Lessons from the 1998 Queensland Election on Preference Dealing with One Nation

The comments by Western Australian Liberal Premier Colin Barnett that his party is prepared to preference One Nation is a sign of the damage being inflicted on non-Labor politics by the re-emergence of One Nation.

It is an admission that his party cannot win the election without strong preference flows from One Nation voters.

That Premier Barnett seems prepared to toss the National Party under the One Nation juggernaut to get those preferences is extra-ordinary.

Only weeks ago Mr Barnett was critical of how One Nation chose its candidates. He raised the instability of the party and its poor choice of candidates in relation to who would replace former Senator Rod Culleton.

Only a week ago Premier Barnett stated in an interview that "When we've seen minor parties, sometimes with an odd assortment of candidates, it makes government very, very difficult."

Now Premier Barnett is prepared to help elect the sort of candidates he warned against ahead of National Party members he has shared government with for more than eight years.

When One Nation has debuted at past elections, it has always been the Coalition parties that have suffered. The table below sets out what happened to Labor and Coalition first preference support at past debut elections by One Nation.

Changes in Party Support at One Nation 'Debut' Elections

	Labor		Coalition		One Nation
Election	% Vote	Change	% Vote	Change	% Vote
1998 Queensland	38.9	-4.0	31.3	-17.7	22.7
1998 Federal	40.1	+1.3	39.5	-7.8	8.4
1999 New South Wales	42.2	+1.0	33.7	-10.2	7.5
2001 Western Australia	37.2	+1.4	34.4	-11.1	9.6

At every One Nation debut election, the party's vote was matched by a huge decline in first preference support for the Liberal and National parties.

Much of that change was a direct switch of first preference support from the Coalition to One Nation. Some was a switch of Labor voters to One Nation, but Labor's vote was bolstered by Coalition voters deserting to Labor.

Whatever the path of vote switching, the result was bad news for the Coalition.

Most damaging for the Coalition in the final three elections listed above was that having lost first preference support, the Coalition was damaged by the the even split of One Nation preferences. Having apparently lost so many first preference votes, the Coalition failed to receive those votes back as further preferences.

The Liberal and National parties have advocated putting One Nation last on how-to-vote material at every election with the exception of One Nation's first contest at the 1998 Queensland election.

As the 1998 Queensland election approached, the Borbidge Coalition government realised the only way the National and Liberal Parties could win re-election was by recommending preferences to One Nation in the hope of encouraging One Nation voters to direct preferences back to the Coalition.

The decision certainly worked in terms of preference flows. The 1998 Queensland election is the only election where One Nation preferences heavily favoured the Nationals and Liberals.

The problem was the decision benefited One Nation as much as the Borbidge government.

At the time Nationals Senator Bill O'Chee was scathing of media questions on whether the decision would see National preferences elect One Nation MPs. National preferences would not need to be distributed O'Chee asserted, a claim that proved to be wildly inaccurate.

The National Party vote was savaged in its rural Queensland heartland, its candidates pushed into third place by One Nation. Three senior National Party MPs, Russell Cooper, Doug Slack and Len Stephan, only made it back into parliament thanks to Labor's decision to preference the Nationals ahead of One Nation.

The 1998 Queensland election was not a state wide contest. Only 52 of the 89 seats finished as traditional Labor versus Coalition contests. There were 22 Labor versus One Nation contests where National and Liberal candidates slipped to third place and had their preferences distributed. There were also 13 National versus One Nation contests and two seats won by Independents.

The election was conducted under optional preferential voting, but in 1998 most parties still distributed how to vote material recommending full preferences. Labor's 'Just Vote 1' strategy did not begin until the 2001 election, so 1998 preference flows had lower exhaustion rates than elections since.

There were 29 seats where One Nation candidates were distributed last in Labor-Liberal contests, with preferences flowing 47.3% to Liberal, 23.7% to Labor and 29.0% exhausted. In 15 Labor-National contests, One Nation preferences flowed 50.3% to National, 18.7% to Labor and 31.0% exhausted.

There were eight seats where Liberal preferences were distributed producing flows of 52.2% to One Nation, 22.6% to Labor and 25.2% exhausted. In the 14 seats where National preferences were distributed they flowed 60.8% to One Nation, 19.1% to Labor and 20.l% exhausted.

There were 12 electorates where Labor preferences were distributed, with Labor preferences flowing 46.2% to the Coalition, 17.9% to One Nation and 35.9% exhausted.

