Research Paper 19 1999-2000

Victorian Election 1999

Scott Bennett
Politics and Public Administration Group
Gerard Newman
Statistics Group
11 April 2000

The 1999 Victorian election was one of the most remarkable State elections of the last 50 years. It removed the apparently impregnable Liberal-National Coalition Government, it produced the retirement of two of the three party leaders, and it pitchforked into office a party that was remarkably unprepared-a number of its new ministers were sworn into executive office before being sworn in as parliamentarians. It was also an election that was unusually prolonged.

This paper gives a brief assessment of the major parties prior to polling day. It concludes that there were signs of the Kennett Government being in some danger but that these were largely ignored by the media. They, and many politicians, seemed to be influenced by particular opinion polls that suggested the Coalition Government was certain of victory. One intriguing aspect of the election result was the question of whether this was due to a protest vote against the Kennett team. The results of the election are described as are particular seats of more than usual interest. Major factors in the outcome are analysed, with the conclusion that it was a shift of votes in rural and regional electorates that was largely responsible for the narrow Labor victory. This was a reminder of the important impact that the rural-urban divide has long had upon our politics. Finally, the paper takes the story well past polling day to the Frankston supplementary election, the Burwood by- election, the end of the Coalition Government and the resignation of the National Party leader. Victorian election 1999 was later described as the election that would not end.

Prior to the mid-1950s Victorian politics was the most unsettled in the country. This was brought about largely by a distribution of electorates which heavily favoured rural areas but produced a party balance in Parliament that made it very difficult for any party to gain a parliamentary majority. A chronically unstable parliamentary situation was made more uncertain by the presence of a strong Country Party, which was able to govern as a minority government on occasion, sometimes with the support of the ALP. The Country Party had generally poor relations with the main non-Labor party, making coalitions generally unwelcome. Coalitions were in fact barred for a time by the Liberal Party.(1) All of this was combined with the presence of the electorally-weakest of all Labor branches. The first Labor Government to last more than four months did not emerge until May 1927 and the first majority Labor Government came to power only in December 1952.

In May 1955 Victorian politics stabilised with the election of a majority Liberal and Country Party(2) Government led by Henry Bolte. Aided by a redistribution that greatly benefited the Liberals while seriously weakening the Country Party, Bolte won six elections from 1955 to 1970. Apart from his final victory in 1970, when Labor won 4.7 per cent more of the vote than the Government, Sir Henry (he was knighted in 1966) was rarely put under any real pressure from the Labor Opposition which suffered a great deal of infighting and unrest.(3) The period of stable Liberal government continued under Dick Hamer, with victories in three elections during the 1970s. Hamer was replaced by Lindsay Thompson in 1981.

Government changed hands in 1982 when a reformed and newly-disciplined Labor Party took office from Thompson. John Cain led his party to its first majority victory since that of his father nearly thirty years before, forming only the second majority Labor Victorian government since the party's creation. The stability of the Liberals was now replaced by that of Labor which won elections in 1982, 1985 and 1988. Cain's successor, Joan Kirner, was defeated in the election of 1992, when 'the unprecedented sequence of financial crises sent the government's popular appeal into freefall'.(4)

By the time the Kennett Government came to power, the old animosities between the Liberal and National Parties had been put aside and a coalition formed, due largely to the fact that a one-vote-one-value redistribution appeared to make it difficult for the Liberal Party to win enough seats to govern on its own-something that was not borne out in the event. Winning office in 1992 with a very healthy combined first preference vote, the Kennett-McNamara team showed little sign of losing popular support in the following election. Polls suggested that the Government had maintained its support due to its strong leadership, its restoration of confidence in the Victorian economy and the continuing 'Guilty Party' stigma attached to the Labor Party. Indeed, the Coalition's 1996 election tactic was basically one of reinforcing in voters' minds the perception that Labor was responsible for any economic problems being suffered by the State. Kennett and his team therefore continued the stability that had been a mark of Victorian politics since the advent of Henry Bolte's first government and which had seen just the two changes of government in over forty years.(5) Most observers expected this stability to be maintained whenever Premier Kennett chose to call the 1999 election.

On 24 August, Kennett announced that the 1999 Victorian election would be held on the 18 September. The election was for 88 Legislative Assembly seats and half (22) of the Legislative Council seats. There had been no redistribution since the previous election. Three Legislative Council by-elections, for the provinces of Ballarat, Melbourne and Melbourne North were to be held concurrently with the general election. Some observers wondered if the Premier had chosen the date so as to have the campaigning lost in Victoria's annual dose of football fever. It would be, said the Herald Sun, a '25-day footy finals campaign'.(6)

The Standing of the Kennett Government

In its first term, the Kennett Government caught public attention with its radical approach to many aspects of government. Taking full advantage of its control of both houses of Parliament, the Government began a massive downsizing of the public sector, as well as an extensive privatising of government resources. It created controversy over the establishment of the Grand Prix track and its relationship with Crown Casino, and a lot of rural unrest was brought about by the suddenness and extent of local government changes. The important question in the 1996 Victorian election, therefore, was whether the Premier's preparedness to advance controversial policies was likely to see his government lose support at the ballot box. In the Commonwealth election of 2 March that saw the Howard Government come to power, the Liberal Party vote actually fell in Victoria, causing some observers to wonder if this were due to a backlash against the Kennett Government.(7)

If this was so, then there was no indication of this influencing voters in the Victorian State election held four weeks after the Commonwealth poll. In 1992 the Coalition first preference vote had been 52 per cent; four years later this had barely moved to 50.7 per cent. It was a quite remarkable stabilising of the vote, considering the many controversies surrounding the Government. This seemed to be recognised by the Premier, who described the 1996 victory as 'probably the most profound electoral result in any state or federally in this country in the last 50 years'.(8)

Dominating Victorian politics between 1992 and 1999, Premier Kennett was the latest in a long line of strong leaders to hold the top job at the State level. With his strong self-belief, his preparedness to ignore convention in his determination to push the State in a certain direction, and his refusal to be deflected by criticism, Kennett not only dominated his State's politics, but he had the highest national profile of contemporary Premiers. He was very much in the mould of the strong, autocratic leader who has played such an important role in government and politics of the States in this country:

According to Professor Brian Costar, this most recent of boss-Premiers had elevated the practice of executive dominance 'to an art form'.(10) With this type of Premier, there is always the chance that the very dominance of the leader may become an election issue, but it clearly had not done so to any great extent in 1996. Few expected 1999 to be any different.

The Kennett Government thus entered the campaign extremely confident of its chances, despite the loss of six Ministers who did not recontest their seats: Alan Stockdale (LP, Treasurer), Phil Gude (LP, Deputy Leader, Education), Marie Tehan (LP, Conservation), Jan Wade (LP, Attorney-General), Tom Reynolds (LP, Sport) and Bill McGrath (NP, Police). A sign of the Premier's confidence came at the opening of the campaign, when he ruled out a debate with the Leader of the Opposition describing such an event as 'irrelevant' to the final result.(11)

The Labor Challenge

The 1996 election had re-confirmed the domination of the lower house by the Coalition, with the Liberals (49) and the Nationals (9) winning 58 of the 88 Assembly seats (65.9%). Labor, which had failed to win even 40 per cent of the vote when losing office in 1992, increased its vote by over 4 per cent to 43.1 per cent. This still left it well behind the Coalition, for it only managed to win back two seats, and the Labor total of 29 left it 16 short of control of the Legislative Assembly.

