ABORTION IN AUSTRALIAN ELECTIONS

A Vote Loser for Women?

Helen Pringle

Abstract This article focuses on the question of the salience of the issue of abortion in
Australian elections; that is, whether it is an issue on which electors cast their vote, and
whether it plays a role in changes in voting patterns. The issue of public attitudes to such
primary women’s rights and feminist issues as abortion has been important in Australia for
many years, but there is no body of research literature here on the electoral salience of those
attitudes to abortion. In contrast, a body of US literature indicates that attitudes to abortion
there are of significance in predicting voters’ choices at state and federal levels and that this
significance has increased over time. My argument is that there are no significant patterns of
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voting or even of party identification that are dependent on parliamentary candidates’ views
on abortion in Australia, and that this has been the case for at least 30 years. My argument is
made through exploring opinion polls and academic surveys; examining three anecdotal
claims of electoral retribution; and looking in detail at the case of the defeat of Barry Simon in the
1980 federal election. My finding as to the non-salience of the issue of abortion among Australian
voters has significance in terms of accurately identifying obstacles to feminist proposals for
reform of abortion laws in Australia. One of the aims of the article is to dispel the myth that
politicians who are pro-choice or who vote for abortion reform are likely to face electoral
retribution on that score. That is, the feminist project of abortion reform is not a vote loser.

The measurement of public attitudes to the key feminist issue of access to abortion
has been an important task in Australia for many years. Levels of public support for
abortion provision and access have been well charted over that time, and there is also
considerable evidence as to the correlation of those attitudes to sex, age and partisan
identification. There is no body of literature in Australia on the electoral salience of the
issue and attitudes towards it; that is, whether it is an issue on which electors cast their
vote, and whether it plays a role in changes in voting patterns. Assessment of the electoral
salience of abortion has remained at a largely speculative level, developed by reference to
unsupported claims and anecdotes. In particular, feminist support for abortion law reform
has been modulated by a persistent concern that attempts to reform the law might fail
and electorally backfire on the proposers, with an attempt perhaps even resulting in more
restricted access. My argument focuses on whether this concern by feminists is justified.
The claim that politicians who are pro-choice or who vote for abortion reform are
likely to face electoral retribution on that score is of course a staple of anti-abortion
campaigners. In October 2010, for example, the Australian Family Association (AFA)
released a report entitled What Queenslanders Really Think about Abortion, an analysis of a

Some of the empirical material in this article has been drawn on to support different arguments in my
previous publications on abortion (Pringle 1997, 2007, 2008) and a very abbreviated version of the main
argument was presented in an online opinion piece (Pringle 2010).

Australian Feminist Studies, Vol. 27, No. 74, December 2012

ISSN 0816-4649 print/ISSN 1465-3303 online/12/040389-16
# 2012 Taylor & Francis http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08164649.2012.729343
 390 HELEN PRINGLE

telephone survey conducted by Galaxy Research (AFA 2010). The AFA warned that an
electoral swing of 12% would be generated against Queensland members of parliament if
they voted for decriminalisation in any conscience vote on abortion. The report was sent
to all members of the Queensland state parliament in an effort to form their consciences
on the issue. The publications of the AFA are not usually of great value in terms of
academic research; however, the 2010 report is of interest in that it canvasses the question
of whether abortion has any electoral salience. At the launch of the AFA report, Voters for
Life spokesman Luke McCormack said, ‘I’d like to say to the radical fringe [seeking to
change Queensland’s abortion laws] we know what you’re up to and Queenslanders when
they find out will demonstrate their opinion at the ballot box’ (Dobbyn 2010). On 20
November 2010, the AFA published an advertisement in seven Queensland newspapers
citing further evidence for this claim: ‘This potential swing [of 12%] against candidates in
favour of decriminalising abortion was demonstrated by Voters for Life campaigns in 2010
in the Federal electorates of Hinkler, Dickson and Bonner and 2009 in Aspley and Algester
state electorates’ (see Cherish Life 2010, 4).
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While it is the case that many groups and organisations can and do make similar
wild claims about their influence, such assertions about abortion are typically given wide
credence, often by members of parliament. Indeed, it is striking that pro-choice and
broadly feminist politicians and campaigners take these claims seriously or even make
similar claims. For example, on 14 October 2010, the final day of the Cairns abortion trial,1
the then Queensland Premier Anna Bligh tweeted: ‘As I’ve stated many times, I support
decriminalisation of abortion, but majority of MPs do not, law change requires that
majority’ (Bligh 2010). Bligh followed up by reminding a fellow tweeter that abortion is
subject to a conscience vote, such that an important constraint on parliamentary voting
patterns in this area is public opinion (or MPs’ perception of that opinion) rather than party
policy, loyalty and discipline.
This article is part of a project that provides a wider evaluation of such claims about
the salience of abortion in electoral behaviour in Australia. My research has found no
significant patterns of voting or even of party identification that are dependent on
parliamentary candidates’ views on abortion in Australia. That is, the findings of my project
are compelling as to non-salience of the issue of abortion among Australian voters
between 1980 and 2010. Such findings provide a body of research with significance for
feminists in terms of making an accurate identification of obstacles to reform of abortion
laws in Australia.
In this article, I first briefly cite public opinion polls and more academic surveys in
Australia on the issue of abortion, noting the almost complete absence of evidence in polls
and studies as to the relationship between opinions on abortion and voting intentions or
behaviour (although there is some research on the correlation of abortion attitudes to
party choice). Secondly, I note a number of more anecdotal claims made as to the role of
abortion in elections. The one example that seems to promise a finding of significance in
this respect is the defeat of Barry Simon, the Liberal Member for McMillan, at the 1980
federal election. Although abortion is a state government issue insofar as criminal law is
largely a state issue in Australia, it is also a federal issue, inter alia, given the
Commonwealth funding through Medicare (or Medibank, as it was in 1980), which was
placed in question by the Lusher Amendment of 1979. Hence, both federal and state
elections can offer opportunities to evaluate the electoral salience of abortion in Australia.
The later phase of my project also includes some examination of the electoral impact of
 ABORTION IN AUSTRALIAN ELECTIONS 391

