The writer is in Australia
WELL, there goes ‘One Term Albo’ as a nickname! Wishful thinking doesn’t always prevail in matters electoral. The Australian election result was predictable, though no one foresaw the extent of the anti-Liberal rout.
Looking around the (non-American) Anglosphere, some interesting points of convergence are apparent. Not to the corporate media, of course. They, Liberal ‘moderates’ and progressivists generally, are already busy constructing their own self-serving narratives. Like blame conservative opposition leader Pierre Dutton, blame the hard right and (of course) blame Trump.
Oh, and the term ‘historic’ is being given an airing. As in Albanese is the first Australian PM to win two straight elections since 2004. (True enough. But this is mostly because the two major parties have often taken choosing their leaders out of the hands of voters at elections. So much for accountability).
As long as no one says ‘mandate’.
The most striking comparison is between Albanese and Sir Keir Starmer in the UK. In 2024, Starmer won a ‘landslide’, another word freely and lazily used this day, here in Australia. The Brit ‘landslide’ consisted in Starmer winning government with 34 per cent of the vote. That is, with voluntary voting, 34 per cent of the 59 per cent who actually voted. Labour’s vote increase from 2019 was a mere 1.6 per cent. Hardly a revolution. Clearly not a mandate for anything.
Here, on Saturday, Albo won with a whopping 34.7 per cent of the primary vote. Up a ‘massive’ 2.1 per cent (at this stage of the count). The Coalition scraped together 31.7 per cent of the primary vote. Yes, both the majors are still very much on the nose. Do the math: 35 per cent of the electorate, and certainly those of us who value and prioritise freedom, probity, small government and tradition, remain hopelessly unrepresented. Those who are not green have close to net zero voice in the House of Representatives.
Oh, and at the time of writing, there were 433,301 ‘informal’ votes cast in the Aussie election in the Lower House. Close on half a million people in some way spoiled their ballot papers. This number will grow as the count continues. Some of these might be bunglers. Many, though, will have been simply disillusioned. Over 10 per cent voted informally in 16 seats. In one seat it was as high as 22 per cent.
Add to this those simply not turning up. Yes, the fine is only $20 (£9.70). So, there is laziness. But there is also disillusion. As the Australia Institute has noted, those not voting have increased since 2007, and each election is getting fewer and fewer at the polling stations, even now with the added (inexplicable) ease of pre-poll voting.
At the last federal election in 2022, despite voting in federal elections being compulsory, only about four in five eligible Australians (82.5 per cent) cast a valid vote. In addition, millions of people live, work and pay taxes in Australia, but are not citizens and therefore not entitled to vote. Taken together, the share of people of voting age who cast a valid vote in the last federal election is just 72 per cent, far below the 89.8 per cent official headline turnout figure.
Hence, ‘Sir Keir Albanese’. A landslide without a mandate. A victory without enthusiasm, despite the easy narrative.
Will Albo’s second-term honeymoon last any longer than Sir Keir’s? The latter is already a dead man walking, less than a year after his false victory. The Brits loathe him, and he still has over four years to go. At least his party does.
Another comparison is with Canada and the recent election. There, just like here, there was a radical, leftist Government on the nose, dragging its people further and further into the mire. And there was an opposition with a clear, indeed, a massive lead in the polls. Then the Government simply changed leaders, the opposition lost its mojo and focus, and the rest is history. Here they stuck with Albo and still won handsomely. Not even a need to change leaders, but with uncanny similarities.
Hence Pierre Dutton. He led a ‘flat-footed’ campaign which saw an opposition suffer a swing against it for the first time since World War II.
Was it Dutton’s fault? Yes and, possibly, no. Dutton lost his mojo, so painstakingly garnered, against the odds, over much of Labor’s disastrous first term. Yet there might be more to this than meets the eye.
Former Liberal politician George Christensen says: ‘Let’s not sugar-coat it – Peter Dutton was never meant to win this election. Not because he lacked the leadership. Not because Australians didn’t want change. But because his own party made damn sure he’d lose.’ https://nationfirst.substack.com/p/the-sabotage-of-peter-dutton
Christensen says that insiders who feared Dutton’s conservative leadership sabotaged his office’s clear and strategic campaign plan from Dutton’s office was sabotaged by party insiders message dilution, and refusal to fund ads.
This is a big call. But for anyone remotely familiar with the inner workings of the Liberal Party and the warped priorities of its factions, especially in Sydney, it is entirely plausible. Christensen continues:
‘This wasn’t a stuff-up. It wasn’t bad luck. This was premeditated political sabotage—a coordinated takedown by factional cowards, backstabbing opportunists, and hollow men whose loyalty lies not with voters, not with the country, but with their own futures . . .
‘And make no mistake: the Liberal Party is crawling with this breed of political assassin.
In New South Wales, these types are the Armani-suited influence peddlers in the Liberals who treat politics like a cocktail circuit. They don’t build movements. They stack pre-selections and count donor dollars. And after they get their men and women into office they use their influence to lobby on behalf of major corporates, collecting fat wads of cash along the way. It’s all a grift for these guys.’
The whole article is worth reading.
Alex Antic, a true conservative Liberal Senator, has ‘ripped into’ the Coalition’s campaign. As well he might. He doesn’t go as far as Christensen, but he remains a Liberal stalwart and so he wouldn’t. But he does say some of the quiet bits out loud.
Antic is one of those (few) ‘good Liberals’ of whom I have recently written. He once explained to me the logic of his continuing efforts to effect change from within the traditional centre-right tent, and contrasted this with the alternate approach, which is simply to give up on the Coalition and start again. He remains committed to this day to make the Liberal Party great again. His words, today. But he did see the other point of view when we spoke, and readily conceded his party’s massive previous failures when they had the chance (in government) to right the ship and heal the nation.
The point is, at present, as the bastardry of the Liberal factions and ongoing non-performance of outer-right voices show, there is little joy to be found in either approach.
We have no Farage, no Trump. The system here doesn’t support and reward insurgents, other than the communist Greens and their fellow travellers. And, right now, Australia lacks the immediacy of a feral, illegal migrant invasion that cuts deeply to the core of British life on a daily basis, especially outside the cities. A foreign invasion that has united a restive, angry population behind a recognised, popular alternate leader.
Of course, simply to pose the question ‘What is to be done?’ as a choice between sticking with a reformed Liberal Party or to start again on the outside with some combo of existing or new micro parties is to create a false binary. As Mark Steyn says, we cannot vote our way out of this. Too many institutions beyond the control of voters are too far gone. The third option is strategic disruption of elite systems and structures, mass civil disobedience and joining parallel societies.
So, in a large sense, Saturday didn’t matter much. It is all so much performative democracy: most of the real action is offstage and much of the real damage has already been done.