According to Graham Hudson of the University of Melbourne, Labor's performance since its 1992 defeat had done little to inspire confidence that it would be soon back on the government benches.(12) Its leaders were ineffectual in withstanding the Kennett onslaught, and none had produced electorally-popular policies. The Victorian branch of the ALP has had a long history of internal problems, which have tended to divert the leadership from either the job of government or opposition, and this tendency could be seen during
1992-99. This was particularly difficult for John Brumby, leader between 1993 and 1999, and played a part in his eventual departure from the leadership. Brumby had not helped his cause, however, by seeming to be unable to control the factional wars. Brumby had also frustrated some Labor members with his apparently defeatist approach to the party's 1996 chances. As he explained it, 'gaining six seats would be good, 12 would be fantastic, and 18 exceptional'. Such an attitude, however realistic, seemed to suggest the impossibility of denting the Coalition's position in the Parliament.(13)

Despite all of this, during 1996-99 there were some signs that Labor might enter the next election with rather more confidence than in 1996:

• As noted above, there had been an increase in its vote of 4.7 per cent at the 1996 election, and its first preference vote of 43.1 per cent placed it within reach of the Coalition.
• In addition, the largest swings to Labor in 1996 tended to be in safe Coalition seats making many of them marginal. The Coalition was therefore more vulnerable in 1999 than it had been in 1996.
• The Government had come under a lot of criticism from rural communities for what were described as its 'Melbourne-centric' policies.(14) As a measure of this, the independent candidate, Russell Savage, surprised by winning the safe Liberal rural seat of Mildura in 1996. Savage had gained barely one-third of the vote, but won with the help of ALP preferences.
• When former Liberal leader Alan Brown resigned his seat of Gippsland West to assume the position of Victorian Agent-General in London, the Liberals lost the seat to the independent, Susan Davies, in a by-election in February 1997. The Liberal first preference vote fell by 16.3 per cent.
• In December 1997 a by-election for the Melbourne seat of Mitcham was brought about by the resignation of Liberal sitting member Roger Pescott. In a rare example of dissension in Coalition ranks, Pescott's 'open letter' to the Premier accused Kennett of authoritarian leadership, and pointed to various examples of what Pescott called 'bad government', including Kennett's high-handed treatment of the Auditor-General's office.(15) The Mitcham by-election attracted 17 candidates, saw the Liberal vote fall by 23.5 per cent, Labor's first preference vote climb by 5.8 per cent, and a 16 per cent two-party-preferred swing against the Government, with loss of the seat. Observers wondered if this by-election signalled the end of the potency of the 'Guilty Party' slogan used to such great effect in the 1992 and 1996 general elections.(16)
• Peter McLellan, Liberal MLA for Frankston East, left the party in July 1998, also making a strong criticism of the leadership of Kennett as he did so. Unlike Pescott, however, on this occasion the dissident remained in Parliament, sitting on the cross-benches as an independent.(17)
• During 1998 opinion polls began to suggest that Labor might have a better chance in the next State election than most observers were prepared to concede. AgePolls for May-June and July-August, for instance, suggested that the ALP was actually ahead of the Government in two-party-preferred terms.(18)
• Labor's preselections had produced some younger, seemingly well-qualified candidates, including former ABC presenter, Mary Delahunty (who had won Northcote in a 1998 by- election), former mayor, Richard Wynne, the lawyers, Stuart Moss and Jenny Mikakos, Candy Broad, former ALP assistant national secretary, and Justin Madden, Australian Football League (AFL) footballer and former President of the AFL Players' Association.

There were signs, therefore, that the Government might be more vulnerable than many media observers believed, but within the Labor Party there developed a belief that any slip in the Kennett Government's standing had occurred in spite of Labor's efforts. There was a general disillusionment with Brumby's leadership, even within the leader's own faction, that produced a dangerous level of instability. Brumby finally conceded that a change was necessary, resigning in March 1999. He was replaced by Steve Bracks, MLA for Williamstown since 1994. It was a move that has been described as 'poll-driven'.(19)

Despite all of this, it was the common view of the media that the Government was certain of victory, probably by quite a wide margin. In fact, a February 1999 Newspoll that described the Coalition as 11 per cent ahead, had some observers wondering if the Labor Party might actually lose seats.(20) In addition, the polls showed a great deal of community ignorance of the Leader of the Opposition, though to one writer, 'the biggest problem for Labor was not so much their unknown leader, as the great popularity of the Premier'.(21) One journalist summed up the general media view that Bracks was:

Such a view was echoed by former ALP federal secretary, Bob Hogg, who asserted in late August that it:

In many State elections, the standing of the Premier is often central to the result. As head of the State's administration, as effective leader of the State branch of the governing party, as the State's 'ambassador' in relations with the Commonwealth, and as its roving 'trade commissioner' in the endless quest to bring capital to the State, the Premier is often seen as crucial to his or her party's electoral chances. When a government is performing well, the importance of the Premier can occasionally be spelled out in a campaign slogan: 'Hamer Makes it Happen', 'Wran's Our Man', and 'Now, more than ever, Queensland needs Joh and the Nationals', were slogans of our recent past that thrust the Premier firmly before the voters.

Despite this historical tendency, the Victorian Government campaign in 1999 was probably unprecedented in the intensity of its focus on the political head of government. In a move reminiscent of Queensland's Joh Bjelke-Petersen (NP, 1968-87) at the height of his powers, Premier Kennett worked to ensure that he, and only he, was the spokesperson for the Government, when he issued a blanket ban on campaign comments by all Ministers bar himself. This was not achieved, largely due to the presence of the Nationals' Deputy Premier, Pat McNamara, who was certainly not silenced, but it effectively kept all of the Liberal Ministers out of the mainstream media. Not since the criticism of the Greiner 'one- man band' in the 1991 New South Wales election, has there been as much adverse comment about the domination of a campaign by a Premier.

The Liberals went further, however, when they attracted a great deal of attention by their creation of a Web-site geared entirely to the personality of the Premier. This was shown clearly in the fact that its internet address featured just the Premier's forename: www.jeff.com.au. Apart from listing party policies, the site devoted much of its space to detailing the campaign activity of the Premier, and a sustained reading of the site would have suggested very much that the Victorian Government equalled Jeff Kennett. It even gave space to the Premier's dog. So unusual was the site as a campaigning tool, that it was seen as a probable pace-setter in campaigning throughout Australia. There was even a degree of adverse comment on the ordinariness of the Victorian Labor Party's site, which was concerned solely with policy matters, with no attention being paid to the leader.

Opinion polls showed Kennett so comfortably ahead of Bracks as 'preferred Premier', that the Labor leader and his advisers judged that there was no campaign mileage to be gained out of attacking the Premier. It was felt to be far more important to emphasise that Labor was now free of the baggage of the Cain-Kirner years.(24) The focus of Labor's campaign was therefore on policy questions and the promise of 'transparent' government. This featured three inter-related aspects:

• Labor spoke at length about what it described as its new and attractive policies.
• The Opposition did all it could to draw attention to weaknesses in the Government's administrative performance, with particular attention being paid to such matters as the Intergraph ambulance difficulties, school closures, hospital problems, police numbers, the reduction in the independence of the Auditor-General's office and the increased restrictions placed on freedom of information.
• Alert to the general unhappiness of many rural communities concerning their 'neglect' by the Government, Labor did all it could to remind voters of closed schools, diminished rail services, movement of local government councils to distant towns and other major regional complaints. To symbolise its concern it opened its campaign in Ballarat, and pledged a $170 million infrastructure fund for regional Victoria.

Overriding this was Labor's promise of 'A new style of leadership', wherein Bracks promised to be both 'socially progressive' and 'financially conservative'. In an effort to convince voters of this, Labor had the independent firm, Access Economics, 'sign off on the challenging party's election promises. Labor also was keen to emphasise that its leader was 'a nice bloke'.(25)

By polling day the general view of observers seemed to be that the Kennett Government was certain of being elected. More seemed to believe the final AC Neilson Agepoll, which had the Government ahead by ten percentage points 50-40 per cent, than the final Newspoll result which suggested the Government and Opposition were locked together on first preferences, with Labor ahead on a two-party-preferred basis.

The Opposition (30 seats) entered the election needing 15 seats to gain control of the Legislative Assembly. The Coalition (Liberal 46 seats, National 9) seemed impregnable, despite the Liberal loss of Mildura, West Gippsland, and Mitcham since 1996. Even Malcolm Mackerras, almost the only commentator prepared to tip an increase in Labor seats-he spoke of seven being picked up-still asserted that no one expected Labor to be in government after the election.(26)

The seats that changed hands were as follows:

The Labor Party contested all 88 seats, with its vote of 45.5% being 2.4 per cent higher than in 1996. It gained 11 seats (excluding Frankston East), its total of 41 being four short of an absolute majority.

