public can trust him not to pursue deeply held views on issues such as abortion, Coe says look at his record in the Assembly, where he has never sought to raise such an issue, and look also at the unity of the Liberal team. He will not attempt abortion law change, he insists.

For his part, Hanson says that if the conservatives wanted to pursue such issues "why would they have elected a pro-choice atheist as leader?"

"I'm probably one of the more socially liberal Liberal leaders in Australia so to say that I have been elected by my peers demonstrates that we are not a party dominated by one group or another," he says.

Voters with long memories, however, might recall the unedifying knots that Kate Carnell and her government tied themselves in trying to accommodate Paul Osborne's tightening of abortion laws in 1998, relying as they did on Osborne's support to retain government. And Barr hopes these kinds of doubts will worry the left-leaning Canberra electorate enough to make people think twice about sending a protest vote to the Liberals.

If Hanson will be the target of no-holds-barred political attacks, Barr is facing something similar himself in the clubs' campaign against him. The clubs are using their broad reach into the community to get maximum visibility for their campaign that characterises the decision to allow poker machines in the casino as a body blow to community clubs and local sporting groups, under slogans such as "Don't let ACT Labor destroy your club" and "Labor Leader Barr's deal with the foreign-owned casino is the last straw". This material is not only on posters and coasters in clubs and on mail-outs to thousands of Canberrans, but was on the big screen at the two recent Raiders home games. Asked about campaign plans between now and the election, Raiders head Simon Hawkins would only say, "there will be lots of things that will happen between now and the election", an opaque statement that must send a chill warning to Barr, given the financial clout of the clubs and amount they have to lose.

The Greens, of course, have a major vulnerability of their own – and that is their ability to explain and justify the enormous closeness of their coalition with Labor of the past four years. Rattenbury will point to what he has achieved for the Greens agenda, but those achievements have come at the cost of many compromises that have forwarded the Labor agenda. Michael Moore's decision to accept a ministry in the Carnell government put an end to his political career and while Rattenbury is almost certainly secure in his seat, the Greens are probably damaged.

Jon Stanhope, who you'd have to say has become a thorn in Barr's side, pointed out recently that with the departure of Brendan Smyth, the Liberals have no one on their team who has ever been in government. Equally disturbing for good government, with the departure in a few weeks of Simon Corbell, Labor has no one who has ever been in opposition. That in itself, sets the scene for a fascinating election.

Kirsten Lawson is The Canberra Times chief ACT political reporter.