 Hi and welcome to this week's episode of Off the Hill, the ANU's weekly look at what's been happening inside the 2016 federal election campaign. As always, I'm joined by my co-hosts, constitutional law expert Ryan Goss and political marketing expert Andrew Hughes. And as always, if you're in Canberra on Tuesday night, get along and you can see us this week with John Hueson and Bob McMullen talking about the final issues of the campaign and probably giving some really well, really badly thought out predictions. OK, let's get started for this week. And Ryan, I know you've got some thoughts on this week of election launches, of campaign launches. Yeah, that's right, Jill. So coming up this this weekend, we have Malcolm Turnbull and the Liberal Party launching their campaign. And of course, last Sunday, we saw Bill Shorten launching his campaign. And this is a good thing. You know, Sea of Red in Sydney, rather. Look, I think these campaign launches really underline one of the farcical aspects of this campaign, which is that we are days out from the election now, and we still don't have the party's policy platforms. There's nothing wrong. For me, the side, if the policy launches are not a day on which to launch your policy, then what are they for? And voters deserve better. We've already had literally hundreds of thousands of people casting their votes before the full set of policies are out. If you want to have a launch and have a fancy party, that's fine. But the policies should be out at the start of the campaign, in full, ready for voters to scrutinize. And I think we've touched on this previously, right? Other countries do this. Exactly. And there's no reason we can't do it. It's something that's done in many other countries in the UK, for example, at the start of the campaign, the full set of policies comes out and then people have an argument over whether or not those policies are good. Instead of having an argument about, oh, when will this policy be released or when will these costings be released? People out there, voters need to know what the parties stand for early on so that they can tease it out and scrutinize it and argue about it. We haven't even really talked about costings in this campaign. Usually that's the one good old reliable, right? That we can fight about costings. But we know what the campaign launches are for this time, and it's just to pivot public attention. That's right. It's a great publicity occasion. I'm sure this is something that... Mr. Publicity. I want a title. No. I feel honored. No substance or flash. That's all right. All spin, no substance. Go, Andrew. What are your thoughts on it? Oh, look, campaign launches, don't you love them? I see red. I think this is what Andrew just said, but we don't love them. Like I'm waving behind, you know, Bill Shorten. Every time we got up to 100 positive policies. Look, the whole point here about this... The Questacon... The Questacon admission fees? Huge issue in the campaign. How could you, Jill, not overlook that? I should get up and leave right now. You haven't talked about that issue. But this is textbook marketing, right? It is. It is textbook marketing, that's for sure, because it's all about making sure you don't overpromise and underdeliver while in government, because Labor has a big lesson there from Kevin Rudd. He did exactly that. Let's not forget he came in with a huge, you know, public support, huge news poll ratings. 12 months later, he was on the slide. I mean, 12 months later, he was getting towards the point where people were already talking about leadership change, which is what happened. There were other things going on with Rudd, though. Exactly right. But Obama did the same thing, too. Obama, first time up, was hope. Second time up was not about hope, it was about progression. So, and this is the same thing with Labor. Trying to go a lot less on the actual specific details means that you can't be done for it later on if you get elected or, you know, heaven forbid, if you go into the post-election period where people might rake over the coals a bit more, you can't be then picked on for, hey, you came up with this idea, what made you think that? So, in a way, it's a good marketing tactic because it's all about the gloss, it really is. We won't have another greatest moral challenge about time, will we? That's right, yeah, we won't. It's all about image management nowadays, so the bigger debate is how you manage your image more than about managing a policy. Now, kind of the problem, my theory on this is that this is the flip side of compulsory voting and I'm very pro-compulsory voting it. It avoids the Trump and Corbyn kind of whiplash. What we do get though is incredibly dull campaigns and that has a normative kind of effect, right? I mean, that's problematic when voters don't know exactly what they're voting for. To kind of prove my point, I think this week's focus on Medicare kind of elucidates that the ALP hasn't said anything specific about Medicare, they've just said, hey guys, Medicare, remember health. And the reason they do that is because, I mean, voters love health. ALP voters particularly love health. 25% of ALP identifiers are people who not necessarily voted for the ALP but say that they are ALP lifelong voters, rated health or Medicare is the most important issue in the 2013 election. And among those, 70% thought that the ALP had the closest policy to their own view. Among liberal identifiers, 8% still thought that the ALP had the closest policy to their own position. So it's 8% of coalition voters that you can swing if they're thinking about Medicare. It's cynical, but it works, right? Exactly right, yeah. And exactly why Medicare is such a strong issue for Labor too, because it's a reminder of why you vote for Labor. But also it's a tangible issue which everyone can relate to because health is so important to everyone out there. And it plays well for Labor for that reason. It's a localization of your message. So hard in politics when you're doing a mass communications campaign like this is to make that message hit home in a point which changes your behavior at an individual level. That 8% need to be motivated emotionally to change their behavior. This is how you do it. And health is what does it. And I think we've seen newspaper headlines this