Last-ditch reshuffles won’t save Labor

MATTHEW DENHOLM, Australian
THIS week provided the first concrete evidence that David Bartlett’s honeymoon with voters is well and truly over.
In fact, divorce proceedings have been instituted and the CD collection carved up.

For the first time since he took the Labor leadership from Paul Lennon in May last year, Bartlett is no longer the man voters prefer for that office. And he leads a party most punters now see as inferior to the alternative.

The Enterprise Marketing and Research Services poll, released this week, should have shattered any illusions Labor held that the party was best placed to retain government at next year’s March election.

Labor support has plummeted 7 per cent since May, to 26 per cent; the Liberals have soared 6 per cent to take a strong lead on 33per cent; while the Greens have also marched ahead 4 per cent to 17 per cent.

The undecided vote is still high at 22 per cent, but down slightly. After pushing those uncertain voters to declare whether there was a party they were leaning towards, and excluding the remaining diehard undecided, the poll paints a picture just as bleak for Labor. On this basis, it has fallen 8 per cent to 35 per cent, six points behind the Libs on 41 per cent, while the Greens surge to 21 per cent.

A seat-by-seat breakdown reveals what all this means in terms of who may form the next government in the House of Assembly.

While the small sample means these figures must be treated with caution, they would see Labor lose four seats, the Liberals pick up threeor four and the Greens retain four or gain one. That would leave Labor on 10 seats, the Liberals 10 or 11 and the Greens four or five. Liberal leader Will Hodgman would havemore chance of being premier than Bartlett. The Greens would be kingmakers or coalition partners.

Labor has not been in such a dark place in the polls since the dying days of Lennon’s leadership, when its support slumped to 25 per cent in May last year and Lennon’s preferred premier rating stood at 17 per cent.

Bartlett’s personal vote stands at 30 per cent, behind Hodgman (37 per cent), while Greens leader Nick McKim is on 15 per cent.

But the gap between the parties is similar to that which sent Labor into the panic that led to Lennon’s demise. Lennon’s fatal poll in May last year had the Liberals eight points ahead; this week they are seven in front.

Labor appears rattled and on the back foot. After the poll, Bartlett appeared to leave open the option of a coalition government and undermined his own scare campaign against minority government.

Usually in such doldrums, a leader would look to a reshuffle to reassert this authority and gain some freshness and momentum. Labor, however, has already had more reshuffles than the English batting line-up and there is no new talent for the selectors to call on.

Hodgman has a newly elected upper house MP, criminologist Vanessa Goodwin, and a team daring to dream of ministerial offices for the first time in years.

Bartlett is an intelligent man with some good ideas, but he has failed to inspire a jaded and suspicious electorate. Policies that could be working for him — the broadband rollout, education reforms, irrigation schemes, new child and family centres — appear not to have gained traction with the media or with voters.

Hodgman has not yet presented enough in the way of alternative vision and policies but is finally being accepted by an electorate clearly willing to embrace change. Labor’s hopes rest with the undecided.
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