the RU486 debate conducted across party lines in the Commonwealth Parliament in 2005!
2006 (see Sawer 2008; Pringle 2008). In the third section of the article, I address the 1980
election in more detail, and place Simon’s defeat in context, in addressing the question of
whether partisan mobilisation of opinions on abortion can affect its electoral salience.
Although the example is not a recent one, there is no evidence that popular attitudes to
abortion have become more conservative. I conclude by emphasising the combination of
factors needed to give even limited electoral salience to opinions on abortion in Australia,
a combination present in 1980 but which is unlikely to recur, and the implications of this
finding for feminist proposals for reform. Although there is no specifically feminist
approach in the analysis of voting patterns, nevertheless this analysis has great
significance for such proposals.

Public Opinion Polls and Academic Surveys on Abortion: The Missing

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Piece
In a comprehensive survey of opinion polls in Australia since the early 1970s (Pringle
2011), I have identified a long-standing pattern of majority support for wide access to
abortion. This finding is of course consistent with the work of other researchers such as
Katharine Betts (2004b, 2009). What is missing in these widely cited polls, however, is
systematic attention to the question of the linkage of opinions on abortion to voting
intention and choice.
This omission is in contrast to the state of research on this linkage in the USA, where
it has received sustained attention since the early 1990s, especially in the work of Cook,
Jelen, and Wilcox (1992, 1994a, 1994b). The US literature indicates that attitudes to
abortion are of significance in predicting voters’ choices at state and federal levels (e.g.,
Abramowitz 1995; Cook, Jelen, and Wilcox 1992, 1994a, 1994b; Howell and Sims 1993), and
that this significance has increased over time (Adams 1997), with both party identification
of voters and voting behaviour influenced by attitudes on abortion. This literature
indicates that, in the USA, attitudes on abortion are readily available for political
mobilisation and, in particular, partisan mobilisation by elite groups (Jelen and Wilcox
2003, 494!6).
Australian academic surveys do provide some clues to electoral salience. The
Australian Survey of Social Attitudes (AuSSA 2008), for example, was first conducted in
2003, and then every two years since, by the Australian National University’s Australian
Demographic and Social Research Institute (AuSSA). In the 2003 and 2005 surveys, a
question phrased in terms of ‘family planning today’ asked respondents to indicate their
level of agreement or disagreement with the statement ‘A woman should have the right to
choose whether or not she has an abortion’. The 2007 and 2009 surveys inquired as to a
range of specific grounds on which respondents agree with abortions (AuSSA Ques-
tionnaires). Beginning in 1987, a second academic survey is the Australian Election Study
(AES), conducted by the Australian National University, Queensland University of
Technology and the University of Queensland researchers, which measures electoral
attitudes and behaviours around federal elections. In 1987, the AES asked: ‘Do you think
women should be able to obtain an abortion easily when they want one, or do you think
abortion should be allowed only in special circumstances?’ From 1990 to 1997, the AES
survey asked respondents to say which of four statements about access to abortion
 392 HELEN PRINGLE

