By Graham Matthews
BRISBANE — On February 5, voters in the Queensland seats of Bundamba and Woodridge returned Labor members at by-elections. Both Labor candidates were elected with more than 50% of the primary vote.
In Bundamba, Jo-Ann Miller received 57% — a swing to the government of nearly 6% on the 1998 state election result. In Woodridge, former ALP state secretary Mike Kaiser received just over 50%. The two-party preferred swing against Kaiser was less than 1%, despite the indictment of former ALP member for Woodridge Bill D'Arcy on more than 50 child sex charges in the weeks before the by-election.
In Woodridge, the Liberal candidate received only 9% of the vote, the worst recorded by a Liberal in a Queensland by-election since the party was formed. The Liberals performed marginally better in Bundamba, receiving more than 14% of the vote and forcing former One Nation senator-elect, now City Country Alliance leader, Heather Hill into third place.
Hill's fortunes in Bundamba chart the electoral decline of One Nation. Bundamba incorporates part of the federal seat of Oxley, which was won by dis-endorsed Liberal candidate Pauline Hanson in the 1996 federal election. At the 1998 state election, One Nation won 28.39% of the primary vote, coming second to Labor. Hill's result is a halving of support in the electorate in less than two years — most of that vote returning to the Labor Party.
The results in Bundamba and Woodridge reveal a strengthening of support in traditional working-class seats for Premier Peter Beattie's government — at the expense of the Liberals and One Nation. Both Labor candidates played on the real fears of working-class people about the GST.
In neither electorate did the Labor candidates make any promises to voters. Despite years of neglect of the areas by incumbent Labor members, both candidates promised only that they would listen to and represent voters' concerns to government. Labor also played on fears of governmental instability should either seat be lost (it rules by a one seat majority), despite the independents promising to guarantee supply to the government.
Left opposition to Labor was very slim in both electorates. In Bundamba, the Queensland Greens received almost 6% of the primary vote, just short of the Democrats' vote in 1998. Green candidate Sean Curley promised more services for the electorate but did not articulate any alternative vision for government.
In Woodridge, Kaiser was challenged by former ALP councillor Russell Lutton. Lutton's campaign rested on chastising the ALP for failing to "represent" the electorate and taking it for granted.
Lutton received the preferences of every other non-Labor candidate in the by-election and won just under 34% of the primary vote, slightly below that registered by One Nation in 1998.
The reason why the ALP won both by-elections so easily is not hard to determine. In neither electorate, nor in state or national politics, is the ALP challenged by a strong left. There is, as yet, no force capable of welding the struggles of working-class people into a consistent alternative to Labor. Until this occurs, Woodridge, Bundamba and seats like them will remain safely in the back pocket of the Labor Party.
[Graham Matthews is the Democratic Socialist candidate for Dutton Park in the March 25 Brisbane City Council election.]