The major parties could disappear if pollies and journos don’t tell the truth

This is a good time to relate some history from one of Australia’s most insightful, most remarkable journalists, Warren Denning. In 1939, Denning became the first political correspondent for the ABC in the federal parliamentary press gallery in Old Parliament House. That ended a system imposed by newspapers to preserve their power which allowed the ABC to broadcast only at prescribed times, a few hundred words of copy prepared by AAP which, as it happened, was owned by the newspapers.

Warren Denning,, c. 1940.

Another of Australia’s greatest journalists, Laurie Oakes, wrote in a Hall of Fame tribute to Denning that: “The decision that the ABC should cover federal politics with its own staff was a crucial step towards the public broadcaster going head-to-head with newspapers across the board. The move was driven by government, not ABC management.”

It all sounds horribly familiar. The Murdoch empire continues its mission to emasculate the ABC, at times ably assisted by the ABC, which wilts in the face of pressure from politicians, other media or lobby groups, most recently and shamefully after the attacks on its senior political reporter Laura Tingle.

I am grateful to Oakes for gifting me Denning’s extraordinary book Caucus Crisis, the rise and fall of the Scullin Government, published in 1937, documenting the demise of the Labor prime minister and his government during the Great Depression. The only one-term federal government since the beginning of the major two party contests. So far.

Denning wrote that during James Scullin’s tenure, there were grave fears that massive riots caused by widespread poverty and joblessness would trigger a breakdown of social cohesion.

Denning summed up the dilemma thus: “Newspapermen found the responsibility of telling the people of Australia the story of what was happening at Canberra, so that on the one hand incompetence might not be cloaked and on the other, grave national difficulties not intensified by hysteria or panic, was a heavy one. It was increased by the reticence of the Scullin Government, and its fear or dislike of publicity and criticism.”

Denning concluded everyone had been adrift in a “vast ocean of uncertainty”.

Ignoring the pleas of his MPs to stay, Scullin sailed for England, supposedly to lift investor confidence in Australia. By the time he returned six months later, his government had splintered and collapsed.

Denning believes Scullin was mentally and physically exhausted and was really seeking refuge. Scullin was not the first and certainly not the last leader struggling to cope with the demands of the job during a crisis.

Denning’s words remain pertinent today. He captured perfectly the responsibilities and the burdens of those in public office and those who report on them.

Prime Minister James Scullin in Canberra, circa 1931.Credit: Fairfax

For journalists, it’s to report as accurately as possible the turmoil inside government during a crisis, without inflaming or inciting community tensions.

For others – politicians, public servants, advisers – it’s to accept criticism, to be transparent about the challenges they face as well as the limits to their capacity to solve them.

It’s not as dire today as it was during the Great Depression, but some things haven’t changed.

Governments respond to criticism by clamping down on information, by lying, by forcing people to sign gag orders to discuss politically tricky policy like gambling ad bans, by doubling down on discipline or by pretending everything has gone exactly according to plan when it plainly has not.

“The art of leadership is saying no, not yes – it is very easy to say yes”: Former British prime minister Tony Blair.Credit: AP

Inevitably, amid the mis- and disinformation, journalists get it wrong or stretch the few facts they have.

Politicians need to stop making promises they know they can’t keep, or worse, never intend to keep. The rest of us need to stop demanding governments solve every problem and prevent every catastrophe. They can’t.

Even if he didn’t always follow his own advice, Tony Blair was right when he said in 1994: “The art of leadership is saying no, not yes – it is very easy to say yes.”

The stage 3 tax cuts Anthony Albanese delivered were fairer, but they were not what he promised, and when he promised them, the risks were obvious.

True, sticking with a promise made years before could be sheer folly. But breaches need to be explained truthfully, minus the spin and denial that drives voters mad and drives them to alternatives.

Everyone refers to the “drift” away from major parties, implying it is whimsical or unthinking or transitory, or a phase that voters will grow out of. It isn’t. It should be described as the great desertion. It is a deliberate, conscious, repudiation by Australians in their millions of traditional politics and politicians. Much like the desertion of audiences to social media or streaming services.

The existential threats faced by the major parties are real, not a passing phenomenon that will exhaust itself. There are profound implications for them and the way we are governed.

The solution does not lie in turning MPs into parrots or robots, nor in trying to starve independents out of existence with financial gerrymanders.

Unity is important, unless it becomes a tool to stifle debate or punish those who defy the “collective”. Not all rules crafted a century ago work today.

Australians need to know their MPs have a pulse, a ticker and a conscience.

Coalition MPs treasure their right to cross the floor, yet a few poor souls – unless their first name is Barnaby – are vilified or isolated if they dare do it.

Bridget Archer seems destined to spend her political life on the backbench despite increasing her margin in 2022 and even if promoting an intelligent woman with small “l” liberal values would signal there is a place for such people inside the Liberal Party. Fatima Payman’s resignation from Labor is a reason to ditch the rules threatening expulsion for floor crossing.

Senator Fatima Payman is now an independent senator for Western Australia. Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

It would still be a thing if MPs were brave enough to weather the wrath of the leader or colleagues, but not such a big thing when it happens.

Some of us remember Labor’s nuclear wars during the 1980s. Left faction leaders like my old mate Gerry Hand called full-scale press conferences to condemn the policies of his prime minister, Bob Hawke and his cabinet.

There were passionate public and private debates over tax, privatisation, foreign policy, you name it. Those “fights” over policy did not prevent Labor governing or reforming. They did not prevent five consecutive election victories. Hand became a cabinet minister.

The Coalition paid a high price for its leadership wars during this period. But in 1993, it was in full lockstep behind John Hewson and his “Fightback”, and it still lost the unlosable election.