The exhaustion rates complicate projecting possible preference flows for Western Australia. However it does suggest the Liberal Party might get two-thirds or more of One Nation preferences on 11 March compared to the even preference splits that have occurred where One Nation was put last.

But at what cost for future stable government?

In 1998 the Borbidge government went into the election governing in a hung parliament with 44 Coalition seats, 44 Labor seats and one Independent.

The result was a mess with contests across the state where the bronze medalist determined who won gold and silver. Where One Nation finished third preference flowed to the Coalition, though results tended to reflect an overall two-party preferred swing. Labor's own seats were at risk in seats where the Nationals finished third, and the Nationals were forced to rely on Labor preferences to win seats where Labor finished third.

After preferences there was a 4.6% swing to Labor where One Nation finished third, a 3.0% swing against Labor where One nation finished second, and a 16.2% swing against the Nationals where Labor finished third.

Labor gained six seats from the Liberal Party in traditional two-party contests, but lost six of its own seats to One Nation on National Party preferences. One Nation gained five National Party seats and could have won another three were it not for Labor's decision to recommend preferences for the Nationals.

Out of this electoral chaos, Labor ended up one seat short of a majority due to the Nationals helping One Nation win seats. But that also left the Coalition well short of any ability to govern. Preferencing One Nation may have made life more difficulty for Labor's Peter Beattie to form government, but it made it impossible for the Coalition to form government. (Beattie eventually formed government with Independent support.)

Three years later, the Beattie government won a landslide re-election with the line that the only alternative to a Labor government was a ramshackle coalition of National, Liberal and One Nation.

For all the talk that conservatives need to tap into the resurgence of the right created by One Nation's return, the issue is how conservatives interested in stable government can ride the wild tiger of conservative populism.

An incident in the last week of the 1998 Queensland election encapsulates the problem.

One of the biggest political issues of 1998 was the Howard government's amendments to the Native Title Act to remove uncertainty created by the Wik judgement.

Premier Rob Borbidge did his best to argue Howard's case in the Queensland election. In the last week of the campaign he flew to the state's north-west to visit the Century Zinc Mine, a project being held up by delays in resolving Native Title. The story was to highlight how his government could work with the Howard government to resolve these issues where Labor couldn't.

By the time Borbidge returned to Brisbane his story had been bumped down the evening news bulletins by Pauline Hanson, who rejected any dealing with the Wik Amendments and simply asserted the Native Title Act should be repealed. Her statement led the evening news, drowning out Borbidge's message.

The week after the Queensland election, the Howard government backed down on the four contentious points of its 10 point Wik plan and claimed victory. Within weeks Mr Howard also announced his GST plans and switched the entire focus of his government on to its strongest selling point, its handling of the economy and tax reform since coming to office.

This is the difficulty that Colin Barnett will now face in Western Australia. Every time a One Nation candidate comes out with a wild claim on an issue, Premier Barnett will be asked why he thinks it is good to help such a candidate win election.

It is a problem that the Queensland LNP will also face at the state election likely to be held this year. A preference deal with One Nation might stop Labor winning the election, but at a cost of the LNP having to try and govern with One Nation holding the balance of power.

The re-emergence of One Nation has been put forward by some as a local manifestation of the UK's Brexit vote or the election of President Trump.

To me it has strong undertones of being a repeat of One Nation's first emergence in 1998, and the 'Joh For PM' push a decade earlier. It is just another cry that conservative politics in Australia is not conservative enough.

It creates a terrible dilemma for Australia's most conservative mainstream party, the Nationals, who once again face being crunched by those who think they are better conservatives.

Comments

[Isaac]

What lower house seats in WA would you say are most likely to fall to One Nation, if any at all?

COMMENT: The seats where they polled well in 2001. There is a table down the page here http://blogs.abc.net.au/antonygreen/2016/12/one-nation-and-the-2017-wa-election-lessons-from-the-past.html

[Chris Hargreaves]

Has there been any comment by WA Labor or WA Nationals about what order they will preference each other in rural seats?

If the PHON vote is as high as speculated, what will the likely outcome of three cornered contests in rural seats? (Libs, Nats and PHON)

COMMENT: The Liberals and Nationals have said they will recommend preferences for each other first in the lower house.

