Green Arithmetic and Doctors' Wives-The Election 2004

Review - Institute of Public Affairs, Sep 2004 by Kerr, Christian

WHEN a newspaper with list-instincts of Sydney's Daily Telegraph claims a political tag as its own, poll watchers take notice. And so it was late in May, when political editor Malcolm Farr wrote about 'the doctors' wives... the women the Government most fear'.

Who are they? They look and sound like Liberal supporters', said Farr, 'but this year they are considering voting Green-even Labor'.

When Parliament resumed at the end of the winter recess, Newspoll still had the Greens on six per cent. This was fifty per cent higher than the Nationals, who only managed four. The Greens thrashed their old rivals for the protest vote, the Australian Democrats, who just managed to rate one per cent.

The Morgan Poll results from the same period put the Greens in a stronger position. Morgan gave the party eight per cent, with the Democrats on 2.5 per cent and a mere 1.5 per cent of voters signalling support for the Nationals.

Where is the Greens support coming from, and what might it mean for the Federal election?

First, some matters of electoral arithmetic need to be looked at. The Australian Democrats have traditionally been a Senate party. Electoral Commission figures show that, in 2001, they won 7.25 per cent of the Senate primary vote, compared to 5.41 per cent of the first preference ballots in the House of Representatives.

The Greens, in contrast, received 4.94 per cent of Senate primaries and 4.96 per cent in the Lower House.

These voting patterns, tied with their increased vote, mean that the Greens' preferences will be more influential than the Democrats' in shaping the outcome of the House of Representatives results and deciding who will win government.

Since the last election, the Australian Democrats have lost a leader and disintegrated. Simon Crean has become the first Labor leader to be dumped without ever contesting an election and his party has embarked on the Latham experiment. Electoral redistributions have also occurred in Victoria, Queensland and South Australia.

Using these new boundaries and the 2001 primary voting figures, it appears that the Greens' ten strongest seats are Melbourne, Sydney, Grayndler (NSW), Batman (Vie), Melbourne Ports, Kooyong (Vie), Denison (Tas), Richmond (NSW), Wentworth (NSW) and Franklin (Tas).

Of these, Richmond is the only rural or regional seat, and it includes the hippie havens of the New South Wales north coast. Franklin is semirural, but most of the electors live in the Hobart suburbs on the Derwent's eastern shores.

Batman, in Melbourne's northern suburbs, is the only genuinely bluecollar electorate on the list. Sydney, Grayndler, Melbourne Ports and Melbourne are fashionable and rapidly gentrifying. Denison takes in Hobart's poshest parts, while Wentworth and Kooyong respectively rate third and fourth highest on the list of electorates ranked by relative socioeconomic advantage prepared by the Parliamentary Library from the 2001 Census.

Indeed, Wentworth and Kooyong and Dennison-and much of Sydney and Grayndler and Melbourne Ports and Melbourne-take us back to the doctors' wives. Who are these people? Farr explains that these women come from comfortable families created by high-income husbands.

The 'doctors' wives' are not seriously troubled by financial pressure and have plenty of time to think about other issues. They have opposed the Government's border protection policy and cannot forgive John Howard for Tampa. Now they are angry over Australia's presence in Iraq. They are appalled by the atrocities committed on Iraqi prisoners and believe Australia has been tarnished. Like most Australians they didn't want us to sign on for the war and now they are ready to punish the Government.

Farr specifically warns that their backlash could be felt in seats such as Wentworth, and adds that the doctors' wives could also influence Senate contests, with the Liberals the losers.

So why will they vote this way? The 'Power' edition of The Australian Financial Review Magazine, published at the end of July, may have some answers.

The figure at the top of its Cultural Power list was, and remains, invisible-the young woman whose sexual assault allegations against members of the Canterbury Bulldogs Rugby League Club sparked off a rethinking of sexual mores throughout organized sport and in the wider community.

Then, at number two, was the Australian Greens leader, Senator Bob Brown.

He was propelled there by an unlikely pair of experts, according to the AFR-Robert Manne, the conservative, turned bleeding heart, Professor of Politics at La Trobe University and Max Moore-Wilton, a friend of John Howard's, former head of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet and now Sydney Airport Corporation CEO.

Manne offered this view: Outside the economy, some people think-and maybe they are part of the elite-that the country has not gone well in the last few years with regard to things like indigenous matters; the republic; multiculturalism; refugees; the environment. I'm one of the people who think that this period will be seen, when it is understood, to be a backward-looking period in our history where all the possibilities of the seventies, eighties and nineties have been squandered. In so far as there is anyone who stands for at least part ofthat vision, it's Bob Brown.