‘comes closest to how you feel about abortion in Australia’ (McAllister and Clark 2008, 69).
Again, respondents were not directly asked how their ‘feeling’ related to their electoral
choices or behaviour.
Consistent with other polls I have mapped, these academic surveys indicate
continuing high levels of public support over time for freely accessible and legalised
abortion, with only 5!10% of Australians opposed to abortion in all or almost all
circumstances. Although some small variation in level of opinion by age, gender and
religion has been noted (see Kelley and Evans 1988, 7!9), religious affiliation is not
strongly correlated with opposition to abortion access. That correlation is pronounced in
the USA, where it provides an additional factor to be considered in assessing the electoral
salience of abortion there.
To summarise at this point, Australian opinion polls and surveys on abortion shed
valuable light on the general state of public opinion, but provide little assistance in gauging
the electoral salience of opinions on abortion. Explicit questions in regard to this linkage
have been absent from poll design and the surveys provide little sense of other factors that
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might help in assessing this linkage; for example, the strength with which opinions on
abortion are held, and the intensity with which they are held relative to opinions on other
issues. Even where poll questions ask for consideration of the options ‘strongly agree’ or
‘strongly disagree’ in response to a statement, as in the AuSSA 2003 and 2005 surveys, the
selected response is as likely to be indicative of the level of certainty or how fixed the
opinion is, as it is of the level of ‘vehemence’ relative to other opinions. The level of relative
intensity can indicate issue salience in regard to the formation of voting intention, in
illuminating how*if at all*those opinions on abortion are translated into voting behaviour.
For example, I might ‘strongly agree’ that women should be able to access abortion, but not
care terribly much about the issue in comparison to, say, the level of taxation. Or I might feel
very strongly that abortion is wrong, but given that I have lost my job under a Liberal
government, I nevertheless do not accord weight to my opinion on abortion in casting my
vote for a Labor candidate who is known for her pro-choice position.
A study by Jonathan Kelley using data from the 1984!1985 National Social Science
Survey was notable for not relying on single-item questions, but used factor analysis to
identify the relation of various attitudes to party choice. Abortion was found to have a very
low correlation with party preference (Kelley 1988, 70!1), suggesting in turn a probable
finding of negligible influence on voting intention. Kelley’s suggestion is backed up by the
analysis of the 1980 election in which I discuss the defeat of Barry Simon defeat below in
this article. It should be noted here that the lack of a systematic practice of exit polling in
Australia means that we have no evidence comparable to that of the USA showing how
issue importance and party choice are related at specific elections.
In these circumstances then, the 2010 AFA poll noted above has an importance not
otherwise warranted by its small sample size and shaky calculation of conclusions. The
report added little to the findings of the 2006 report of the Australian Federation of Right
to Life Associations, What Australians Really Think about Abortion (AFRLA 2006), except in
that it directly and explicitly inquired as to the relation of attitudes to voting intention. The
AFA report notes that 55% of canvassed voters said that an MP’s support for
decriminalisation would make no difference to their voting intentions, with another
26% saying they would be less likely to vote for an MP supporting decriminalisation, and
14% saying they would be more likely to vote for the MP in that case (AFA 2010). The AFA
spokesman Alan Baker claimed, oddly, ‘This represents an average swing of 12 per cent’
 ABORTION IN AUSTRALIAN ELECTIONS 393

(Dobbyn 2010). As I noted above, the results in five Queensland seats in the 2010 election
were asserted as supporting evidence. Baker’s claim of a 12% potential swing has an air of
unreality about it given what is known of public attitudes from opinion polls, but it is
worth looking at the anecdotal evidence often cited in support of such claims about
electoral swings.
I now turn to examine such evidence in a number of cases in which it has been
claimed that the issue of abortion was decisive in the defeat of a member of parliament. It
should be noted that claims about the salience of abortion opinions in Australia usually
concern their significance in the defeat of a parliamentarian for having been in favour of
reform and wider access to abortion, rather than as the reason for an electoral victory. That
is, the anecdotes concern ‘retribution’ for an anti-abortion stance, rather than a ‘reward’ for
a pro-life stance by the candidate. John Warhurst’s brief analysis of the 1979 Victoria state
election suggests that a focus on defeating opponents rather than supporting candidates
is in fact also a deliberate strategy of the Right to Life Australia (RTLA), as borrowed from
American pro-life campaigners (Warhurst 1979, 238; see also on this point Warhust 1983,
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113). I shall return to this suggestion in considering the significance of pro-life campaigns
in the 1980 election, below. I should note also that the claims about electoral retribution
are made about the risks to an MP of being pro-choice; there seems to be an implicit
assumption in research, in Australia as in the USA, that being pro-life carries few if any
electoral risks. This assumption might need re-examination (e.g., see my comment on
Bertram Wainer’s situation in 1980 later in this paper).

Anecdotal Evidence of Electoral Retribution

In this section, I consider three cases where parliamentary candidates allegedly
suffered repercussions for a pro-abortion stance, the first in 1987 and the others in 1998
and 2009. Examples from the Victorian state election in 2010, following abortion reform,
are outside the scope of this article, given the incomplete data publication and analysis.
None of the three examples offered supports the claim that abortion has significant
electoral salience, and an examination of each serves to dispel a widespread ‘mythology’
that support for abortion will be followed by significant electoral repercussions. Anecdotal
claims about electoral retribution that are given credence in popular and parliamentary
forums have also been repeated uncritically in some academic and popular work by
feminist and pro-choice authors. I consider these three cases as a way of ‘clearing the air’
for a properly rigorous evaluation of the electoral salience of abortion.

