ABC news report of the Tampa affair and its political context, October 2001.
Throughout much of 2001, the Coalition had been trailing Labor in opinion polls, thanks to dissatisfaction with the government's economic reform programme and high petrol prices.[citation needed] The opposition Australian Labor Party had won a majority of the two-party-preferred vote at the previous election and had won a series of state and territory elections. Labor also recorded positive swings in two by-elections, taking the Queensland seat of Ryan and coming close in Aston.
In fact, voter concern with terrorism in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks in the United States was noted, with the rise in the combined primary votes of the major parties
from 79.61% at the previous election in 1998, to 81.17% at this election. There would be further increases in the combined major party primary vote in 2004 and 2007.
Another major issue was the collapse of the country's second-biggest airline Ansett Australia and the question of whether it should be given a bailout. The Coalition was opposed to any bailout because the collapse was not the government's fault.[citation needed] However, Labor supported a bailout, because the company's collapse was about to result in the biggest mass job loss in Australian history, whilst also arguing that the government was partially responsible for allowing Ansett to be taken over by Air New Zealand, a move which had caused Ansett's failure.[2] Although the two-party preferred result was reasonably close, the ALP recorded its lowest primary vote since 1934.[3]
During the 2001 election campaign, Labor made a 'GST rollback' a centrepiece of its election platform. Labor attempted to reprise the effects of the birthday cake interview by deriding the application of GST to cooked and uncooked chickens, but failed to ignite public response to the limited scope of the rollbacks applying only to gas and electricity bills. the election loss of Labor in 2001, would effectively end all serious opposition to GST.
Political scientists[who?] have suggested that television coverage has subtly transformed the political system, with a spotlight on leaders rather than parties, thereby making for more of an American presidential-style system. In this election, television news focused on international issues, especially terrorism and asylum seekers. Minor parties were largely ignored as the two main parties monopolised the media's attention. The election was depicted as a horse-race between Howard and Beazley, with Howard running ahead and therefore being given more coverage than his Labor rival.[4]
The disproportionality of the lower house in the 2004 election was 8.67 according to the Gallagher Index, mainly between the Liberal and Green Parties.The disproportionality of the lower house in the 2001 election was 9.43 according to the Gallagher Index, mainly between the Coalition and Labor Parties.
The following table indicates seats that changed hands from one party to another at this election. It compares the election results with the previous margins, taking into account redistributions in New South Wales, Western Australia, South Australia, Tasmania and both territories. As a result, it includes the seats of Macarthur and Parramatta, which were held by Liberal members but had notional Labor margins. The table also includes the new seat of Hasluck (retained by Labor); the abolished Northern Territory, which was divided into Lingiari (retained by Labor) and Solomon (retained by the CLP); and Paterson, a Labor seat made Liberal by the redistribution
^ abShayne Murphy had resigned from the Labor Party on 2 October 2001 and served out the rest of his term as an independent.
^For seats that were affected by the redistribution the Australian Electoral Commission calculated "notional" margins for the redistributed divisions by modelling the outcome of the previous election as if the new boundaries had been in place.[7]
^David Denemark, Ian Ward, and Clive Bean, Election Campaigns and Television News Coverage: The Case of the 2001 Australian Election. Australian Journal of Political Science. (2007) 42#1 pp: 89–109 online
