7 - Vision

Summary

The presentation of a positive vision for Australian development and prosperity has been a central and enduring element of effective campaign communication. Party leaders vie for the prime ministership by asking voters to buy into a hopeful narrative of possibility; one that is always reliant on an explicit construction of, and implicit connection to, the shared cultural ideas of values, community, belonging and security explored in the previous chapters. Enduring political narratives of the Australian future combine these elements in their appeal to voters: This is what your nation might look like, and who you might become, if you vote for us instead of them. These appeals to possibility and hope are mechanisms of connection, through which a constituency can be constructed and maintained. In federal election campaigns this is the task of the party leader: to paint a picture for the nation's future that will personify the values central both to their party and to the Australian identity, and reflect both the electorate's frustrations with the present and dreams of the future.

Change of government elections offer the clearest window into the moments where a leader's vision connects with the electorate's priorities. Australians are notoriously loyal, and have voted an opposition in (or a government out) only six times in the elections held between the end of World War II and 2013: 1949, 1972, 1983, 1996, 2007 and 2013. These elections become part of political folklore, positioned as reflecting cultural and demographic shifts to herald a new era in Australian politics. In 1949, for example, Robert Menzies brought Labor's wartime government and post- war reconstruction to an end and gave voice to the ‘forgotten people’ he had been addressing in his radio broadcasts since the early 1940s (see Brett 1992). In 1983, a popular new leader restored Labor to power for the first time since the Whitlam government's 1975 dismissal (Haupt and Grattan 1983). In 1996, John Howard's vision of a ‘relaxed and comfortable’ nation brought Labor's record 13 years in government to an end (Williams 1997); and in 2013, a carefully controlled Tony Abbott came to power after a tumultuous period of Labor leadership changes and political uncertainty (MacCallum 2013).