The Liberal Party won 36 of the 81 seats it contested. It lost 11 to Labor and won a seat from the National Party. Its first preference vote of 42.2 per cent was a fall of just 1.8 per cent, though it did contest three fewer seats than in 1996.

The National Party contested 12 seats, winning seven, a nett loss of two seats, one to the Liberal Party and one to an independent. Its share of the vote fell 1.8 per cent to 4.9 per cent, despite its contesting two more seats in 1999.

Independent candidates won three seats. (For more details see Table 1)

Of the other parties and groups, the Australian Democrats won fewer votes in 6 electorates than Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party (PHON) did in 4. The average PHON vote was 6.9 per cent, a reminder of the party's potential to cause trouble to the big three when it has a higher electoral profile than on this occasion. In the rural seat of Rodney, Dorothy Hutton, a PHON candidate for an outer-Sydney seat in the March 1999 New South Wales election, managed 10.8 per cent.

There are 44 Members of the Victorian Legislative Council. The Members represent 22 electoral provinces with two Legislative Councillors representing each province. Each province is made up of four Legislative Assembly electorates. Legislative Councillors serve for two terms of the Legislative Assembly. At any general election half of the Legislative Council provinces fall vacant; the other half falling vacant at the next general election. The voting method is preferential voting.

The normal half-Council election saw Labor (42.2%) win eight of the 20 provinces it contested. The party won three Liberal seats: Ballarat, Chelsea and Geelong. The Liberal Party (39.7%) won 11 of 19 provinces it contested, and the National Party (7.3%) won the three provinces it contested. The Labor and Liberal vote was lower than in the Assembly election. Many of these lost votes may well have been gathered by the Australian Democrats, whose Statewide vote of 6.8 per cent indicated that the party seems to be seen by voters primarily as an upper house player, even in an election where preferential voting is used.

In the three by-elections, Labor won Ballarat from the Liberal Party and retained Melbourne and Melbourne North.

The party balance after the election was, therefore, Liberal 24 seats (a loss of four seats on 1996), Labor 14 seats (+4) and the National Party 6 seats (no change).

Electorates of interest

Brighton had been held by the retiring Treasurer, Alan Stockdale. With such a safe Liberal seat becoming vacant, the party's preselection was likely to determine who would be the next MLA. Brighton quickly became the battleground for a struggle between forces led by the Premier and others supportive of the Commonwealth Treasurer, Peter Costello. In the event, Kennett's support for the Small Business Minister, Louise Asher, an MLC seeking to move to the lower house, proved decisive, though not before a very public struggle was conducted. As expected, Asher won the seat comfortably in the general election, but the fall in the Liberal first preference vote of 8.8 per cent was one of the largest shifts of Liberal votes in the metropolitan area.(27)

This was the seat held by the rebel Liberal, Peter McLellan, who had left the party in the previous year to sit as an Independent. McLellan had won the seat for the Liberals in 1992, but resigned after clashes with the Premier over various issues including WorkCover, privatisation and the effort to reduce the importance of the Auditor-General. In a re-run of the aborted Commonwealth election for Newcastle in 1998, McLellan's death on the morning of the election meant that Frankston East voters would have to wait for a supplementary election, on 16 October (see below, p. 13-14).

If Labor was to do well, it needed to win back seats in areas it once held. Geelong was just such an area, and the Opposition nominated Ian Trezise, son of Neil, Geelong football legend, MLA for Geelong West (1964-91) and Minister in the Cain Government. Geelong was held by Ann Henderson, Minister for Housing and Minister responsible for Aboriginal Affairs. She had increased the Liberal vote by over six per cent in the previous election, winning the seat on first preferences (52.6%) and seeming to make it much more likely to be retained. Despite this, Geelong turned out to be the ultimate cliff-hanger. Henderson's vote fell by 5.1 per cent, the Labor vote barely moved (+0.1%), but the seat went to preferences, where Trezise eked out a win by just 16 of the 30 984 formal votes that had been cast. If just nine of Labor's Geelong voters had shifted to the Government, the Coalition would probably have retained office.

One difficulty in analysing State elections is that the most easily found information tends to relate to general State-wide issues. In focussing on the broad picture, however, commentators can sometimes fail to notice the existence of local issues that are important enough to turn many voters away from the major parties. Occasionally a sitting member can be defeated by a spectacular movement of such votes-in 1988 the Labor Party lost the safe Labor seat of Swansea in New South Wales over the controversial issue of the Swansea Bridge. In Gippsland East an issue that had caused much local unhappiness was the virtual disappearance of water running in the Snowy River. Craig Ingram, a concerned local resident, decided to stand in an effort to draw attention to the Snowy issue. As in the Swansea case, the single issue campaigner did much better than he expected. The National sitting member's vote fell by 16.9 per cent, with Ingram's vote of 24.8 per cent leaving him in third position. Preferences from three other candidates pushed him into second place, and Labor's second preferences produced a massive 15.4 per cent two-candidate-preferred margin for the political novice. The National Party and its predecessors had held the seat since 1920.(28)

In the 1996 State election, the endorsed Labor candidate, Susan Davies, managed just one- third of the first preferences votes, finishing a distant runner-up to former Liberal leader Alan Brown (57.7%). When running as an independent in the 1997 by-election, Davies' percentage of the vote actually declined by 0.6 per cent, but aided by the preferences of the four other candidates, who stripped 16.3 per cent off the Liberal vote, she squeaked into the seat by 159 votes. In 1999 Davies was only able to increase her first preference vote by 3.1 per cent despite being the sitting MLA. She was helped greatly by the Liberal vote falling a further 3.4 per cent from the by-election figure and won the seat on preferences by an eventual margin of eight per cent.(29)

Tom Reynolds, the Member for Gisborne, and Minister for Sport and Rural Development, retired at this election. Premier Kennett participated in the resulting preselection, making it clear that he wished it to be won by Rob Knowles, Minister for Health and Aged Care. Knowles, fifth in the Ministerial list, was spoken of as Kennett's preferred successor as party leader, but had the disqualification of having a seat in the Legislative Council. After much intra-party argument, Knowles gained preselection for a seat that Reynolds had retained in 1996 with a first preference vote of 55.7 per cent (itself a drop of 7.2 per cent). In 1999, the Liberal vote dropped a further 13.8 per cent and although Labor's vote also fell (0.4%), its candidate Joanne Duncan managed to win on preferences-the Liberals thus lost a seat held since 1967. Apart from its vote suffering because of the general drop in regional areas, the Liberal Party was reported to have suffered from voter resentment at the government's inattention to concerns over a noisome waste treatment plant, as well as resentment at Knowles being brought in as a headquarters-anointed candidate.(30)

In 1996 the loss of Mildura by the Liberals to an independent was seen by the party as a one-off, fluke result. As is typical in the occasional independent victory, Russell Savage had gained only a modest first preference vote (35.7%), but picked up the lion's share of preferences to win the seat by just 1.8 per cent. During his term in Parliament, Savage was portrayed as standing up for his rural constituents, while also managing to anger the Premier on a number of well-publicised occasions. Although the Liberal Party had expected to win back the seat, Savage's first preference vote increased by 8.7 per cent in the general election, and he secured over 56 per cent of the two-candidate-preferred vote. The Liberal vote fell by 19 per cent, most of which probably went to the National Party (19.7%) which nominated a candidate, unlike 1996.(31)

As already noted, Mitcham was the scene of a remarkable by-election in December 1997 when an enormous swing saw Labor's Tony Robinson win the seat narrowly from Andrew Munroe (LP) and 15 other candidates. In the 1982 State election it was the movement of eastern suburb electorates, such as Mitcham, to Labor, that was considered to have been crucial in returning Labor to office. In 1999, observers believed that if Labor could not win a parcel of such seats, then its chances would be slim. It was therefore important for Robinson to hold the seat in another contest with Munroe. In the event, Labor did not recover ground in this part of Melbourne, though Mitcham was held by just 343 votes after preferences. The seat may well have been decided on the votes of an independent who campaigned against Government proposals for the Eastern Freeway extension. He won 4.8 per cent of the vote and directed his second preferences to Labor.(32)

