‘This campaign is all about…’ Dissecting
Australian campaign narratives
David Bartlett, Australian National University
Jennifer Rayner, Australian National University
Abstract
It has sometimes been suggested that there are only a handful of campaign narratives in
existence, and that political parties repeatedly recycle these when running for elected
office. In this paper, we test this suggestion by dissecting the narratives communicated
by Australia’s major political parties over 10 years of state and federal election
campaigning. We find that just six narratives dominate in Australian electoral
discourse, and explore how these narratives are linked to issues such as incumbency
and the electoral context.
Keywords: Australian elections, campaigning, narratives, political communication
Introduction
For all the talk of change and innovation in this ‘postmodern era’ of political campaigning
(Norris 2000), we are often struck by a sense of déjà vu at election time. It seems that every
election is the most important in a generation, with a choice that has never been more stark.
One or other party is always lambasting its opponents as corrupt, incompetent or out of touch;
promising to end waste, cut debt or restore accountability; and offering a miracle panacea to
whatever currently ails the electorate. The cast of campaign characters often feels familiar
too: the saintly opposition versus the compromised and craven government; the decisive and
experienced Prime Minister versus the untested and unreliable alternative; the future
visionaries versus the conservative reactionaries. In theory, political parties have an infinite
number of themes and messages to choose from when preparing their pitch for office, as each
election has its own unique context and dynamics. In practice however, it appears that parties
stick closely to a handful of common campaign scripts, even as they take up new tools and
technologies to disseminate them.
This observation has sometimes been bandied about by columnists and commentators, but
to date no effort has been made to demonstrate it using empirical data. Understanding the
specific narrative frameworks political actors use to influence and persuade during election
campaigns is not only a matter of academic interest, but is also important for fostering a more
informed electorate which can recognise and decode such persuasion attempts. Armed with
Somers and Gibson’s (1994) concept of ‘public narratives’, we therefore set out to explore
whether parties do indeed draw upon a common set of election campaign scripts, and, if so,
what stories these tell.
Telling political stories
The central importance of narrative in constructing our understanding of the world around
us has long been recognised by scholars in the social and political sciences. Woodstock
(2002, p. 41) argues that: ‘as constructed forms entailing selection, edition, condensation,
repetition and exclusion, nonfiction narratives construct reality.’ Paraphrasing Fisher (1987),
she further suggests: ‘story structures play a crucial social function; they enable us to take the
complexity of life and condense it in a way that renders it meaningful’ (Woodstock 2002, p.
Copyright © 2014 (David Bartlett & Jennifer Rayner). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs (CC
BY_ND) License. For information on use, visit www.creativecommons.org/licenses. Cite as Bartlett, D. and Rayner, J. (2014), ‘‘This
campaign is all about…’ Dissecting Australian campaign narratives’, Communication, Politics & Culture, vol. 47 (1), pp. 51-68.
COMMUNICATION, POLITICS & CULTURE – VOL. 47 (1) (2014)
46). While many scholars have focused on the individual stories we tell about—and to—
ourselves, Somers and Gibson (1994) point out that stories also exist at a broader level in the
form of public narratives which provide a basis for shared understanding of events and social
phenomena. Like individual stories, these public narratives have ‘drama, plot, explanation,
and selective appropriation’ but are produced by institutions, groups and agencies to provide
some external account of themselves (Somers and Gibson 1994, p. 62).
Although hard-headed political warriors might baulk at such ephemeral language, the
construction of public narratives is clearly a core activity for parties and candidates who seek
to influence public discourse and govern aspects of the public sphere. As authors such as
Hammer (2010), Westen (2008), Smith (2003) and Chilton and Schaffner (2002) have noted,
the stories politicians tell us help to make abstract concepts such as the economy and
international relations concrete and relatable to our daily lives; explain why any given policy
is preferable to others available; construct a common sense of national identity; and obfuscate
the real purpose or outcomes of political decisions, amongst other things. Narratives are
particularly important during elections because they ‘affect our actions in response to or in
anticipation of political events’ and so play ‘a critical role in the construction of political
behaviour’ (Paterson and Renwick Monroe 1998, p. 316). Parties and candidates may reach
out to voters through the latest data mining techniques, they may flood the airwaves with
advertisements and clog social media with their Tweets and posts, but at the heart of all this
campaign activity is a story. A story about what is at stake in this election, how your vote will
make a difference, and why they deserve your support above others. A story which elicits
‘emotions of fear and hope, requiring active participation’ and which ‘personalise[s] the
impersonal and connect[s] the disconnected.’ (Woodstock 2002, pp. 40–42). This storytelling
‘prompt[s] people to embrace the valorised identities, play stirring roles, and have the
fulfilling experiences that political leaders strive to evoke for them’ (Smith, 2003, p.45), and
so enlists individual voters to a party or candidate’s coalition of support (Hammer, 2010,
p.270). When we refer to ‘campaign narratives’ throughout this paper then, we are referring
to the range of stories Australia’s major political parties tell as part of their campaigning for
elected office.