Michael Maher in Lowe in 1987

One of the most frequently cited Australian examples of electoral retribution for
support of abortion reform is Michael Maher’s defeat in the seat of Lowe at the 1987
federal election. Maher lost the marginal seat for the Australian Labor Party (ALP) in 1987
after the RTLA had campaigned against him on the grounds that he refused to support an
amendment to the (federal) Human Rights Bill that defined life as beginning at
conception. Within 10 years after the election, Maher’s defeat had become widely
accepted as an example of the risks of support for abortion reform by MPs. Journalist Sian
Powell reported:
 394 HELEN PRINGLE

Some parliamentarians, [Meredith] Burgmann says, think it’s too risky to push for reform.
The fate of Michael Maher, a former NSW Labor MP who held the marginal seat of Lowe,
echoes in their ears. It is now part of Labor mythology. Maher offended the
antiabortionists and the Right to Life group campaigned vigorously for his ousting.
Supposedly, as a result, he lost his seat in the 1987 election. (Powell 1998, 19)

Maher’s defeat, however, does not bear out any such interpretation. The RTLA did target
Maher in 1987, using part of its total electoral budget of $25,000, but Maher was a
practising Catholic, a supporter of NSW Right to Life and a public critic of abortion (saying,
for example, ‘I believe that abortion is an evil thing and philosophically wrong’). Members
of the ALP reportedly called him ‘Father Maher’ (for the preceding, see Cameron 1987, 10;
D’Alpuget 1987, 45).
Maher won Lowe at a 1982 by-election, after the seat had been held for 32 years by
Billy McMahon (who, throughout the 1970s, had supported abortion law that was, in his
own words, ‘sympathetic to the cause of women’ [Commonwealth Parliamentary Debates
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(CPD) 21 March 1979, 980]). Going into the 1987 election, Maher held Lowe with a slim
margin of 2.3%, and he lost the seat to the Liberal Dr Bob Woods by only 80 primary votes.
The chairman of the RTLA, Margaret Tighe, claimed that Woods had given a guarantee that
he would oppose abortion in parliament (Cameron 1987, 10), although Woods denied any
knowledge of the RTLA campaign (Powell and Windsor 1997, 13). Woods made good on
any such guarantee with some passion in raising the issue in parliament (e.g., CPD 26
October 1989, 1953), but without any great persistence or results, before the seat returned
to Labor with his defeat in 1993.2
Maher’s own explanation of his loss in 1987 cited opposition to the proposed
national identity card, anger with government policies on rent allowances to pensioners
and the general swing against Labor in Sydney (Hewett 1987, 10). Indeed, the 3.8% swing
against Maher was no greater than the average swing against the government in the
metropolitan Sydney (Cockburn 1987, 31). There is simply no evidence to support a claim
by either side in the abortion debate that Maher’s loss came because of his support for
abortion reform, especially given that Maher did not support it, and given that his pro-life
stance was widely known in his electorate.

Pauline Hanson, One Nation and the 1998 Queensland State Election
A more recent example of the ‘mythology’ of popular retribution on parliamentar-
ians who support abortion reform concerns Pauline Hanson. In 2003, Hanson’s former
advisor David Oldfield announced that he was writing a book about her and, as evidence
of her political ineptitude, referred to an incident in May 1998 when Hanson was asked at a
public meeting on the Darling Downs about her view on abortion. Hanson had replied, ‘It
is every woman’s right to determine her own body, to decide her body’ (‘Hanson amends
abortion stance’ 1998). Oldfield claimed that Hanson’s supporters were religious and
conservative, and that they were angered by this inadvertent revelation of her views on
abortion: ‘She got cornered and was asked these questions. She started to give answers
along the lines of how a woman’s body was her temple. People freaked out . . .. It probably
cost two seats in the 1998 State election’ (quoted in Wright 2003, 2).
Again, however, there is scant evidence to support Oldfield’s claim about the electoral
repercussions of Hanson’s response, nor did Oldfield provide any. In fact, shortly after the
 ABORTION IN AUSTRALIAN ELECTIONS 395

Darling Downs incident, it was reported that several One Nation candidates in Queensland
had responded to a survey by the Women’s Electoral Lobby and the Queensland Women’s
Interest Coalition asking for their views on women’s issues. Of those who replied, six
candidates argued that abortion should be removed from the Criminal Code and brought
under the Queensland Health Act, and four supported a woman’s right to choose (‘Abortion
split hits Hanson supporters’ 1998). Electors failed to ‘freak out’, or at least not in the sense
that Oldfield meant: One Nation received an impressive 22.7% of the primary vote across the
state, and gained 11 seats in the Legislative Assembly (Newman 1998).

