Sunday Times 2
Two decades of Australian general elections: A Lankan perspective
With the change of Labor Parliamentary leader last week the new Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has two choices as it is mandatory to hold the general election before November this year. He can go for the scheduled general election on September 17 or postpone it until November this year.
This will be the first Australian general election during the past two decades which I will be watching from a distance. In 1992, months after I first arrived in Australia, I witnessed the then Treasurer, Paul Keating being elected as the mid-term Prime Minister by the Labor Party parliamentary caucus after he successfully challenged Bob Hawke who had been the Prime Minister for the previous decade.
I have closely watched all general elections in Ceylon since independence and the 1977 general election of the Republic of Sri Lanka, all of which were held under the Westminster style of “first-past the-post” constituency based system. In addition, I have also
Australia's Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and his wife Therese Rein arrive at the presidential palace for a meeting with Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono in Bogor, July 5, 2013. Rudd is in Indonesia to attend the annual Indonesia-Australia Leaders' meeting. Reuters
witnessed a few general elections in India where, even though under a federal system, elections are held for 543 constituencies of the lower house under the Westminster style first-past the-post system. This first ever Australian election I witnessed immensely appealed to me because, although it is constituency based, the Australian system provides the choice for voters to cast their preferences to all contenders and the winner will be announced only once a leading candidate acquires enough preferences to pass 50 per cent plus one votes polled. This system prevents a candidate from being elected with only about 30-40 per cent votes cast with rest of the 60-70 per cent of votes dispersed amongst other candidates as happened in Sri Lanka a number of instances before 1977. If Sri Lanka adopted a similar system after 1977, today’s farcical “manapa” system could have been prevented from taking root and corrupting the whole electoral system.
Enter Rudd, Gillard
Come 1996 and the Australian electoral landscape had changed. Labor, under Keating had reneged on most of the promises and the voters in the middle had become tired of the Labor’s 13 year long incumbency. Almost unnoticed at this election, two future prime ministers, Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard, entered parliament from outer suburbs constituencies of Brisbane and Melbourne.
The Labor Party in December 2006 opted for (the current Premier) Kevin Rudd, a diplomat turned politician with liberal Christian convictions as its leader with Julia Gillard, an unwed former trade union lawyer with no religious convictions, as the deputy leader. For the first time in ten years, this appeared to be an acceptable combination which offered a credible alternative to the tired Liberal government which appeared to have lost its vision and had no accordance to develop a policy framework to tackle looming issues such as climate change and the apparent population growth projections.
Upon being elected as the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd swiftly moved to make a grand gesture of reconciliation by making a public apology on behalf of people and the government of Australia for the past injustices to indigenous Australians.
Riding an unprecedented wave of popularity, Rudd declared that action on man-made climate change to be the “greatest moral and economic challenge of our generation”. Rudd attended and played a prominent part in the Copenhagen international climate change conference which ended as a damp squib with no binding agreement. Highly demoralised, Rudd, nevertheless, persisted with moving the emissions trading bill in Parliament but it was knocked down by Liberal and Greens Senators.
As the popularity of Rudd gradually waned, Julia Gillard became popular within the party and finally she succeeded in wresting the party leadership and become the prime minister three years ago.
The Liberals, meanwhile, were busy trying to find new issues for the election campaign. It was given a lifeline by the continuous arrivals into Australian maritime waters of boats carrying asylum seekers. Liberal Party started accusing the government of being responsible for the massive increase in boat arrivals because it abandoned the policy of issuing only-temporary protection visas to refugees. The Labor government could not give any effective response to these allegations and continued to state that it was not the government policy but the worsening conditions of the source countries such as Afghanistan and Sri Lanka caused the increase in boat arrivals.
Four years ago when a boat carrying 255 Sri Lankans heading towards Australian territorial waters was towed back to Indonesia at Kevin Rudd’s request to Indonesian President and another 78 Sri Lankans were rescued by an Australian naval vessel and taken back to an Indonesian port, Immigration Minister Chris Evans stated that it was not the softer government policy but the disturbances in Sri Lanka following the end of a protracted war were responsible for the surge of asylum seekers.
Boat people: An election issu
Recent opinion polls showed further slump in Labor’s fortunes down to an elections losing position from unassailable heights it enjoyed a few months ago. While opinion polls put the Labor Party chances under Gillard’s leadership at mere 25 per cent, on a supplementary question, the Labor chances went up to 50 per cent if the party elected Rudd as its leader. As a result the Labor Party caucus (combination of party MPs and Senators) in an unprecedented move removed a first-term prime minister and installed Rudd as the prime minister to take the party into the next election.
One of the major issues of the next general election will be the crisis of the boat people. The Labor government has already announced that it did not stand for a “bigger Australia” but for “sustainable future growth” and re-named the newly created ministry the “Ministry for Sustainable Population.”
As the election comes near most of these policy announcements will be counterbalanced by each side’s rhetoric and only the big issues will play on the ears of voters. What matters, however, on election day is how the residents in 30 or so marginal constituencies would vote. Barring a landslide, the Australian general elections are usually fought and won, or lost, in the marginal seats. Of the 150 seats, about a hundred are considered to be blue ribbon wealthy Liberal, hardened working-class Labor, or country-side National Party seats. The remaining seats become usually up for grabs and the political parties usually spend most of their energies and resources into these seats which are usually won on preferences.
The next general election is likely to become a contest on mundane issues or, if more and more boats are spotted on the horizon, deteriorate into another election on border protection credentials with each party trying to out do each other on being tougher on asylum seekers.
Last year, when arrivals of boats filled with Sri Lankans reached a crisis point, the Australian Foreign Minister visited Sri Lanka and issued a communiqué stating:”Australia and Sri Lanka have jointly committed enhanced cooperation against the criminal organisers of the people smuggling trade, encourage regional cooperation on the matter, undertake public information to alert Sri Lankan citizens to the dangers of maritime people smuggling”.
Yet, boats continue to arrive and the debate about “Sri Lankan refugees” is likely to escalate before the election and continue beyond the election irrespective of whichever party comes to power. It is still not too late for the Sri Lankan Government to reach out to the Australian Government to establish a cooperative approach to tackle this issue. The Sri Lankan authorities may explain to Australian authorities that the country has just returned to normalcy after eliminating a ruthless terrorist group and that Sri Lanka is a functioning democracy where no person is discriminated for ethnicity and religious or political beliefs.
Whoever becomes the next Prime Minister of Australia, I wish that the President of Sri Lanka, while congratulating the newly elected PM, will assure him or her that there is no need to approach third countries to seek a solution for an issue between two liberal democracies with long standing diplomatic relations and cooperation. He may also suggest that any Sri Lankans unlawfully entering Australia could be returned to Sri Lanka and they could be transparently relocated under a programme of resettlement coordinated by Sri Lankan and Australian authorities. Under the present circumstances the Australian authorities would certainly welcome such an approach from Sri Lanka.
(The writer is a veteran journalist)
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