In exploring these campaign narratives, it is important to distinguish between such public
storytelling and the narrower concept of framing. Discussions of political communication
often focus on how political actors use language to ‘frame’ issues or events in particular
ways, and so shape the public’s understanding of them (see, for example Boin, t’Hart and
McConnell 2009; Froehlich and Rudiger 2006; Pan and Kosicki 2001; Esser, Reinemann and
Fan 2000). For example, the social reality of illicit drug use can variously be framed as a law
and order problem, a health and wellbeing challenge or a minor social nuisance depending on
the selection and emphasis of information by public actors such as politicians. The use of
different frames justifies and normalises distinct responses; an increased police presence at
drug hot-spots makes sense within a law and order frame but is incomprehensible within the
context of a health and wellbeing one. Framing is a critical tool for parties when presenting
their electoral agendas, as this allows them to define the scope and nature of policy issues in
ways which then favour their proposed actions or solutions (Aaroe, 2011). However, these
frames are generally erected around individual issues, such that voters are encouraged to view
the state of the economy in a particular light, or consider asylum-seekers within a national
security context rather than a humanitarian one (O’Doherty and Augoustinos, 2008). The
campaign narrative weaves these individual issue frames together into a broader, allencompassing story about the state or nation’s future, and the kind of political leadership
needed to successfully navigate the road ahead. Framing is therefore an important tool for
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narrative construction, but issue frames are more specific and contextual than campaign
narratives.
Cases and methods
To explore the stories parties tell on the campaign trail, we examined campaign materials
produced by the different branches of the Australian Labor Party (ALP) and the Liberal Party
of Australia (LPA) across a decade of federal and state election campaigning (2004 to 2013).
This timeframe was selected because it provided a range of different political contexts in
which to explore campaign narratives, including elections fought by first-term through to
fifth-term governments, those resulting in government changing hands and those preserving
the status quo. We decided to include state election campaigns primarily to generate a
sufficiently large data set for analysis, but also because past Australian research has tended to
overlook campaigns and elections outside of the federal sphere.
In examining campaign materials from this period, we specifically looked at: 1) the party’s
campaign slogan; 2) the speech delivered by the party leader at the official campaign launch;
3) the television advertisements released by the party during the official campaign period;
and 4) printed collateral such as direct mail and flyers wherever available. The majority of the
slogans, speeches and collateral items were obtained directly from the parties’ campaign
websites via the Pandora web archive, while the television advertisements were primarily
located on YouTube. In a small number of cases1 the original materials could not be located,
and so we have relied on media reportage of these speeches and advertisements in these
instances. In addition to collecting these materials, we also compiled basic data about the
context of each campaign, including who the party leader was and the duration of their
leadership, the number of terms in government/opposition the party had served at the time of
the campaign, and what the ultimate outcome was. In all, we gathered data on 35 ALP and
LPA campaigns—eight within the federal sphere and 27 at the state level2.
In analysing these materials, we looked for key words and phrases which were repeated
across the four different formats, and particularly at those used by the parties to describe
themselves and their opponents. Based on our own experiences delivering and writing
campaign materials, we also searched for statements such as: ‘this election is all about...’ and
‘voters face a clear choice between...’ as we were aware that parties craft such statements to
communicate their core narrative in the clearest possible way with the least-informed voter in
mind.
We began by reviewing each set of campaign items produced by a party for a particular
election, and then summarising the core story told by these materials in one to two lines.
Having undertaken this process, it became apparent that the same six narratives were
appearing repeatedly with only minor contextual details and variations—confirming a view
formed by the paper’s first-named author during his own time in politics. We then grouped
the campaigns which employed these themes together so that we could examine how each
was constructed and what distinguished it from the other narratives. We also looked for
commonalities in when these different narratives were deployed, to explore how they were
linked to issues such as incumbency and the electoral context.