Bonny Barry and the 2009 Queensland State Election in Aspley

My third example of the salience of abortion in elections was noted by Alan Baker in
launching the 2010 AFA report. Baker noted what he saw as the success of a ‘humble
education program’ in unseating the ALP member for Aspley, Bonny Barry, at the 2009
Queensland state election (Dobbyn 2010). Barry had publicly and repeatedly announced
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her intention to introduce a bill to decriminalise abortion in Queensland and, according to

Baker, pro-life groups targeted her on this ground and contributed significantly to her
defeat.
Voters for Life and other pro-life organisations did target Aspley in 2009, and Barry
did lose her seat; however, electoral records provide no evidence to support a causal
connection between these two events, and especially not the 12% swing connection to
which Baker referred. The Queensland ALP sustained around a 4.7% statewide swing
against it in 2009, with Barry suffering around a 7% swing (ABC Elections 2009, Aspley).
Barry’s Liberal National Party opponent, Tracy Davis, appears to have no connection to
pro-life groups and no public commitment either way in regard to abortion.3 Antony
Green’s ABC analysis of the Aspley result focuses on Anna Bligh’s planned closure of a
hospital in the area as decisive (ABC Elections 2009, Aspley), as did Davis’ inaugural speech
in the Queensland parliament (Davis 2009). The Family First party, with a clear pro-life
platform, polled a meagre 633 votes, or 2.4% of the primary vote, in Aspley, hardly
evidence of the salience of pro-life voting intentions among the electors (or indeed, of the
salience of religion).

Barry Simon’s Defeat in 1980 and the Lusher Amendment: A Perfect Storm?
The three cases considered above provide scant evidence of retribution on members
of parliament for a pro-choice stance as being in any way decisive or even significant in
the election outcome. In each of these cases, however, there is some suggestion that
although abortion is not broadly electorally salient, a disciplined campaign by pro-life
groups might account for a small swing of perhaps 1!2% in a targeted electorate. This is
of course a long distance from the 12% swing projected in the 2010 AFA report, which
would be an unusual outcome in any election for any party. It remains to consider whether
such concentrated campaigning by pro-life groups can increase the salience of abortion in
particular contests so as to affect their outcome through such very small swings,
particularly in very marginal seats.
The example of the 1980 federal election provides an opportunity both to reflect on
the general salience of abortion as an electoral issue, and to consider whether the
mobilisation of opinion by disciplined pressure groups can increase that salience. The 1980
 396 HELEN PRINGLE

election is also useful because it offers an opportunity to test the importance of proximity
of parliamentary deliberation on an issue in regard to electoral salience. In the US context,
Dodson and Burnbauer (1990) suggest that one of the factors likely to influence the
salience of an issue in voting is where events happen that increase public interest in the
matter close to an election. Such events might include violence around abortion clinics,
say, or law reform proposals in parliamentary forums. Cook, Jelen, and Wilcox (1993)
suggest that ‘repoliticisation’ of the issue of abortion through legislative battles over
access stimulate the efforts of pro-life organisations in particular, which might then affect
the outcomes in a proximate election.
In the 1980 Australian federal election, the RTLA claimed responsibility for the defeat
of one parliamentarian in particular: the Liberal MP for Macmillan, Barry Simon. This claim
was accepted and repeated by Karen Coleman in a leading academic study of abortion
politics in Australia (Coleman 1988, 91). The proximate spur for the ‘repoliticisation’ of the
issue of abortion in this case was a debate in federal parliament around the ‘Lusher
Amendment’. As noted above, the regulation of abortion through the criminal law is a
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state matter in Australia, but on a number of occasions abortion and related questions
have been deliberated and voted on in the Commonwealth parliament. In March 1979, the
National Country Party MP Stephen Lusher moved a motion in the House of
Representatives to restrict the payment of medical benefits by Medibank (as it was
then) for termination of pregnancy under Item 6469, ‘unless the termination was
performed to protect the life of the mother from a physical pathological condition and
that the life could be protected in no other way’ (CPD 21 March 1979, 963, Stephen
Lusher).4
Lusher lost the day. Barry Simon had successfully moved an amendment to the
motion specifying that the Commonwealth would continue to pay benefits for
terminations where done ‘in accordance with the law of a State or Territory’ (CPD 22
March 1979, 969!72, Barry Simon), to which the House agreed (CPD 22 March 1979, 1125!
26; see Pringle 1997, 101). It is perhaps worth noting in the context of my argument that at
the time of Lusher’s motion, all 124 members of the House of Representatives were men
(of whom only one remains in the current parliament: Philip Ruddock, who voted with
Lusher). In March 1980, when the Human Rights Commission Bill was being debated, Barry
Simon also played a role in opposition to John Martyr’s amendment to guarantee the right
of the unborn from the time of conception (CPD 5 March 1980, votes at 713, 716!17).
Simon was defeated at the following election of 18 October 1980. As noted above,
Karen Coleman attributed his defeat to retribution engineered by the RTLA. Coleman
argued:

