By Mike Steketee Sun 8 Sep 2013
Photo: Prime Minister-elect Tony Abbott celebrates with wife Margie and their daughters at the Liberal Party function in Sydney following his victory in the federal election on September 7, 2013. (ABC: John Donegan)
Notwithstanding a convincing election win by Tony Abbott and the Coalition, support for minor parties and independents entrenched a trend away from major parties, writes Mike Steketee.
As always, the election results, however predictable they may seem, reveal a telling story.
On the basis of Saturday night's count for the House of Representatives, the swing after preferences against Labor of 3.5 per cent was less than the last two occasions it lost government – in 1996, when it went backwards by 5.1 per cent and in 1975, when the swing was 7.4 per cent.
While Labor supporters will draw solace wherever they can, this is nothing to boast about, given how much the party's vote was eroded in the 2010 election.
The reality is that barely a third of voters on Saturday could bring themselves to give Labor their first preference.
That is the worst result since the 1931 and 1934 elections, when Jack Lang split the party. If you add the Lang vote to Labor's, you have to go back even further, to Australia's second federal election in 1903 for Labor to have polled worse and that is when the party had been in existence for little more than a decade.
On the other side, despite Tony Abbott's convincing victory, the Coalition's primary vote in the lower house rose by only 1.6 per cent to 45.3 per cent. Again, that is partly due to its good showing in 2010, giving it a higher starting point than most oppositions.
But there is another factor - the performance of the "others", as election analysts call them.
Collectively, minor parties and independents recorded the biggest swing in the election – 5.8 per cent towards them on primary votes. That was despite a 3.3 percentage point fall in the Greens’ support to 8.4 per cent.
Clive Palmer's party gained 5.6 per cent of the national vote in the House of Representatives, including 11.4 per cent in Queensland. That means that, as of Saturday night, he had won the support of 591,168 voters around the country.
Not all them would have been convinced by some of his claims, ranging from accusing Rupert Murdoch's estranged wife Wendi Deng of spying for the Chinese government to the CIA funding Greenpeace and opinion polls being corrupt. Some may have been attracted to his policies such as restricting foreign investment. But given the opportunity and encouraged by a massive dose of Palmer-funded publicity, it seems they were mostly saying they would rather vote for anyone other than the major parties.
All up, 21 per cent of voters chose a candidate representing other than Labor or the Coalition. This continues the long-term gradual but relentless trend away from the major parties.
The electorate never has had so much information provided to it and it never has been less impressed with the main choices on offer.
Before the Democratic Labor Party split from the ALP in the 1950s, the vote for "others" in the lower house was often three per cent or less.
The arrival of the Australian Democrats in the 1977 election saw votes leech from the major parties but they still mostly received nine out of every 10 of them. The rise of the Greens has eroded their share further, largely at Labor's expense.
The Greens went backwards at this election, perhaps because of the party's association with Labor in minority government, the overall swing to conservatives and Bob Brown's retirement. But they remain a force to be reckoned with.
They maintained the foothold they first established in the House of Representatives at the 2010 election by retaining the seat of Melbourne – a notable achievement considering both major parties directed preferences away from them. And whatever the ultimate Senate result, they will remain a significant presence, given that six of their nine upper house members did not face election on Saturday.
The Australian electoral record suggests voters are cautious about changing their governments.
Federally, starting in 1949, they have just done so for the seventh time – that is, once every nine years.
The average is stretched by the 23-year reign of the Coalition under Robert Menzies and his successors.
From 1972, with the election of the Whitlam government, it has come down to once every seven years.
In that context, the six years of the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd government is only a little short of the average. Like all incumbents, it had a natural advantage: once in power, it had the ability to dictate the agenda. Oppositions oppose; governments dispose.
Labor squandered that benefit by diverting the voters' attention to the party's own lack of faith in its leadership, starting with the coup against Kevin Rudd in 2010 that, according to John Howard amongst others, cost it majority government in the election that year.
Tony Abbott's particular success was in focusing the electorate's gaze on to Labor's problems and contrasting them with the unity and discipline of his own side.
The legacy of this Labor government is that it was not as good at economic reform as the Hawke and Keating governments and fell short of the Whitlam government on social reform.
Nevertheless, there were significant achievements, including the introduction of Disability Care and, belatedly, reform of school funding, as well as the first substantial steps to tackle climate change.
And Rudd was right on at least one of his boasts: his government helped Australia weather the global financial crisis better than most countries. Although it ended up spending too much and mismanaging some of the programs, the initial stimulus package did save the country from recession, less because of the actual money it poured into the economy and more because of its psychological effect in stemming the loss of consumer and business confidence that can make an economic downturn self-fulfilling.
The Rudd-Gillard rivalry meant it received little credit for its achievements. And it still has to find a way to bridge the gap identified at least a decade ago by Lindsay Tanner, who was the last of a continuous line of Labor members to represent the seat of Melbourne: how to bridge the gap between the culture and beliefs of what was once its working class base and those of the left of the party attracted to the Greens.
Mike Steketee is a freelance journalist. He was formerly a columnist and national affairs editor for The Australian. View his full profile here.