In the following section we outline these six narratives and identify the campaigns from
our data set which deployed them, as well as highlighting our observations about the
contextual factors which appear to have played a role in this. In dissecting these narratives,
we have particularly focused on four elements highlighted by Somers and Gibson:
•
•
•
plot—who are the main characters and what are the key focal points?
drama—what is at stake?
explanation—how are events organised and causality attributed?
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•
selective appropriation—what symbols or frames are called into use?
In classifying the campaigns by their core narrative, we acknowledge that the parties in our
data set exemplified these to differing degrees, and sometimes drew on elements from a
number of different narratives. However, with the exception of the campaigns listed in Table
7 under Mixed narratives, we found that all of the campaigns studied ultimately placed more
emphasis on one narrative than any others, and we have sorted them on this basis in the tables
below.
The narratives
New hope
Perhaps the most inspiring of the narratives to emerge from out data set is New hope, a
story which seeks to transcend voter cynicism and re-engage the public by fostering a
renewed sense of optimism and possibility. In this narrative, voters are presented with a
choice between the future and the past: between an out-of-date or out-of-touch incumbent
who represents ‘politics as usual’, and a fresh, energetic leader who has the vision and drive
to fashion a smarter, more flexible and more positive politics for the times ahead. At stake is
the very future of the nation or state itself, as the New hope narrative emphasises emerging
opportunities for social, economic and technological betterment, but frames the election as an
exceptional moment when such opportunities must be seized by the collective will of the
people. In essence, the New hope narrative tells voters: ‘We are the party of tomorrow. We
will build a brighter, fairer future for everyone to share, so seize this historic moment for
change by voting for us on election day’.
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Taken together, these symbols and frames seem designed to engage voters beyond the level
of their individual material interests, and instead involve them in a collective movement for a
better future. As evidenced by Table 1b, the narrative’s emphasis on change and renewal
suggests that it is primarily—perhaps exclusively—a tool of opposition parties. Furthermore,
its use appears to be constrained both by the need for a leader who is seen as new and fresh to
anchor it, and by the public mood, as voters who are focused on individual concerns are
unlikely to respond to its more communal themes. This perhaps explains why it is the most
rarely-used narrative of our six, with only three of the 35 campaigns in our data set
employing the New hope story exclusively.
Interestingly, the LPA appears to have attempted to combine New hope elements with
another narrative during the 2010 federal election campaign, as did the ALP at the 2013
federal poll. However as we discuss below (see Mixed cases) both parties lacked leaders who
could genuinely be described as new or fresh and so were unable to gain the level of traction
they may have hoped for with this.
Time’s up
The second narrative to emerge from our data set is Time’s up, a story which seeks to
harness public dissatisfaction and whip it into a wave of anti-government sentiment capable
of driving incumbents out of office. In the Australian media, campaigns employing this
narrative are often referred to as ‘It’s time’ campaigns, after the slogan of the Gough
Whitlam-led ALP campaign which swept Labor into office in 1972. However, we have
deliberately not used that title here because we believe the substance and symbolism of
Labor’s 1972 campaign was much more closely aligned with the New hope narrative above
than the Time’s up story discussed here.
In particular, where parties running a New hope narrative focus primarily on their leader
and the future, the Time’s up story is first and foremost about a party’s opponents and their
past record of incompetence, corruption, disinterest or waste. The narrative presents the
election as a choice between a professional and competent opposition with practical solutions
to fix the nation or state’s problems, and a corrupt or degraded government which is only
interested in prolonging its own survival. As with the New hope narrative, this story
emphasises that the future is at stake, but asks people to vote against a nightmarish outlook of
never-ending traffic congestion, endless hospital waiting lists and crumbling schools, rather
than for a positive future vision. Its core message is a negative one, but the Time’s up
narrative leavens this negativity with messages about more reliable services and accountable
governance—prosaic things that will improve voters’ day-to-day lives. In sum, the narrative
says: ‘You know we are heading in the wrong direction and after all these years, this pathetic
government is completely incapable of turning things around. Only a change of leadership
can get things back on track now’.
