Since we posted last week’s myth buster piece about whether New England is a ‘safe seat’ or not, there have been a number of comments and messages to me directly about how the seat gets ignored, or other gripes about party machinery when it comes to elections. Many have bought in to this idea that if we make the seat marginal, then we’ll get things.
The problem we face is not one of being a safe seat or otherwise, it’s one of being a ‘non-key seat’.
Safe seat is just a categorisation of the margin from the last election. There’s nothing else that comes into it.
Key seats are those that the party strategists have decided to target.
There’s 150 (down from 151) house seats to be decided, in this election.
The parties can’t target them all – an they don’t need to, they just need 76.
It’s all about the money
We don’t spend enough money on Australian elections to effectively contest them all.
(Yes, I know I’m an outlier in that I think we should be spending much more money on elections, not less, and we can talk about that another day.)
For the moment, let’s start with the position that each serious candidate needs a bare minimum $50k, and preferably at least $150k, to properly campaign for a house seat. A tightly contested seat – where there are two or three seriously viable candidates – would need in the order of $500k per candidate.
Where does that money come from? Donors, and a bit from taxpayers. Every candidate that gets more than 4% of the vote gets cash back from the government coffers. Parties roll that money over to the next campaign in most cases, independents bank it or pay off their debts.
I’m a tough customer on this – I view it as one of the biggest wastes of tax payer money and certainly a structural benefit to major parties. Personally, I think if you can’t raise the money, you can’t raise the votes, so step off and allow the voters to assess the genuine candidates. But, as long as this rule persists, our ballots will be cluttered with names from minor parties just trying to get the 4% to get the cash. Some parties or candidates will even campaign for you to give them your number 1 preference specifically so the cash goes to them (cough *Greens* cough).
The new electoral laws increase the amount of federal funding to $5 per vote. That increases the amount paid to candidates from the $75m last election to something closer to $110m. Some argue this is good for democracy. I strongly disagree, again, a story for another time.
The new electoral laws also cap the amount that can be spent on an election campaign *during the campaign period* at $800,000 per candidate at $90m per party. That is the maximum amount that can be spent during the 5 weeks of the official campaign. Obviously, that’s not enough to campaign in all 150 seats, plus Senate races, which would need a minimum of $300m per party.
So, the parties put the money and the staff where the money and the staff can win. They do that by categorising the 150 electorates into key seats that get the money and staff, and non-key seats which don’t.
Pick your winners
Key seats includes seats under threat, seats where they don’t know if there is a threat yet but must hold, and seats they want to win.
It varies largely due to the preferences and personalities of state party directors, but as few as 20 seats nationwide will get the full resources possible – and by resources I mean money, staff, ministerial visits, announcements, specific campaign pledges, and so on – and there’ll be about 40 more that get something, but not the full shebang.
That leaves 90 seats with nothing. These are the non-key seats.
Non-key seats they do the bare minimum. Non-key seats are split into seats that party holds where they aren’t being challenged, and seats they don’t hold that they have no chance of winning.
Not all parties have the same key seats. For example, Melbourne is a key seat for Labor and the Greens, but not for the Liberals. Cowper on the coast is a key seat for the Nationals and the Teal independent candidate, but not for Labor or the Greens.
If they were really smart, they wouldn’t contest those seats they don’t care about at all… but because of our national obsession with the 2PP and that 4% money back guarantee provided by the tax payer, they do.
New England and Parkes are non-key seats for pretty much everyone. Unless an Independent mounts a challenge in New England, no money or time or really anything other than the bare minimum happens here.
And a heap of minor parties run candidates in non-key seats because they’re more likely to get the 4% cash grab if the seat is effectively uncontested. It’s why New England and Parkes usually have a couple of candidates who nobody has ever heard of, sometimes have never set foot in the joint and wouldn’t be able to point to it on a map.
Parkes has been getting a little bit more love from the Nats this time around because it’s an open seat and Jamie Chaffey has to get known, but once the starters gun goes off there will be no more visits from Littleproud or anyone else… it will return to obscurity as far as the national campaign is concerned.
Party processes kill democracy
While the process of determining key and non-key seats is completely understandable and would be an efficient practice for any campaign or project, the culture of both major parties to strangle their endorsed candidates in non-key seats is neither understandable or good for democracy.
Essentially the way that party’s behave is to assume that any of their endorsed candidates in non-key seats can only hurt the campaign, so they basically silence them.
No interviews. Don’t reply to surveys. Don’t do anything on the record. Every press release and statement must be pre-approved by party HQ. Don’t attend events. Don’t do anything. Just shut up, and be a name on a ballot so we can get our 4% election cash.
Now, depending on how ‘non-key’ you are, you may get some latitude to do a little campaigning, hand out some flyers or what have you – and obviously sitting members can do what they like pretty much. Others won’t be allowed to do so much as a social media post. For example, New England has a Labor candidate who is allowed to do a little campaigning: Parkes doesn’t have a Labor candidate, won’t have one until the nominations are finalised, and bet your boots they won’t be allowed to say boo.
But often times the only way a non-key seat challenger can campaign at all is to vomit out pre-canned blather written by some kid in party HQ whose job it is to take the party press release and customise it into the 90 odd press releases for the candidates who aren’t allowed to have a brain of their own.
The utterly bizarre suggestion in the Sydney Morning Herald recently that there had been a ‘Barnaby Rule‘ implemented to try and keep him here in New England would only be bought by those who have no understanding of how the parties have been operating for years. All of the major party campaign treat all their candidates like stupid children, needing to raise their hands to speak and get a hall pass to go down the road. They have done so for a very long time.
(Not that the Nats could do anything to stop the fact that Barnaby’s gonna Barnaby, even if they wanted to.)
Marginal wouldn’t make a difference
If New England or Parkes were to become marginal it wouldn’t be because the Labor suddenly decided to show up and take the seats seriously. It would be because an independent or minor party candidate that no one expected had a run and got some support.
That’s not true marginal, where the result could go either way in any election. Just like New England isn’t truly safe.
So we could make the seat marginal in one election, but nothing would change. We’d still be ignored, forgotten, mentioned only as those value-deprived people that vote for Barnaby.
To be a key seat, it needs to be so sharply contested that it could decided government. Every election.
Then we’ll get stuff.
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