Politics
Will today’s young voters stay “left”?
We probably become more conservative as we age, but that doesn’t turn us to the Coalition.
For a long time it was a political verity that as voters aged, and became card-carrying members of the bourgeois property-owning class, they would become politically more conservative, and more inclined to vote for parties on the right.
Studies of the 2019 and 2022 elections questioned that verity. As baby boomers die, there hasn’t arisen a replacement cohort of Coalition voters. We are yet to see the 2025 Australian Election Study, assuming it survives the cuts at ANU, to see if Australians are still failing to switch as they age.
Writing in Inside Story – The trouble with Coalition’s young voter problem – Peter Brent, using simple mathematics from previous election studies, and focusing on TPP voting patterns, questions the election study findings. Recent elections have seen a particularly low vote for the Coalition among young people and an overall turning away from the Coalition, but within this general trend there is still evidence that as people age they turn to the right.
Brent writes his analysis “with plenty of provisos”, particularly at a time when the meanings of “left” and “right” have become even more vague, and when support for the two old established parties has collapsed.
Lest the Coalition take from his article the idea that they will find redemption from Gen X and Gen Y (roughly the 30 to 60 age group) there are two qualifications.
First, these people could indeed be becoming more conservative as they age, but that conservatism may be turning them towards the Labor Party, because, contrary to some claims from the far right, the Albanese government with its emphasis on gradual reform seems to be an exemplar of Burkean conservatism. This is in contrast to the radical Trumpian populism Dutton and his followers presented in this year’s election, and in contrast to the extreme ideas on energy policy, income distribution and defence presently promoted by prominent Coalition politicians. It is hard to think of a policy that’s more conservative than one directed to preserving natural resources and avoiding catastrophic climate change.
Second, Gen X and Gen Y are generally better-educated than earlier cohorts. Gen Y (30 to 45), particularly women in that cohort, are much better educated than the baby boomers. If the Coalition sticks with its strategy of lying and running scare campaigns they will never appeal to this cohort. Their conservatism is likely to direct them to other groupings on the centre-right, such as the “teals” in recent elections.
The Liberals’ gender problem
The Liberals have a gender problem: it’s about policy.
The men in the backrooms of RG Menzies House must be cursing the Australian women who led the world in voting rights for women, because there’s a fair statistical chance that if women had been denied the vote, Peter Dutton would now be prime minister, surrounded by a loyal and supportive brotherhood in Cabinet.
RG Menzies House: The ladies’ entrance is around the back
But it wasn’t always this way for the Liberal Party. In fact until around the turn of this century women’s vote tended to favour the Coalition.
The attraction of women to Menzies’ Liberal Party is pointed out by Blair Williams of Monash University in her article in the Australian Journal of Politics and History, Bloody Howard! Gender, Leadership, and the decline of the Liberal Party of Australia as the “Party for Women”.
The title itself says much about her findings, arising from her summary of the approach she took:
I begin by outlining the origins of the LPA and the many firsts it achieved for women in the mid-20th century. I then trace how the Party began to lose its way on women's issues during the Fraser government and particularly in the 1980s during its time in opposition. I assess the impact of Howard's leadership on shaping the Party's values and demonstrate the persistence of his legacy, evident in the cultivation by subsequent leaders—from Abbott to Morrison—of a stance on gender equality policy that was both economically neoliberal and socially conservative, alongside an aggressively masculine, highly sexualised, and sexist “boy's club” culture.
Her work is a welcome balance to the Howard hagiography The Howard Years, now being re-broadcast on the ABC. And it’s a reminder that the party’s problem with women voters isn’t going to be solved by appointing a female “leader” or bringing the party’s women forward in photos of the “shadow cabinet”. It’s about policies and, as she says, the party’s “shift towards the reactionary right under Peter Dutton”. Dutton may have retreated from the scene, but the men who put him forward – a chain that goes back to Howard – are still there and are influential in the party’s ranks.
Patricia Karvelas has a summary of Williams’ work, in her post Howard paved the way for Abbott, Morrison and the Liberal Party's “women problem”.
