THE LIBERAL PARTY’s campaign message is pitched directly at Australian families. “Real action” on childcare, a $760 million boost to the education tax rebate and a twenty-six-week paid parental leave scheme are all designed to resonate with the kitchen-table economics of the “ordinary” family. But does this strategy reflect a sophisticated understanding of the voting behaviour of the Australian electorate?
Images of the family are not new in Australian elections, of course. On the campaign trail, politicians have long positioned family at the centre of society, taken their own families on the hustings, and even spoken of the nation itself as the “Australian family.” What is new is opposition leader Tony Abbott’s emphasis on his status as husband and father to demonstrate how he embodies “family values.” Abbott’s repeated and specific references to his own family at formal campaign events are even more unusual.
Through this language and imagery, the Liberals are trying to do two things at once: to exploit the perceived electoral advantage that Abbott’s home life offers and to solve the perceived electoral challenge of a female prime minister. In this narrative, Abbott is a family man who is surrounded by, and understands, women. Voters are invited to contrast the opposition leader with his opponent and to draw conclusions about the values and integrity of the candidates based on their home lives.
Election campaigns are about identification. Candidates take a stand on issues, make policy promises, and present a vision for the nation in the hope that their message will resonate with voters. When politicians give televised speeches, host photo opportunities and update Twitter feeds, they are attempting to reflect the hopes, fears and underlying values of “ordinary” people.
The televised campaign debate on 25 July demonstrated this very clearly. Both leaders referred to the values and priorities that matter to “Australian families” in their opening statements. The prime minister’s opening was unremarkable and transactional, promising that by delivering “a strong economy” Labor would “provide the services that families need.” The opposition leader’s statement was more specific and personal. He described his own family life as both informing his policies and qualifying him for the role of prime minister: “My wife Margie and I know what it’s like to raise a family, to wrestle with a big mortgage, with grocery bills, with school fees…” The personal experience of being a husband and father, along with his ministerial experience, means Abbott is able to “deliver for Australian families.”
The notion of the male politician as “family man” and the invocation of personal characteristics as credentials for political leadership have become more common over the past decade. It is part of the larger trend of personalising politics, but contrasts strikingly with the way earlier generations of leaders framed their message.
The idea that Bob Hawke might have promised to be a sound economic manager because of his ability to balance his family budget, or that Robert Menzies might have argued that his experience of fatherhood made him a more understanding prime minister, might seem ridiculous. But contemporary media coverage does not focus only on political qualifications or experience. We see glossy magazine spreads; we know the colour of the prime minister’s curtains or the name of the opposition leader’s family pets. Personal stories have become a key way for first-time leaders to connect with Australians and to lay claim to a deep foundation for their future success in politics. I will work hard for families, these leaders are saying, because as a father, as a husband, I understand.
In 2007, Kevin Rudd made explicit reference to his family in his campaign launch speech – not only to connect with the electorate, but also in an attempt to claim this area from John Howard, who had become the custodian of Australian “family values.” Rudd wrapped up his speech by reflecting on how good it was “to be back home” in Brisbane “with Thérèse and the kids,” and by assuring his wife that he “hadn’t forgotten that today’s our twenty-sixth wedding anniversary.”
Tony Abbott’s claim to represent family values because he and Margie “know what it’s like to raise a family” owes less to Rudd, however, than it does to Mark Latham. Launching Labor’s campaign in 2004, Latham twice explicitly referred to his wife and family. He reassured Australians that he could be trusted to fulfil his promise to keep interest rates low. The reason? “Janine and I have got a great, big mortgage. We live in a mortgage belt street. We come from a mortgage belt community.” Latham also spoke of the effect of his family on his personal character, reassuring voters that “Janine and the boys have taught me the power of caring,” they have “made me a better man.” Ultimately, Latham’s family had made him “a man strong enough to know that he can lead this nation well.”
This election, however, there is a key difference: the gender and marital status of the newly installed incumbent. As a result, Abbot’s emphasis on how family values inform his politics invites a comparative construction of the prime minister as lacking a family, and therefore “family values.” This implies that the authentic “family” involves being married or parenthood. In this construction, other valued familial relationships – daughter, sister, aunt, cousin or partner – are marginalised. Media coverage of the prime minister has played into this strategy by emphasising Gillard’s “single status.” A front-page article in the Age on 27 July, for example, described Gillard as “not only childless, but unmarried.”
The message embedded in Abbott’s narrative is worrying. The implication that only the personal experience of being married or having children allows a leader to understand the needs of “everyday Australians” (another nonsensical term) is troubling, and underestimates the sophistication of voters.
The emphasis on Abbott as a family man is also a mechanism for attempting to neutralise the perceived electoral threat posed by a female prime minister. The political and media conventional wisdom is that Abbott has always had trouble connecting with female voters, and that his “gaffes” as leader (when he implied that ironing was the domain of “housewives,” for example, or when he suggested, in response to Gillard’s proposal for a second debate, that “no doesn’t mean no”) have only made matters worse.
Abbott’s transparent rehabilitation as “female friendly” betrays the Liberals’ fear that Australian women will vote for the prime minister simply because she is a woman. The Liberals’ response is to assert that Abbott and his policies will be female-friendly because he is surrounded by, and comfortable with, women in both his home and working life.
It should be acknowledged that this image of Abbott predates both the campaign and Gillard’s prime ministership. We saw the opposition leader relaxing at home with “his women” in a 60 Minutes profile in May, and offering candid relationship advice to his daughters in Australian Women’s Weekly in January.
But the stakes have been raised by the campaign, and the political media seem happy to buy into the narrative. The Age has represented Abbott’s campaign as a bid to “woo female voters,” pointing in particular to the presence of his wife at a campaign event at a Brisbane childcare centre on 26 July and his family-centric language in the debate. The Herald Sun noted, in a similar vein, that when Abbott’s daughter Louise campaigned with him at the Mackay fish markets on 28 July it was “the fourth time in four days” that he was “joined by a female family member.”
The central premise – that Abbott needs to prove his female-friendly credentials and that, as a woman, Julia Gillard does not – seriously underestimates Australian voters. On election day, voters’ decisions are motivated by a range of factors, including their own experiences, pre-existing party preferences, a sense of connection with a party’s vision for the future, and their trust in leaders to provide personal, economic and national security. While many women will rightly celebrate Australia’s first female prime ministership, the decisions of Australian women (and men) at the ballot box will not be predetermined by gender. •
