Australia’s shifting political landscape
End of a political duopoly?
At a gathering of independent candidates in Canberra last Monday, Senator David Pocock, almost in passing, said that well-organized independent candidates were changing the political landscape.
In the coming election there will be at least 30 independent candidates, some supported by Climate 200 and some supported by local movements, making a pitch for winnable seats. Some will fall short of victory, but even if they do, Pocock said, they will have helped in changing the way politics is done in Australia.
That change was the theme of the Four Corners episode: Why this Australian federal election will be different, about the decline of the two-party political duopoly. That decline has been in progress for 75 years, but has come to the media’s attention only in the last few years, such is the durability of the way journalists see the political world.
The program gathered views of candidates and other commentators in four electorates:
Werriwa in western Sydney. It was once held by Labor with a solid majority (65:35 TPP in 2007), but Labor’s margin in 2022 was down to 56:44. This is Gough Whitlam’s old seat – Labor heartland in times past. There is discontent on the streets, but it will be a tough contest for the Liberal candidate in view of Dutton’s anti-Arab stance on the Middle East.
Wannon in western Victoria – the area once known as the “western districts” of the landed gentry (or the bunyip aristocracy). This used to be solid Liberal Party territory. It was Malcolm Fraser’s electorate, and is now held by Dan Tehan. In 2022 it became contestable when independent Alex Dyson, with 19 percent primary vote, came close to knocking off Tehan in a 54:46 TPP outcome. Dyson is running again, with a more organized campaign.
Brisbane and two adjacent urban seats, Ryan and Griffith. These were won by the Greens in 2022 with TPP swings of 8 to 9 percent. Brisbane and Griffith, the two more inner-city seats, were once Labor seats while Ryan, stretching to the west of Brisbane, was once a strong Coalition seat. Notably in the 2022 election there were no strong independents running in the Brisbane region. The Greens saw an opportunity and took it.
Bullwinkle, a new seat in Perth’s eastern fringe. There will be a Liberal-Labor contest, but there will also be a National Party candidate, Lena Davies, whose politics are more moderate than the hard-right line of the Nationals in the eastern states. For example she supported the “yes” case in the Voice referendum. (The Western Australian Nationals are somewhat separate from the Nationals in the Eastern states.)
The producers seem to have picked these four electorates because they most strongly illustrate how old assumptions about safe seats no longer hold. A run through four electorates hardly constitutes a well-structured sample, but there are some common themes that probably extend to the nation at large.
One theme is that voters are annoyed because the major parties have taken once-safe seats for granted. That’s a long-standing issue: it’s not clear why ABC journalists were so surprised by this finding. But there has been a change, because well-organized independents and Greens now give voters an alternative, and voters are responding. Just as we seek competition in supermarkets and airlines, so do we welcome competition in our political options.
In keeping with this observation, the main concern among the people the ABC interviewed was about government services – roads, schools, health services – services that make for more liveable communities. Many are finding it hard to make ends meet, and in Brisbane and Perth, the cost of housing is a major issue. But they don’t seem to be blaming Labor for their material conditions having deteriorated: rather they will support candidates who can do something to improve those conditions and they may be candidates free from the constraints of the established parties.
This attitude seems to confirm the old aphorism that all politics is local, and it helps explain why the teal independents have resisted the temptation to unite as a new party.
Are Australians comfortable with this changed political landscape? The most recent Essential poll asked respondents to choose between the two following statements:
It is better to have a major party with the balance of power in parliament, so they can enact policies they promised to implement without needing approval from minor parties and independents.
and
It is better to have minor parties and independents holding the balance of power in parliament, because they provide greater scrutiny on policies proposed by the major parties.
Respondents split exactly 50:50 between the two statements. Older people are more in favour of majority government, and women are more in favour of minor parties holding the balance. The big (and largely predictable) differences relate to voting intention. Coalition voters, in particular, are particularly attached to the idea of majority government.