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As Table 2a highlights, the Time’s up narrative aims to eat away at the credibility of
incumbent governments and incite voters into terminating them with extreme prejudice. As
such, it is clearly a narrative which can only be deployed from opposition. Table 2b indicates
that it has been a very popular choice for Australia’s opposition parties over the past decade,
as 10 of the 35 campaigns in our data set made use of it. The frequency with which the
narrative was used may simply reflect the time period studied—which included a number of
long-term incumbent governments—or it may be that this narrative represents a fall back
option for parties which lack other convincing options. Furthermore, within our data set this
narrative was used exclusively by the Liberal/National parties, however this may simply have
been because those parties were out of office in all Australian states for much of the past
decade. We believe that the Time’s up narrative lends itself to use by opposition parties of
any ideological persuasion, but it would be necessary to examine the period before Labor’s
electoral dominance of the late 1990s and early 2000s to determine whether this is, in fact,
the case.
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Interestingly, the cases identified in Table 2b suggest that the Time’s up narrative is only
successful when used against very long-term incumbents—those running for their fourth or
subsequent terms—or where there is an existing sense of discontent within the wider
community. The Tasmanian, Victorian, Queensland and New South Wales opposition parties
all attempted to run this narrative against reasonably well-regarded incumbent Labor
Governments at their respective state elections throughout 2006 and 2007, and were not
successful in replacing the government in any of these cases. Each party ran with the same
narrative again in the elections of 2010 and 2011, and this time two of the four (Victoria and
New South Wales) defeated their Labor opponents, while the Tasmanian Liberals reduced
Labor’s support to the point where it was forced to form a minority government with the
Greens. Although there were obviously factors at play in all these elections beyond the
campaign itself, this does suggest that the Time’s up narrative gains potency the longer
incumbents are in office.
Job isn’t done
While the previous two narratives are primarily stories told by opposition parties, the third
n narrative to emerge from our research is firmly a tool of incumbent governments pitching
for a return to office. The Job isn’t done narrative presents the election as a contest between
an energetic, hard-working government which is making solid gains in key policy areas, and
an opposition which would undo these hard-won achievements. This narrative suggests that
the government’s accomplishments to date are just a taste of what still lies ahead if they are
re-elected, but emphasises that progress depends on them staying in the driver’s seat. Echoing
the famous US campaign injunction not to change horses in midstream, the core message of
the Job isn’t done narrative is: ‘We've come a long way in just a few short years, but there's
still plenty to do so we can't afford to lose momentum now. Vote for us to keep things
moving ahead’.
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As illustrated by Table 3a, the Job isn’t done narrative is a largely positive story which
allows incumbent governments to use the achievements of their first term/s as the basis of
their claim for a future one. The evidence from our data set also suggests that it can be quite a
useful narrative, as seven of the eight parties identified in Table 3b were re-elected after
deploying it.
However, a closer examination of the election outcomes suggests that this story’s power
declines somewhat over time: of the three third-term governments which deployed it, the
Brumby Government was voted out of office and the Bartlett Government needed to form a
minority coalition with The Greens to remain in office. Only Morris Iemma’s NSW Labor
Government was successfully re-elected outright after employing this narrative in a third term
of office. This makes a certain amount of intuitive sense, as after a lengthy period in office,
voters are likely to respond to a government’s claim that it still has work to do by asking why
it has not done this work already, and what exactly it has been doing during its years in
power.
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As a natural counterpoint to the Time’s up narrative, it is not surprising that the Job isn’t
done narrative was exclusively deployed by the ALP in the past decade. Again, we feel that
this narrative should be fit for use by incumbent governments from either side of the political
divide, but would need to test this by surveying a longer time period.
Experience vs. inexperience
The idea that the use of these different narratives may be linked more to governing status
than party ideology is given strength by the fact that our fourth narrative was employed an
equal number of times by both sides of politics in the past decade. The Experience vs.
inexperience narrative offers a comparison between a stable, reliable government and its
untested or unpredictable opponents, and tells voters that they have little to gain but much to
lose by changing the nation or state’s leadership. Employed exclusively by incumbent parties
within our data set, this narrative makes a virtue of predictability and argues that the times
demand cool and experienced heads at the top of government. Its core message offers both
reassurance and threat, as it says: ‘Things are going well thanks to our solid leadership, and
we’ve got the skills and experience to make sure they stay that way. But if you vote for
someone else, you’ll put everything at risk’.