The Liberals’ existential problem
The Liberal party must choose between fundamental reform and dissolving to make space for a new centre-right party. It is doing neither.
Last Thursday’s Late Night Live was devoted a discussion about the future of the Liberal Party: Liberal Party lost: can the party of Menzies recover?. In the studio with David Marr were Judith Brett, Frank Bongiorno and Paul Kelly.
He’d be rather annoyed
Marr did his best to provoke disagreement among his guests, but they were all of the opinion that the party is in bad shape. The immediate problem is to do with policies relating to climate change, but the more basic problem is that the party has lost touch with a constituency, mainly an urban constituency, inclined to support a centre-right party.
The party seems to have bound itself in a structure that works against reform. Elements of that structure include its (secret) contract with the National Party, state branch structures that are so small that they are vulnerable to stacking by fringe groups, and immersion in the echo chamber of right-wing media more intent on fighting Labor than in developing policy.
The Tasmanian election challenges political assumptions
Following the Tasmanian election the Liberal Party has demonstrated a responsiveness and flexibility in a way the Labor Party hasn’t.
Even though representation of Labor, Liberals and the Greens didn’t change at the Tasmanian election, held on July 25, it took a long time for a government to form – in this case a continuation of the Rockliff Liberal Party government.
A reminder of the outcome is in the table below, constructed from the ABC website.
This election, coming only 16 months after the March 2024 election, was precipitated by a successful Labor no-confidence motion, against Liberal Premier Rockliff. This led to the Governor calling a re-election, guided by the Premier’s advice.
In view of that outcome, taking the path of least resistance the Governor re-appointed Rockliff as Premier, leaving it to Parliament to test his support.
In view of the Coalition’s dismal showing in state and federal elections both the swing and the base vote are an impressive performance for the Coalition.
An observer unfamiliar with our Australian political sensitivities, looking at those figures, would conclude that a Liberal-Green coalition, or at least the Liberals with Green a guarantee on supply and no-confidence, would be able to form stable government, with support in 19 of the 35 seats. Austria, for example, from 2020 until this year, has had a Green/Christian-Democrat coalition government.
But so far Australians have thought more about polarizing coalitions, rather than spanning coalitions.
Once Parliament re-convened, Labor, thinking along “left-right” and “progressive-reactionary” terms, and identifying at least four of the independents as progressive, moved a motion of no-confidence, hoping to scrape a majority from 19 members (10 Labor, 5 Greens, and 4 independents.).
The motion failed miserably: not a single non-Labor member supported it, and as Lucy MacDonald of ABC Tasmania suggests, Labor seems to have orchestrated a no-confidence motion in itself. Its leader Dean Winter has resigned from his position as Labor “leader”, giving way to Josh Willie to take his place.
The Liberals have shown a capacity to negotiate with independents in a way Labor hasn’t. They have agreed to phase out greyhound racing in Tasmania – a decision that won’t go down well with its redneck supporters – and they have gone back on their 2024 promise to open an additional 39 000 hectares of native forest to logging.
That doesn’t mean the Liberals are in a firm position. There is still the promise from both Labor and the Liberals to build a football stadium in Hobart, a project lacking any merit on economic grounds to do with public goods, and for which cost estimates have blown out way beyond the $375 million originally estimated as the state government contribution. The Greens and almost all the independents oppose it, particularly in light of the poor condition of the state finances which, as Saul Eslake (and the state Treasury) reminds us, are in no position to finance large capital projects, particularly something as frivolous as a football stadium.
We seem to be observing among Rockliff’s Liberals a willingness to back off hard “positions”, recognising that some of the policies the right included in the party’s platform do not have widespread support. It’s a flexibility for which there is no evidence among his federal counterparts, or in the Labor Party. And for the time being at least, Tasmania seems to have a Liberal-Green accommodation.
Perhaps Rockliff’s room to manoeuvre is helped by the absence of a National Party in Tasmania. Federally and in the three eastern states the Liberal Party has unnecessarily burdened itself with its formal coalition arrangements.
