Over at The Drum, I have a piece published reflecting on what this election result means for our politics.
NB: Tim Dunlop, also writing for The Drum, has a complementary take.
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NB: Tim Dunlop, also writing for The Drum, has a complementary take.
Good piece Mark.
When someone has time can we have a post on how we all got it so wrong? Antony Green had a post up a couple of weeks ago saying how a Liberal victory (still possible?) was more likely than a hung parliament and yet here we are. I’m not dissing Antony Green, I’m just wondering if he didn’t see it then what hope did other interested but ‘uneducated in matters political’ people like me could have done. Other pundits expected a returned Labor govt with a reduced majority, maybe hanging on by one seat. So what happened to get us where we are now?
@2 – Cheers, Lefty E.
Interesting article Mark. I am not sure if what we are seeing is a change in the way politics is done or simply a voter reaction to a particular set of leaders under particular circumstances.
By and large the Howard period saw both sides dominated by a paradigm that was obsessed by reducing taxes, reducing government debt and taking a “safe” approach while allowing infrastructure to run down. We saw this approach at both the federal and state levels.
The initial, enthusiastic response to Mark Latham as Labor leader suggested that the electorate was fed up by the Howard paradigm and would have voted Labor in if Mark had not been ..er.. Mark.
The success of Rudd in 2007 supported this perception that the electorate was sick of the Howard paradigm. The decline in support for Rudd when the ETS was dropped (without an alternative being put forward reinforced this perception that we were eager for real action. However, neither Julia or Tony seemed to have recognized this change in electorate mood. So once again, Julia’s support dropped when she announced her Clayton’s climate policy plan and tried to reduce the gap between herself and Tony.
Most of her pronouncements during the campaign were pure Howardism. Cuts to company taxes, emphasis on fiscal ultra-conservatism and a rejection of important things like a better effort on mental health because we could only afford it by dropping the company tax reductions or being a little less obsessed with balancing the budget by some arbitrary target date.
Under these circumstances it is not surprising that voters turned to a range of minor parties and independents. The mood reminds me of the general dissatisfaction at the time when One Nation had its successes.
We will see how much both major parties have learned from this election.
However, it is worth noting that Labors TPP vote is much better than Howard’s figure was in 1998. Also worth noting that since 1998 support dropped dramatically for both the Democrats and One Nation. Time will tell whether the move to the Greens is a long term feature of our system or merely a symptom of general dissatisfaction.
The Greens will largely plateau after this result. They are now a player and so their actions rather than their aspirations will be what gets judged. They will be unable to satisfy the unrealistically high expectations of a great many of their 2010 voters. No fault of theirs – just political reality. The three indies also enjoyed their finest hour yesterday. It’s all downhill for them now!
It is wrong to expect any party to be able to lead us to loving peace and harmony. Politics is a very real battle between sections of society with real and conflicting interests and viewpoints. Bitter division and lowest common denominator compromise is most often the best result to be hoped for.
Vision is a fine thing – but we do not share common visions. Hence politics.
We were told the Greens vote would plateau at less than 10%.
It didn’t. Broader cultural and social factors are at work and a simple now they are players and will get judged accordingly is too simplistic and short sighted.
Doug, I think the Greens vote will still continue to rise somewhat from here. But I think that they now embark on the second stage (a great achievement) where there will be ups and downs. There is nothing inevitable about cultural evolution in any particular direction. For example I can’t see yet how any radical climate change policy can be achieved in the life of this new parliament. That will lead to disappointment. And some will revert to the view that real political gains can only be achieved by going back to the traditional progressive force in the ALP.
There is no precedent for the Greens electoral trajectory. Greens policies are driven by ecological and social justice issues. The big two are driven by the class politics of pre-ecological crisis industrial capitalism. The Green’s vote will reflect the deepening of the ecological crisis and growing concern about that. I don’t rejoice in this at all and would have it another way. However, if you don’t factor in structural changes to the working class in Australia you don’t understand the significant structural drivers of irrelevance within the ALP. Similarly, to grasp how the Green vote will run you need to see how denial and immobility within the electorate around the ecological crisis has begun to shift and will continue to do so. There is more creative energy and will to survive within Australian civil society than either the ALP of the Libs are aware of or can harness.
@8 The question depends as much on the ALP as it does the Greens. Right now Labor is run by a group of machine men and spin doctors who, if they were hired by KFC, would try to sell it as being “A greasy warm dead bird in a cardboard box” if they bothered trying to explain it at all, and then would wonder why no-one is buying.