As Table 4a highlights, the implied promise of the Experience vs. inexperience narrative is
that events will continue on their existing, satisfactory trajectory if the government is reelected. Despite essentially arguing for the status quo then, the narrative cleverly frames this
as a forward-looking agenda by arguing that events are conspiring to alter that trajectory, and
that skill, experience and concerted effort will be needed to maintain it. The fact that this
narrative emphasises a party’s record over any new plans for the future no doubt accounts for
its popularity with long-term incumbents—of the seven campaigns listed in Table 4b, four
featured incumbent governments pitching for a fourth or fifth term in office. The longer a
government is in power, the more likely it is to have implemented its major policy initiatives
and exhausted its stock of future ideas, so campaigning on experience is a useful way to draw
attention away from this potential weakness and direct it towards an opponent’s own area of
disadvantage.
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Interestingly however, the other three instances of this narrative within our data set came
from first and second-term governments. A closer examination of the context of these
campaigns indicates that two featured a period of extended turmoil within the opposing
parties: the Liberal Party had churned through four leaders since the last state election when
the second-term Carpenter Government employed this narrative at the West Australian state
election in 2008 (Phillips 2009), while the first-term Barnett Government used this narrative
in a state campaign which was all but eclipsed by federal Labor’s extended leadership tussle
between Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard in 2013 (Holmes 2013). In the third case, the West
Australian Liberals gave the ailing first-term Gallop Government an electoral gift by
unilaterally announcing plans for a Kimberly to Perth canal which were quickly found to be
uncosted and disowned by the federal Liberal Government (Black and Phillips 2005). This
suggests that a party’s decision to deploy the Experience vs. inexperience narrative is affected
by the perceived calibre of its opponents as well as by its own internal imperatives. If this is
the case, it helps to explain why the incumbent parties in our data set did not use this
narrative as frequently as the Job isn’t done story—inviting a comparison between yourself
and your opponents is a risky strategy unless you are certain the opponents will come off
worse from that evaluation.
We’ve listened and learned
The fifth narrative identified through our survey of past Australian election campaigns is
perhaps the most interesting, as it has been used by both incumbents and opposition parties at
various stages in the electoral cycle. The narrative of We’ve listened and learned is also
somewhat unique in that it primarily aims to rebuild political capital by promising a break
with the party’s own unpopular policies or behaviours of the past. Rather than campaigning
on their record, parties using this narrative effectively campaign against it, telling voters:
‘We understand we’ve got things wrong in the past and let you down. But we’ve learned
from those mistakes and if you give us another chance, we can do much better’. As indicated
by Table 5a, this narrative focuses almost exclusively on expressing contrition and
demonstrating willingness to change; the future and the party’s opponents barely rate a
mention.
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Based on analysis of the campaigns listed in Table 5b, it appears that there are two distinct
occasions when parties wish voters to believe that they have listened and learned.
Unsurprisingly, the first is when an incumbent party is facing a disgruntled and dissatisfied
electorate which is expected to punish it severely at the coming poll. The 2011 NSW election
and the 2012 Queensland poll were both predicted to be electoral wipe-outs for the incumbent
Labor parties following governing terms which were plagued by scandal and policy failure
(Holmes 2012; Holmes 2011). Viewed in this context, the We’ve listened and learned
narrative is less an argument for a fresh chance than an attempt to minimise the electoral pain
inflicted by a hostile public. That is certainly how Premier Kristina Keneally’s use of this
narrative was interpreted after she took the unprecedented step of appearing in a television
commercial apologising to the people of New South Wales for the events of her party’s
previous term in government (see, for example, Aston 2011).
Interestingly however, the other two examples of this narrative in our data set came from
opposition parties which were contesting their first election after being voted out of office. At
the 2006 South Australian election and the 2013 West Australian one, the respective
opposition parties seemed focused on demonstrating that they had received and understood
the message delivered by voters at the previous poll, and spent the past three years adjusting
their priorities and approach accordingly. Both parties employed slogans and language which
appeared on the surface to be directed towards their opponents, but which could also easily be
interpreted as addressing negative perceptions about themselves which had accumulated over
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their previous terms in office. Rehabilitating the party’s relationship with voters is an
important step for any recently-rejected government, and the We’ve listened and learned
narrative appears well suited to this process. However, we are unable to determine whether
this is a common narrative choice for newly out-of-office parties because there were only
three such cases within our data set—the two discussed here and the Liberal Party’s
campaign for the 2010 Federal Election. The Liberal Party did not make use of this narrative
during that campaign, however that is probably because the Labor Government’s leadership
instability and policy troubles provided it with juicier options.
