Two-speed electorate a fast lane to civic discontent

With the political class consumed by intrigue over the Prime Minister’s luxury holiday flights and $4.3m beachfront mansion, it is little wonder there exists a disconnect between those who call the shots and those who pay the bills. As we report on Friday, the results of targeted polling by CT Group expose what it has called a “two-speed electorate”.

The divide is not confined to Australia but it challenges the nation’s long-held self-image of being an egalitarian society rooted in the fair go for all. The disconnect between elite and mainstream opinion can be found across the board in immigration, trust in government, climate change and leadership.

All of these issues are repeatedly front of mind for voters. Poorly managed immigration has become a proxy for the housing crisis, and trust in government was listed as the big casualty in the government response to the Covid pandemic. Premiers could not resist the lure of unchecked power. Climate change action is more popular for those who can afford it than those with nearer-term financial concerns on their minds.

Increasingly, action on climate change is fuelling the city-country divide. Rural communities are being asked to bear the burden of industrialisation for city dwellers far removed from what is actually taking place. The lack of urgency in the nation’s capitals to fix a week-long power blackout in Broken Hill after a storm is emblematic of what is wrong.

Instead, the attention has been on Anthony Albanese’s choice of retirement home, a mansion on the cliffs on the Central Coast of NSW. This was followed almost immediately by questions over free upgrades to holiday flights that put a minister who should have been a servant of the people a cut above the rest. It has become clear that Mr Albanese is not alone in accepting Qantas largesse. The issue reflects a sense of entitlement among our politicians that is at sharp odds with what should be the priorities of civic duty and public service.

CT Group executive chairman and co-founder Lynton Crosby offers some sage advice to politicians wanting to reconnect. His advice is to stop selling their message through the elite lens of the highly paid staff in their employ. The concerns of urban sophisticates obsessed with cultural issues such as climate change and the voice are far removed from what many ordinary people are thinking.

The referendum result should be proof enough of that. High-income city voters are more likely to support strict rationing of gas, meat and electricity to combat climate change. Mainstream voters are more opposed to high rates of immigration. Elites like the status quo but mainstream voters increasingly are feeling left behind. Elites are more optimistic about their financial future. Ordinary voters are less likely to trust what academics and policy experts are saying.

Experts have no one to blame but themselves. Evidence abounds, from the Covid response to weather, where what has been forecast has turned out to be wrong. The response of elites to this is to seek to clamp down on public debate through a tougher regime on so-called misinformation and disinformation.

It is not surprising that many who have championed fashionable campaigns, including the voice and to end fossil fuel use, claim to never have met a person who does not share their opinion. This reflects a bigger disconnect that encircles the big end of town more generally, from business to academia and government.

The result is policies designed to pander to extreme-interest parties such as the Greens and teals at the expense of the middle ground.

The real challenge is to connect with the majority of voters who are more concerned about raising their families, putting food on the table and being treated with respect. The current trend is to increase the number of workers on the public payroll in a way that reduces productivity and stokes entitlement.

Small business, the real engine of employment and prosperity, is being forced to compete on unfair terms with the added burden of tough new industrial relations laws. The result is high interest rates and a record number of insolvencies.

The Queensland election result was a pointer to a shift in voter sentiment away from the featherbedding ways of a long-term ALP government. As Geoff Chambers reports on Friday, Mr Albanese is under pressure to lift the government’s appeal across middle Australia and re-engage disillusioned blue-collar workers.

Meanwhile, Peter Dutton and the Coalition have shifted their attention to outer-suburban and regional seats, in the hope of offsetting falling support in inner-city seats. Labor-held outer-suburban or regional seats targeted by the Coalition include McEwen, Aston and Corangamite in Victoria; Lyons in Tasmania; Gilmore, Robertson, Dobell, Macquarie and Paterson in NSW; Tangney, Hasluck, Pearce and Cowan in Western Australia; Boothby in South Australia; Blair in Queensland; and Lingiari in the Northern Territory.

The need is for politicians to embrace the demographic groups that elite opinion has been too quick to dismiss as undeserving. Joe Biden’s dismissal of Donald Trump’s supporters as “garbage” is an exaggerated example of where, left unchecked, a two-speed electorate will lead.