3rd October 1998
My feet ached as I climbed out of the One Nation staff car outside the National Tally Room. A battered old Cortina, the property of Adam Miller, candidate for Eden Monaro, who had cleared his office out of the front seat by grabbing piles of maps, folders and how to vote cards and transferring them to the back.
My feet ached because I had been standing on them all day long, handing out how to vote cards. And for the three days before at pre-polling. And up and down suburban streets as I poked fliers into letterboxes.
It had been a long but interesting day at my selected booth, one in a Canberra suburb where fibro cottages lined up alongside the residences of barristers, colonels and senior public servants. A young Liberal, extolling the virtues of the aging Senator Margaret Reid, had been warned for trespassing inside the six metre zone of total exclusion. Independent Senate candidate Cec Harris had colourfully worked his way along the queue and disappeared inside, promising to vote for himself first and Pauline second. And three lanky young anarchists had been warned for encouraging people how not to vote.
³Don¹t you think that decision might have been made before the voters turned up here?² asked a pleasant young Democrat Socialist in between urging voters to ³Put Pauline Last². (She might have saved her breath -- Pauline was last on every how to vote card but the ones I was handing out!) After half an hour two police cars pulled up and a couple of policemen approached. The anarchists huddled nervously, determined to be arrested for their principles, but clearly not relishing the prospect.
The police marched past us and into the polling booth, emerging a few moments later with Cec Harris, who had apparently been continuing his election campaign inside. The disgruntled anarchists were relieved at their escape from justice, but aggrieved at not having been deemed important enough to be arrested.
The afternoon wore on, and I lent my chair to the young Liberal, who had been up stringing banners since two in the morning, was starting to glow from solar radiation, and now showing signs of fatigue. I cheered him up with thoughts of long hours of scrutineering to come.
I enjoy scrutineering, and though I¹d pretty well worked out how things were going in this election, I would have enjoyed seeing where preferences were going and sharing more good-humoured banter with the other workers before heading back to a well-earned drink at our election party. But I¹d been tapped to help out at the Tally Room, and I can¹t say that the prospect was uninviting.
The Tally Room was inside a huge showground building, and it was packed with more people, computers, mobile phones and television cameras than I had ever seen in one place before. Up front was a huge white cliff of figures, a list of every Reps candidate in Australia and their votes received. An imposing sight, but a bit of a white elephant because the computer behind the scenes was well ahead and as the night wore on, the figures available on any of the hundreds of computer monitors were several hours ahead of the tally board.
The rear of the room was made up of the studios of the major networks, and the heads of well-known political commentators could be seen high above the crowd. Kerry O¹Brien¹s strawberry blonde hair was immediately visible, but not his face, nor that of any others, as the cameras were facing the other way so as to use the crowd and the tally board as a background.
In between the commentators and the board was the floor of the tally room, packed with spectators and long rows of media tables, where journalists, radio broadcasters and their many, many monitors and microphones buzzed with a determined hum.
And people everywhere. Bob Hawke sauntered past, a credit to the art of the make-up merchants and hairstylists. Gareth Evans, a frown on his face. Barry Jones and Ian Sinclair, both retiring this election, but both looking remarkably genial about their future. Hundreds of lesser lights and party functionaries scurried about.
I suppose I was one of them, wearing a dark suit and the trademark One Nation tie, complete with optional signature. One photographer stopped and took a picture, possibly imagining that I was someone important rather than simply colourful.
Davids Oldfield and Ettridge were in their element, giving interviews, talking away on mobile phones, keeping a weather eye on the big board and computer monitors. David Ettridge was sombre -- he and I had seen enough of the figures to know that our shoestring campaign had garned roughly 10% of the vote, a respectable figure, but not concentrated enouigh in any one electorate to gain a seat. Even Pauline was in trouble and later on it became clear that she wouldn¹t be returning to Canberra, let alone with a dozen companions as she had predicted.
David Oldfield looked set to gain a Senate seat, but it gradually emerged that even though he had well outpolled the Democrat candidate the flow of preferences would see him robbed of a seat.
So it was with some bitterness that I heard Barry Jones say of Cheryl Kernot that she had been ³put in the rather unfair situation of having everyone preferencing against her.²
Well, Barry, how do you think every One Nation candidate and voter felt? Almost every candidate in Australia had to win their seats on primary votes, because there were very few preferences coming our way, a big ask even for a major party candidate in a three cornered contest. If Barry Jones thought the situation ³rather unfair² for Kernot, it was doubly or triply so for One Nation, not only preferenced against, but unfairly mocked and vilified.
Our lack of experience also counted against us. Very few candidates or campaign workers had had any political experience. Straight off the street, ordinary people doing extraordinary things. Not because they were being paid for it, or because they wanted their names in the paper, but simply because they cared.
And in the big picture, the result wasn¹t so much the disaster that it seemed. Sure, we didn¹t gain any Reps seats, and even Pauline¹s brave effort was unsuccessful, but one thing became clear. Crystal clear. We were the third force in Australian politics. In seat after seat One Nation candidates were coming third behind the major parties, in most cases outpolling the Democrats several times over. Very few of our candidates lost their deposits, but the Democrats, Greens and other small parties were going down in droves.
With around ten percent of the vote Australia-wide, this was a stunning result for a fledgling party. Simply stunning. Ten percent of the vote and less than half a percent of the seats in Parliament -- the unfairness is readily apparent.
And no, One Nation is not going away. Heather Hill won her Senate seat in Queensland in her own right, and she will be a Senator until 2004, two federal elections away. The party has now fought one federal campaign, the New South Wales State elections are coming up, and we are gaining experience and learning hard lessons each day.
Even now, the postmortems are being written up, the booth by booth results are being examined, mistakes identified and successes noted. Next time around, we¹ll do even better.
So, even though our enemies were writing One Nation off, I knew that we were now a solid part of the political landscape. We¹d gained more votes than they had, we had had an impact, and our party now had a wealth of experience.
Across Australia our campaign teams were reporting back that even though we had failed to win seats, the effort of working together had brought a wide number of individuals together into a new political family. Friendships had been made, dreams shared, and underneath it all a desire to do better next time around.
So if you want to know who was that One Nation staffer wandering around the National Tally Room with a happy smile on his face, it was me.
Peter Mackay
Canberra
5 Oct 1998