The teal independent phenomenon claimed four of the state’s House of Representatives seats at the federal election last May, and continues to loom large in assessments of the Coalition’s chances of an against-the-odds win in NSW on March 25.
However, the focus on the Liberal Party’s difficulties in affluent harbourside and northern beaches seats tends to overlook the equal pressures it faces at the other end of the political spectrum.
The cause of right-wing minor parties has been boosted across the board in recent years by the rise of populist politics and online conspiracism. But the problem for the Coalition in NSW specifically has been exacerbated by its responsibility as the party in government for managing the COVID pandemic.
From a right-wing perspective, the government is further encumbered by an image of pragmatic moderation personified by NSW Treasurer and Deputy Liberal Leader Matt Kean, who has become scarcely less of a hate figure on the right than anyone from Labor or the Greens.
The resulting complications at the election include the entry of the anti-vaxxer Informed Medical Options Party and an array of right-wing competitors in the upper house, among whom are high-profile Christian conservative Lyle Shelton and former federal Liberal MP Craig Kelly, who have helpfully drawn Group A and Group B on the expansive ballot paper.
Above all, there is One Nation, to which Mark Latham as state party leader has brought a tactical nous that hasn’t always been the party’s strong suit. One Nation is running candidates in only 17 of the 93 lower house seats, but it has smartly chosen to concentrate its energies in mining areas and the outer suburbs — the latter bringing it into contact with at least four of the election’s key seats.
By contrast, it has opted to sit out the federal byelection for the Melbourne seat of Aston on April 1 in what Pauline Hanson describes as a “strategic decision not to take votes away from the Coalition” — seemingly sending the message that it will play favourites with the Liberal Party of Peter Dutton, but not the Liberal Party of Matt Kean.
Such considerations are normally blunted by preferential voting, but NSW stands as an exception as the one jurisdiction where voters are not compelled to number every box.
The implications of this are laid out in sumptuous detail in an analysis of ballot paper data from the 2019 state election by the ABC’s Antony Green. It shows that even Greens voters, with their distinct sense of Labor as the lesser of the available evils, allowed their preferences to exhaust 40% of the time, which provides all the explanation you need as to why Labor governments knocked optional preferential voting on the head in Queensland and the Northern Territory.
By the same token, optional preferential voting can play to the Liberals’ advantage only in seats where they face pressure from teal independents, preferences having been crucial to their successes federally.
However, exhaustion rates for the Greens are left in the shade by those of minor parties of the right, whose supporters are largely motivated by a desire to thumb their noses at an establishment broadly defined. Nowhere is this truer than for One Nation, which led the pack in 2019 with an exhaustion rate of 70%, the remainder flowing 18% to the Coalition and 10% to Labor.
Given the 64-36 split of One Nation preferences under full preferential voting at the federal election, this amounts to a penalty to the Coalition of at least 2% after preferences where One Nation polls 10%, which it can reasonably expect to do in the seats it has chosen to contest.
This alone could account for a negligible Liberal margin in Penrith and have a decisive impact when combined with an expected Labor swing in Parramatta — losses that could prove fatal in the context of an election where polls suggest the Coalition can hope for little more than a tenuous hold on a minority government.
“Informed Medical Options Party” – sounds like another one of those euphemistic monikers for scary single-issue political parties that might be more accurately called, in this case, the “Uninformed Medical Opinions Party”.
Surely anti-vax sentiment is running out of steam by now?
I know what you mean, though some of them don’t bother to hide. I respect the Shooters for picking that name, even if for not much else.
I had a look at the Shooters policies today, SSR. You have to download a PDF for each subject they have a policy on. Social policies are all bundled on one page and start and end by attacking the young, who the Shooters claim have been “too protected”.
Dear oh dear.
I didn’t bother looking at any of their other policies. This grandmother’s clearly not their target voter. Not enough assets to believe the young have it easy.
I wish the Shooters well, amping up intergenerational animosity and chasing exactly the same voter the likes of the Libs, Nats and One Nation court.
