Opinion
There are no ‘safe’ seats any more, and here’s why that’s good news
Ross Gittins
Economics EditorWhy do we have so many economic problems, and why do our governments make so little progress in fixing them? Because the two main parties just play politics and by now have boxed each other in. Neither side is game to make tough decisions for fear of what the other side will do to them.
Our tax system needs repair, but neither side dares to make changes somebody somewhere might not like. So we put up with poor government services, growing waiting lists, tax avoidance by the highly paid, bracket creep and phony tax cuts.
Illustration by Simon LetchCredit:
We have a system where people with mortgages get squeezed unmercifully whenever inflation gets too high. There are fairer and less painful ways to fix the problem, but neither side has the courage to change.
When occasionally the two sides agree on some policy, it’s often a bad one. Many defence experts quietly doubt the wisdom of AUKUS. By the time the nuclear subs arrive in many years’ time – if they ever do – they’ll probably have been superseded.
But the political duopoly’s most egregious failing is its inaction on climate change. For a while, it looked like the climate wars had ended, with the Albanese government making very cautious progress towards net-zero emissions.
Now, however, Peter Dutton has come up with a new reason for delay: let’s go nuclear instead. And we don’t have to do anything unpleasant for a decade or two. It will probably never happen, but what it has done is rob commercial investors of the certainty they need to keep investing in solar and wind farms at the rapid rate we need them to. With our ageing coal-fired power stations so close to the grave, our transition to renewable energy could be very bumpy.
The election of teal MPs in 2022 confirmed voters’ willingness to move away from the two-party political system.Credit: James Brickwood
So, what can we do to free ourselves from the clutches of a two-party political system that’s stopped working? Well, we’re already doing it. Voters are increasingly taking the law into their own hands by opting for the minor parties and independents. We saw this at the last federal election, in 2022, where the two big parties’ combined share of first-preference votes – which has been declining since World War II – fell to 68.3 per cent, its lowest level since the Great Depression.
So, the share of first-preference votes going to minor parties and independents is now just a little short of a third. In consequence, the number of crossbenchers in the House of Representatives rose to a record 16.
It’s not difficult to judge that the duopoly’s poor performance on climate change explains much of their decline. Labor loses votes to the Greens while, for the first time, teal independents took six previously safe seats from the Liberals.
Nor is it hard to believe that Labor’s caution and the Liberals’ nuclear red herring may add to the big parties’ loss of first preferences at next year’s election.
New research by Bill Browne and Dr Richard Denniss, of the Australia Institute, finds there are now no safe seats in House of Representatives. While some Labor seats are safe from being taken by the Liberals, and some Liberal seats are safe from Labor, such seats aren’t safe from the Greens or an attractive independent candidate.
In the supposedly safe Liberal seat of Mackellar on Sydney’s northern beaches, the teal independent Dr Sophie Scamps won the seat with a two-candidate preferred swing of more than 15 per cent. A strong independent candidate’s advantage is that they can pick up the preferences of the minor parties, plus those of the other big-party candidate who was never going to win.
It’s usual for the big parties to focus on the “marginal seats” that could be won or lost if a few “swinging voters” change their votes. And it’s mainly these marginals that one big party loses to the other.
But it’s not usual for the minor parties and independents to pick up such marginal seats. No, they’re much more likely to win supposedly safe seats.
So while the big guys focus on winning or retaining the marginals, they leave themselves open to the small guys when they neglect the concerns of voters in their heartland seats. Again, climate change would be the classic concern.
The standard way of predicting the results of elections using the psephologist Malcolm Mackerras’ famous pendulum has been overtaken not just by the lack of a uniform national swing between the two majors, but by the rise of the minors and independents.
I think it will be rare for governments to be elected with big majorities in future. Wafer-thin majorities will be the norm, with “hung” parliaments common. The big guys will warn us this will lead to chaos and inaction.
Don’t you believe it! It’s never been true at the state level where, at present, only five of the eight state and territory parliaments are dominated by a majority party.
I think a move to more power for crossbenchers at the federal level could be a good way to break the big-party logjam. It’s hard to see how it could be worse than what we’ve got.
Ross Gittins is the economics editor.