James Campbell: Liberals, conservatives facing danger of voters’ zeal for teal

Before wandering off to the teals, upper-middle-class voters should think carefully about sawing through the Liberal branch they’re sitting on.

The Australian public should reconsider their choice to vote for an independent candidate. Picture: Ian Currie

For years, Liberals – especially Victorian Liberals – have enjoyed the spectacle of Labor folk working themselves into a frenzy over the Green menace in their heartland.

The story is well known. Labor-voting working-class people, many of them migrants, died or moved away and were replaced by richer, whiter new residents, many of whom grew up in Liberal suburbia.

These people, who were left-wing but had no connection with or affection for the union movement, now form the base of the Greens party.

In Victorian state politics, we have grown used to the idea that every election is really two elections, a Liberal-National Party versus Labor contest in the majority of the state, and a Labor-Greens fight in five or six seats around the CBD.

Now federal politics is going the same way. This election has become two elections, a fight between Scott Morrison and Anthony Albanese for the affection of suburban and regional Australia, and a battle between a well-resourced machine of leftists fighting to knock off Liberals in seats where once upon a time they didn’t need to count the Liberal vote, they just weighed it.

Scott Morrison and Anthony Albanese are battling for the affection of suburban and regional Australia.

It’s fair to say Labor people are enjoying this spectacle even more than the Liberals once enjoyed the ALP’s discomfort in the inner city.

And why wouldn’t they? A seat that flips from Labor to Green does not change Labor’s chances of forming government because there’s no chance the Greens MP will support the Liberals.

On the other hand, a teal seat (as we must get used to calling them) lost by the Liberals is one that the party must make up elsewhere, because – despite the independents’ innocent protestations that they have yet to make up their minds – everyone knows that in truth there’s no chance these candidates will keep Scott Morrison in the Lodge.

This phenomenon has been with us for long enough now that we can see it’s not a one-off but will be a feature of Australian politics for the foreseeable future.

Which means that going forward at each election, one or more of the seats of Kooyong, Goldstein and Higgins in Victoria, and Warringah, Wentworth, North Sydney and Mackellar in NSW, along with Curtin in Western Australia, are likely to see some form of Teal-Lib action.

What can the Liberals do about it? In the short term – the next three weeks – probably the best they can do is beat the drum about the risk of a hung parliament.

Independent Zoe Daniel, who is contesting the seat of Goldstein. Picture: Ian Currie

According to Liberal insiders, some of their voters tempted to wander off to the teals are doing so because they are convinced Labor will win the election outright.

But as the number of people has grown who say they think no party will get a majority, so have concerns among potential teal voters about whether they are a risk worth taking.

“A vote for an independent is a vote for chaos” is a fine line to run, with memories of the Gillard government fresh enough in voters’ minds. But while it might be a good line for this election, indeed might even prove the difference between victory and defeat in some of these seats, it does nothing to address the problem long term.

Why some of the richest people in Australia are turning their backs on the party of business is too big a subject for a newspaper column, except to observe it suggests some of them are either too rich to worry about what a government can do to them, or don’t really understand what they are risking.

Imagine a future in which the Liberal Party has decided that pandering to those people is more trouble than it’s worth, just as the Victorian ALP has basically given up on swathes of inner Melbourne.

Future elections would be a battleground between Labor and the Coalition in suburban and regional Australia.

Under this scenario, how long do you think the people of Toorak, Hawthorn, Potts Point and Double Bay would continue to enjoy their tax-free superannuation?

What do you think the long-term prospects would be for the current taxation arrangements involving family trusts?

In a world where the major parties were concerned exclusively with winning votes in Parramatta and Frankston, how long do you think Geelong Grammar and Xavier College would continue to enjoy the millions they get each year from the taxpayer?

In this Australia, all the little taxpayer-funded lurks and perks that make upper-middle-class life so agreeable will be at the mercy of politicians with different priorities.

Now it may be that these voters are so high-minded or, as I suggested, so rich they won’t care.

Perhaps they find the modern Liberal Party a bit too suburban – or, to use the older term, common – to bring themselves to vote for it.

But they ought to think twice before they sever that relationship because at the end of the day the Liberal Party is all that’s standing between the mob and their goodies. If I were them, I’d think carefully about sawing through the branch I was sitting on.

James Campbell is national weekend political editor.