Such a hard election, this one. So much choice. So many so deserving of being put dead last on my ballot papers, but only one can win the race to the bottom, sadly.
Or the “Cheerfully Misinformed Medical Opinions Party”?
CMMOP. I like it 🙂
George Costanza’s taken the ‘Misinformed & Obdurate Opinion Party’.
Arguably, the so-called Liberal Party is an even less honest label, at least for recent decades.
next measles outbreak location
I don’t live in NSW, and I shouldn’t have a horse in this race. But speaking as a usual Labor/Greens voter, I’d like to see the Liberals win just so I can watch the fight between them and Clubs NSW. I want to see someone stand up to the unquestionable evil that is the pokies industry, and I want to witness the tactics used by both sides. Yeah, I know that the Libs have been making some bad decisions and, well, they’re Libs, so support for wealth and contempt for the poor go with the territory. But this is a groundbreaking fight, this is the gambling Gettysburg of our time. Vote the Libs back in, even if they don’t deserve it, and bring it on.
Wouldn’t a minority government, with Nationals and RWNJ partners on the right, and Teals on the left, be a much more interesting parliament?
As long as they’re in the fight, I don’t care. But unless the tyranny of distance is distorting the news, aren’t the Nationals against any pokies reform?
Clubs NSW has said the Libs plan would cost the clubs 30% of their revenue. Fantastic. I imagine most of that would involve problem gamblers. Perhaps they should aim for 40%.
Saw that on Four Corners. As an estimated 40% of revenue comes from problem gambling, the clubs are still making a profit from misery.
Agreed. The Libs are the only ones who can carry this fight. As you say, contempt for the poor goes with the territory. Most of the victims of the pokies are poor and working-class people, and ClubsNSW will almost certainly pitch that it’s a case of the nanny state and the government trying to deny honest workers the right to spend their hard-earned however they want. That might score some points if aimed at a Labor government but will be shrugged off as par for the course if directed at the Libs. And if the Libs do get back in, then hey! I don’t live in NSW either.
Bring back pub rock, I reckon.
Good points but the best was the last – 10+
“Remember the Star Hotel!” should be a Eureka moment but there is no turbulence left in the working class (apols. to Eric Blair) – can anyone really imagine today’s yoof with that sort of courage, vitality and sense of self worth?
Even Chisel have Bowdlerised their lyrics in the ‘official video’ version – as Ian Drury did with his paean to gritty norf Lunnon “Sex & Drums & Rock’n’Roll” and Lou Reed with “Walk of the Wild Side“.
One weeps for what once was possible – not chance now.
Single issue voting is a great indulgence. The Liberals $400 middle class child handout would be quickly taken back from families in their increased utility costs including water. Who knows what other privatisations the Libs have ready to go if they get back in. They and the Nationals are basically anti-government and want to hand as much as they can over to their business cronies. Did Perrotet’s brother eventually surface? What is going on with these property developers and the Libs? There are many different forms of corruption just consider the sheer hostility to their fellow Australians of robodebt. The federal Liberals and the state Liberals are the same kind of people with the same classist attitudes. Matt Kean will go on to Federal politics if the Libs are booted out. Please release him.
Standard Liberal National game any changes are not until after the next Term of Government, if it was genuine it would have been Legislated before this Election.
I certainly sympathise with the anti-pokies stance, but government is not about one issue, and there are much more important issues out there, particular in the area of climate change, which the Libs could stuff up.
Good explanation of the consequences of the voting system, thanks. Of course this just illustrates (again) what a farce ‘representative democracy’ is, sophisticated insiders gaming the system and unintended consequences of voting behaviour that baffle most voters and which they cannot hope to control as they vote easily outweigh the fabled ‘will of the people’.
Let’s have a referendum on that then.
Great irony if the neofascist racist One Nation mob locks out the LNpee.
Trumpism writ large from a big racist, ignorant crowd which hopefully helps to sink the incompetent LNPee.