week accusing Labor of running a scare campaign. We saw a very lengthy interview with Lee Sales and Bill Shorten on Thursday night about whether or not this was a scare campaign. And I think whether or not Labor's claims about what the coalition will do to Medicare is a scare campaign. I think what this reflects to me is one of the difficulties that Malcolm Turnbull is in this campaign. Voters know that in the first Abbott Hockey budget the coalition was willing to mess around with Medicare and mess around with their GP. And Malcolm Turnbull is in a very tricky spot here similar to what Julia Gillard was in 2010. He both wants to stand on his government and his party's record but also distance himself from Tony Abbott. So I think in that sense it's a tricky one for Malcolm Turnbull to find his way out of even if it is some of a scare campaign of sorts. The coalition could not talk about health and that sort of bottom line. Now on Tuesday night on sort of hopefully a bit more substantial issues on Tuesday night the ANU hosted the annual Lionel Murphy Memorial Lecture and Penny Wong gave a really lovely I think speech about marriage equality. Yeah, a lovely speech but I think also a very hard-hitting one in some ways. Yeah, an important one, yeah. An important one. And it's an issue that we haven't seen a lot of in the campaign in most of the country but I think we're seeing it being discussed in a smaller number of seats and in certain demographics. It must be popping up in Batman and Grainler and Melbourne surely. In a number of seats and I think particularly for a younger demographic as well that may be more important. But look, why this is interesting to me is yes, it's interesting as an election issue but it's really I think gonna shape the dynamics of whoever wins after the election. What do you think will happen? So if Labor wins the election, they have said that they'll legislate for marriage equality within 100 days so we could see same-sex marriages happening legally in Australia in the not-too-distant future. Would that be a binding vote on ALP members? At this stage the vote would be, I can't remember the position of the vote but at this stage in this parliament my understanding is that it would be. I think they hadn't... And that it wasn't in the... Nailed it down. And but there will be a vote in this term and that that will go through with a mandated Labor wins. But I think the more interesting thing is if the coalition wins, they've said that they'll have a plebiscite, a nationwide vote. None of the details of how that will work are clear. They're not set down anywhere. There'll need to be a debate quickly about what form that plebiscite takes. Is it compulsory voting? Is it postal voting? What form is the question? If it succeeds, will it automatically get up? None of this is clear and that will very quickly become a source of division within the coalition but also potentially within the other political parties. It's a train wreck. It's potentially a train wreck. Even on that side and Penny Wong highlighted a number of reasons why gay and lesbian Australians should be concerned about that as well as the rest of Australians about the divisiveness and the anger that might be raised. It will open up all sorts of horrible cleavages I think. Yeah and I think that's the danger to on this issue and looking even beyond into the future too. If Malcolm Turnbull's got to go back to some of the policies he holds dear to his heart like climate change and republic for example and the indigenous recognition now that Bill Sean's talking about a treaty that's another issue which is going to have to be discussed. They're going to have to face that. They are going to have to face it and these issues you know what we put them in the back benefit way too long as a nation and it's about time we now have to tackle them and... But there's never any imperative to talk about them. Yeah exactly right. Another party wants to talk about them moving into an election. When you have that first year there's been leadership problems right that have prevented these issues from being sorted. So look fingers crossed I guess after this election there'll be some clear air because we know they're not going to be discussed before an election. They just turned voters off which is you know... Who's to judge? Yeah and I think it gets into that theme of you know a lot of negativity at the moment in politics as well and it's a long campaign. People are a little bit tired at the moment of politics. People are tired. People are very tired. If anything will make them more tired it's a plebiscite. There is absolutely no need for this vote. Parliament can legislate for it you know in the click of a finger there's absolutely no need to have this nationwide vote. Yeah it was absolutely a handball off to a future time that is going to come back to really bite I think. Now final thoughts for the week? Final thoughts for the week. Negative scare campaign. I don't think it's going to happen for the coalition. I want to go for the fact that next week I think if anything coalitions go very quiet because they don't want to give any edge at all to Labor in the week ahead. I think we'll see a very quiet positive campaign to round off for the coalition. And Ryan in your final thought for the campaign because you'll be sunning yourself on a well-deserved holiday next week. I'll be in glorious Queensland next week but my final thought is that as we're filming this the results of the Brexit referendum are still coming in it's still too close to call. It could well have a major effect on Australian politics in the next week and the next six months. I think, well yeah you're probably right which is a shame because I don't think much will change either way. I think my notes kind of dire that I think we wouldn't see an election this boring anywhere and I'm an ardent supporter of compulsory voting tell all my international colleagues you're mad why don't you mandate voting maybe their answer is because you get campaigns like this. Yeah exactly right. So maybe I need to take a long hard look at myself in some respect. Don't be so hard on yourself Jill. As always thanks for watching and if you're in Canberra remember to pop along and see us at the Crawford School on Tuesday. We'll see you all next week.