Beyond Selidor

I was going to wait until the dust had settled slightly — at least until we knew the full shape of the results, but counting continues. As of this evening (26th May), we still don't know if we're going to have a Labor government with a slim majority, or a minority Labor-led government with some form of coalition or confidence-and-supply agreement with independents and minor parties. The former is more likely, but any result is honestly fine by me.


Some context for non-Australians, before I launch into my thoughts on the results.

Australia has compulsory voting (technically, compulsory to show up at a polling station or send in a postal vote envelope — obviously voting is secret, so no one can see if you actually vote or not); if you do not vote without a good mitigating reason you get a small fine. As a result, turnout is very high — always more than 90 per cent, usually more than 95 per cent — and the entire electoral infrastructure is very well organised. Voter suppression is impossible, and elections cannot be won by appealing to a narrow base and assuming apathy will keep most citizens away from the polls. We have serious problems with the Murdoch press, and elections have been won on single issue rightwing culture wars in the past, but in general, you have to get the centre if you want to win office. Where that 'centre' lies has shifted back and forth over the years — governments of the day tend to set the tone as to what is the 'sensible centre' — but compulsory voting is generally a shield against the worst rightwing extremism. (Australians will be arguing with me here: our past government was awful. But they only had a majority of one seat, and although their rhetoric was awful and their inaction in certain areas was a disgrace, it could have been a lot worse.)

In addition to compulsory voting, we have preferential (ranked choice voting), meaning it is impossible to waste your vote, and tactical voting is generally unecessary. (About as tactical as it gets is putting your unrealistic preferred candidate first, and then ranking the candidate you can tolerate second.) In addition to this, we have an independent electoral commission responsible for drawing electoral boundaries (no gerrymandering), and electorates are based solely on population — roughly 105,000 people per electorate — so a tiny, densely populated area in inner city Sydney counts as much as a huge expanse of the outback in the Northern Territory. Most Australians live in cities, so you have to win a lot of city votes to win.

Our two main political parties are the Australian Labor Party (ALP), centre-left social democratic party, and the Liberal Party, centre-right party. The latter always contests elections as a coalition with the conservative National Party — the Nationals stand candidates in rural areas, and the Liberals in cities, towns and suburban areas. We also have various minor parties — the Greens are the biggest — and this year a group of 'teal independents' contested a bunch of seats in wealthy parts of major cities, on a platform of 'doing something about climate change.' These are places which tend to vote Liberal, but whose voters have progressive attitudes when it comes to social issues and were alienated by the Liberal Party's tilt to the far right, its embrace of rightwing culture war issues, and its refusal to do anything to combat climate change. (Full disclosure: my dad was the paid campaign strategist for the teals' campaigns.)

We were coming into this election after nearly ten years of rightwing Coalition government, and I didn't know what to expect. I'm so battered and weary after the past decade of ongoing political horrors all around the world that I just assumed the worst would come to pass: another term of Coalition government, Scott Morrison rewarded for his cruelty, his arrogance, his incompetence, and his evangelical Christianity prosperity gospel nonsense that is so out of step with highly secular, irreligious Australia. I assumed that this election would be like all others: confirming that I lived in a leftwing bubble, that the feelings of my entire family and social circle weren't echoed around the country as a whole. I settled in to watch the ABC's election coverage with a sense of trepidation and dread.

And then ... it didn't happen. The votes rolled in, and the appetite for change was enormous, all across the nation. This manifested itself in different ways in different electorates. Labor held seats in working class suburban areas that Morrison had attempted to take by stoking transphobic culture wars. Labor gained seats in Victoria and Western Australia, apparently a backlash against the Coalition federal government insulting their (Labor) state governments' attempts to fight the pandemic with strict lockdowns and border closures. The Greens — the Greens?!?!?! — gained seats in Queensland! And as for the climate change-fighting teals? They romped home in a number of formerly safe Liberal seats in various major cities. For the first time in my life, I felt that our preferential (ranked choice) voting system was working as intended: instead of a two-horse race between the two major parties, we ended up with a properly pluralistic set of results, with a record number of minor parties and independents set to take seats in parliament.

Climate change obviously loomed large as the decisive issue this election, and I welcome that, as it's been a hugely damaging, divisive wound in Australian politics since the late 2000s. But it also felt as if the election, rather than being a national affair, was about lots of individual state-level and local issues, with results reflecting attitudes to those issues as much as broader national concerns.

What was resoundingly, delightfully clear, of course, was that the country has had enough of Scott Morrison as prime minister, and his toxic, misogynistic, coal-fondling, racist, cruel-for-the-sake-of-cruelty anti-refugee, victim blaming prosperity gospel garbage government. And our votes reflected that. It is so, so, so satisfying to see, like being washed clean by the sea of all the metaphorical dirt and grime and blood of the past nine years.

I'm a cautious and pessimistic person by nature — out of a sense of self-preservation, to be honest — so I do have some cause for concern in the wake of this result (in essence: when centre left parties lose elections, there's a lot of ugly soul searching, usually a circular firing squad, and they try to work out how they should change, but when right wing parties lose elections, their reaction tends to be 'Are we out of touch? No, it's the voters who are wrong' and double down on moving further to the right). But for the moment, right now, they're all pushed aside, and I feel as if I can breathe for the first time in years.

We did it. The evil is defeated, and, even if only for a little while, we can feel hope again.

I'll conclude with some links that really sum up this election:

Two articles by journalist Annabel Crabb summing up the election result.

This amazing First Dog on the Moon cartoon.

Meanwhile In Australia: the election edition.