It is also worth noting that none of the parties in our data set which employed the We’ve
listened and learned narrative were successful in securing election or re-election. This should
not be surprising, given that parties which find themselves at the point of expressing public
penance are likely to have a wide range of other factors working against their electoral
efforts.
Fear
The final story identified by our research should be familiar to voters with even the most
limited exposure to political campaigning: the Fear narrative. This narrative seeks to incite a
visceral, irrational and negative response by appealing to the most basic of human emotions.
Entirely negative in tone, it tells voters that they, the people close to them and the nation or
state as whole will be irrevocably harmed if the opposing party is allowed to get their hands
on the levers of power. In one iteration, the Fear narrative capitalises on a lack of detail about
an opponent’s plans to suggest that they are hiding something dreadful. In another, it portrays
an opponent’s stated preference for particular solutions or ideologies as evidence of their
doctrinaire and unfeeling approach. In both cases however, the core message is the same:
‘Our opponents are out to get people like you. Don’t let them destroy your way of life’.
While Fear is perhaps the most distinctive narrative of those discussed here, our analysis
leads us to believe that it does not actually exist as a standalone story. Rather, we argue that it
should be viewed as an add-on which parties deploy to varying extents alongside a number of
the narratives discussed above. As illustrated by Table 6b, seven of the parties in our data set
made use of the Fear narrative, but in each case this was as reinforcement for one of three
main narratives: the Job isn’t done, Experience vs. inexperience or We’ve listened and
learned stories (an eighth case which combined this with another story from our set is
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discussed below under Mixed narratives). This suggests that the Fear story is not sufficiently
broad to support an entire election campaign, but does provide a means for parties to tear
down challengers who they perceive as a real threat.
Despite observing that Fear does not stand alone as a campaign narrative, we do believe that
it can, and should, be distinguished from more general negative attacks or critiques of an
opponent. All of the campaigns in our data set made some use of negative language,
symbolism and framing—particularly those using the Time’s up and Experience vs.
inexperience narratives. But only the campaigns identified here marshalled the specific set of
tropes outlined in Table 6a in such a way as to make people feel actively afraid, suggesting
that the Fear narrative is something distinct from the commonplace negativity of
campaigning.
The final observation to make about the Fear narrative is that it appears to be primarily a
story told by incumbent parties, with the notable exception of the West Australian ALP at the
2013 State Election3. Furthermore, incumbent parties resort to this narrative when the
election outcome is expected to be either very close, or result in a significant swing against
them. It is hardly a new observation to say that parties resort to attacking when they feel
under threat, but the evidence presented here on when the Fear narrative has been deployed
really just underscores that point. It also suggests that voters and media pundits have it right
in seeing the use of the Fear narrative as a sign of a party’s own anxiety about its electoral
chances.
Mixed narratives
While most of the campaigns we examined ultimately displayed more elements of the New
hope, Time’s up, Job isn’t done, Experience vs. inexperience or We’ve listened and learned
narratives than any other, there were two campaigns which genuinely appeared to use tropes
from multiple narratives in equal measure. These campaigns are identified below in Table 7.
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Our primary observation about these campaigns is that they appear to be examples of
conflicting imperatives driving mixed narrative choices, rather than representing distinct
narrative forms. The Liberal Party’s 2010 federal campaign drew heavily on the symbols and
frames of the New hope narrative, including by highlighting community values and national
pride, promising to re-orient politics towards ‘the people’ and emphasising opportunities to
build a better future. However, the party also presented its leadership team as professional
and competent ‘fixers’ rather than inspirational figures, and had a significant focus on the
failings of the incumbent Labor Government. This suggests that the party wanted to
campaign on hope and change after the upheavals of the Rudd/Gillard years, but lacked a
leader who could convincingly pull off this narrative in its entirety. It also suggests some
internal struggle between the desire to present a positive, forward-looking agenda and the
pragmatic benefits of tapping into voter discontent with the incumbents. It is worth noting
that the party did not make the same mistake in 2013—opting for a clear and consistent
Time’s up narrative which helped deliver it to power.