Barry Simon . . . paid dearly for his opposition to Lusher. Blaming him for [the defeat of
the Lusher motion], RTLA mounted a vitriolic campaign against him in the next
election, mustering a good deal of their human and financial resources. The point was
not only to vent their bitterness by unseating him, but also to demonstrate to others
the price they could pay for supporting abortion. His consequent downfall was
credited to their efforts and this success has encouraged them since regularly to
employ the tactic of targeting ‘anti-life’ candidates. To this end they send
questionnaires to all candidates before elections, attributing ‘pro- or anti-life’ ratings
to them according to their answers (or their failure to reply). They circulate these
ratings in electorates and, in selected cases of marginal seats, wage vigorous and even
 ABORTION IN AUSTRALIAN ELECTIONS 397

near-libellous campaigns employing their full armoury of shock tactics, along with
‘How to Vote-for-Life’ cards and intensive door-to-door canvassing. They have since
had sufficient success with this technique to make many candidates extremely wary of
crossing them. (Coleman 1988, 91)

Coleman’s argument here is unsourced and, moreover, the remainder of her article notes
and documents a pervasive pattern of lack of success of pro-life campaigns, particularly in
Queensland, with Coleman herself concluding:

The victories for anti-abortionists then have been exceedingly small and few and far
between . . .. For the present, abortion is relatively secure in Australia, public opinion
favours it and history has surely made it apparent to politicians there is little potential
gain in bringing it on the agenda. (Coleman 1988, 96)5

The 1980 election was conducted in the context of ‘repoliticisation’ of the abortion issue and
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some resultant heightened activity by pro-life groups, particularly the RTLA. There is
certainly evidence of a strong campaign by the RTLA in Victoria in the 1980 election,
including the rating of candidates and other tactics noted by Coleman (see Warhust 1983,
113). If, however, we place the case of Barry Simon in the context of the broader results of
the 1980 federal election, there is little to suggest, first, that abortion was an electorally
salient issue broadly or, second, that the campaign by the RTLA and other pro-life groups
significantly increased its salience in voting choices broadly or in specific seats.
As part of the project on which this article draws, I have compiled an electronic table
(available on request) setting out the full results of the 1980 election for the House of
Representatives, in an attempt to draw out any correlations between an MP’s vote in regard
to an abortion issue, and his, or his party’s, performance at the 1980 election. The table notes
MPs’ votes on the 1979 Simon amendment to the Lusher motion and includes the magnitude
of the swing in each electorate. A ‘No’ vote for the Simon amendment is assumed to show
support for the Lusher motion restricting benefits for abortion, and hence as reflecting a
broadly anti-abortion stance; certainly, pro-life groups interpreted a ‘No’ vote in that way in
their campaigning. Voting ‘Yes’ to the Simon amendment could cover a variety of nuances in
an MP’s position on abortion. That is, a ‘Yes’ vote for the Simon amendment has a slightly
more equivocal meaning (although not to pro-life groups, who characterised Simon’s
amendment as sanctioning open access to abortion). The table does not include MPs’ votes
on the 1980 Martyr and Simon amendments to the Human Rights Commission Bill, as there
were some variations in voting of individual MPs on the different amendments. The 1980
parliamentary votes do not, however, contradict the pattern of the Lusher votes as a broad
indication of where an MP stands on the spectrum in regard to abortion.
My table for the 1980 election indicates no discernible correlation of size of electoral
swing with the voting position of the MP (or former MP) on the Lusher motion in 1979.
Thirteen seats changed hands at the 1980 election: 12 Liberal and 1 Labor (Riverina, in
which the sitting member had a margin of 0.1%, and suffered a swing of 0.6%). The Liberal
Party suffered a 6.6% swing on primary votes, with the Liberal National Party coalition
government sustaining a 4.20% swing on estimated two-party preferred tallies in the
House of Representatives. Barry Simon sustained a 6.2% swing in McMillan. Eight out of
the 12 former Liberal seats experienced a higher swing than did Simon, and his 6.2% was
in line with the general swing against the government. Indeed, there would be no prima
 398 HELEN PRINGLE

