increasing concentration of economic power; the growth in population mobility; the development of national news media (radio and television); and the growth in power and pervasiveness of central government. It could be argued that all of these fit Australian developments to some extent. Kemp has explained the Australian case in terms of the emergence of nationwide mass communications, which is linked to Sharpe's third idea, and also to the existence of national
2
political parties. Others have found "some evidence" to support a hypothesis of an increasing focus on national-level news in Australian
3
newspapers which also helps in the explanation. To it might be added the mobility factor. Australians are very mobile people: 42 per cent of those interviewed in the 1979 survey had lived in their present area for ten or fewer years. Thirty-one per cent were not born in the
4
state they resided in at the time of the survey. It could be expected that any regional effect would be reduced with increasing population mobility because those new to a region would not have the network of local connections, allegiances and dispositions that residents of long-standing are bound to have acquired and therefore would not be
1
Sharpe, "Decentralist Trends in Western Democracies", pp. 11-12. 2
Kemp, Society and Electoral Behaviour, p. 257; Kemp, "The Australian Electorate", p. 27.
3
Colin A. Hughes and J. S. Western, "The Geographical Sources of Domestic News in Australian Newspapers", Politics, 9 (1974), 166-172.
4
The inclusion of immigrants in these figures takes little if anything away from the thrust of the argument.
169
subject to regional propensities. The more intermixing of the population through movement between states the less regional influence there will be on voting and national tendencies will come through more strongly.
If both argument and evidence relating to the nationalization of opinion support the view that Australia really is relatively homogeneous and increasingly so in its electoral behaviour, then the New Zealand case remains something of a puzzle. Certainly not too much weight should be placed on behaviour at the 1981 election which was fought in unusual circumstances and responded with unusual
1
results. But the trend towards a wider north-south rift was evident before then. Sharpe's work can perhaps provide us with a theoretical explanation. He argued that in reaction to the increasing nationalization of politics in the twentieth century there has more recently been a counteractive decentralist trend. According to Sharpe this trend has contained three strands: demands for devolution of power to the local community level; strengthening of the capacity of existing local government institutions; and demands for the creation of new regional representative bodies with powers devolved from the central government.“
The first two of these are less relevant in the present context than the third. Indeed some evidence suggests that local government in New Zealand may be on the decline. In 1950 there were over 300
See Clive Bean, "From Confusion to Confusion - The 1981 General Election in New Zealand", Politics, 17 (November 1982), 108-120.
See Sharpe, p p . 17-63.
2
local authority districts in New Zealand. By 1980 the number had fallen to around 230. Yet this change probably reflects a restructuring rather than a diminution of local government efficacy. There are some signs that local government is stretching its wings and that calls for it to be given more functions are perhaps gaining strength. But there appears to be little conclusive evidence either
1
way. Moreover, such concerns are not directly relevant to a discussion of north-south regional consciousness.
In a modified form the third of Sharpe's "strands" is pertinent, however. Sharpe stressed the importance of the concept of uneven development in giving rise to regional separatist movements. In the last decade or so there has been a tendency for South Islanders to perceive that their island is not receiving its fair share of the economic cake and is suffering a form of relative deprivation in terms of development priorities. A "South Island movement" has been formed which has complained of exploitation by the more populous north and
3
issued separatist mutterings. The central government is located in the North Island and so is an increasing majority of the population.^ Survey evidence reveals increased alarm at the South Island's plight. In 1975 when the issue was incipient hardly any survey respondents
See the discussion in Graham Bush, Local Government and Politics in New Zealand (Auckland: George Allen & Unwin, 1980), pp. 238-246.
2
Sharpe, "Decentralist Trends in Western Democracies", p. 51. 3
"Mainlanders", as South Islanders like to call themselves, frequently joke that they should cut the Cook Strait (electricity) cable and let the North Island float away. Much of the North Island's electricity is generated in the South Island, hence the claims of exploitation.
4
See Ovenden, "The Electorate", p. 41. The North Island now contains nearly three-quarters of the population. Before the turn of the century the majority lived in the South Island.
171
mentioned it. By 1978 when concern had risen noticeably 6 per cent of those interviewed said it was an issue of some importance (the 1978 data were all collected in the South Island). In 1981 other issues distracted attention and only two per cent of the South Islanders interviewed volunteered that the South Island situation concerned them. Given the previous propensity of the South Island to favour Labour and also that the National Party has been in government for most of the period of increasing disquiet, it seems a natural progression for the South Island to have registered its decentralist protest by moving further away from support for the National Party.
