Peter Dutton and Anthony Albanese don’t make appeals to average Australian issues because neither needs to | Caleb Bond
One thing is clear from this election campaign – average Australians no longer hold the keys to the lodge, writes Caleb Bond.
Opinion
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Federal elections are rarely fought on federal issues.
It’s a fact that many people don’t understand – but a fact it is when it comes to our electoral system.
The distribution of electoral boundaries is, as much as possible, designed to match the number of seats won to the national two-party-preferred vote.
That means, as well all know, that some people live in safe seats and others marginal.
More than 80 per cent of electorates had a “classic” result at the 2022 federal election – meaning the chips fell where they were expected to fall.
It’s the few who live in marginal electorates who ultimately decide governments.
And campaigns are largely made to pander to them instead of the broader public.
Both Peter Dutton and Anthony Albanese campaigned in Adelaide on Thursday under the belief that Sturt is on a knife’s edge and could fall to Labor.
When you’re fighting for the right to govern in majority, instead of minority, then these things matter.
And that’s how elections are won.
Sturt has an interesting mix of blue-chip eastern suburbs, which would traditionally skew Liberal but may have some Teal sentiments, and the more working-to-middle class northeast which would generally skew Labor.
As demographics change, so do electoral habits.
The more properties you subdivide and lease out, the more renters you have.
Same goes for migrant populations which have grown in certain parts of the electorate.
That’s why the Coalition has rarely campaigned on the rampant immigration inflicted by the Albanese government which has undoubtedly added to inflation, the cost of living and the lack of housing.
Many of the seats in western Melbourne and Sydney that the Liberal Party would like to claim are full of migrants and while they may now be Australian citizens, the Coalition is scared to upset them.
Likewise Dutton’s noncommittal talk about climate change.
He would probably prefer to pull out of the Paris Accord but the Coalition wants to win seats back from the Teals who were elected on a climate ticket.
In the case of Sturt, Greens volunteers have been knocking on doors and telling people that if just one in 10 people changed their vote to the Greens, then they’d win the seat.
That may well be true in the same fairyland in which I seem to choose which horses to back.
But their aim is to shuffle preferences around to hand the seat to Labor.
Elections, we must realise, are no longer about the average Australian because the average Australian is, funnily enough, no longer average.
The country has changed and so too have the handful of electorates that now decide government.
Albanese and Dutton don’t have to appeal to the vast majority of Australians because, vote-wise, they don’t really matter.
The more fractured and “diverse” the country becomes, the more that is becoming obvious.
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