George Megalogenis on poll driven parties.

Stuck behind Rupert's pay wall

Poll-driven parties put the individual first at electors' expense

THE nuttiness in the Australian political system did not begin with Kevin Rudd's sacking in 2010.

The main parties have been yielding to personality-based politics since at least 2003.

It is worth reflecting on that period because many of the screwy election results since in the federal and state jurisdictions can be put down to the miscalculations both sides made when they were faced with a choice between old and new.

The leadership tussles were between John Howard and Peter Costello, and between Simon Crean and Kim Beazley.

The same stuff was being argued then as now: who will win us the next election?

Howard decided to run again, after previously hinting he would retire on turning 64. Costello, unwilling to damage the government, copped it sweet. Labor, meanwhile, let anger get the better of it and elected Mark Latham, not Beazley, after Crean fell over at the end of that year.

The truth is the nation was ready for a federal Labor government; or, failing that, a more moderate Coalition one, but it was denied by the match-up of Howard v Latham. Each side sent the wrong man to the ballot box.

Latham was an early warning of what the US Republicans have witnessed in their presidential soap opera this year. The fresh face received a surge in support. But the public interest in the new candidate vanished with the first gaffe. Remember troops out by Christmas?

This pattern of excess praise followed by punishment in extremis is the new abnormal in reporting politics. It is part of a wider problem of the digital age: the hijack of public debate by opinion polling.

By playing the short game, Latham gave Howard a fourth term. An explosion of middle-class welfare and the double-cross of Work Choices were the unintended consequences of Labor's impatience. But the public must also share some responsibility. Giving the Coalition control of the senate was surely a mistake.

What followed was a cycle of over-correction that may have some years yet to play out before a sense of stability is restored.

The electorate seemed to be acting rationally in the mid-noughties. Voters took out insurance against a long-term Coalition government in Canberra by sticking with long-term Labor governments at the state level. But this repeated the let-down. The implosion of the NSW government after its re-election in 2007 and of the Queensland government after 2009 were system failures of an equivalent scale to Work Choices: the people didn't deserve to be betrayed, but they made it so by sticking with the incumbent.

Again the primary blame lies with the opposition of the day. The conservatives in the rugby league states were like Latham's Labor in the federal parliament, painfully unready for office. Yet in each jurisdiction the reward for the opposition was a landslide just one term later because the devil we knew had exhausted us.

Howard lost not just government but his seat in 2007 while the Coalition shredded its next generation of leaders in Costello and Malcolm Turnbull in its first two years of opposition.

At the state level, Labor was wiped out in NSW last year, and party insiders expect a similar rout in Queensland next month.

But then the new boss was worse than the old boss. Here is the rub for voters. When they give a long-term government one too many wins, they deny themselves the right to scrutinise the alternative at the following election.

Labor people complain incessantly that Tony Abbott is trying to slide into office without having his policies tested. But the pot is roaring at the kettle. Rudd sailed into office without facing hard questions of policy detail and implementation, not just from the media but from his own side as well. To listen to his colleagues complain now about the dysfunction of his first term is to be reminded that they didn't do their due diligence before they elected him to replace Beazley mark II.

There were Coalition attacks on Rudd's character in 2007 that seemed to anticipate his flaws as a manager. Remember he dined with disgraced former West Australian premier Brian Burke, he drank too much at a strip club in the US? But the electorate picked those sledges for what they were: a tired old government seeking another term by default.

Rudd's failure to deliver is being repeated by Barry O'Farrell's Coalition in NSW. The method is different: Rudd tried to do too much, O'Farrell is doing too little. But the national interest suffers just the same. NSW is the state most in need of reform. Yet the Coalition is behaving as if it has all the time in the world. It has eschewed a Kennett-style shock for incrementalism.

In Western Australia and Victoria, where voters swapped governments just in time, leaving much tighter parliaments, reform appears to be no more forthcoming. Colin Barnett is the new Joh, yelling insults at Canberra. Ted Baillieu is the new Steve Bracks, a nice guy with a curiously mangled leader's voice.

Queensland is an unusual example that will prove the rule that changing governments one term too late denies the public the right to know what it is in for. LNP leader Campbell Newman is not even a member of parliament.

The focus on the leader is a reminder of the increasing presidentialisation of politics and the weakness of the main parties. Labor and the Coalition yield to the leader because there is no other way to sell themselves. Kevin07 and Can-Do Newman are brands that deliberately place individual above cause.

The irony is, the most effective government in the nation today is neither popular nor commands a majority in its own right. Julia Gillard has achieved more in the past 1 1/2 years than any government since Howard's first term between 1996 and 1998.

The punchline is it is Rudd's agenda she has been successfully negotiating with the Greens and independents.