facie grounds to invoke any other explanation for Simon’s loss in McMillan than as part of
the general swing against the government, except that Simon was designated by the RTLA
as a primary ‘target’. Hence, it is worth delving a little further into his defeat.
On the basis of RTLA material, John Warhurst notes that the ‘special targets’ of the
RTLA in 1980 were the Labor candidates in Henty, LaTrobe, Hotham, Burke, Bendigo and
Deakin, the Labor member for Maribyrnong, the Liberal members for McMillan and Holt
and the NCP member for Murray. The RTLA campaigned most intensively in McMillan and
Murray (Warhurst 1983, 113!4). It is a little unclear why the RTLA chose these particular
seats or candidates, rather than others. For example, the abortion provider and
campaigner Dr Bertram Wainer stood as an independent in Casey, but the RTLA did not
target him or that seat, which was held with a safe margin of 10.2% by the Liberal Peter
Falconer. It cannot be discounted that seats were targeted by the RTLA more because of
the higher possibility of its appearing to make an impact on the outcome rather than
because of the stance on abortion of the candidate; this appears to be a favoured tactic of
pro-life groups (see the argument sketched by Gleeson and Pringle 2011). At any rate, the
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results in these seats, as noted in Table 1, again present no prima facie evidence that would
necessitate further investigation of a significant impact on voting of the repoliticisation of
the abortion issue. John Warhurst argues that RTLA activities were in no seat worth any
more than 1!2% of the primary vote in 1980 to its favoured, or least disfavoured,
candidates (Warhurst 1983, 118!19). While there is no doubt of course that a swing of even
one vote can tip the result in a seat, it cannot be reasonably counted as evidence of
electoral salience, when put in the context of a comparative analysis of seats and swings.
In that context, an acknowledgement of the manner in which pro-life groups can and
do capitalise on smaller numbers of votes is of greater importance than the existence of
the votes per se. As I noted, one of the chief ways in which this is done is through success
in persuading MPs that the votes themselves matter, without anything more.
Much analysis of the activities of pro-life groups has centred on the highly visible
tactics noted by Karen Coleman (1988), quoted above, which certainly form the public face

Table 1. The 1980 federal election: seats targeted by the RTLA

March 1979 (Lusher motion) 1980 election result

Member of Simon Member of

Parliament Party Margin% amend vote Swing% Parliament Party Division State

John Bourchier Lib 8.5 N "6.9 John Bourchier Lib Bendigo Vic
Barry Simon Lib 4.8 Y "6.2 Barry ALP McMillan Vic
Cunningham
Roger Johnston Lib 1.7 Y "5.7 Lewis Kent ALP Hotham Vic
Kenneth Aldred Lib 2.7 N "5.5 Joan Child ALP Henty Vic
Alan Jarman Lib 7.4 N "5.1 Alan Jarman Lib Deakin Vic
Marshall Lib 0.8 N "3.1 Peter Milton ALP La Trobe Vic
Baillieu
Bruce Lloyd NCP 26.2a DNV #1.3 Bruce Lloyd NCP Murray Vic
Keith Johnson ALP 6.6 Y #2.2 Andrew ALP Burke Vic
Theophanous
Moss Cass ALP 2.0 Y #8.7 Moss Cass ALP Maribyrnong Vic

a
Estimated margin (in the three-corner contest).
Source: Mackerras (1980) and Carr (n.d.).
 ABORTION IN AUSTRALIAN ELECTIONS 399

of the RTLA. The decisive part played by the RTLA in Barry Simon’s defeat, however, was
not through those public activities, but through its canny electoral strategy of persuading
the Victorian ‘rump’ of the Democratic Labor Party (DLP) to direct its preferences in certain
ways (Warhurst 1983, 101).6 In most Victorian seats in 1980 DLP preferences were directed,
and flowed heavily, to the Liberal!National coalition. In McMillan, the DLP preferences
were directed to the Labor candidate, as a punitive measure against Simon in an
agreement with the RTLA, and flowed that way at a rate of 72.1%. This direction of
preferences was sufficient to tip the final two-party count away from Simon.
The study of electoral preferences and preferencing is an under-researched area in
Australia, particularly the use of strategic allocations and lockouts (however, see Denton
2010). My argument here is that the McMillan case provides a case study not of the electoral
salience of abortion, or even of the strength of the RTLA, but rather of a canny (and cynical)
direction of preferences. DLP preferences are of course unlikely to ever again play such a role
in Australian politics as in 1980, with the DLP now confined to a small power base in
Victoria.7 As Rodney Smith (2009) and Kate Gleeson (2011) have argued, there is no evidence
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of a significant religious resurgence in Australian politics, and it would seem a poor strategy
to align pro-life issues with small religious parties here. The combination of factors
contributing to Simon’s defeat in McMillan in 1980 is unlikely to be repeated, and certainly
unlikely to be replicated into a broad electoral pattern across states.
One of the reasons for the very low electoral salience of abortion in Australia can
perhaps be identified as its failure to have any consistent alignment with partisanship on
other issues, or with party cleavages (as noted by Kelley 1988). In the USA, in contrast,
opposition to abortion is aligned quite tightly with the religious right and, to a significant
extent, with the Republican Party itself. Although Liberal and National Party MPs have in
the past been more likely to be anti-abortion than other MPs in Australia (see Betts 2004b),
this difference has narrowed considerably, in part it would seem because of the increasing
numbers of women elected to parliament from all parties (Sawer 2004). The alignment of
abortion attitudes with particular parties is also short-circuited in Australia by wide
acceptance of its status as a ‘conscience issue’ in voting in both state and federal
parliaments (see McKeown and Lundie 2003, 2009). The activities of pro-life groups had
electoral significance in 1980 in part because the DLP provided a party ‘home’ for such
groups, but with the almost complete demise of the DLP, that bargaining power has not
migrated to any other party. The later stages of my wider project explore these questions
in greater depth up to 2012.

