There is currently in the nation’s capital a controversial debate swirling around a plan by the incumbent government – a Labor/Greens coalition – to design and construct a light rail public transport system that would run through the middle of the city but would service only the northern half, from the suburb of Gungahlin to the Civic centre. This 12-14 km link is costed at something approaching 1 billion dollars.

Adding to the controversy the current Liberal Opposition has made clear for some time that it is opposed to the light rail plan and should it win government at the next election, scheduled for late 2016, it would seek to cancel the project and any contracts that have been entered into as part of the project’s implementation.

This has excited comment from a number of quarters, including criticism by a Federal Liberal Minister in which he has accused his ACT colleagues of “economic lunacy”. There is more than a little politics in this, given that the Federal Government and the Prime Minister have been vociferous in their criticism of the action of the recently-elected Victorian Labor Government in cancelling a major road project approved and contracted by its Liberal predecessors, an action that Labour in opposition made very clear it would take and which the Victorian electorate had very definite knowledge of prior to the State election.

So the position is more than a little muddy with normally natural allies taking opposing positions. There has also been widespread comment from the community itself, with support and opposition being strenuously expressed both publicly and privately.

In an effort to bolster the project support case the local union movement, in favour of the project both because it is a Labor proposal and because it hopes that the plan’s implementation will result in an increase in jobs, conducted a telephone poll.  A report on the results of this poll can be seen here.  Unfortunately, for the project’s supporters  the greater number of respondents to the poll were against the light rail plan.

Enter academia, of which Canberra is blessed with a preponderance. A contribution to the debate and specifically to the unfortunately negative poll results was penned by two academic supporters of the proposal.  This can be seen here.  Their essential point was that the poll results were only negative because of the impact of negative responses expressed by intending Liberal voters and if they were excluded then magically the poll results would have been positive.

One would have to say that this is a proposition that is staggering in its naivete.  It is almost charmingly guileless in its disregard of the obvious flaws in such an analysis, including the possibility (probability?) that respondents indicating that they were likely to vote Liberal were intending to do so precisely because they opposed to the light rail plan.  The cause was the light rail plan and the result was an intention to vote Liberal, not the other way around.

Additionally, did it not occur to these ivory-tower dwellers that any similar exercise that excluded intending Labor voters would result in overwhelming rejection of the proposal?

This has now raised the intriguing possibility for all our politicians – if they suffer an adverse poll just exclude all negative respondents and all will be well.

I am astonished that anyone would seek to reinterpret poll results in this way, especially individuals whose education and position should lead them to know better.  I am utterly astounded that they would then seek to have this exercise actually published, potentially opening them up to ridicule.

Only in Canberra!