In normal circumstances the electorate of Niddrie, held by Rob Hulls for the ALP by a margin of 8.8 per cent, would not feature in a listing of electorates of interest. On this occasion, however, the electorate was in the news because of the origins of the Liberal candidate, Susannah Kruger. Hulls, former MHR for Kennedy (Qld, 1990-93), and one of the more colourful of Labor's Assembly members, had been forced to apologise to two young women, one of whom had been Kruger, after he had a verbal altercation with them earlier in the year. At the time of the announcement of the election, Kruger received publicity by approaching the Liberal Party and offering herself as a candidate, despite her apparent lack of any political experience. How would she fare against a no-holds-barred politician like Hulls? The answer was quite clear, due to the fact that each of the 1996 and 1999 contests had only two candidates. Kruger's vote of 43.2 per cent was a fall of 2.4 per cent, giving Hulls a 13.6 per cent margin.(33)

In 1996 Swan Hill was one of the safest Coalition seats, having been retained by Barry Steggall (NP) with a first preference vote of 59 per cent. Three years later, local schoolteacher and former St Kilda football star, Carl Ditterich, stood as an independent, apparently at the urging of Russell Savage in neighbouring Mildura. The picture was made more interesting by the decision of Bill Croft of PHON to stand. Croft had won 12 per cent of the vote in Mallee in the 1998 Commonwealth election. Like Savage, Ditterich and Croft both emphasised government neglect of the bush. Although Ditterich won only 22.6 per cent of the vote, he forced the sitting member to preferences as a consequence of his vote falling by 13.8 per cent, and briefly seemed to have a chance of winning the seat. Eventually, Steggall won with a 52.8 per cent two-candidate-preferred vote. Croft had managed only 5.1 per cent of first preferences.

Water was also a problem for the Government in Warrnambool, the seat of retiring Police Minister, Bill McGrath (NP). A rise in water charges for local farmers had become a controversial issue. With the retirement of the Minister, the Liberal Party nominated John Vogels, to the Nationals' chagrin (see below p. 25). Despite this competition the National Party expressed its confidence of retaining the seat. In the event its vote fell by an extraordinary 40.3 per cent to just 17.5 per cent. The Liberal candidate topped the poll with 40.2 per cent and won easily on preferences.(34)

The Frankston East Supplementary Election

After the counting of all seats except Frankston East, the Government held 43 seats, Labor held 41 and independents held 3 (Gippsland East, Gippsland West, Mildura). The Frankston East supplementary election, to be held on 16 October, therefore assumed great importance. If the seat was retained by the Liberal Party, the Government would have half the lower house numbers, and would need only the support of one of the independents to control the Assembly-Craig Ingram seemed the least hostile to Premier Kennett. If Labor could win the seat, it would then be in a position of being able to govern with the support of the three independents, but a loss by Labor would have meant that it could not form a government that had any realistic chance of survival. In addition, the supplementary election was likely to be seen as an opinion poll upon the standing of the Government and might therefore play a part in influencing the independents when considering their future actions in the Parliament. During the election, they had, in fact, made it clear that the result in the supplementary election would do just that.

The major parties therefore put all of their resources into winning the seat, for it was eminently winnable for both sides-in 1996 McLellan's first preference vote had been 4.6 per cent ahead of his Labor opponent, though later preferences had pushed that out to a margin in excess of 6 per cent. In addition, the presence of 14 non-major party candidates on the ballot paper seemed to make it more of a lottery than would usually be the case. Leader of the Opposition Bracks made little alteration to his election pitch, but Premier Kennett caught the headlines by a sudden announcement of more money to be given to the local hospital. He attracted some criticism by the apparent ease with which he expressed his preparedness to modify some of his Government's policies despite his strong defence of them in the general election. He also made an unprecedented apology for his political style which, he acknowledged, may have antagonised some people.

The result was quite convincing, for Labor's Matt Viney won the seat on first preferences, a rise of 7.1 per cent to 51.4 per cent. The Liberal vote fell substantially by 7.3 per cent, to 41.6 per cent. Labor now held 42 of the 88 Legislative Assembly seats, three short of an absolute majority.

On 27 September shortly before the Frankston East election the three independent MLAs released their 'Independents' Charter Victoria 1999', stating they wanted written responses to the Charter from the party leaders by the Tuesday prior to polling day for the supplementary election. Stating their determination to remain independent and outside any 'formal part of any government', the independents expressed their willingness to support a government which publicly undertook to:

• Promote 'open and accountable government'
• Improve 'the democratic operation of Parliament'
• Establish 'clear plans, strategies and targets to address the urgent needs of Rural Victoria'
• Offer assurances of increased levels of cooperation with Independent Members, and improved codes of conduct between government and other Members of Parliament
• Permit no more privatisation of public assets 'at least until after a full independent inquiry has reported to Parliament on the social and economic costs and benefits of planned and existing privatisations'.

The independents also expressed their willingness to provide political stability by voting with the government on appropriation and supply bills and all motions of no confidence, 'unless there is evidence of fraud, misappropriation or illegal activities'.(35)

After negotiations with both sides, on 18 October the independents announced their support for Labor,(36) and two days later the Bracks Labor Government was sworn in by Governor Gobbo. There were 18 ministers, none with prior ministerial experience and eight of whom were women-a record proportion for any State or Commonwealth government. Four of the new Ministers, Candy Broad, Justin Madden, Bronwyn Pike and Marsha Thomson accepted office prior to their taking their Parliamentary seats for the first time. Only two, Peter Batchelor and Sherryl Garbutt, had been in Parliament at the time of the defeat of the previous Labor Government in 1992.

Government Performance

Three factors seem to affected voters' perceptions of the Kennett Government's performance.

In many ways the Kennett Government was ground-breaking. The extent of innovation was great, and the preparedness to tread where others had refused to go marked it out as a ministry prepared to test public patience. The Kennett Government has, in fact, been described as 'a genuine revolution in the relationship between the public and private sectors and between society and the State'.(37) Its radical reorganisation of local government, for instance, dealt with a political issue that had seen its predecessor unwilling to take on vested regional interests, while its embrace of the Crown Casino was in stark contrast to the timidity of the Liberal Government of Dick Hamer. The swathe cut through the public service, which included the closure of schools and hospitals, was very controversial, and the pushing of outsourcing eclipsed any other Australian government's efforts. Such a record may well have been a double-edged sword, for although it would have pleased many in the community, it probably antagonised many more. Woodward and Costar have noted that State governments 'cannot ... assume that having good credentials as economic managers will suffice [to ensure their re-election]'. In saying this they drew a parallel between the governments of Jeff Kennett and Wayne Goss.(38)

Here also it would not have taken very many votes to be loosened for the Government's position to become uncertain.

Although the opinion polls consistently gave Premier Kennett a very favourable rating, there seems to have been no doubt that his political style was controversial. His crash- through approach to government, his unpreparedness to tolerate criticism and his muzzling of ministers during the campaign, were all well-publicised examples of his leadership style. Woodward and Costar have stated that this became a 'major' issue after the Herald Sun ran a front page story on the Premier's gagging of his team.(39) Prior to the election, Gary Morgan stated that his research suggested that many voters saw the Premier's confidence as arrogance. He cited Kennett's decision to ignore Bracks as a 'crucial mistake', suggesting that, '[w]hen you ignore the opposition they have a field day'.(40) It seems quite likely, therefore, that some votes shifted because of an unhappiness with Kennett's mode of operation.

