Major Parties Pay for Lack of Vision

Both Prime Minister Julia Gillard and Opposition Leader Tony Abbott have little experience in campaigning as party leaders and are learning on the job.
Major Parties Pay for Lack of Vision
Julia Gillard and Tony Abbot are both inexperienced campaigners with an equal chance of winning, forcing a safe, and lacklustre campaign on the electorate. (Alan Porritt/Getty Images)
8/16/2010
Updated:
9/29/2015

“I hate those slander ads. I don’t want to hear what is wrong with the other person, I want to hear what they are going to do!” says 22-year-old Tom, who is frustrated with the 2010 Federal election campaign and voting for only the second time in his life. Tom was never going to get what he wanted in this campaign though.

<a href="https://www.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2015/07/103078132_medium.jpg"><img src="https://www.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2015/07/103078132_medium.jpg" alt="Julia Gillard and Tony Abbot are both inexperienced campaigners with an equal chance of winning, forcing a safe, and lacklustre campaign on the electorate.  (Alan Porritt/Getty Images)" title="Julia Gillard and Tony Abbot are both inexperienced campaigners with an equal chance of winning, forcing a safe, and lacklustre campaign on the electorate.  (Alan Porritt/Getty Images)" width="320" class="size-medium wp-image-110883"/></a>
Julia Gillard and Tony Abbot are both inexperienced campaigners with an equal chance of winning, forcing a safe, and lacklustre campaign on the electorate.  (Alan Porritt/Getty Images)
According to political analyst Dr Clem Macintyre, the 2010 Federal election campaign is uniquely negative and lackluster and for a number of reasons.

For a start, both Prime Minister Julia Gillard and Opposition Leader Tony Abbott have little experience in campaigning as party leaders and are learning on the job.

Julia Gillard took over the leadership from former Labor leader and Prime minister Kevin Rudd, after he was unceremoniously removed by his own party, just weeks before the election was announced. Tony Abbott, like Gillard, has held ministerial positions but neither has campaigned as leader of their respective parties before.

“Neither leader were terribly sure where their campaigning strengths were and where their appeal to the electorate would lie, and they have been working that out as the campaign has evolved,” he said.

Added to the mix is that both parties are on a “ knife edge” in terms of a likely winner, creating what Dr Macintyre says is a “too cautious” and “risk averse” approach.

“The parties have worked out they are more likely to win by pointing out the shortcomings of the other side than by campaigning on their own policies.”

Combined with advisers who seem to have drilled each leader in a set number of words that they must repeat incessantly, the campaign has been generally decried from all sectors.

Social demographer Hugh Mackay says the campaign beggars credibility.

The highly respected social analyst says both leaders of the two major parties have shown a distinct disconnect from the electorate, offering contrived images and repetitive slogans when the electorate wants vision and the “overarching narrative” about “who they are, who they could be, where we are going and how we are going to get there”.


“Vision is what a society yearns for; what they want leaders for,” he told ABC radio.

Dr Macintyre agrees, saying: “No one is trying to capture our imagination, winning hearts and minds. It is very much attrition and skirmishes rather than bold, dynamic [or] visionary,” he said.

<a href="https://www.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2015/07/103412966_medium.jpg"><img src="https://www.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2015/07/103412966_medium.jpg" alt="Jed Adcock of the Brisbane Lions casts his vote ahead of Saturday's Federal Election at The Gabba on August 17, 2010 in Brisbane, Australia. (Bradley Kanaris/Getty Images)" title="Jed Adcock of the Brisbane Lions casts his vote ahead of Saturday's Federal Election at The Gabba on August 17, 2010 in Brisbane, Australia. (Bradley Kanaris/Getty Images)" width="320" class="size-medium wp-image-110884"/></a>
Jed Adcock of the Brisbane Lions casts his vote ahead of Saturday's Federal Election at The Gabba on August 17, 2010 in Brisbane, Australia. (Bradley Kanaris/Getty Images)
The Australian political landscape is lacking clear direction, he continued, with both Labor and Liberal parties struggling in “the clarity of their differences”.

This is manifesting in high levels of support for the Greens, particularly in regards to Labor.

“If you look at the primary votes, there is almost a direct relationship between the Greens going up and Labor going down, which says that the bulk of recent adherents to the Greens is disaffected Labor, ” he said.

Dr Macintyre said that if the major parties were “truly reflective”, they might learn some lessons and “shape their policies to recover that level of support”.

However, in the present climate, he said he is not confident of that happening.