[Nick]

The Nationals will probably die in WA. This shouldn't be a shock, as they haven't been in Coalition with the Liberals over there. I expect the Liberals will win government again.

To my way of thinking the most interesting state will be Queensland. Queensland could be seen as The Nationals' home state. Furthermore it has the LNP structure. I suspect this will create problems. The Nationals have sold their party identity down the river. Now they're all LNP, which is code for the Liberals (after the Campbell Government). I think One Nation is likely to go hard after the rural voter and pick up a handful of seats from the LNP. That makes winning government there hard.

COMMENT: Yes, it does intrigue me that it is always the more conservative of the Coalition parties that gets smashed by conservative uprisings, not the Liberal Party.

The oddity in WA is that the National Party forced the Liberal Party to adopt the National's 'Royalties for Regions' program, and now everyone in the regions is gunning for the Nationals. Never expect gratitude in politics, just requests for what you are going to do next.

[Paul]

Hey Antony.

Do you know which QLD Labor seats could be under threat from the resurgent ON at the next state election?

My impression would be that the more 'traditional' rural Labor type seats would face a large ON presence while the urban seats would be relatively safe, although I'm not particularly familiar with the electoral dynamics of QLD.

Considering the fact that Labor governs with a minority government losing too many seats to ON would leave them with very little chance of forming government and I don't think either major party would be in a rush to govern in coalition with ON - lest they alienate more moderate voters, which could possibly leave QLD going back to the polls quickly, which can be unpredictable, or perhaps the LNP will roll the dice and form a government, and we get to see how ON actually governs - but then again, the reason why the Liberals and Nationals complement each other so well is that they don't really step on each others toes during elections, while I can't see that happening given the combined nature of the LNP and the demographics of ON voters.

Thanks!

COMMENT: Regional seats and less well of seats on the edge of Brisbane. In short the same seats they did well in at the 1998 election.

Buried in WA election preparation, I really don't have much time to spend analysing what might happen in Queensland. We might know better after 11 March.

[Ken]

I wouldn't describe One Nation as a conservative party, they are more of a dogs breakfast. They are definitely not economically conservative, as they are against market reform and are being careful not to alienate the unionist voters. They do want lower taxes, but that seems to be more of a "free beer" type of election policy. Makes you popular with people who don't have a clue how the economy works or where their future pension is coming from. There are some aspects of what might be called social conservatism, but then some of the worlds socialist parties and governments have quite conservative socially. Think Labor prior to the seventies.

The problem is demographics. You look at a place like Hervey Bay with a high Pauline Hanson vote and many people would aspire to the affluence of western Sydney. Incomes are relatively low and unemployment high. They vote National not because they agree with the Liberals philosophy but because Labor offers them nothing, or worse wants to harm them with policies that affect farming, forestry or mining. So now someone has come along and given them an alternative.

COMMENT: One Nation poll well in Conservative seats. They take votes off conservative candidates. I'm happy to describe them as conservative. They are a populist right party.

[Trent Gilbert]

G'day Antony

Great article! Quick question regarding your remarks about the 1998 QLD Election analysis.

Do you think that the exhaustion rates of One Nation votes are likely to be similar in the upcoming 2019 NSW Election? Are there any trends that exist that give any clues as to the projected amount of voters that will not preference any other candidate beyond their first choice? I'm particularly interested in results in regional seats.

It would be great to hear your thoughts.

Thanks

COMMENT: The exhaustion rate is regularly 50% these days, except for situations like Queensland in 2015 when the Newman government seemed to have irritated every minor party supporter in the state and we saw much lower exhaustion rates.

[G]

Excellent stuff Antony, thank you.

However I want to take issue with the characterisation of the WA Nationals as the more conservative of the alliance partners. Nothing in their policy record since Brendon Grylls took over supports the claim: indeed Grylls was ready to form Government with Labor after the 2008 election but was talked out of it by the old-fashioned conservatives like Max Trenorden and Grant Woodhams, all of whom have now left the scene, to be replaced by a younger breed of centre-left types, typified by the party's deputy leader Mia Davies.

The WA Nationals' signature policy achievement in Government has been the highly redistributive tax and spend Royalties for Regions program, which could easily be a proposal advocated by the Greens. Last year the Nationals blocked their own Government's privatisation of Fremantle Port, scuttling a Budget centrepiece and undermining the economic narrative.