On the other hand, it was claimed that the Premier's brash style won him many supporters among young males aged 18-25 years.(41) The use, and the style of, the 'jeff' website was seen as a means of attracting this part of the electorate. Kennett was often heard on various Melbourne rock radio stations, where his 'Jeff f....... rules, OK!' adverts were also to be heard. In hindsight, the danger may have been that in pitching so public a message to this demographic segment, he may have alienated support from others. There was some evidence of middle-aged voters being less keen on the Premier than younger voters.(42) The hostile journalist, Pamela Bone, claimed in the Age before the election that '[Liberal] party strategists knew many traditional Liberal voters would be shocked, not only by the language [of the adverts] but the sentiment behind them'. Dame Beryl Beaurepaire, Liberal grande dame, was said to have described them as 'a pity'.(43)

It is a truism of State and Territory elections that the performance of the government in the provision of services plays a very important part in explaining election results. Poll evidence suggests that service delivery was a significant issue in this election. When surveying voters' views prior to the election the Herald Sun claimed that nearly eight voters in 10 were unhappy at the state of hospitals, nearly two-thirds unhappy at changes in schools, and over three-quarters dissatisfied at the central place that gambling had assumed in Victoria.(44) A Morgan poll, published in the final weeks of the campaign, suggested that whilst voters preferred the Government as the manager of the economy (58% favoured the Government and 14% favoured the Opposition), by contrast Labor was preferred in the areas of health (55-15), education (51-18) and law and order (53-18).(45) As we have seen the Government did not lose many votes overall, but a few disgruntled voters unhappy with particular services and prepared to shift their vote because of this, may well have made the difference between a narrow defeat and a comfortable parliamentary majority for the Coalition.

The fact that during the campaign the Premier announced a number of significant initiatives relating to government services suggests that he may have realised the potential for the loss of votes in this area. In his policy speech much was made of the provision of more teachers and nurses, as well as a promise for faster hospital treatment-perhaps these promises were seen as an implicit recognition that there were some serious weaknesses in the provision of these services or that the changes had gone further than voters were prepared to accept.

A potential problem for a State government that cuts back the provision of services by its own agencies is that it runs the risk of suffering an electoral backlash if the new providers are not up to the mark. For the Kennett Government this may have been symbolised by three aspects of outsourcing that gained it unwelcome publicity. First, there were a number of stories of ambulances failing to answer calls quickly, some of which produced claims of patients dying because of these delays. The second matter involved the creation of private gaols, where claims were made of inefficiency, and of inmates being able to abscond easily. Finally, there was the pending introduction of high tolls to be paid on new privately-run motorways, and the conversion of older public roads into the motorway system.

The Urban-Rural Divide

The Government seemed well aware that the question of services seemed particularly to affect rural and regional residents. The Premier had reportedly made 27 visits to country areas during January-August 1999 for a significant number of the Government's marginal seats were outside of Melbourne.(46) Coalition relationships had become strained over policies that appeared to be uncaring of the position of rural people, while being very much capital city-centred. Some policies, in particular, earned unwelcome criticism. The massive reshaping of local government, which removed many government offices from country towns and was said to have reduced the quality of service, and the plans to privatise the State Electricity Commission, for example, both put strains upon the Coalition, for the National Party was uncomfortable with such changes.(47) Some cases, such as the closure of the Mortlake hospital in 1994, took on a symbolic importance, as they seemed to illustrate how the Government did not understand the needs of country people. As the editor of a country newspaper put it: 'you tear the heart out of any community when a hospital shuts'.(48)

The division between town and country has been a key part of Australian electoral politics since the advent of elected legislatures in the nineteenth century. The importance of this division has been seen most obviously in the continuing electoral health and political significance of the (Country) National Party that emerged during the second decade of this century. Generally, this has worked to the disadvantage of the Labor Party. In the 1999 Victorian election, however, the belief that the Kennett Coalition Government had neglected rural areas seems to have been crucial in accounting for the marked success of the ALP in rural electorates. A paper by two Victorian academics states that 'The backlash against the government in rural and regional Victoria was decisive'.(49) In Melbourne the Government lost just three seats, on a vote fall of 2.3 per cent, but in the thirty-two non- metropolitan seats the combined Liberal-National vote fell by 6.1 per cent, with nine seats lost by the Coalition-eight to the ALP and one to the successful independent in Gippsland East. There was a 4.7 per cent swing to Labor in provincial city electorates.(50) Surprisingly, National leader McNamara put this down to an inability to counter the 'folksy' and 'country boy' image of Bracks, who had been raised in Ballarat.(51) Despite this unusual claim of a Labor politician apparently sounding more sympathetic to the bush than were the Nationals, the loss of rural votes and seats was presumably much more to do with a longer-term rural unhappiness with the Government. In two general elections the Government parties had in fact lost 12 of the 26 regional seats that they gained in 1992. At the same time, just six of the 35 Melbourne seats were lost to Labor. This suggests that Bracks' election as party leader had little to do with the final result, and that regional Victorian voters had begun to resent what they saw as 'big-city' neglect some years before.(52)

The impact of preferential voting

This election is a reminder that occasionally the preferential voting method can have an impact upon the result of an election.

Labor won the election despite being behind the Coalition on first preferences. Sometimes such a result can be an indication that many votes have been wasted-large majorities built up in safe seats can be a problem for a party. This occurred to Labor in the 1954 Commonwealth election when it failed to win government despite topping 50 per cent on first preferences. A variant of this occurs then a party can win a significant number of seats by securing enough second or later preferences from other candidates although its opponents win a greater number of first preferences. This second example was said to have been crucial to Labor's 1990 Commonwealth election victory.

It also seems to have been very important in Victoria in 1999. In five seats (Carrum, Geelong, Gisborne, Mitcham, Seymour) Labor trailed its major opponent on first preferences. The average margin was 1.7 per cent. In all cases Labor won the seat on preferences, despite their opponent's first preference figure averaging 47.7 per cent in four of the seats. Only in Gisborne, where the Liberal first preference vote was 41.9 per cent, was the Government candidate some distance from the figure needed for victory. This suggests that although quite a number of voters shifted from the Coalition parties many of these voters did not find the Labor Party attractive enough to receive their first preference. Instead, they voted for a third candidate but put Labor ahead of the Coalition on their later preferences. It was hardly a ringing endorsement of the Labor Party.

The importance of preferences was also evident in Gippsland East and Gippsland West, both won by independents. In Gippsland East the first preference count had the National candidate (35.9%) 11.1 per cent ahead of Craig Ingram-who in fact was third after the first preference count. Despite this the National was defeated comfortably on preferences. In Gippsland West the gap was narrower, but again the Liberal candidate (38%) lost a lead, and Susan Davies won comfortably on preferences.

It is therefore clear that if a different voting method had been in use, the result would have been different. First-past-the-post, for instance, would have produced a comfortable majority for the Kennett Government.

A Protest Vote?

It has been noted that if a State administration continues to deliver benefits to the electorate then it is likely to remain in office. It does seem that, generally, a State government's administrative performance has to be very bad for it to be voted out by the voters.(53) The 1999 Victorian election must make analysts think again about some of the 'truths' of State-level electoral politics, for on the eve of the election it appeared that the Kennett Government was in much better electoral standing than the challenging Labor party. It had experienced some community unrest over aspects of its administration of the State's services, but polls seemed to be saying it was still held in high regard.

Was this result, then, simply a 'protest' vote against the Kennett Government? In this context, 'protest' is meant to suggest that some voters, resentful about some aspect of the Government's performance, but not wanting its actual defeat, voted against it to give it and its leader (in the words of an unnamed senior Liberal), 'a bit of a kick up the arse on a few things'.(54) Was it, in the words of Denis Napthine, successor to Kennett as leader of the Liberal Party, 'a protest vote gone wrong'?(55) Such a view is well summed up by the Liberal MLA for Mordialloc, Geoff Leigh, who described the election result as 'one of the great accidents of history'.(56) The journalist Mike Steketee has even used such a view to wonder if the publication of opinion polls ought to be controlled close to an election, as is done in some European countries.(57)

Despite the fact that such views have been heard on similar occasions-after the near- defeat of the Greiner (NSW, L-NP, 1991) and Goss (Qld, ALP, 1995) Governments for example-such views are essentially unprovable. It is impossible to know when a vote against a government is 'genuine' and when it is 'not-genuine', that is, a 'protest' vote. All that electoral analysts can do is ascertain just how many votes shifted in an election-the reasons for each shift are impossible to establish with any accuracy. One possible test of the 'protest vote' view might be the Frankston East and Burwood by-elections. If voters in these electorates were concerned that a 'protest vote' had gone too far, they could at least have shown their support for the Liberal Party. In both cases, however, there was a further movement of voters away from the Liberals.

