The confusion about independents of green is to think that climate policy is progressive or left-wing. It is no longer, certainly no longer is. It is now a widespread issue.
For example, research by the Liberal Party found that action against climate change is one of the top three priorities that motivates voters across the country, through all the electorates in which it fielded candidates.
The independents of Teal Allegra Spender (Wentworth), Kylea Tink (North Sydney), Zali Steggall (Warringah) and Sophie Scamps (Mackellar). Credits: Oscar Colman
Tony Abbott and Barnaby Joyce got good political mileage by making climate change a divisive partisan political point. But it was temporary. The Australian people finally discovered the realities. The mistake of the Liberals was to think that climate madness would be a permanent winner. It is no longer a matter of partisan division, the need for climate action is now a national unifier, with some possible pockets of exception in central Queensland.
Scott Morrison knew it, and so he took the trouble to force the Coalition to adopt a zero-zero policy in 2050. But he could not bring the entire Coalition with him and could not build a serious set of climate policies. He still seemed insincere. The Liberals suffered accordingly.
And the other two main priorities of the teals: integrity in government and justice for women, are not causes of the left. They are dominant and bipartisan. Only Morrison managed to position himself to appear in favor of corruption and against women. This required special efforts of ineptitude. This was a Morrison special.
Loading
The Teal Independent Movement represented a civil war within the center-right of Australian politics, perhaps an upgrade, but not an abandonment.
Labor and the Greens represent the left on the Australian spectrum, and they certainly improved their numbers in the House, but not their vote in the primaries. In fact, the number of votes in Labor primaries fell from 4.75 million in 2019 to 4.15 million last week. That means a loss of 600,000 votes for Labor.
The Greens increased their vote in the primaries, but barely by about 4,000 votes. These figures are the official figures from the Australian Electoral Commission on Friday afternoon.
Labor and the Greens have improved their position in the House, but do not confuse it with an increase in their main support. Labor and the Greens – the left – have eliminated more than half a million voters from their combined base since the last federal election.
Loading
It seems that Labor and the Greens have lost some votes to the pro-independence party in the so-called “tactical vote”, that is, not to vote for your favorite candidate but to get a tactical result. In this case, the removal of the Morrison government.
How do we know? In 15 seats where there was a new and credible independent candidate “green green” who faced a Liberal in session, the share of votes for Labor and the Greens fell much more than in other seats.
The Australian people in general did not move to the left. Any political party that assumes this will act with a false signal.
The central dynamic of the election was the rejection of the Morrison government. The coalition was hammered. The number of primary votes cast for the Coalition fell from 5.9 million in 2019 to 4.59 million last week, a loss of 1.31 million. That is, 22 percent fewer people voted for the Coalition than three years earlier.
His vote was divided into several directions: the Green Independents, the Labor Party, Pauline Hanson’s One Nation, Clive Palmer’s United Australia.
Scott Morrison acknowledges defeat in his election ceremony at The Fullerton Hotel, Sydney. Credit: James Brickwood
Why, exactly? The different political parties will carry out their detailed autopsies, but we already have a lot of evidence in sight. Morrison government poll numbers held up well into the first phase of the pandemic in 2020. It earned praise for quickly closing borders, for quickly introducing JobKeeper, and so on.
But the government’s position fell and fell sharply in 2021 when the vaccine deployment failed. Failure to respond credibly to Brittany Higgins’ allegations of rape in Parliament and the Women’s March for Justice exacerbated the problem.
Its fate was sealed when, late last year, as Australia began to emerge from the blockades, the Omicron variant arrived and the blockades resumed. When he was unable to organize the RAT tests and then did not respond to the flooding on the east coast, it was all over.
Loading
“We will now spend months discussing whether we went too far left or too far right,” says one Liberal strategist. “It’s all pretty absurd. Most Australians don’t care about the Liberal Party’s ideological position. They don’t follow what is said in Sky After Dark or the Guardian. They just want good government.”
Morrison’s office gave paramount importance to making political announcements to “communicate values” to the electorate, as he liked to explain to one of his close advisers during his tenure. Not to solve problems, note, but to “communicate values.” This is campaigning, not governing. The competition was gone.
And, if voters were inclined to reconsider themselves during the election campaign, they were shown even more incompetence by the government.
The Solomon Islands security agreement with China discredited Morrison’s claim to the superiority of national security. The two major parties say their own investigation shows that this was actually recorded among voters. “The government’s sharp response to Solomon’s agreement convinced people that they were not up to it,” says a Labor strategist.
Loading
The rapid rise in inflation and rising interest rates similarly damaged the Coalition’s claim to superior economic management. “With all the cost-of-living pressure that ordinary Australians face,” says the strategist, “the government had nothing to offer. All their responses were temporary.” And voters saw it. “The nature of the economic problem facing the country was changing and the government had nothing.”
Morrison was an unpopular prime minister, no doubt. But unpopular prime ministers have been re-elected in the past as long as they were deemed capable, or at least more capable than their opponents. Morrison didn’t like it but he was also incompetent. It was fatal.
It was a Liberal strategist who pointed to the central resonance of one of Labor’s campaign slogans: “No more mistakes. No more Morrison. “
It is assured that these elections showed a continuation of the popular abandonment of the two main parties. And this, no doubt, is confirmed in its declining joint share of the primary vote. Between the two, the current tally gives the two majors only 69 percent of the total electorate.
Loading
But this trend is not inevitable. The Liberal Party forgot its traditional values and therefore lost its traditional voters, although it did not offer basic powers to the nation.
The Labor Party, still traumatized by its 2019 loss, offered a timid and shaky alternative. Can major parties gain new support? This is totally in your hands.
Party fans and cheerleaders, true believers and field supporters will offer countless ideological and philosophical arguments as they dissect the results. That is its nature. They will overlook the competition. At your own risk.
Postdate: Some readers have argued that this article places too much emphasis on counting primary votes to explain some voting trends.
This is a valid point because I used the count of unfinished primary votes for last week’s election and compared it to the finished count of the 2019 election.
Therefore, it is not a comparison of peers with peers.
Primary ballot figures for the 2022 election will increase as the AEC finishes counting in the coming days.
Another way to analyze the results would be to use the percentage of votes counted so far from the parties.
Because these numbers are unlikely to change significantly as the count progresses.
If you use this approach, it leads to the same conclusion: the share of Labor votes goes down a fraction, that of the Greens goes up a bit and that of the Coalition goes down a lot.
It ends up being an indistinguishable distinction. The conclusions of the piece remain intact.
The morning edition newsletter is our guide to the most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights of the day. Register here.