Conclusion
An important implication of my argument here on the very low electoral salience of
abortion in Australian politics is to counter the widely held, but mistaken, idea that the chief
obstacle to abortion reform is retributive voting by electors. The chief obstacle to reform has
little to do with voters’ electoral behaviour, let alone their general attitudes on abortion, and
a great deal more to do with the will of members of parliament to pursue legislative change
in this area. Regardless of what views Australians hold on the ethical or legal status of
abortion and abortions, my research so far suggests that they do not rate the issue of
abortion highly in the formulation of their political allegiances or their voting choices. The
 400 HELEN PRINGLE

distinctiveness of the argument here is in bringing together a wide range of academic and
non-academic evidence to support that conclusion and to guide future research.
Australian opinion polls on abortion have found that the beliefs of parliamentary
candidates for some parties differed markedly from public opinion. For example, in 2004
Katharine Betts argued that, while Australians across party lines support liberal access to
abortion, as noted above, there was a wide disparity in support for reform between Liberal
and National Party parliamentary candidates and voters, with LNP candidates being
significantly more conservative than voters on the question (Betts 2004a). Betts now
argues, however, that this disparity has narrowed in more recent polls (see Betts 2009). At
any rate, there is no untapped ‘well of feeling’ against abortion available for partisan
mobilisation at the polls.
There is some evidence in my research that Australians nevertheless think that their
fellow voters are more conservative on abortion than they are themselves, and that their
fellow voters are more conservative than is actually the case. Rather than voters exacting
retribution on reformers, however, a more accurate prediction is that many parliamentar-
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ians will continue to set aside the long-standing consensus among voters on this issue.
And pro-choice MPs will continue to lay the blame on a conservatism of the electors and
the electorate rather than on their own lack of will or policy choices. Again, the problem
here is not the attitudes of the electors, but how they have been characterised in
overestimating the conservatism of others.
A final disturbing implication of this research for feminist projects of abortion reform
is that right to life organisations seem to use the claim of electoral backlash less because
they actually believe it is the case that electors will vote against pro-choice politicians and
policies, and more because it is effective as a tool of pressure on members of parliament.
The RTLA tactic of targeting seats where an appearance of impact can be generated seems
to support this argument. In Australia at least, anti-abortion groups have not been
successful at narrowing access to abortion; but they have been successful in constructing
a mythology that abortion is a vote loser, and having that mythology accepted even by
many MPs as well as by feminist analysts. The research presented here, however, indicates
clearly that it is indeed a myth that an anti-abortion stance is a vote loser for individual
MPs or for parties. That is, the attitudes or the choices of voters are not a barrier to feminist
reform of abortion in Australia.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The author would like to thank Kate Gleeson and the anonymous referees for helpful
comments on the article.

NOTES
1. In 2010, Tegan Leach and Sergei Brennan were found not guilty at the Cairns District
Court of charges under the Queensland Criminal Code related to procuring a miscarriage
by the use of RU486 and misoprostol (R v Sergie Brennan and Tegan Simone Leach 2010).
The case was striking given the rarity of prosecutions for abortion in Australia, and
particularly so given that Leach was charged with procuring an abortion on herself. De
Costa (2010) provides an impressionistic account of the trial.
 ABORTION IN AUSTRALIAN ELECTIONS 401

2. Woods’s ignominious resignation as Senator in 1997 and his subsequent conviction for
defrauding the Commonwealth suggest that his endorsement by RTLA was not a
prudent action in terms of defending ‘family values’ (see e.g. Nicholson 1999, 2;
Seccombe 1997, 33).
3. Confirmed by personal communication with Aspley Electorate Secretary, 2010.
4. Medibank benefits were made payable for termination of pregnancy in 1974. In 1977,
the Health Minister conducted a review of the payments, following discontent among
some parliamentarians on the question (see CPD 21 March 1979, 963, Stephen
Lusher).
5. A similar perspective is also presented by McVey (1983).
6. Also see Edwards (1979, 83!4) on the 1979 Victorian election.
7. The DLP gained its first senator for 36 years in the 2010 federal election but, again, not
because of any increase in its primary vote but given preference flows at the tail-end of
the count.
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 404 HELEN PRINGLE

Helen Pringle is in the School of Social Sciences at the University of NSW, with degrees from
the ANU and Princeton University. Her work specialises in human rights, particularly
issues of sexual equality and discrimination, and of freedom of expression. She is the
author of the most recent edition of Australian Protocol and Procedures, and has a
forthcoming book on abortion in Australia.
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