To a marked degree, elections deal with expectations. If enough people are certain of a particular result-in this case the comfortable return of a government-then there is a need to explain away a different outcome. Despite the impossibility of really knowing what motivates the individual voter, journalists and politicians together can find comfort in the notion of the 'protest' vote: in the words of one journalist, 'Saturday's poll may well go down as the election that defied all predictions, producing the mother of all protest votes'.(58) To state such a conclusion, however, is not to prove it.

Apart from having to wait for four weeks after polling day to learn the Frankston East result, three other important post-polling day events formed part of the story of the 1999 Victorian election.

End of the Coalition

Mention has already been made of the long history of poor relations between the two major non-Labor parties, typified by the words of long-time Liberal Premier, Sir Henry Bolte, who once described the Country Party as 'a mob of political prostitutes who will go to bed with anybody'.(59) Despite the fact that the 1992-99 Kennett Government was the longest surviving coalition in Victorian history, relations between the long-time antagonists was at times very strained. This was partly due to the inevitable tensions that exist in Liberal-National coalitions wherever they are established, but it was given particular feeling because of the relative strengths of the parties. The Liberal Party actually won a majority of seats in the 1992 and 1996 elections, and the Coalition was formed by the grace of the Premier-himself a determined opponent of coalition in the 1980s. Not all Liberals were pleased with this.(60)

The relationship was also strained by many of the policies followed by the Kennett Government that appeared to be unsympathetic to the needs of rural people (see above, pp. 17-18). In the aftermath of the unexpected defeat, it therefore seemed inevitable that the formal coalition would crumble. On 22 October, a meeting between National MPs and the party's State Council duly reported that henceforth there was 'no coalition agreement between the Liberal and National Parties in Opposition'.(61)

Such a decision was in part a recognition that tensions existed in both camps. For the Nationals there was also the feeling that they were fighting for their very existence. In 2000, the National Party holds just seven Legislative Assembly seats and six in the Legislative Council-nine per cent of the Parliament. Fifty years ago the respective figures were 20 and 13 in a smaller Parliament, for 32 per cent of the total membership. For the Liberals there were the continuing resentments felt in that party over the very notion of coalition. In an echo of Henry Bolte's words, one unnamed Liberal MLA claimed after the election that, 'The Nationals like to stay for the night but don't like to get married'.(62)

Eventually a memorandum of understanding was signed. It was designed to satisfy disgruntled National supporters, while apparently accepting the probable need to work together in the future:

• Although the formal coalition is at an end for the time being, there will be a combined Opposition front bench.
• There will be an Opposition front bench team of 22 (out of a total Assembly representation of 43).
• Five of these 22 will be from the National Party.
• The parties will remain 'separate and distinct'.
• The party leadership will meet weekly, and shadow Cabinet will meet regularly.
• Backbench members will sit in separate party blocs. The Liberal party will be the official Opposition, and the National Party 'the Third Party'.
• The National Party Leader will have a place at the Legislative Assembly table with the Leader and Deputy Leader of the Liberal Party.(63)

The Kennett Resignation and the Burwood By-election

Jeff Kennett submitted his resignation from Parliament on 2 November, thus precipitating the by-election for his seat of Burwood that was held on 11 December. Both the Labor and Liberal Parties put a great deal of effort into winning a seat that had been held by the Liberals since its re-creation in 1976. Labor's candidate was Bob Stensholt, the defeated candidate in the general election, while the Liberals surprised by their by-passing of prominent party member, Helen Kroger, for Lana McLean.

The Liberal Party seemed to be on the back foot throughout the campaign. McLean proved unexpectedly controversial. Among other matters, she had been involved in a local planning dispute and she was apparently involved in a legal dispute with the Commonwealth Bank. She even earned notice during the campaign for her criticism of a junior basketball referee. The party also earned media criticism for some of its claims, such as the prediction that a Labor victory would encourage the government to set up a chain of heroin injecting rooms across all suburbs of Melbourne. At the same time, Labor seemed to concentrate its efforts on the discrediting of McLean rather than discussing policy. When the fact of Stensholt having not mentioned his brief career as a seminarian was noted by the Liberal Party, an Age journalist criticised the 'grubby' campaigning efforts of both sides, 'Why such crowded gutters in Burwood?', he asked.(64) The picture in the by-election was made more uncertain by the nominations of a Green candidate and of Stephen Mayne, former Kennett media adviser, who had earlier had a well-publicised falling-out with his employer.

The Labor Party won Burwood comfortably after preferences, though the result was probably brought about more by voter disillusionment with their opponents than enthusiasm for a party which had never held the seat. Even in a climate of support and interest for a new government, Labor's first preference vote of 45.1 per cent was only 3.6 per cent higher than in the general election. As in the case of the general election itself, it was a reminder of the relatively small increase in the Labor vote over the State as a whole (see below, p. 22). By contrast, the Liberal vote fell to its lowest in over twenty years, with its 40.5 per cent being ten per cent lower than in September. Mayne pointed to a probable disillusionment with both major parties: in the general election the combined Labor-Liberal vote was 97 per cent, but in the by-election this fell by 11.4 per cent.(65)

The Resignation of Pat McNamara

Soon after the election, the National Party leader, Pat McNamara, announced that he would soon leave the leadership, and would probably leave the Parliament by Christmas. It seemed likely that there would be a by-election for his seat of Benalla in the new year, possibly February. The 1999 Victorian election therefore seemed still to have some life, particularly as a swing of 7.5 per cent would see the National Party lose a seat that it has held since 1943.

In due course McNamara handed over the reins to Peter Ryan in November, but did not say anything about his resignation from the Parliament. However, in the immediate aftermath of the Burwood by-election, reports began to be heard of McNamara coming under pressure to remain in the seat, at least for a few more months.(66) Were the seat to be won by the Government, this would be the first time Labor has held a seat whose history can be dated back to the first decade of this century. Such a result would give Labor half of the Legislative Assembly, a significantly stronger position than before the resignation of Kennett. Loss of Benalla would also further weaken the Nationals' parlous parliamentary position. McNamara remains in Parliament at the time of writing.

The Labor Party

Labor is fortunate to be occupying the government benches in the Legislative Assembly. Its vote of 45.5 per cent, which was a modest increase of only 2.4 per cent on the 1996 figure, was actually 1.6 per cent behind its Coalition opponents. Labor's total of first preferences is the lowest by a winning party since the final Hamer victory in 1979. The election result might actually tell us more about the disillusionment of voters with the Coalition Government, than their support for their challengers. Many voters abandoned the Coalition, but a significant number chose to give Labor their second preference, rather than their first. In the seat of Seymour, for example, Labor trailed the Liberal sitting member on first preferences, but won the seat by just 462 votes after the distribution of Australian Green preferences.

On a more positive note, Labor's vote of 45.5 per cent was its second increase in successive elections, and was a healthy 7.1 per cent above its dark days of 1992-which had been its worst vote for 25 years. The ALP needs to use the advantages of office to prepare the ground to win majority government in its own right and gain a safer parliamentary position-as did the New South Wales party between the elections of 1995 and 1999. It has to work to win more seats east and south of the Yarra, for history suggests that its hold on its regional gains will be harder to maintain than its hold over its metropolitan seats. The increase in its Melbourne vote was only 2.6 per cent, and its total metropolitan vote of 49.6 per cent gives significant room for improvement-in 1982 John Cain's Labor Party won 54.7 per cent of the Melbourne vote. There is room for growth outside of the capital as well. Despite Labor picking up so many regional seats, its overall vote was only 38.1 per cent, 4.8 per cent lower than in 1982. It must ensure that its policies are seen as 'bush-friendly', if it is to retain these seats.