And since Grylls' return to the leadership, the Nationals have pursued a leftist, populist policy of imposing a big new tax on the multinational miners.

COMMENT: If you want to make your point, the issue goes back further than Grylls. The WA Nationals have always been much greener than in other states as water and salinity issues have always been more important in WA Agricultural districts than in other states. It was former leader Hendy Cowan who stopped Richard Court from trying to hold a referendum on the death penalty. Cowan and Grylls have also made speeches far to the left of many Liberals on gay rights.

Even accepting your point, there is still the Royalties for Regions that the Nationals insisted on but the Liberals hated. And the Nationals will now be the party steam rolled more than the Liberals. Whether it is Liberals or Nationals holding rural seats, it is rural Liberals and Nationals that get flattened by One Nation, not urban Liberals, though One Nation may play a part in urban Liberals being defeated by Labor.

[Alan]

Two comments:
1. The entire WA National Party has already "come out with a wild claim on an issue" - namely its proposal to tear up the state agreements and impose a new tax on BHP and Rio Tinto. A policy which it has presumably advocated in order to position itself with angry rural voters, and surely understanding that no WA Gov't which aspired to economic responsibility could ever implement it. The National party corflute slogan "Standing up for you, not big miners or Chinese steel mills) is more than a little Hansonesque. If PHON manages to outbid the Nats in naked populism, then I don't imagine any Liberal is going to have any sympathy for them.
2. The WA Upper House: those preferences are likely to flow more than 95 per cent. in accordance with the negotiated deal, aren't they? This will almost certainly mean some PHON Leg. Councillors elected instead of Nats in the country provinces, and the potential for some Liberal upper house seats in the Metropolitan provinces to be saved.

[Brendon Entrekin]

Hi Antony,

I'm interested in your thoughts on whether the decision of One Nation to preference the Liberals ahead of Labor in every lower house seat in WA will hurt Labor's chances of retaining several of their marginal country electorates (particularly Albany and Collie-Preston)?

And do you see it making Labor's chances of picking up several crucial marginal seats in the country and Perth fringe more difficult (e.g. Wanneroo, Southern River and Bunbury)?

COMMENT: Labor's chances of winning the election will largely be decided by the shift in first preference support between the major parties, not by how many votes leak to One Nation. The Liberal preference arrangements are about trying to minimise their own loss of support by attracting as many votes as possible lost to One ation back as preferences. A vote lost to labor is a vote lost by the Liberals.

One Nation might complicate this in a seat like Collie-Preston where One Nation may take more votes from Labor than elsewhere.

[Tyson]

Hi Antony,

Great piece as usual! It's definitely going to be interesting!

First of all, do you have, or know of where I might find, a detailed preference distribution for the LC in the 2013 election? Interested to see how many Nationals MLCs got elected on Liberal preferences in the non-metro regions and how different levels flowing to ONP could affect things - even on a primary vote the Nats will have no chance of attracting this year.
(Any thoughts on the proportion of Lib voters that will follow the HTV in the LC? Were preference flows affected by 3-cornered contests - if any were? - and Lib/Nat voters having the ability to preference the other)

Agree with you on your above response calling ONP conservatives. Theirs is more what I might call 'Common Man Conservative' - cultural conservatism and strong nationalism whilst eschewing the traditional economic conservatism for economic populism - much like Trump.
There's the temptation to call them low information voters, but that would be neither fair nor accurate, in my mind.
There'd be those who support economic conservatism also supporting ONP - either holding it less important than their deep social conservatism and then those who simply felt like giving their usual party a whack.

Are they the missing force in Australian politics? The place to defect for socially conservative Labor voters who believe the whole 'Libs are just for business' mantra and won't go there despite commonalities? Or do you see them being more a replacement National Party seeing the Nats have an exposed flank since they've been softening/quieting down on protectionism? It would've been interesting to see how things developed had ONP not imploded post-98 given that they came second on the primary tally in 98. Ever a viable third force on their own?
Replacement for the Nats as the Libs' Coalition partner? That would have been interesting.. if they'd replaced the Nats as they were pre-merger. In a scenario where a ONP/Lib Coalition won govt, would their strength in otherwise Lib suburban seats have kept them the senior partner?

Though as much as I postulate and wonder, I'm personally rather glad we never found out.

It's going to be an interesting year psephologically!

COMMENT: You can find the preference flows in the WA Electoral Commissions statistical returns. They are published on the WAEC website.