Could the major parties become dinosaurs? Credit: The Canberra Times

Voters seem destined to continue their mass migration to others in what threatens to be an ugly, divisive campaign if it is fought on immigration or a Middle Eastern war feeding antisemitism, Islamophobia and neo-Nazism.

I am indebted to the Parliamentary Library for its excellent summary of all federal elections from 1901, and to former Labor staffers Andrew Charlton and Lachlan Harris, who warned a few years ago of what was emerging.

According to the library’s review of the 2019 election, Labor’s vote of 33.34 per cent was the lowest since 1931, when it hit 27.1 per cent. The Liberals’ 27.99 per cent primary vote (which excludes the LNP and the Nationals total of 13.18 per cent) was the lowest since they first contested federal elections in 1946.

In 2022, the Liberal primary vote fell to a dismal 23.89 per cent (with another 11.6 per cent from the Nationals and Queensland’s LNP) while Labor’s dropped to 32.58 per cent. Almost one in three voters opted for minors or independents.

In a 2016 examination of minor party voting since Federation, Charlton and Harris found that on three occasions when the “protest vote” breached 25 per cent, it coincided with or precipitated, major party convulsions.

The first was between 1901 and 1903, when the rise of Labor forced the merger of Free Traders and Protectionists. The second was between 1931 and 1934, with the Lang Labor party split and the formation of the United Australia Party by Joseph Lyons after he defected from Scullin’s government. Labor’s lowest ever primary vote of 26.8 per cent was recorded 90 years ago at the federal election on September 15, 1934. The third, triggered by the death of Lyons in April 1939, came in 1943. Labor won 50.2 per cent of the primary vote, the UAP collapsed, and Robert Menzies founded the Liberal Party.

Three seismic events.

The 2022 election, where Labor lost once safe seats to the Greens and the Liberals relinquished their heartland to the community independents, was described to me recently by Harris as a volcano erupting just below the surface of the ocean. Historians could pinpoint May 21, 2022, as the day Menzies’ party died, while delivering one last warning to Labor: do better or else.

There is no way of knowing exactly what will happen next, only that something will. The aftershocks will continue. There is no law that says political parties must survive. All badly run or led enterprises inevitably collapse. Sometimes it’s desirable. That organisation needs time out to consider its reason for being, to re-examine its values, to reflect on who it is meant to serve.

Realignments have already rendered parties unrecognisable to their creators. The Coalition looks more and more like One Nation, Labor more and more like the Liberals used to, the Greens have morphed into Labor’s old guard left. The teals waft and weave between them all.

Harris says it’s unrealistic to think Labor or the Liberals can broaden sufficiently to reverse the trend so that they can govern on their own. He predicts minority governments could become the new normal, with majority government still possible, although more as the exception than the rule.

“Major parties have to get better at building coalitions with people not under their control,” he says. He certainly does not mean Labor aligning in government with the Greens, which he says would be “fatal”.

Right now, Labor looks set to lose its majority. If it’s lucky, it will survive in minority government after securing pledges from independents. It will require dexterity and flexibility to govern. It will be exhausting. There is every chance the leader and/or the government will not last the full term.

If Labor loses outright, to become the first one-term government since Scullin in 1931, the resulting bloodletting, the accusations of timidity, arrogance, complacency or incompetence could precipitate a split. It could lead to the creation of a new social democratic party. Union defections over the essential CFMEU intervention could be a portent. Anything and everything is possible.

If Labor retains its majority or falls into minority through gains by others, not the Liberals, the Liberals’ strategy of the past three years to head further right, to ape Donald Trump, to dismantle the broad church on which the party was built, will be discredited.

A Coalition minority government – assuming it finds willing dance partners – will entrench the control of the hard right and the evangelicals.

One senior Labor man told me a narrow pathway exists for a Coalition victory, but it would have to get everything right. Which obviously means the government would have to get everything wrong.

Whatever happens, the dominant right will not concede or retreat. The few remaining Liberal moderates can surrender, join the teals or hope someone founds a new socially liberal, economically conservative party.

One former PM has the resources. I doubt he has the will.

The teals’ magic would evaporate if they formed a party or joined another. Besides, as one of their admirers says, they are all alpha females, so the leadership battle would be something to behold.

Our system of government offers a level of protection, not full immunity from the extremes we have witnessed overseas and which have sprung up here. Our immunity dissolves if and when we reach the point millions of Americans have, where lies are excused or accepted, corruption is ignored and divisiveness is tolerated because politicians and the media manipulate our emotions, rather than tell us what we need to know.

Malcolm Turnbull has the resources, but does he have the will?Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

This is not called a lecture for nothing, so I will finish with a bit more advice for politicians and journalists.

In this fight for survival, integrity and decency matter. A lot. If you show respect for one another, people are more likely to respect you.

To journalists: Don’t publish lies, then claim it’s balance. Also, balance is not refusing to run one side because the other side fails to turn up.

If you do your job well, you will upset people, you will be called names like “tory bitch” or “fat-arsed bitch”, you will be abused online, you will lose contacts, you will inevitably lose friends. But you will also win respect.

Niki Savva delivering the Speaker’s Lecture in Parliament House earlier today. Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

To politicians: Tell the truth, even if it hurts. We can handle it, and we deserve it. Never run from cameras. It always ends in disaster.

To everyone else, please stay engaged with politics.

Please subscribe to reputable news outlets. They still exist. Please encourage everyone in your orbit to do the same.

This is a transcript of the fourth Speaker’s Lecture delivered by Niki Savva in Parliament House on September 9, 2024. Read the full speech here.

Niki Savva is an award-winning political commentator and author. She was a staffer to former prime minister John Howard and former treasurer Peter Costello, and she is a member of the board of Old Parliament House.