The Pressure Valve: Does The Defeat Of Same-Party State Governments Help Federal Governments?

It's 1992.  The unpopular Cain/Kirner Victorian Labor government has been sent packing.  In comes Jeff Kennett and some voters are soon alarmed by his New Right agenda.  Cue massive protests.  The Keating federal Labor government has been struggling in the polls but it springs to life soon after Kennett's win (though that was far from the only cause).  In the 1993 election Labor gets a 4.34% swing in Victoria and gains four seats.  Across Bass Strait, where a short-lived Labor government had been removed in early 1992, there's an even bigger swing that yields another three.  The three Tasmanian losses are the first signs on counting night that something has gone terribly wrong with John Hewson's unloseable election, and these seven seats picked up by Labor in these two Liberal states combined are the backbone of Keating's against-the-odds win.  

Victoria 1992 is the paradigm case for a theory that one might call the "pressure valve" theory of state elections, that there is a drag effect of state elections upon federal elections and that federal governments benefit if the voters let off steam by throwing out an unpopular state government of the same party instead of taking their anger with it out on the feds.  Better still if the new state government has started to frighten the horses.  I have talked a lot about "federal drag" on here, which refers to the fact that state governments do much worse at elections, all else being equal, when the same party is in power federally.  Age and federal drag are the two biggest killers of state governments and it is for this reason that the Miles Government was always likely to lose by about as much as it did.  But does it work the other way?

"Unrepresentative Swill" - A Keating Line Way Past Its Use-By Date

"But one Treasurer borrows and turns a short term borrowing into a medium term borrowing—no more money is borrowed; a short term borrowing just becomes a medium term borrowing—without telling our Treasurer and our Treasurer immediately responds and tells him he has to regularise it and you, who let 75 per cent of borrowings run everywhere, have the gall to get up and talk about the Loan Council and to set up a Senate committee. Then you want a Minister from the House of Representatives chamber to wander over to the unrepresentative chamber and account for himself. You have got to be joking. Whether the Treasurer wished to go there or not, I would forbid him going to the Senate to account to this unrepresentative swill over there—"

With these words, spoken on 4 November 1992, then Prime Minister Paul Keating created a colourful insulting description of the Senate that has endured to this day, and is commonly seen when anyone wants to attack a Senator they do not like.  In the last month alone, Twitter users have used Keating's line at least 76 times, mostly but not exclusively to attack Senators or the Senate itself.  In the last month for instance it has been used especially to attack UAP Senator Ralph Babet, but also to attack Coalition Senators Linda Reynolds, Michaelia Cash, Gerard Rennick and Bridget McKenzie, JLN Senator Jacqui Lambie, Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young, ex-Greens Senator Lidia Thorpe and ex-Labor Senator Fatima Payman.  But no Labor Senators, funny that.  

The Keating Aggregation 1990-1993

A bit of a special feature for today ...

25 years ago today Paul Keating's Labor government won re-election against the odds, having battled a recession and fallout from the mid-term removal of the previous Prime Minister Bob Hawke.  Among all Australian elections, 1993 stands out as an oddity, the one that breaks almost every predictive election model that can be thrown at it.  If you want to get a feeling of just how unexpected it was, check out Lateline from a couple of nights before.

It is easy to forget that in office Keating was a very unpopular Prime Minister, widely considered arrogant and abrasive, and blamed for comments about "the recession we had to have".  He did not poll a single positive Newspoll netsat in 109 consecutive Newspolls on the job.  Yet history has been kind to him, in part because of this alleged electoral miracle.