Of course, the length of time that Labor has in office may be insufficient to build up any degree of extra support, for its biggest problem will be ensuring that it retains the government reins. A minority government, propped up with some reluctance by independents, which has to face a Legislative Council controlled by the Opposition, is likely to see an early election as a strong possibility. Whether it could win majority control of the Assembly may well depend on a great many variables that are out of its control.(67) Not the least of its problems is the great difficulty it will have in gaining control of the Legislative Council while the two-member province electoral system is retained.

The Liberal Party

The Liberal Party's new leader, Denis Napthine, has moved to indicate a new style of leadership: '1 can't imagine a denis.com'. He quickly signalled this in symbolic fashion. The Victorian Liberals under the successive leadership of Henry Bolte, Dick Hamer, Lindsay Thompson and, initially, Jeff Kennett, had always had caucus election for most of their front bench. In 1988 this had been scrapped by Kennett, who took over the responsibility himself-as is done in other divisions of the party. In turn, Napthine has reinstated caucus election with a few positions chosen by the party leader.(68)

Like the ALP, the Liberals can face the next few years with some optimism. With a new leadership team, and presumably a forthcoming review of its policies, it should be encouraged by the fact that its 1999 State-wide vote fell by only 1.8 per cent. In fact, its first preference vote was higher than any vote managed by Sir Henry Bolte from 1955 to 1970, when the party was reliant on Democratic Labor Party preferences in a great many seats. The party is very strong in Melbourne, so that its main aim must be to regain the seats it held in regional Victoria-for instance, it lost both Ballarat East and Ballarat West, as well as the two Legislative Council Ballarat contests.

Overall, the Liberal Party is well-placed to launch a bid to regain office at the next election, providing the early, emotional views of some members ('the worst ever loss in the history of the Victorian section'(69)) do not lead to any widespread party blood-letting with resulting poor publicity. If such blood-letting does occur, past history suggests that the earlier it is done before the next election, the better.

The National Party

The National Party's position is far less healthy. Despite its running of two more candidates than in 1996 its vote fell. Its State total of 4.9 per cent was the party's lowest on record-50 years ago its vote was exactly 10 percentage points higher. It currently holds just seven of the 88 seats; fifty years ago it held 20 of 75 seats. Its chances of growth appear to be non-existent. A steady decline in regional seats presents it with a dilemma familiar to branches in New South Wales and Queensland. One chance of growth is to contest near-metropolitan seats, but its abject failure when it attempted to do so in Victoria in the mid-1980s does not bode well for such a tactic if it were to be tried again.(70)

In the immediate future, the party must work to regain Gippsland East. The task of pushing the Liberals out of Warrnambool might be rather more difficult. Elsewhere, it possibly needs to reconsider its opposition to three-cornered contests, for to do so would enable it to mount a serious challenge in the Liberal-held regional seats, as well as in the regional seats its coalition partner has just lost.

The Nationals must hope that the Bracks push to introduce proportional representation for Legislative Council elections can be stopped. On its current vote, it would be hard-pressed to retain its six seats, assuming that the upper house remained the same size. Were it to be reduced, as has been flagged by Labor, and as occurred in Tasmania in 1998, the task of gaining any upper house representation would be very much harder than it is at present.

The Nationals also have a dilemma over the matter of coalition with the Liberal Party. Despite the view of Pat McNamara that the advantages in being involved in government decision-making justified joining a coalition, others have suggested that 'the experience of power in the Kennett years can be said to have been at best a mixed blessing'.(71) The party presumably suffered by being part of the 'Melbourne-centric' Kennett Government, and a return to a coalition government would leave it open to a similar problem in the future. Ryan has pledged to visit rural Victoria to listen to its concerns, but it has been argued that this may be too late: 'The time to communicate with rural communities and then deliver meaningful, effective policies was between 1992 and the 1999 election'.(72)

Three-cornered contests used to be an important component of Coalition electoral contests. In recent years, however, the National Party, ever-mindful of its declining number of seats, has criticised the Liberal Party for its continued enthusiasm for them-as was heard after the 1999 New South Wales election.(73) In a similar fashion, McNamara expressed his annoyance at the number of 'pointless' three-cornered contests in Victoria in 1999. A journalist summed up what he called 'one of the many lessons' learned from the campaign, namely that the partners had spent 'too much energy and resources' fighting such three-cornered battles.(74) The evidence does not seem to bear out such a view.

There were five such contests in this Legislative Assembly election, three in Liberal (or former Liberal) seats, and two in National seats. None of these seats had three-cornered contests in 1996. There were none in the Legislative Council contests.

In Gippsland West and Mildura the three-cornered contests in former Liberal seats were actually caused by the nomination of National Party candidates. In both, the combined Liberal-National vote topped the first preference vote of the winning independent, suggesting that the theory that three-cornered contests maximise the combined Coalition vote, was borne out. In neither case, however, did the Coalition vote top 50 per cent, and this no doubt was of vital importance in aiding the independent victories. In both cases, however, the three-cornered contest tactic appears to have been justified.

In Polwarth, a Liberal seat that runs west from the electorates of Geelong North and Geelong, the Liberal candidate ( 41% ) saw 10 percentage points stripped from the party's 1996 vote. As the National candidate (16.6%), was a prominent ex-Geelong AFL player, it is quite likely that it was his nomination that forced the Liberal sitting member to preferences. The margin between the two Coalition partners was so great-and the National vote so low-that it can be argued that if there was a 'pointless' three-cornered contest, this was it. It was forced, though, by the National Party.

As we have seen the Coalition lost a larger proportion of votes in rural Victoria than in metropolitan electorates. In Wimmera, however, the Coalition figure jumped from 56.9 per cent in 1996 (National only) to a combined Liberal and National vote of 63.5 per cent. Assuming that a National candidate standing alone would have had a reduced vote, the three-cornered contest quite clearly maximised the Coalition vote, as the theory suggests it should. The impact upon the ALP was such that it received less than one-quarter of the vote and was excluded from the contest at the penultimate count. The final count was therefore between National and Liberal, with the National candidate retaining the seat by a 15 per cent margin.

We have seen earlier that the National Party had come under criticism in Warrnambool over water charges. Despite this, the 'intrusion' of a Liberal Party candidate presumably helped the Coalition vote to top 57 per cent-though the National's 17.5 per cent was a drop of 40.3 per cent on the previous result. The question here is whether the National standing alone could have won this seat that is normally not friendly to the ALP. Labor's candidate received just 31.5 per cent, so it is unlikely that enough of the vote that went to the Liberals would have shifted to Labor if a Liberal candidate had not been on the ballot paper. As no other candidate topped 6 per cent, it is in regard to this seat, alone, that McNamara's complaint-as a National spokesperson-has some justification. From the Liberal perspective, however, the fact that the Liberal Party was able to nominate an attractive candidate for the seat meant that Warrnambool did not slip out of Coalition hands as might have happened.

A matter of timing?

The Victorian Liberal Party, the most successful division of the party that Robert Menzies created over 50 years ago, will probably mull over two tantalising questions for some time to come:

• Should Kennett have gone earlier? A combination of good polls, plus Labor's leadership tensions, suggests that the Premier should probably have gone to the people earlier, possibly as early as May or June. The delay meant that the new leadership was able to stake out a position as a reasonable, 'new' face of Labor that could increasingly claim to have put the party's internal problems behind it.(75)
• It seems clear that if Kennett had timed his departure from the Liberal leadership-and hence the Premiership-as soon as it was clear that he had lost his parliamentary majority, then at least Russell Savage, and possibly Craig Ingram, would have supported a minority Liberal-National Government. Indeed, as late as the Monday after the Frankston East by-election, Savage suggested that an earlier Kennett resignation would have swung independent support behind the Coalition: 'They had a great chance to do it but they didn't'.(76)

Implications?

There are several implications that can be drawn from the Victorian election.

