Recent research by the Centre for Independent Studies indicates that younger Australians are less likely to shift their vote to the major parties, or vote consistently in one direction, as they get older. These trends are most urgent for the Coalition, but they are also existential for Labor and the two-party system writ large.
What these shifting voting habits ultimately indicate is a widening gap between what most Australians believe and what the major parties represent. If the gap isn’t closed, European-style minority governments cobbled together with independents and minor parties, could soon be the standard in this country.
It’s hard to hear, but this gap is of our own making. Widespread cynicism towards the two-party system has obscured a simple truth: we only get out what we put in.
The blame for ineffectual parties falls as much on the shoulders of passive observers as it does on current politicians. Through my time in academia and the national security community, I’ve been privileged to work with some of our nation’s most brilliant policy minds. But, despite dedicating their lives to vocations of public service and civic inquiry, many of these people recoil at the suggestion of joining a political party. They are passionate about improving policy outcomes, just not through engaging with the institutions that have more power over policy than any other: political parties.
Dislike of particular politicians and factional infighting are often cited reasons for this. Yet this bystanderism has become a national cop-out. After all, one of the privileges of being an Australian citizen is we can do more than just vote every three years to change our politicians: we can actually join and change the institutions that form our politics.
For my part I’ve been a member of the Liberal Party my entire adult life, although this is the first time I’ve said so publicly. I exercised discretion about my membership as a civil servant, but the main reason I’ve been silent about my party affiliation is because of the fear that it will negatively affect my personal and professional relationships. In fact, I hardly joke when I say it’s reminiscent of the anxieties surrounding me coming out as gay.
There’s an assumption party membership means you take on a kind of thoughtless, wholesale agreement with everything the party says. For the Liberals this is absolutely not the case; disagreement can be frequent and passionate. But the unifying characteristic of being a Liberal is a beliefin a philosophy of government that sees individual liberty, human dignity and free enterprise as the essential to a good society.
Our society would be much improved by more Australians joining parties of government – parties that actually stand a serious chance of winning majorities and forming government, as opposed to protest parties. In Australia’s case we only have only Labor and the Liberal-National Coalition. We have not (yet) seen the emergence of a credible third party. Only parties of government can provide the stable majorities required for Australia to undertake strategic long-term policy reform in everything from the economy to national security, to health or education. Independents and minor parties can only ever bargain around the edges of policy agendas set by the major parties.
As our house of review, the Senate has historically provided the ideal space for such interventions. This is why senators such as David Pocock and Jacqui Lambie have proven effective at the art of “keeping the bastards honest”, as crossbencher senator Don Chipp liked to say.
This is what makes the lower house teal independents so dangerous to stable, effective government. Unlike Senate crossbenchers, the lower house teals have a stated objective to push the major parties into a perpetual condition of minority government so they can seize the balance of power, if not cabinet positions (or apparently even the prime ministership, in Monique Ryan’s case). They don’t just want to keep the bastards on honest, they want to replace them.
This strategy is ultimately parasitic upon the two-party system they profess to disown. To hold the balance of power the teals need the two parties to exist and to be strong enough to come close to majority – but not too close. History shows the teal strategy is anathema to stable government and long-term reform. In the first two decades following Federation, Australia saw eight different governments. It took until December 1919 before Australians would give an incumbent government a second term. If we think our politics is short-termist now, imagine trying to effect reform when the average life expectancy of a government was less than one term. This volatility was due in no small part to the absence of a well-organised two-party system.
Before 1901, Labor brought to federal parliament structures already applied at the state level, namely the parliamentary caucus and the practice of expelling dissenting members. The non-Labor parties, such as Alfred Deakin’s Commonwealth Liberals, initially regarded these practices as placing undemocratic constraints on parliamentarians. The result, however, was that these parties behaved more like loose networks than disciplined alternative governments. Establishing consensus on essential policies and forming functional cabinets proved illusive for them until they adopted the architecture of a more disciplined professional party.
It’s a period of instability we should not revive – but, without more Australians putting their hands up to participate in our national democracy by joining (or forming) parties of government, history may soon repeat.
William Stoltz is an expert associate at the ANU National Security College and a visiting fellow at the Robert Menzies Institute.
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