In case the title didn’t give away the subject of this post, I’m sure this image (which makes me so very happy) did!
Australia Election Follow-up
by Viva BrisVegas and Pete Downunder
It’s not over until the plus-size lady sings, but the 2025 Australian Federal Election is as settled as a fat wombat in its burrow. As of writing, Labor has of a certainty 92 seats (electorates) in the House, the Liberal Party 40, Independents 10, and the Greens 0. This leaves 8 seats as yet undecided. In those undecided seats, Labor is ahead in 2, the Liberals in 4, Independents in 1 and Greens in 1. Counting in the undecided seats is complicated by our preferential voting system, but should be completed in most of the undecided seats this week.
The term “Liberals” used here is a catch all to include all the conservative parties acting in coalition, such as The Liberal Party, The National Party, The Liberal National Party, and The Country Liberal Party. All these parties have essentially the same policies and are only differentiated in marketing terms. They are all right wing bastards, whose only purpose when in power is to funnel cash into the pockets of the richest people in the country and to punch down as hard as possible at refugees, the unemployed, LGBTQI communities, Aboriginals or anybody else they deem unworthy. The Liberal Party was created in 1944 out of the wreckage of previous conservative parties who were thrown out of government because of their incompetence in the early stages of WW2. Since then the Liberals have proven themselves fiscally incompetent, militarily reckless and socially regressive, yet they have been in power for 50 of the past 80 years. They last lost government to the Labor Party in 2022 having been in power since 2013. This is Labor’s first election as a government since 2010.
Labor is a party created in the 1890s as the political arm of the Union Movement. The first Labor government was elected in 1904. It still retains strong Union ties, even though successive Liberal governments have weakened union bargaining power by making almost all strike activity illegal and union organisers personally subject to claims for financial losses by employers, such that Unions now represent only a fraction of the workers that they once did. Like the Liberal Party it consists of several factions who compete for ministerial posts. Unlike the Liberal Party, where the factions range from Centre Right to the dominant Far Right, the Labor factions range from Far Left to Centre Right.
The Greens are a party that arose out the environmental movement of the 1970s, although the party didn’t form until 1992. In its earliest iterations it can lay claim to being among the first Green political movements in the world. They are a left wing party whose factions seem to be based more on personalities than on policies. They compete with Labor for the left wing vote. This has led to a great deal of bad feeling between the parties at the organisational level. Voters couldn’t care less. It does however make Senate negotiations more fraught than would normally be expected.
This election continues the trend away from the two party (Labor/Liberal) system that prevailed throughout the 20th Century. Once 90%+ of first preference votes (number 1 on the ballot) could be expected to go to one of the two main parties, which made it almost impossible for anyone else to win a House seat. In this election the Liberals got 32%, Labor got 34% and Others got 33% of first preferences. The result of this is a trend towards more independents and Greens being elected at each future election. This election was a landslide, with a dominant Labor result, but if these trends continue future governments of either Liberal or Labor will likely be elected with a minority and only be able to form government with the consent of independents or Greens. If you are wondering how Labor achieved a landslide with only 34% of first preferences, it is because it receives the bulk of Greens second preferences. The two party preferred vote is the result once all preferences have been distributed.
As an example of preferential voting, the undecided Green seat is Ryan, Pete Downunder’s home electorate, where so far the Liberal candidate got 35%, Greens 29% and Labor 28% (at this writing, the vote count is at 86%) with minor parties taking up the rest. Since they are both left leaning voters, Labor voters will mostly preference the Greens over the right wing Liberals and Green voters will mostly preference Labor over the Liberals. Thus, if as seems likely the Green party is second and Labor third, then Greens will win the seat. This would leave the Greens with one House seat out of the four they held before the election. Should Labor come in second, then they would win the seat.
The Australian Senate functions slightly differently than in the US. It is a body of legislative review and has veto power over any legislation that is passed by the House of Representatives. It runs on majority rule, there is no nonsense about supermajorities or nuclear options. It consists of 76 seats filled by 12 senators from each of the six states and 2 senators from each of the two territories, the Northern Territory and the Australian Capital Territory (think District of Columbia). The territories were not represented in the Senate until 1975. State senators go to election every 6 years (two House terms), territory senators go to election very 3 years (one House term). 39 seats out of 76 are required for a majority. The voting system for the Senate is tedious and complex, but in essence it’s a quota based proportional representation system which favours the smaller parties. When presented with it, quantum physicists have been known to run screaming from the room tearing their hair out.
Prior to this election there were 30 Liberal, 25 Labor, 11 Green, 2 One Nation, and 8 independent senators. This meant that the Labor government required Greens and independents support to pass any legislation through the Senate that was opposed by the Liberals. Support which was not forthcoming on a number of occasions.
To date the Senate count is only 76% complete, but a probable result for the new Senate looks like being 27 Liberal, 30 Labor and 11 Greens, with Others yet to be determined. The Labor and Greens numbers could form a left leaning Senate majority should they choose to co-operate. Fewer different parties involved in Senate negotiations generally results in fewer compromises in the legislation.
In Australian terms this election is a landslide victory. What is more remarkable is that it is the best result for Labor since 1943 (the middle of WWII). In Australia, it is usual for governments to come into office with thumping majorities and then have that lead whittled away in subsequent elections. In this election Labor has gone against that trend and substantially increased its representation in the House from an already excellent result in the 2022 election.
The pundits are already busy announcing that they knew the result all along. This is despite repeatedly announcing before the election that it was tight, that Labor was in trouble of losing its majority, yadda yadda. The pollsters also have egg on their collective faces as they too grossly underestimated the Labor vote.
Everybody has a theory to explain the result. The main one in the media seems to be that Dutton, the Opposition Leader, was inherently unelectable. This didn’t seem to be problem all last year when they favoured him and his party to win convincingly. So what changed between the end of last year and the election? What made Dutton unelectable? Did something happen in January this year to alter the political environment in Australia?
The obvious answer to all three questions is Trump. Trump happened. Threats to Canada happened. Threats to a fellow Commonwealth country do not go unnoticed here. Tariffs happened. People notice when their country gets slapped with tariffs by the US despite running a trade balance substantially in the US’s favour. They don’t like it when somebody disses our penguins. They don’t like Trump and they don’t like conservative politicians like Dutton who play footsie with Trump. Is the Trump Factor real? There are efforts in the Murdoch media to press the argument that it is not. Which makes it all the more convincing that is as real as day.
Although it didn’t help that Dutton was trying to sell an absurd nuclear power policy and that his culture war stances went down like a lead balloon. Agreeing with Nazis that Aboriginal “Welcome to Country” ceremonies were a woke imposition on our culture, didn’t find purchase outside of right wing media. The Liberals entrenched misogyny has also resulted in a widening gender gap. Women voters in normally safe Liberal seats have been voting in droves for female independents who are generally fiscally conservative and socially liberal.
Since Dutton lost his own seat in the election, on Tuesday the Liberals meet to elects a new leader. It is a contest between Angus Taylor, a Liberal Party stalwart of the old school, and Sussan Ley, one of the very few prominent women MPs in the Liberal Party. Given the gender gap in voting, if they are not suicidal they will pick Ley.
Big thanks once again to two of our Australia peeps, Viva BrisVegas and Pete Downunder, for their great work in keeping us informed!
As Settled as a Fat Wombat in Its BurrowPost + Comments (88)