• The urban-rural divide remains an important part of Australian politics. Given the right circumstances, as in Victoria in 1999, even if few votes move in metropolitan electorates a significant movement of votes in the bush can decide an election result. This recent Victorian election is a reminder of New South Wales 1976. In that election Labor's ability to retain the seats it held outside of the cities, and to pick up the rural seat that gave it a one-seat parliamentary majority, brought Neville Wran to power.
• It is clear that the growing volatility of the Australian electorate means that no government, whether at Commonwealth or State level, can be seen as impregnable. The past decade has seen governments defeated in New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania and the ACT as well as in the Commonwealth election of 1996.
• A related point is that even governments with very large majorities can see these quickly disappear. This occurred to Premiers Greiner, Goss and Kennett, with Greiner resigning before the end of his term, Goss losing power after a by-election defeat and Kennett's recent loss of power.
• Governments that undertake a large-scale reform program run the risk of bringing about a voter backlash, no matter how much the economic circumstances of the time suggest the need for such reform.
• Victoria 1999 reminds us that the use of preferential voting can sometimes have an important impact upon the result of an Australian election.

1. Peter Aimer, Politics, Power and Persuasion. The Liberals in Victoria, James Bennett, Sydney, 1974, pp. 150-4.
2. At this time, a symbol of the less-than-friendly relations between the non-Labor parties was the decision of the Liberal Party in 1949 to call itself the Liberal and Country Party. The party only dropped the word 'Country' in 1965.
3. James Jupp, 'Victoria: Left, Right and Centre', in Andrew Parkin and John Warhurst, ed., Machine Politics in the Australian Labor Party, George Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 1983, pp. 69-72.
4. Brian Costar and Nicholas Economou, 'Elections and Electoral Change 1982-92', in Mark Considine and Brian Costar, ed., Trials in Power. Cain, Kirner and Victoria 1982-1992, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1992, p. 261.
5. Leanne White, 'The Fourth Estate and the Kennett Government', in Brian Costar and Nicholas Economou, eds, The Kennett Revolution. Victorian Politics in the 1990s, University of New South Wales Press, Sydney, 1999, p. 33.
6. Herald Sun, 25 August 1999.
7. Ardel Shamsullah, '"The Policy of Confidence": Politics in Victoria 1992-98', in Costar and Economou, The Kennett Revolution, p. 6.
8. Australian, 1 April 1996.
9. Ernie Chaples, Helen Nelson and Ken Turner, 'The Wran model in perspective', in Ernie Chaples, Helen Nelson and Ken Turner, eds, The Wran Model. Electoral politics in New South Wales 1981 and 1984, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1985, p. 245.
10. Brian Costar, 'Laboring against the Jeff factor', Sunday Age, 29 August 1999.
11. Age, 25 August 1999.
12. Graham Hudson, 'The ALP: Labouring in Opposition', in Costar and Economou, The Kennett Revolution, p. 99.
13. Brumby quoted in Hudson, op. cit., p. 100.
14. Nicholas Economou and Brian Costar, 'The Electoral Contest and Coalition Dominance 1992-98', in Costar and Economou, The Kennett Revolution, p. 131.
15. Shamsullah, op. cit., p. 13.
16. Economou and Costar, 'The Electoral Contest...', p. 130; Age, 12 November 1997.
17. Age, 27 July 1998.
18. Australian, 25 February 1999.
19. Shamshullah, op. cit., p. 11; Hudson, op. cit., p. 109.
20. For speculation that Labor could lose seats, see Australian, 25 February 1999, Age, 25 August 1999.
21. Age, 25 August 1999.
22. Allan Attwood, 'A true believer takes his chance while cameras roll', Age, 20 September 1999.
23. Age, 26 August 1999.
24. Age, 25 August 1999.
25. Age, 28 August 1999.
26. Australian, 25 August 1999.
27. Age, 17, 18 July 1999, Weekend Australian, 3-4 July 1999.
28. Sunday Age, 24 October 1999.
29. Age, 9 September 1999.
30. Herald Sun, 6 September 1999; Age, 20 September 1999.
31. Sunday Herald Sun, 5 September 1999; Age, 10 September 1999.
32. Weekend Australian, 28-29 August 1999; Sunday Age, 5 September 1999; Herald Sun, 8 September 1999; Age, 20 September 1999.
33. Herald Sun, 25 August 1999; Australian, 26 August 1999.
34. Age, 25 August 1999.
35. Independents' Charter Victoria 1999, http://home.vicnet.au/~susandavies/Charterfinal.htm
36. Age, 18 October 1999.
37. Robert Manne, Sydney Morning Herald, 13 September 1999.
38. Woodward and Costar, op. cit., p. 15.
39. Dennis Woodward and Brian Costar, 'Another Case of Electoral Volatility? The 1999 Victorian Election', unpublished paper, 1999, p. 3.
40. Bulletin, 7 September 1999.
41. Financial Review, 17 September 1999, Courier Mail, 18 September 1999.
42. Age, 28 August 1999.
43. Pamela Bone, 'Why some Liberals can't abide Kennett', Age, 16 September 1999; Anne Henderson, 'Rewards go to grassroots pollies', Australian, 30 September 1999.
44. Herald Sun, 27 August 1999.
45. Herald Sun, 10 September 1999.
46. Age, 25 August 1999.
47. Anne Vince, 'Amalgamations', in Brian Dollery and Neil Marshall ed., Australian Local Government. Reform and Renewal, Macmillan, Melbourne, 1997, p. 160; Brian Costar, 'Coalition Government: An Unequal Partnership', in Costar and Economou, The Kennett Revolution, pp. 93-4; Bill Russell, 'Rebuilding Victoria after Kennett', Dissent, Summer 1999/2000, p. 56.
48. Editor, St Arnaud North Central News, quoted Costar, 'Coalition Government...', p. 92.
49. Woodward and Costar, op. cit., p. 9.
50. ibid, p.16.
51. Age, 20 September 1999.
52. See Tim Colebatch, 'Behind the rural revolt', Age, 18 October 1999; for other articles on the rural view of the Kennett Government, see Weekend Australian, 28-29 August 1999, Bulletin, 5 October 1999.
53. Scott Bennett, Affairs of State: politics in the Australian States and Territories, Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 1992, p. 187.
54. Australian, 2-8 December 1999.
55. Age, 18 December 1999.
56. Age, 25 October 1999.
57. Mike Steketee, 'Felled by the polls', Australian, 2-8 December 1999.
58. Tony Parkinson, 'Can-do Premier undone', Age, 20 September 1999.
59. Quoted in Brian Costar, 'The National Party Campaign', in Brian J. Costar and Colin A. Hughes ed., Labor to Office. The Victorian State Election 1982, Drummond, Blackburn, p. 70.
60. Bennett, op. cit., p. 7.
61. Financial Review, 23 October 1999.
62. Age, 27 October 1999.
63. Age, 29 October 1999.
64. Age, 9 December 1999.
65. Age, 16 December 1999.
66. See, for example, Australian, 12 January 2000.
67. Virginia Trioli, 'End of the line', Bulletin, 26 October 1999, pp. 42-3.
68. Age, Australian, 27 October 1999.
69. Bernie Finn, former MLA for Tullamarine, Age, 22 December 1999.
70. Ardel Shamsullah, 'Politics in Victoria: Parliament, Cabinet and the Political Parties', in Considine and Costar, op. cit., pp. 16-17.
71. Age, 21 December 1999.
72. bid.
73. For the New South Wales National Party's complaints, see Scott Bennett and Gerard Newman, 'New South Wales Election 1999', Research Paper No. 22, Department of the Parliamentary Library, Canberra, 1999, pp. 14-15. See also Scott Bennett, Winning and Losing. Australia's National Elections, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1996, pp. 52-3.
74. Ewin Hannan, 'Running on empty in Liberal country', Age, 18 December 1999.
75. Adam Kilgour, Executive Director of CPR Communications & Public Relations Pty Ltd, who worked on the Labor campaign, was one observer who believed the delay was a 'major' mistake by the Premier, see 'How Bracks won it', Age, 22 October 1999.
76. Bulletin, 26 October 1999.