How many of those Coalition voters, however, stop to think that the word “Coalition” means just that? At the federal level it is doubtful if the Liberal Party has ever held a majority of seats in the House of Representatives. With the loss of urban seats and the strong representation of the LNP in Queensland the Liberal Party is on the way to becoming a minor party in this coalition: only 25 of the Coalition’s 45 seats are held by the Liberal Party.
If you want to hear what two independent senators think about majority government, and of the government’s so-called voting “reforms”, there are refreshingly frank expressions of opinion, free of spin and unprompted by speaking notes, by Jacqui Lambie and David Pocock, on ABC Breakfast last Tuesday. Different language, same messages. (13 minutes)
Zoe Daniel calls out the political duopoly
Zoe Daniel’s speech to the National Press Club last Wednesday is about why we need independents in Parliament.
The first 30 minutes is a lively speech, in which she explains how independents not only bring hard issues into Parliament – issues the old parties would like to avoid – but also how they force the government to improve legislation. She describes a large number of practical outcomes achieved by 11 independents in the House of Representatives. “Even without the balance of power in this term of government, it is the crossbench that has been the driving force behind innovation and the improvement of legislation”.
More generally, she describes a change in the way politics is being done in Australia.
Economic policy features in much of her speech, and in her subsequent responses to
journalists. She points out that it is now 25 years since there has been any significant structural economic reform – introduction of the GST. Tax reform is high on her agenda, as it is on Allegra Spender’s, whose work she acknowledges.
Journalists try to get her to commit to saying who she would support in the likely event that neither of the established parties can form majority government. It’s a silly question, but it gives her an opportunity to give her impression of those parties.
She sees Labor as timid, frozen into inaction on important issues, such as gambling reform, because they are fearful of the reaction from pro-Coalition media. Of the Labor Party she says “You are so cowered by your own fear of failure that you are causing your own demise”. On the Coalition she is critical of their failure to present any serious policies, and is even more critical of their tactic of weaponizing every contentious policy issue – including anti-Semitism.
She does not present herself (or by implication other independents) as representing some middle ground between the two main parties. Both parties have their own failings, and they cannot be lined up on a “left-right” spectrum. Rather she seeks to bring “the politics of reason” into policymaking and into public debate. It is strange, she notes, that in most of our lives we engage with one another civilly. But in the political sphere, where we collectively make our most consequential decisions, there is licence to engage in lying, sophistry, casuistry, and ad-hominem attacks.
De facto, Daniel’s Press Club presentation is on behalf of all independent candidates, but like other independents she represents the interests of her electorate, Goldstein, an urban electorate about 15 km from Melbourne’s CBD, on the eastern side of Port Phillip Bay. It was once one of the Liberals’ safest seats, but she won it in 2022 with an 11 percent swing away from the Liberal member. The primary votes in that election were Liberal 40 percent, Labor 11 percent, Greens 8 percent, and Zoe Daniel 35 percent.
The old parties fight back on political donations
When Labor was elected in 2022 there was a reasonable expectation that by the time another election came around there would be reform of political donations, with real-time disclosure of donations and low reporting thresholds as a minimum set of changes.
But here we are with an election looming, still with no reform, because Labor has spent 33 months trying to do a deal with the Coalition, with the feeble excuse that unless they achieve bipartisan support the next Coalition government will reverse any meaningful reform.
That excuse doesn’t wash, because the probability of a Coalition having control of the Senate at any time in the foreseeable future is about the same as the probability of John Howard apologising for wrecking the tax system. Any attempt by a Coalition government to undo meaningful reform could be undone by Labor and the Senate crossbench.
The real reason is about preserving the duopoly, one area there is agreement between two old and tired parties, who at best can claim to represent two out of three Australians.
So in the absence of progress, Kate Griffiths and Jessica Geraghty of the Grattan Institute have pulled together some analysis of 2023-24 returns. Because donations are down in non-election years, their work yields no outstanding revelations, but they do explain the problems in the existing arrangements, and they compare the lack of Commonwealth progress with meaningful reforms implemented by state governments.
No doubt this time next year Kate and Jessica can tell us how much the plutocrats are handing out for this election.