Email from Bill Johnston, WA Labor Secretary

April 2005

Peter

My wife, Kate Doust (who is the ALP Member for South Metropolitan Region in the WA Legislative Council), told me about the posting copied below from 27 January 2005 at the time, although I was a little busy to make comment on it then. Let me assure you, the 2005 WA State Election is was no easy campaign. I think this is a great job, but it was certainly no fun time between August last year and the final week of the campaign.

The thing I find most interesting is that the established pundits are almost always wrong, while Mumble & Poll Bludger are much more accurate. Cricky is not too bad, we will see how it goes in the future. On May 25, Prof Harry Phillips, Prof Greg Craven & Prof David Black will jointly present a seminar entitled "Election 2005: What Made a Winner?". They are the three "doyens" of political comment in WA. I was Assistant Secretary for the 2001 Campaign and Secretary for this campaign. I have not read any pre-election commentary from any of these three that is either accurate or based on opinion polling or research.

It is also unhelpful that the Westpoll is not accurate at all. Now, having got the pre-election commentary wrong, they get to lecture everyone on what happened. Finally, on a small point of disagreement, I notice that you adhere to the orthodox view that One Nation's preferencing against sitting MP's delivered the 2001 State Election to Labor. This is, in my view, a bit narrow. You should consider this: One Nation voters were "agin the government" (as my late mother would say). The ALP's campaign was very negative in 2001 - so we were reflecting One Nation voters discontent. If you like, while we were not rooting-tooting, God-fearing gun-slingers, we were lined up with One Nation voters' angst. That is different to being lined up with the One Nation Party.

So it is natural that many voters, having voted for Richard Court in 1996, then cast a preference against Richard Court in 2001, regardless of the party - a sort of punish the bastard feeling, particularly for the GST, but also the whole Bell Tower, lack of performance, Finance Brokers scandal thing. Note that we campaigned against the GST very strongly direct to small business - which was clearly One Nation territory at the time. So, that is we had a deliberate campaign strategy to appeal to One Nation voters, not to One Nation. It is not as if voters MUST follow How To Votes, they actually fill in the ballot papers themselves. Further, there is evidence for this effect.

Leaving aside our internal polling, which you may not accept as evidence, the ALP had a number of seats that we held narrowly - Armadale, Midland, Thornlie, Burrup and Kalgoorlie. In accordance with the One Nation policy to put sitting MP's last, in all these five seats we did not gain One Nation preferences on their How To Vote. However, if you look at the actual results the only seat that we did not get a majority of One Nation preferences was Kalgoorlie, which we lost. That is a whole chapter on its own. In all the other seats we increased our margins significantly (including primary vote increases) and got a majority of One Nation preferences. It certainly seems to be evidence for my view. Anyway, it is certainly true that these voters would have voted Liberal in 1996 (and Federally in 1996 as well).

That means they were at least available to give a preference in 2001, but the point is what motivated each individual to cast their vote, not what appeared on the One Nation How To Vote. So that really set a very simple agenda for the ALP's campaign task in 2005: knowing that voters had voted Liberal in 1996, and many would return there again, we had to take votes off the Liberal pile and put them onto our pile. If we did that enough, we would win. If we couldn't, we would lose. Fortunately, we did it, we won, the Liberals lost, and the rest is history. And I got a thank you on TV from Geoff in his victory speech on election night - which I don't call being "praised to the heavens", but it was certainly very nice!

Bill Johnston

State Secretary

Australian Labor Party (WA Branch)