The New Zealand population is as mobile if not more so than the Australian population. Survey evidence reveals that 52 per cent of respondents in the 1981 survey had lived in their present electoral district for ten years or less. In Australia, however, movement is fairly even between states (with the qualifications that Western Australia and Queensland attract more new people than they lose and Tasmania loses more than it gains). Added to this is immigration from outside Australia. In New Zealand internal population movement is very largely in one direction - from south to north. The south which is arguably the "deviant" region given that the North Island with three-quarters of the population has a much stronger impact on total New Zealand electoral support - has little new blood to modify its regional propensities and so, reinforced by a perception in the South Island of relative economic deprivation,^ the electoral gap
^Census data from 1981 indicate that there is some basis in reality for such a conception. Although the differences were not large, more South Islanders earned low incomes than North Islanders (44.6 per cent of those aged 15 years and over earned less than $10,000 a year, as against 41.5 per cent) and fewer were in the top income bracket of $25,000 or more (2.2 per cent compared with 2.7 per cent).
between the two islands widens. All of this is not to argue that the North and South islands are politically disparate. They are not. As in Australia differences sit upon a firm base of relative homogeneity.
A recent paper has made two strong and largely convincing 2 arguments concerning the debate on regionalism in Australia. The first is that most previous studies have been methodologically inadequate in that they have not taken into account social structural variations in different regions. The second, backed with evidence from multiple regression and factor analysis, is that once social structure has been controlled for there are no differences at all in electoral support or political attitudes across the Australian states. This argument has force, but although the findings support the general thrust of the present argument they do not seem quite to tell the whole story.
A re-examination of Table 5.3 shows why. If social structural variations explained all it could be expected that differences between the states would be fairly consistent from election to election and that the relative balance of the parties would only change in any state over a long period of time as the social composition changed. In particular movement in electoral support from one election to the next should be very similar in each state. But social structure does
1
One observation in this connection, however, which is interesting if nothing else is that the mean level of support for the Labor Party in Australia is closer to the mean level of support for the Labour Party in New Zealand over the period 1946 to 1983 than is mean support for Labour in each of New Zealand's two islands to each other.
2
McAllister and Kelley, Behaviour".
173
not explain all about political behaviour in Australia and it would consequently be illogical to expect it to explain everything about regional variations all the time. The table shows that there are times when from one election to the next some states move quite unpredictably both in terms of direction and magnitude. While these might be short-term hiccups which do not seriously undermine the general uniformity thesis, they can not be entirely discounted and they serve to demonstrate that there are sometimes other forces than social structure at work in certain regions. The picture drawn by McAllister and Kelley is a static one (and should not be criticized on those grounds) whereas in one sense the dynamic properties of electoral change and election campaign stimuli are important components of regional variability.
It might be assumed that the social structural explanation would have greater strength in New Zealand where the two regions examined so far are more consistent in their electoral support and movement than the Australian states. But such evidence as is available on the question is conflicting. Three of the four indicators in Table 5.4 could reasonably lead to the expectation that the South Island would be less strong in its support for Labour than the North Island. The Labour-supporting South Island has a smaller proportion of the large city dwellers expected to produce such voting habits than the North Island. The South Island also has a higher proportion of its work-force in agricultural industries.1 Furthermore the South Island contains over 10 per cent more Presbyterians than the North Island and
A strong negative correlation between Labour voting and this variable, at the aggregate level, has been shown, for example, in Dean Jaensch, The Government of South Australia (St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1977), p. 70.
Table 5.4
Some Social Characteristics of the North and South Island Populations, 1981
(in percentages)
North Island South Island
Proportion of eligible
voters living in metropolitan 51.2 44.0 electoral districts Occupation: Proportion of work-force in manual occupations 49.8 53.8 Proportion of work-force in agricultural industries 10.6 13.6 Religion: Anglican 26.2 24.5 Roman Catholic 14.5 13.6 Presbyterian 14.0 24.5
SOURCES; Appendix to the Journals of the House of Representatives/ E.9 (1982); New Zealand Census of Population and Dwellings,
1981 .
Chapter Eight shows that this religious denomination gives the least support to Labour of any. However, on the other side of the ledger, the table shows that the occupational structure of the South Island favours a stronger Labour vote because there are more manual workers there than in the North Island (by about the same margin, incidentally, as the mean difference between the two islands in support for Labour, as shown in Table 5.2). Given that Chapter Eight reveals occupation to be the strongest predictor of electoral support from a range of social structural variables, this is perhaps the most important figure in the table. But in this case "strongest" does not
175
mean "very strong". Anyway, gross evidence such as that in Table 5.4 must remain very tentative, and even to the extent that it has credibility its message is unclear. We lack more subtle data, even at the aggregate level, which would help to relate more directly the Labour vote to social structural characteristics and perhaps provide a clearer picture of differences between the South and North islands.