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Tasmanian
and State Politics Stream
NSW
Election - 22 March, 2003
Peter
van Onselen
University of Western Australia
Abstract:
The New South Wales election of March 22, 2003 presents an interesting
study in modern Australian political campaigning. With the backdrop of
war in Iraq, the incumbent Labor Government of Bob Carr went to the polls
challenged by a 34 year old Leader of the Opposition, John Brogden. The
Coalition was coming off a terrible set of results from the 1999 election.
In contrast the ALP was popular, cashed up and running on a track record
of sound economic management. The results saw the Coalition go backwards
on two-party preferred calculations, unable to make any head way into
the ALPs huge lower house majority. This paper details the campaign,
the policy issues and the aftermath of the Coalition defeat. When the
results are analysed a number of interesting findings become apparent.
The concept of state verse federal issues appears to be slowly eroding
in the modern political context. Elections in Australia are becoming increasingly
presidential, with respective leaders dominating the advertising campaigns.
In the aftermath of the defeat, the Coalition has been surprisingly reticent
to closely scrutinize why it performed so poorly. On the other side of
the political spectrum the pecking order in the upper ranks of the Labor
Partys ministerial team are becoming increasingly apparent. Each
of these issues will be examined, as will the results of the minor parties
and independents. The NSW election of 2003 highlighted the growing irrelevance
of state politics amongst voters in NSW, the benefits of incumbency, as
well as the increasing usage of professionalised campaigning techniques
by both major parties.
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