The return of the ACT Labor government for a fifth straight term has raised some big questions, not just because it was another Labor-Green win, but because it took place in circumstances that suggested a likely Liberal victory. Labor has now been in office since 2001. The broader question of whether the Liberals can ever win again in the ACT has morphed into an assumption that only a moderate Liberal leader, like former chief minister Kate Carnell, can ever win in this territory.
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The apparent one-sidedness of ACT politics is more striking in modern Australia than it once would have been. We are now used to regular alternation of the two sides of politics in most jurisdictions. Recently we have had one-term state governments in Queensland and Victoria and the long Labor reigns in NSW and Tasmania have come to an end. But long periods of government by one side were more the norm in the past.
In South Australia, the Playford Liberal Country League era lasted three decades and the extended Menzies-led Liberal-Country era endured for 23 years at the federal level over much the same period. On the other hand, for a long time after Northern Territory self-government in 1978 it looked as though Labor couldn't win there at all.
There is one similar long-term government in Australia today. The South Australian Labor government has been in office under Mike Rann and Jay Wetherill since 2002. During that time SA Labor has won four successive state elections. But, while the SA Liberals have despaired, for much of the time it has been close and, like in the ACT, Labor has been a minority government on several occasions.
There are many reasons for long-lived governments. They include the social composition of the electorate, the prevailing issues and mood, the strengths of the incumbent party and the weaknesses of the opposition. The electoral system can also play a part as it once did in Queensland and South Australia.
The social composition of any jurisdiction includes urban-rural balance and one reason for Labor's rise in SA was its growing industrial base, encouraged by Sir Thomas Playford. The first Labor premier after Playford, Frank Walsh, benefited from that. But it is the social reformer, Don Dunstan, for which the Labor governments of that time are remembered. He best captured the new progressive Australian mood in the 1970s.
Successful long-term governments also benefit from unity, fostered by strong leaders, and issues of the day which suit them. The Cold War industrial and foreign policy issues of the 1950s and '60s suited conservative federal governments and, equally as importantly, divided and weakened the opposition Labor Party. Consequently there were Labor splits across most jurisdictions.
When the social composition and issues of the day started to change and when strong leaders retired, the hold on power of long-term governments began to weaken. There have been many instances when parties couldn't produce a second successful leader to match the first. Yet what SA and ACT Labor have managed to do over the past 15 years has been to hand over leadership to a second and even a third leader after the leader who got them into government (Rann and Jon Stanhope) retired. The new leaders have often been quite different.
This is the context in which future ACT politics should be considered. Social composition is important as is the prevailing mood. They are not quite the same thing although they do overlap.
ACT Labor and other centre-left parties are favoured by the fact the ACT is an urbanised city state with a large public service community based around its role as the seat of the Commonwealth government. This leads to belief in "public service values" on issues like the role of government and the balance between the public and private sectors.
The ACT is also a cosmopolitan community that holds strongly progressive views on social policies, the most prominent of which currently is same-sex marriage, but in the past has included attitudes to abortion law reform, gay rights generally, church-state relations and drug policies.
It is the combination of these two factors that has led to a link being made between the electoral prospects for the Liberals and the need for a progressive rather than conservative Liberal leader. Such conservatism is defined in terms not of attitudes to the role of government and industrial/economic issues primarily, but by attitudes towards social policies. The exemplars here are Tony Abbott and Malcolm Turnbull at the federal level. Local opinion is converging around the idea that the ACT Liberals need a Turnbull rather than an Abbott.
That is a superficially attractive proposition. It harks back to Carnell and in other jurisdictions to figures such as Nick Greiner in NSW and Steele Hall in SA, whose apparent social moderation was successful in defeating established Labor governments.
But it neglects other factors and places too much weight on the characteristics of the leader alone. The overall strength of the competing parties is also important. Governments lose office more often than they are tossed out by an outstanding opposition and therefore must maintain their own unity, strength and performance. Oppositions must do more than produce an appealing leader.
The importance of the leader in bringing a party out of the wilderness cannot be dismissed however. Factors such as their social attitudes and their approach to the role of government are important, but so too are their personal campaigning style, communication skills and gender. The ultimately successful mix for the ACT Liberals will be a combination of all these things.
John Warhurst is an emeritus professor of political science at the Australian National University.
John.Warhurst@anu.edu.au