If the ALP adopts some progressive policies, drops the spin, and drops the factional heavyweights, then they can win back some of the Green vote. And if not? Then who knows how low they’ll slide.
I see the Governor General might have to recuse herself on the grounds she’s Shorten’s mother-in-law. That would add an interesting twist to proceedings. It also makes her a singularly poor choice for the office unless Shorten’s got married since her appointment. The relationship was likely to contaminate virtually any important discretionary decision she would be called upon to make, or at least give the appearance of a lack of impartiality.
I don’t think this is on topic for this thread, Ken, but yes, Shorten’s relationship with her daughter substantially predates her appointment. I think it’s ridiculous and insulting to suggest she would have a conflict of interest on those grounds, though.
I enjoy the optimism implicit in your posts, Mark – or maybe it’s my optimism [naivety?] that read them that way..? I dunno….but thanks for the good, thought-provoking reads.
Kim the legal principles have been clear for a very long time and have nothing to do with the integrity of the person involved. There is no possibility of insult. They are there to protect and preserve the perceived impartiality of the judicial process by removing preventing who has a personal stake in the outcome from deciding it. Whether the person concerned would allow their personal interest to influence their decision in fact is irrelevant – the law very wisely holds there is no way to establish that and the only safe course is to exclude everyone.
I think it’s clear a mother-in-law has a personal interest in the career of her son-in-law. Whether the GG will be called upon to exercise a judicial function seems to me the key question, but lawyers are better placed than I am to answer that.
Ken
Bill Shorten got marries last year to the lady in question
Ooops
That should read MARRIED not marries
cheers
The Governor General is not part of the judiciary though, so precedents based on the judicial process do not seem to be directly relevant.
True tigtog @ 17 which is no doubt why she is getting advice, although apparently she doesn’t say from whom. Kerr got it from the Chief Justice and that wasn’t seen as too clever.
Has anyone been watching the trajectory of the European Green parties? Does the pattern here follow the pattern there? Or is the political landscape too different to tell?
Hi all – this is my first post here. Congratulations on being the most consistently interesting and informative source of news and opinion on Australian politics. LP has kept me sane during this idiotic election. Anyhow, to the topic at hand:
Perhaps there is a constitutional lawyer here who can correct me on this, but as I understand it the notion that the Governor General has discretion on this is a complete furphy. Under the conventions of the Westminster system, the GG must first ask the prime minister of the day whether he or she can form a government. If the answer is “yes”, then well and good. If the answer is “no” then the GG asks the leader of the opposition if he or she can do so. If no party or group within the parliament can demonstrate the confidence of the parliament (by commanding a majority of votes) then we have to turn to a new election.
The Governor General does not have discretion under any normal circumstances to chose the government, any more than the Queen does in the UK. Parliament is supreme, and it is the MPs who chose the government by a majority of votes.
Therefore, this media kerfuffle about the GG’s son in law is merely smoke blown to distract the people, and cast an pall of illegitimacy over whatever non-Liberal government gets formed. It is pure politics, with the mainstream media aiding and abetting it… as usual.
Thanks Mark – a good piece. I also enjoyed Tim’s point “the media will be incapable of giving us the necessary breathing space needed to understand this opportunity”.
@Chris in Perth, my understanding matches yours. The GG simply has to ask the questions, in the proper order as you lay out. There is no discretion involved.
Chris, that’s pretty much it as far as I can tell. If things drag on, there’s a little room for discretion as to whether she accepts advice for another election, but not a lot (and as supply will last until July 1 2011 there’s no huge hurry).
I assumed the GG could resign instead of following the process. Is that not possible?
Chris at Perth: My understanding is that the Tas governor set a precedent in the last election when he refused to take the Premier’s advice to give the opposition leader the first chance to form a government and insisted that the premier test whether he had the confidence of the Parliament first. There was an element of discretion here and Bryce may find herself in a similar position if neither party gets enough clear support to form government – Hence Bryce has been smart enough to seek advice before it becomes an issue.
John @25, I take your point, but it seems to me that the Tasmanian example shows a GG correctly following established procedure. It would be interesting to hear a formal legal analysis of this, but we have an established Westminster procedure, and so long as Bryce follows it there cannot be any taint of bias or nepotism.
Not that that will stop the coalition and their media enablers from claiming one.
Oh, and given that the system makes her ask the PM first, the only way she could conceivably show “discretion” would be to ask Tony Abbott first. I’m sure Tony wouldn’t want that. Ahem.