There is a lesson all politicians, particularly those in the old parties, can take from this election. Minority government, particularly when the so-called “crossbench” is well in touch with the community, presents an opportunity for the party to drop poorly-considered or just plain stupid policies foisted on it by their fringe movements.
A 50-year political history of Australia in 50 minutes
A well-led life of public service
Many readers know John Menadue from his policy website Pearls and Irritations.
That’s his present contribution to a life dedicated to public service – as a political adviser, as the head of Commonwealth departments, as a diplomat, and since retirement (did he ever really retire?) as an advocate for good public policy. Establishing the Centre for Policy Development was one of his achievements, but by far his most consequential and enduring contribution to Australia as we know it today was his significant part in getting rid of the White Australia Policy.
David Marr has dedicated a session of Late Night Live to John Menadue’s public life: John Menadue critiques Australia's media and our relationship with the United States. He certainly covers those topics (spoiler – he’s not a great enthusiast for AUKUS). But the interview is more than that – it’s essentially a political history of Australia, starting with his own experience as a Labor candidate for the federal seat of Hume in 1966, and covering the ground in his 2024 book Summing up: pearls and irritations.
Who are these “sovereign citizens?
They are disorganized but can be dangerous.
We are inclined to regard “sovereign citizens” as a bunch of harmless right-wing twerps whose main burden on society is in terms of clogging up the courts, but the murder of two police officers at Porepunkah, allegedly by someone claiming to be a “sovereign citizen”, reminds us that the movement poses serious threats to society.
Confused symbols
The Conversation editors have drawn our attention to a 2020 article by Kaz Ross, a researcher in far-right extremism: Who are the sovereign citizens, or SovCits, and why do they believe they have immunity from the law?. It’s a loose term – anyone can claim to be a sovereign citizen, but the core element is a libertarian belief that one is not bound by the law of the place where they live. That same belief means they are unlikely to come together as a well-structured organization or to have a hierarchy within their movements.
The mainstream “right” would like to dissociate itself from sovereign citizens, but these people have surely been inspired by the rhetoric of politicians like Reagan, Thatcher and Howard, who repeatedly represented government as some burdensome organization suppressing people’s freedoms.
As Ross explains, sovereign citizen beliefs often intersect with patriot movements, anti-tax protest groups, and certain religious communities. Those who murdered two police officers at Wieambilla in 2022 made no claim to be sovereign citizens, but they had all the necessary credentials for membership.
When Ross wrote that article Covid was in full swing. Vaccine mandates, lockdowns and travel restrictions all contributed to sovereign citizens’ paranoiac belief that an oppressive, illegitimate state was out to deprive them of their liberty. As Coalition Home Affairs spokesperson Andrew Hastie says, during Covid many of them went down rabbit holes and have never come back out.
It is probably a mistake to consider sovereign citizens as loners, even though they often stress their individualism and self-reliance. Writing in The Age Aisha Dow, Melissa Cunningham and Grant McArthur describe how the individuals can come together, reinforcing one another’s beliefs and feelings that the state is oppressing them: The descent of Dezi Freeman is warning of wider perils. Indeed they have a point, because most law-abiding citizens have little idea of how heavy the instruments of state control can be.
The Porepunkah and Wieambilla incidents both involve firearms. Writing in The Conversation Samara McPhedran of Griffith University brings us up to date on firearm ownership in Australia: What’s behind the rise in gun ownership in Australia?.
As the title indicates there are now more firearms and more firearm owners than there were before the Howard government, in response to the Port Arthur massacre, imposed strict controls on firearm ownership and on the types of firearms people could possess.
Although data is patchy (something that should concern us all), it appears that the growth in firearms and ownership is largely explained by population growth. We do have reasonably good data on the rate of firearm homicide however, which has been falling for at least 35 years, and now around one seventh of its 1980 level. This suggests that effective firearm regulation may be a more useful policy than reliance on crude numbers such as firearm numbers.