Similarly, one facet of the ALP’s 2013 re-election effort was a classic New hope narrative,
with Kevin Rudd at the centre of a campaign which emphasised a new approach to politics
and visionary leadership for the future. This was an unprecedented narrative choice for an
incumbent party, but must have appeared feasible to the party’s strategists given Rudd’s
absence from the political leadership for the preceding three years. However, the party also
devoted a significant proportion of the campaign to generating apprehension about an Abbott
Government, and used the full suite of Fear tropes to do so. As Table 6b illustrates, the
ALP’s use of this second narrative follows a strong pattern of incumbent governments
resorting to fear in tight elections, however this campaign also differed from those listed
above in two important ways. Firstly, the Fear narrative appeared to be given equal billing
with the New hope story instead of being deployed as a reinforcing sub-narrative as in the
other campaigns. Secondly, no other party within our data set used these two particular
narratives in combination with each other, presumably because the negativity of the former
clearly undercuts the positivity of the latter.
Where the New hope story promises a departure from politics as usual, the Fear narrative
epitomises old-fashioned political brawling. Where the New hope narrative asks voters to
help build a better future for all, the Fear story is primarily focused on how much each
individual stands to lose. And where New hope depends upon a leader who is seen as soaring
above the political fray, Fear requires a leader to get down into the mud and start slinging it.
In short, these narratives are fundamentally incompatible and combining the two sends
extremely mixed messages to the electorate. But with any alternative story being likely to
draw attention to Labor’s internal instability and raise awkward questions about the legacy of
former Prime Minister Gillard, the party’s narrative choices were highly constrained.
Running parallel New hope and Fear narratives must have seemed like the best way to draw a
line under the party’s past while warding off a strong challenge from the Liberals, but the
resulting confused and contradictory campaign achieved neither of these things.
Some might argue that by mixing and matching different elements of these core narratives,
parties are actually creating new narratives. While we would be open to exploring this idea
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further by examining other instances of mixed narratives, it appears that these particular cases
are simply the result of inconsistent selection from within the existing narratives as a result of
conflicting imperatives.
Which narrative, when?
Having dissected these six campaign narratives and explored the varying timings of their use,
there are two important points worth noting. Firstly, each of these stories clearly lend
themselves for use at different points in the electoral cycle. For example, an opposition party
which is seriously attempting to take office may choose between the New hope and Time’s up
narratives, depending on the personality of the leader and the length of tenure of the
incumbents.
If that party is successful in forming government, the natural choice for their first reelection effort would then seem to be the Job isn’t done narrative, or the Experience vs.
inexperience story if their opponents are especially unstable and disorganised. This latter
story appears to have particular resonance when bidding for a third term, while governments
which survive past this point may find themselves telling voters We’ve listened and learned.
The Fear narrative can be deployed at any point in this cycle if the opposition starts
making too much headway. However, it would appear that it cannot be successfully
combined with New hope for risk of undercutting that narrative’s positivity, and is somewhat
unnecessary when using the already heavily negative Time’s up story.
By contrast, it seems that opposition parties which are not successful in taking office have
three options: tell voters We’ve listened and learned and work to rebuild political capital over
successive elections; change leaders and try again with a New hope narrative; or continue
telling voters that Time’s up until they eventually agree.
The second, and related point, is that although these narratives naturally fit different points
in the political cycle, none were shown to consistently lead to election wins for the parties
using them. In fact, the success rate ranged from zero out of three in the case of the We’ve
listened and learned story, to five out of eight for the Job isn’t done narrative. What’s more,
the most popular narrative in this data set—the Time’s up story—only led to a win for the
party using it in four out of 11 cases. It is intriguing that these parties would repetitively
recycle narratives which do not consistently deliver electoral success, as this is usually the
key metric by which campaign tools and practices are judged. The critical question of why
parties might re-use these particular narratives is discussed further below, but it seems clear
from the evidence presented above that it is not a clear-cut case of copying past successes.
On one level, understanding what these narratives are, how they are constructed and how
they relate to a party’s electoral goals and the stage of the political cycle is illuminating. By
demonstrating that there are a common set of campaign narratives in existence which are
constantly recycled by political parties, we have provided empirical support for an
observation which has often been made, but never tested. In the process, we have also
provided a likely explanation for the Groundhog Day quality of Australian elections.
