Tight preference flows to Labor – often 85 per cent – suggest Greens voters understand they can’t get a Greens government but know how to get Labor rather than the Coalition.
Teals voters know they can defeat Coalition primary vote winners in targeted seats with the help of Greens and Labor preferences, boosting Labor’s prospects of forming government.
Voters for One Nation and Clive Palmer’s Trumpet of Patriots are frustrated that Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has been moving to the political centre. Some of these voters are helping Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.
The Coalition does harvest preferences from minor right wing parties but the exchange is not as tight as Greens-Labor preferences. About 60 per cent of One Nation preferences flow to the Coalition.
In The Australian on Wednesday, Paul Kelly pointed to the media irony: populist conservative media that give a platform to One Nation leader Pauline Hanson and conservatives who admire the social policies of US President Donald Trump are hurting the Coalition.
And to that, add the support that left-leaning journalists give to minority governments they claim are more democratic.
The Sydney Morning Herald’s economics editor, Ross Gittins, had the page one lead story and two full pages inside on Monday to analyse the Labor and Coalition campaign launches the previous day.
His opus concluded: “So if you don’t like what the two major parties have done to campaigns and timidity in government, you should share my hope that this election puts neither major party back in majority government.”
The Australian and The Australian Financial Review often point out minority government just ensures policy paralysis and timidity – so go figure.
Reflect too about why the ABC, the Nine newspapers and the Guardian all give overweight coverage to the teals. They know the teals are more damaging to the Coalition’s left flank than One Nation and Trumpet are on the right.
Yet evidence from the 2022 election suggests teal voters are less likely to be defectors from the Coalition than strategic Labor and Greens voters who can lift an independent above a sitting member.
The 2022 Australian Electoral Study, led by the Australian National University and Griffith University and released on December 5, 2022, said “most teal voters were not disaffected Liberals but tactical Labor and Greens voters. Less than one in five teal voters previously voted for the Coalition. And on average teal voters are ideologically close to Labor voters – placing themselves just left of centre.”
Of the six teal MPs elected in 2022, only Zali Steggall, contesting to be re-elected, won on primaries. The others all finished second to sitting Liberals but picked up Greens and Labor preferences.
The Nightly on April 14 quoted Dutton speaking in the Brisbane Greens-held seat of Ryan, formerly a blue ribbon Liberal seat, accusing GetUp of meddling in the election to support teal candidates
He had the day before in Perth slammed the Climate 200-backed teals as a “con job”.
“If you vote for a teal you’re voting for a Green, which means you’re voting for Anthony Albanese.”
A minority Labor government backed by Greens and teals would be a disaster, he said.
The public is starting to see the real teals after Allegra Spender in Wentworth was caught out paying for comment by a social media influencer, and Kooyong MP Monique Ryan was unable on ABC Insiders on April 13 to offer any view about the practice.
Sky News Australia and The Age last week revealed recordings of telephone push polling bagging “the extreme agenda” of some in the Coalition, and making favourable comments about Goldstein MP Zoe Daniel.
It turns out that Climate 200 uses the same US dirty tricks that the teals criticise.
Unlike the teals, neither One Nation nor the Trumpet of Patriots are likely to win a Lower House seat, but both will take primary votes away from the Coalition.
Kos Samaras, from the RedBridge polling group, was explicit with Peta Credlin on Sky News on April 15. He explained why Dutton, who had been leading the published polls in the lead-up to the campaign, had fallen behind: younger millennial and Gen Z voters who had been Coalition supporters had parked their vote with One Nation and Clive Palmer.
Samaras said these voters were soft in their support for the minor parties: “If the Coalition can bring them back they will be competitive in a lot more seats than … at the moment.”
This newspaper’s Dennis Shanahan earlier in the show discussed that morning’s Newspoll which had the two-party-preferred vote at 52-48 for Labor.
“The real point of the Newspoll today … is everyone but One Nation is basically where they were at the last election. There’s been a decline over the last few months in the Coalition primary vote, but they’re back to where they were at the last election. None of that decline has gone to the Labor Party primary vote,” he said.
“What we’ve actually got here is a shift within the conservative vote away from the Coalition but towards … One Nation. The One Nation vote is not as good for the Coalition as the Green vote is for Labor.”
The public has had 30 years to understand Pauline Hanson, but Clive Palmer’s motives are less clear and journalists less skilled at finding them than this newspaper’s Hedley Thomas was over a decade ago.
Palmer’s Trumpet of Patriots now claims to support coal mining but in his first iteration the then Palmer United Party leader actually appeared with former US vice-president and climate catastrophist Al Gore to announce PUP’s climate plans.
The AFR on April 7 ran a piece on Palmer’s election spend, likely to reach $90m this year. It said his then United Australia Party in 2022 spent $123m on advertising to come away with only Ralph Babet’s Senate seat.
Greg Sheridan was correct on April 15 when he lamented the low standard of the election contest.
And Kelly nailed Dutton’s problem last Wednesday: the Coalition has not done enough policy work, has not released its policies early enough or defined what it stands for.
If May 3 is no more than a contest between giveaways, why change government after a single Labor term? Dutton’s backflips on working from home and public service job cuts, to the electorate’s shock at Trump’s damaging tariffs and Labor’s efforts to link the policies of Trump and Dutton, have all hurt the Coalition’s campaign.
This column on December 4, 2022 argued many left-wing commentators who saw Albanese win the previous May as the beginning of the end of the Liberals were making the same mistake as when John Howard lost in 2007. Yet by 2013 the Coalition was back federally and in NSW, Queensland, Western Australia and Victoria.
That piece paraphrased two-term Victorian premier Jeff Kennett on how to rebuild Coalition support: “Hope is far more electorally powerful than culture wars. Voters want better lives for themselves and their children.”
How extraordinary that in what is the most dangerous time globally since the 1930s – militarily and economically – no leader here has been able to map out a vision for a safer, more prosperous Australia.
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