[David Price]

Hi Antony,
The 'horse trading' of preferences continues to blight our voting system. Isn't it time that making your preference count was a voter option (ie just mark '1' and exhaust your vote), and 'how to vote' cards were banned?

COMMENT: The horse trading is generally over upper house ticket votes. The sooner WA follows the Commonwealth's lead and abolishes the ticket votes the better. Optional preferential voting would allow the abolition of how-to-votes, as the NT government tried before the 2016 election.

For major parties in the lower house, the main point of how-to-votes is to help voters to cast a formal vote, and to attract the first preferences of late deciding voters. The impact on preferences is much more limited.

[SoZ]

"This is the difficulty that Colin Barnett will now face in Western Australia. Every time a One Nation candidate comes out with a wild claim on an issue, Premier Barnett will be asked why he thinks it is good to help such a candidate win election"

It's already started Antony. If anybody is of the view that Western Power should be sold as per the Liberal Party election policy (I'm actually not one of them, but I know they do exist), they are now finding themselves asking a very awkward question - "Why am I voting for people in the Lower House (Liberals) who will do this, whilst simultaneously helping to elect people into the Upper House (PHON) who are saying they'll prevent it from happening?"

As a piece of uber-smart political strategy, it isn't.

And this was after they were already asking themselves, if as Colin Barnett insists, the debt on the government books is "good" debt (i.e. infrastructure, things that will save money elsewhere, etc.), why it has to be "paid down" by flogging-off Western Power? "Good" debt, as the name implies, is money borrowed today to bring in a return tomorrow. "Good" debt pays itself down - it doesn't need outside assistance.

So many questions. So little coherency. So many seats likely to be changing hands.

[John]

Rob Borbidge said 'if we look at the last (Queensland) state election, I note that the Labor Party preferenced One Nation ahead of the LNP at least in one seat'. (ABC)

Mathias Cormann said 'the Nationals had previously preferenced One Nation and several other minor parties ahead of the Liberal Party (in Western Australia)'. (ABC)

Are these statements true and, if so, which electorates did they apply to and what impact did these preferences have?

COMMENT I have no idea if those statements are true.

I presume the Cormann quote relates to what the Nationals did in 2008. To which I'll say One Nation polled 0.06% of the vote in Agricultural Region in 2008 and will poll more than 20% in 2017. On those levels of vote, a decision to preference One Nation in 2017 is as enormously important in 2017 where it was enormously irrelevant in 2008.

Since the prime of One Nation in 1998-2001, the party has tended to poll maybe 0.5% when it contests seats. Slowly but surely as parties realised One Nation couldn't get elected from such low votes, they started to treat the party as just another also ran and apply the same preference test to them as other parties.

Major parties issue how-to-vote cards primarily to encourage voters to cast a formal vote. Parties try to issue simple sequences of numbers so that people don't make errors in transcribing them to their ballot papers. Where possible parties prefer to list straight down a ballot paper. You will find cases like this where One Nation in recent years has been listed in a higher than normal position for this reason.

You can find an article addressing the dilema for how-to-votes here http://www.canberratimes.com.au/act-news/canberra-mp-andrew-leigh-defends-howtovote-card-rejects-antiislam-agenda-20130903-2t3kc.html

And Andrew Leigh's defence here
http://www.andrewleigh.com/4842

[Brisbane Jack]

"It is just another cry that conservative politics in Australia is not conservative enough." Not conservative enough for _some_, Antony, but too extreme, especially on social issues, for others who habitually vote for the self-titled "liberal" party. Logically they should split into a Conservative Party and a Moderates Party or True Liberal Party - but logic doesn't always rule in Oz politics.

[Norma Jones]

Hi Anthony

The issue for conservatives in Queensland this time is there is no separate Nationa Party candidate as all candidates will be LNP candidates. This will likely see ON claim more of the vote in those traditional national areas and LNP Will need the ALP to see their candidates returned. Then there is preferential voting to add to the complexity for all the LNP and ALP.
The ALP also will leak some primary vote and may rely on the LNP for preferences. If in those areas there may be some fall out if the LNP preference ON preferring Labor. WIll the LNP put ON last ? The story of WA will inform

COMMENT: I'm not sure your point. All your comments were exactly what happened in 1998. If you are saying that One Nation will do even better in former National Party heartland than in 1998, then the chances of the LNP winning the election are nil.