Opinion: Coalition victory would show Australia not as politically volatile as some think

IT may be boring – very boring – but that doesn’t mean this election won’t change history.

THE history that matters isn’t always of the exciting variety destined for school text books.

It’s not just moon landings and crumbling Berlin Walls that shape modern events. Often it’s the sedate signing of treaties or the unheralded scientific invention that make the most profound changes.

Or, indeed, the boring election campaign. And there’s been none more tedious than our very own 2016 federal poll.

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But that doesn’t alter the prospect of even this election changing history, or at least revealing more about ourselves than more memorable polls like Kevin Rudd’s and Tony Abbott’s victories in 2007 and 2013 respectively.

If the opinion polls are right and the Turnbull Coalition is returned, albeit narrowly, to majority government, it will, at the very least, challenge recent assumptions about a changing Australian political culture.

Despite recent conservative defeats in Queensland and Victoria, a Coalition victory will suggest Australia isn’t as politically volatile as many think. Unlike the US where fringe-dwellers like Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump have met enormous success, and the UK where Brexit has dumped decades of established policy, this election could show that most Australians – disappointed in our political class but not yet outraged – are still prepared to give first-term governments a go.

Ironically, it’s probably the very tedium of this campaign that’s worked in the Coalition’s favour. A failure to ignite voters’ passions also means a failure to spark their anger. The result has been no real mood for change.

Yet the campaign’s monotony masks some fascinating history in itself.

For one, the marathon 55-day campaign – or 102 days if we take Turnbull’s recall of the Senate to pass union governance bills as the unofficial start – is the longest on record. If Turnbull wins, it will disprove the theorem that long campaigns always damage incumbents.

For another, we are about to vote after the biggest changes to Senate voting rules since 1984. To what extent senators are elected in proportion to primary votes cast – and how many of us correctly complete our ballot papers – will shape this Parliament and the next.

None of the four big party leaders – Malcolm Turnbull (right), Bill Shorten (centre), Barnaby Joyce or Richard di Natale (left) – has taken his party to an election. Picture: AAP

Few too have noted that none of the four big party leaders – Malcolm Turnbull, Bill Shorten, Barnaby Joyce or Richard di Natale – has taken his party to an election. It’s rare to see two political newbies; four is unprecedented.

That throws up yet another difference. Not since the 1970s have we seen such strong contrasts in economic policy between Labor and the Coalition. After decades of agreement on economic rationalism, after years where both parties fought over the economic centre, this election has seen Labor lean further to the Left in its campaign against negative gearing and for a Royal Commission into banks, while the Coalition has gone further to the Right in its pitch for big business tax cuts.

Then there’s a record number of eponymously named minor parties. This Saturday, hopefuls from the Nick Xenophon Team, the Jacqui Lambie Network, the Palmer United Party, Pauline Hanson’s One Nation and the Glenn Lazarus Team will all chance their hand. While their presence doesn’t spell volatility in itself, how many are elected – and how smoothly they engage with the government – will shape minor party success in 2019 and beyond.

Moreover, it’s this Melbourne Cup field, not just in the Senate but in the House too, that has seen some weird preference deals.

Because Labor MP Michael Danby has implored voters to preference the Liberals over the Greens, Labor could lose his seat of Melbourne Ports for the first time in a century.

Just as bizarre is Labor’s plan to preference the Liberals ahead of the Nationals in some Western Australia and Victorian seats.

And when we consider the Liberals’ pitch to preference the Greens last in every seat, we see the long-established rule to place Pauline Hanson last very quietly lifted.

This election has also been, arguably, the most stage-managed in our history. Driven by focus group research that homes in on Medicare and asylum seekers, Labor and the Coalition have each tested the bounds of credibility in their mutual attacks.

In that sense, if Napoleon’s thesis that “history is but a set of lies agreed upon” is correct, then this election will truly be historical.

Dr Paul Williams is a senior lecturer at Griffith University’s School of Humanities

Originally published as Opinion: Coalition victory would show Australia not as politically volatile as some think