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The by-election that won’t tell us much but means a lot
By-elections sometimes reflect important political trends, and sometimes they don’t. So why are we watching Canning so closely?
It was Saturday 26 March 1988, and Coalition supporters were cock-a-hoop. Just a week earlier twelve years of NSW Labor government had been swept away, big time, and now the federal electorate of Port Adelaide had swung to the Liberals by a whopping 11.1 per cent at a by-election caused by the resignation of Labor’s Mick Young.
Port Adelaide had stayed Labor – just – but double-digit swings are (or were) rare. Political observers could vividly recall the 14 per cent slide in Bass in 1975 that foretold the Whitlam government’s election demolition later that year.
And just a month before Labor’s knock in Port Adelaide, the Liberals had taken Adelaide in a by-election with an 8.4 per cent swing. For the five-year-old, twice re-elected (most recently, just nine months earlier) Hawke government, all was doom, gloom and introspection. Opposition leader John Howard felt obliged to warn his party room against complacency, insisting the next election was not a foregone conclusion, but his future looked bright…