On another level however, this understanding is really only a starting point as our findings
raise many new questions which we are not yet able to answer. In the final section, we briefly
outline some of these questions and highlight how they could be addressed through further
research.
Not the end of the story
Since it appears that there is substantial repetition of the six campaign narratives identified
here, an important question naturally arises as to whether party campaigners are consciously
COMMUNICATION, POLITICS & CULTURE – VOL. 47 (1) (2014)
replicating these, or unconsciously being influenced by past campaigns. One possibility is
that parties deliberately re-use these narratives because they provide a shorthand way to
convey information about the context and significance of a given election to uninformed or
disinterested voters. Another possibility is that the party staffers who are responsible for
delivering election campaigns unconsciously mirror the themes and tropes which they have
been exposed to in previous campaigns, creating a self-perpetuating cycle of narrative
replication. Alternatively, each of these narratives may have originated from a specific,
highly successful election in the past beyond this data set, which party strategists refer back
to as an archetype and guide when faced with a similar set of political circumstances. In this
case, what they are mirroring is not so much the narrative itself, but the set of strategic
choices made by their political predecessors, which then leads to a common outcome.
The question of why parties recycle campaign narratives is clearly an important and
interesting one. As highlighted in the previous section, our data does not suggest that it is
simple case of parties repeating narratives from winning campaigns. In fact, in several cases
parties were observed to re-use the same narrative directly after losing with it at the preceding
election (see Table 2b). If electoral success is not the factor driving narrative repetition, as
one might have assumed it would be, then what is behind this? This is not a question that can
be answered using the current data, but interviewing party campaigners about the inputs and
influences of their campaign design would be a useful way to shed light on this question.
Elite interviews would also be beneficial to determine why these particular narratives are the
ones which have been adopted for repeated use, given the conceivably broad range of
possible alternatives.
A further question arises in considering whether these narratives can be used by any party
within the political arena, or are only deployed by the major parties that compete to form
government. This analysis was confined to the stories that the Labor and Liberal parties tell,
and in light of their content, it is questionable how relevant these would be for minor parties
with alternative goals and objectives. For example, a minor party such as the Australian
Greens is unlikely to ever be in a position to employ either the Job isn’t done or Experience
versus inexperience narratives, because these are premised on the party being in government.
The other four narratives seem more adaptable to a minor party’s needs, however both the
New hope and Time’s up narratives are somewhat dependent on the sponsoring party
presenting an alternative vision for governing, not just for occupying the crossbench or
holding other parties to account. Further research to explore the stories that minor parties tell
would not only shed light on this issue, but would also provide an interesting insight into how
they conceptualise their role in the political ecosystem and what their objectives really are
when contesting elections.
Finally, this research has been limited to Australian election campaigns, but it would be
fascinating to explore whether the narratives identified here are also in use in other country
contexts. A casual review of past campaigns in the USA and UK suggests that they may be—
Barack Obama appears to have stuck closely to the New hope narrative in 2008 and the Job
isn’t done story in 2012, for example—but more detailed analysis using the method outlined
above would be needed to explore this. Conducting this analysis as a comparative exercise
would be a very large research undertaking, but as a first step we would encourage individual
country experts to contribute their own findings on the presence or absence of these
narratives in different national contexts.
For the targets of these campaign narratives—the voting public—we hope that this research
might generate an entirely different set of questions. Newly armed with an understanding of
the stories parties tell on the campaign trail, we look forward to voters challenging and
66
scrutinising these, and maybe even demanding that parties throw away their scripts and speak
authentically about their beliefs and plans. That would be a story well worth telling.
Notes
1
These cases were: Liberal Party campaign materials for the 2006 Tasmanian State
Election and Australian Labor Party campaign materials for the 2005 Western Australia
State Election.
2
Materials from the 36th campaign within this time period—the Liberal Party’s campaign
for the 2005 Western Australia State Election—could not be located, and media reportage
of this campaign was insufficient for inclusion in this analysis. As a result, this campaign
was removed from the data set.
3
It is not clear why the West Australian ALP chose to incorporate a Fear narrative into
its campaign, given that it was out of office and not seen as having any real chance of
defeating the incumbent Liberal government at the 2013 state election. It is possible that
this was a purely opportunistic move—rather than a strategic one—as there was some
inconsistency between senior members of the government about their plans for
privatisation of state owned assets, and when this became a source of public discussion
during the campaign, it created an opening for a Fear narrative.
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