Is my street a harbinger of a changing federal parliament?

Every time I pull into my driveway, I am confronted with the gigantic head of federal Fremantle Labor pollie Josh Wilson on an election placard near my neighbour’s letterbox.

Surely, that chiselled, shapely hair has been photoshopped?

The campaign signs adorning Brendan Foster’s street. Credit: Brendan Foster

Directly across the road, there is another campaign sign for maverick Queensland senator Gerard Rennick’s newly founded People’s First Party.

The Liberal party defector’s face is on the banner, surrounded by the two WA candidates for the Senate, who eerily resemble the grown-up Von Trapp kids from The Sound of Music.

Politicians naming a party after themselves have the same peculiar pomposity as a musician putting his name in the title of a yacht rock band.

A few doors down, Greens candidate Amy Warne’s tiny sign leans on an angle, nestled among native plants, only metres away from two dusty, leaf-covered Priuses.

A couple of houses away, local independent Kate Hulett’s poster is neatly wrapped around a small, fading, picket fence.

The prominent teal candidate is having a crack at the federal stage after coming within a whisker of knocking off Labor’s Simone McGurk in last month’s state election.

At the end of my street, there is a splattering of campaign placards belonging to micro-parties, whose unassuming names disguise policies that would make Donald Trump giggle.

At the 2022 federal election, Liberal and Labor signs dominated our humble hamlet.

While my neighbourhood sounds like some utopian Athenian democracy, it reflects the changing nature of Australian politics with the rise of mini and micro-parties.

If you look at the last federal election, there was a seismic shift away from the major parties, with 16 independents and minor parties elected to the crossbench and 10 to the Senate.

In fact, in 2022, almost one in three voters cast their ballot for minor parties or independent candidates.

Independent election analyst William Bowe says voters will continue to ignore both Labor and the Liberals.

“I think most indications are that it will be a lower than ever (primary vote), which is to say lower than 2022, which was the lowest ever,” Bowe told WAtoday.

“I think it’s more than likely that it will continue, by which I mean be even greater than last time.

“The major party vote certainly isn’t going to bounce back at this election.”

There is also another strange phenomenon looming over this election which could see more people casting their votes for the minor or independent parties.

It’s the first time Gen Z and Millennials will outnumber Baby Boomers at the ballot box.

And while Millennials have been given the unsavoury tag of the most disengaged generation when it comes to politics, Gen Z appear keen to have their say.

According to the Australian Electoral Commission, youth enrolment (18 to 24-year-olds) at the end of March 2025 stood at just a tick over 90 per cent.

And those TikTok-raised kids are heading to the polls confronted with real issues like the cost of living, housing, jobs and climate change.

More importantly, Gen Y and Z voters don’t have a lot of faith they’re being “seen” by the major parties.

More than half a million Gen Zs will head to the ballot for the first time, which Bowe says will dismantle the two-party system even further.

“If you look at any poll breakdown by age, the way the Greens vote tracks from age cohort to age cohort is massive,” he said.

“You know, the Greens are as popular as Labor and the Liberals among 18 to 34-year-olds.”

“So that absolutely is a phenomenon, and we’ve seen that with the steady rise in Green support and the steady erosion in Labor support.”

John Phillimore, executive director of the John Curtin Institute of Public Policy at Curtin University, says the two major parties aren’t “thrilling the electorate” – particularly when it comes to Gen Z.

But he believes one of the contributing factors is that young voters aren’t rusted on to one political party, unlike their parents.

“As the oldies die off [along with] their loyalties to parties, they die out of the system, so new people come in and basically replace them, and they don’t have the same fixed loyalties,” he said.

“But there are many more women in the workforce, so their ambitions – both economically and socially – are much more on the agenda.

“Parties weren’t traditionally attuned to them, so that’s meant that they’ve had, if you like, new policy areas that the parties had to get used to.”

And while the teals rocked the traditional political landscape last time round, Professor Phillimore says community independents may have peaked.

“I think potentially it has because partly it didn’t get the balance of power last time,” he says.

“It’s not the same movement this time around, because last time it was sort of a more novel thing, and they had a reasonably coherent and consistent message across the different seats.

“But then again, given that the major parties – and particularly given that the Liberal Party vote is dropping, compared to last time – the votes are going to go somewhere, so you’d imagine those independent candidates are going to do better.”

Whatever the outcome of the federal election this weekend, the political landscape is ushering in a diversified electorate never seen before.

And I’m looking forward to not waking up and seeing Josh Wilson’s magnificent melon staring at me. Even if he does have the best quiff in parliament.

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