40-seat lead likely

Press, 10 October 1984, Page 10

40-seat lead likely

By

CHRIS PETERS,

of NZPA Sydney Already the pundits are asking not if the Australian Prime Minister, Mr Bob Hawke, and his Labour Party can win a second term, in the Federal election on December 1, but by how much.

The most generous predictions are that the margin will be 50 seats in the newly expanded 148-seat House of Representatives, while no swing will leave him with a lead of 30 in the bigger House.

The consensus is about 40 seats.

For Mr Hawke, the most popular Prime Minister in Australian history, the only gamble he is taking in calling this early poll is the .record eight-week lead-up to December 1, given by his announcement on Monday. The official campaigns will begin next month, and even his own advisers have counselled the traditional short, sharp campaign to capitalise on the party’s mana and minimise any damage. But Mr Hawke’s Government has broken all sorts of conventions with its brand of consensus politics. For Mr Hawke and the Opposition leader, Mr Andrew Peacock, the stakes are high. Mr Hawke, elected in a

landslide on March 5 last year, is determined that his will not be a flash-in-the-pan Government. He wants a long-term administration. If he wins that, the country will next go to the polls just before the beginning of bicentennial year — 1988 — a time that the commentators say should help a successful Government to yet another term.

Andrew Peacock’s political future is widely regarded as being on the line, especially if the swings go against him and Labour gets near its possible 50-seat majority. The present 125-seat House has 75 Labour and 50 Liberal-National Party seats — a 25-seat majority which, translated to a 148seat House, is put at 30 seats.

The conservatives need to gain 16 seats to regain power and a swing of 3.2 per cent to do that. A swing of 2 per cent would give the coalition eight Labour seats. A 2 per cent swing to Labour, which is doing better in opinion polls than it rated at the last election, would give Mr Hawke eight new seats for a majority of 46 in the expanded Parliament.

The peg on which Mr Hawke hangs the election call is the desire to bring the General Election back in line with the half-Senate

election, due before April next year, saving the country sAustl9 million in election costs.

The snap poll called by Malcolm Fraser last year threw the elections out of kilter, but Labour is not expected to gain control of the Senate. Each of the six Australian states has 10 senators, and two each from the Northern Territory and Australian Capital Territory, half of them are re-elected every three years. The Senate is also being expanded, from 64 to 76. The States will each have 12 senators. The new ones will be elected on December 1. The five Australian Democrats and a rebel Labour Tasmanian Independent hold the balance of power between the conservatives and Labour.

The poll will be dominated by hip-pocket issues, boiling down to the economy. Here Mr Hawke and Labour have got it all over the Opposition. They can point to cuts in inflation, interest rates, employment, and the lowest levels of industrial disruption in nearly two decades. They can point to the new spirit of national purpose and optimism that was born in Mr Hawke’s consensus style, and to Mr Hawke.

He has been almost presidential in his style, he has broken all records in popu-

larity, yet he has shown that he is as human as anyone else — the sports-loving reformed larrikin.

The conservatives will aim their economic shots not so much at what the Government has done up to now, but at what it is going to be forced to do once the election is out of the way. The economic medicine, they say, will come next year when the nation will pay for the honeymoon it has enjoyed up to now. The Opposition will also play on fears about the new assets test on pensioners, and detailing the promises Labour has not kept. The wild cards in the election will be crime, and, to a lesser extent, Aboriginal land rights, immigration, and nuclear power.

Organised crime, particularly in New South Wales, is about the only issue that has got the Government on the back foot in 20 months in power. Mr Peacock blew a lot of the gains by accusing Mr Hawke of being a “little crook” and “one who took orders from criminals.”

They were assertions that Mr Peacock could not justify, and backing down has been costly for him and the debate.

The Costigan Commission of Inquiry report is due to be released shortly, and some commentators predict that it could be the Exocet Mr Peacock needs to sink

the Labour ship. There is also the Senate inquiry into a former Labour Attorney-General and now High Court judge, Lionel Murphy, and the reaction of the New South Wales Premier, Mr Neville Wran, to assertions being made by the state’s Chief Magistrate. Each of the states has the potential to provide a national issue on its own. In New South Wales it is crime. In Victoria the heartland of the radical Left it will be how long Labour can keep its Left wing caged. In Queensland it is the everpresent Premier, Sir Johannes Bjelke-Petersen, and his threat to block what he regards as an unnecessarily early Federal Election. South Australia has the uranium mining at Roxby Downs. In the West and North it is land rights.

In Tasmania the bitter row over the Franklin dam has left its legacy of disenchantment with Mr Hawke and his party. Despite sAust27s million worth of Federal compensation, Tasmanians are not happy and the state is expected to stay in the conservative camp. Labour began its campaign for re-election a year ago. It has paid its dues with the August Budget, and the question now is whether it can keep the pace up in the run to the line.