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It’s 8:30 pm on Friday night, and I’m across the road from my father’s house putting Labor party bunting on the fence of Edithvale Primary School. We’ve beaten the Liberals to the punch this year, meaning all the prime spots are ours. I yank another zip tie into place, fingers numb from the cold. The local candidate’s face stares at me from the corflute – respectable, bespectacled Mark Dreyfus, QC. Dad is a few metres away in a beanie and a long black overcoat, chortling at the thought of being seen as a union thug. My stepmother April is further down the fence, duct-taping the shit out of some banners. I move on to the next corflute, this one exhorting voters to ‘Save Medicare’. It’s freezing, I haven’t been inside yet and I don’t even live in this electorate.
Such was my election day eve in Australia.
Last Saturday the citizens of Australia went to the polls to decide our country’s future.
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Last Saturday the citizens of Australia went to the polls to decide our country’s future. The fight was between the incumbent Malcolm Turnbull, of the Liberal/National Party Coalition, and the opposition leader Bill Shorten of the Australian Labor party. The Liberals campaigned on a largely economic platform, promising jobs and growth, whilst Labor vowed to oppose the Liberals’ planned privatisation of Medicare. For the Australian people, the choice was anything but clear.
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To really understand what happened in this election, we have to take examine the turbulent history of Australia’s recent political past. Australia holds federal elections every three years, but Malcolm Turnbull was not who Australia elected in 2013. Rather it was former Prime Minister Tony Abbott, an ultra-conservative revenant who won office in a landslide. This occurred subsequent to six years of Labor rule defined largely by instability and infighting.
During those six years Labor leader Kevin Rudd was overthrown by his deputy, Julia Gillard, who became Australia’s first female Prime Minister. However, she was embattled from the beginning of her tenure and so abysmally failed to inspire public support, that at the eleventh hour Rudd launched a vengeful coup, taking back the Prime Ministership.
While Rudd’s return was a personal victory, he was only backed by the party only because he could save them a few seats in the house, while facing an electoral annihilation. Labor sewed fractiousness, and Tony Abbott became the elected conservative Prime Minister.
Abbott had spent his years in Opposition savaging Labor, and by 2013 all the Liberals had to do was tattoo the phrase ‘the chaos of the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd years’ onto their knuckles and punch Labor repeatedly in the face. Labor went down with split lip, black eye and broken nose. However, the 2013 result was more about ‘no more Labor’ than it was ever about ‘Go Tony!’ and within two years Abbott’s popularity had emulated Julia Gillard’s and hit rock bottom.
The reason for this was simple: Tony Abbott was a bigoted, anachronistic, international embarrassment. Highlights from the reign of the ‘Mad Monk’ include reinstating the archaic institution of knighthood in order to grant one to the already well-titled Prince Philip of England. He appointed himself Australia’s ‘Minister for Women’ and perhaps aptly ate a raw onion as if it were an apple on live television. By 2015 there was much disillusionment with Abbott and The Liberal Party and politics continued to reign supreme. Here enters the first of the 2016 election’s key players: Malcolm Turnbull.
A popular figure and Minister among the Liberal frontbench, Malcolm Turnbull at first politely refused strong public support for himself to replacement the Prime Minister. So it was that the Liberal party chose to give their controversial leader six months to turn things around. Seven months later nothing had changed, and Turnbull grinned for the cameras as he sank a knife into Abbott’s back and very few mourned the loss of the man who came to be known as the Mad Monk.
Malcolm on the other hand was articulate, measured and the most progressive man to ever hold a Liberal office. He promised a golden combination of social progress and fiscal responsibility. Labor’s weak hit-back and general grousing by the people of ‘five Prime Ministers in five years’ gradually evaporated in the honeymoon of the Turnbull government, and it seemed the Australian people had the Prime Minister they wanted.
Except they didn’t.
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There can be no doubt, the 2016 election has been unique. It’s hard to imagine now as the agonising wait for a result drags on, but as recently as two months ago this was election ‘Who Cares’? As far as the Australian people were concerned, they had a choice between a grey-haired man in a suit with glasses and blue tie, and a grey-haired man in a suit with no glasses and a red tie.
The whole thing seemed ridiculously overblown; a double-dissolution requiring all Senators and MPs to run for re-election, which was triggered by a non-issue spat over the ABCC (The Australian Building and Construction Commission). This was a theoretical body Turnbull sought to create, that would have powers to investigate building and construction unions. The Liberal party acting in their role as spiritual successors of the English aristocracy in Australia, were therefore traditionally opposed to unions on the grounds that working people having the means to stand up for themselves. This would obviously make it harder for the rich to exploit the workers, so Labor and independent crossbenchers blocked the ABCC bill. As a direct result, Turnbull seized on the excuse to call an election.
For the Australian people the upcoming election was little more than an inconvenience. As the long campaign got underway, however, things began to change. Australia’s past two federal elections had been characterised by recriminations over instability, but the Liberals’ smoother handling of Abbott’s eviction meant that they hadn’t copped the same degree of flack as Labor had. Free of the ‘your party’s so shit’ discourse that defined the last two elections, Australian Felection Election 2016 was free to shape up along different lines, and Labor and the Liberal Party fell into their traditional ideological camps with fresh energy.
The Liberals promised a strong economy and a pat on the head for being a good voter. Labor did better, vilifying Turnbull’s quid-pro-quo dealings with big business and promising that only they would stick by working families and save Medicare. From what had started out as election ‘Who Cares’ came the rumblings of a class war.
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As 2016 dawned the Turnbull government’s honeymoon ended, and people began to realise that Malcolm was more talk than action. His progressive values vanished as soon as the conservatives in the Liberal party became important to his support base. His past as a successful merchant banker was pondered, and everyday Australia’s general distrust and resentment of wealth began to kick in. Labor, who had spent the dark years of Abbott’s reign reorganising and repurposing, re-emerged as a political force. However, their new leader was Bill Shorten, a man with the charisma of a wet sponge and all the good looks of a recently exhumed corpse. By comparison Turnbull seemed distinguished, composed and quietly confident, even if his smugness was hard to miss. When the ABCC bill was blocked and Turnbull pulled the double-dissolution trigger, pundits had the odds on Malcolm keeping his job.
Don’t like ads? Become a supporter and enjoy The Good Men Project ad freeEight weeks later, on a cold Friday night I headed to bed prepared for a Labor loss. Local victories being the best that could be hoped for, with the outside chance of a hung parliament. I turn out my light.
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It’s Saturday morning, election day.
The voting booth across the road is busy. Dad and April are sitting on the couch drinking coffee, Mark Dreyfus campaign shirts pulled over their regular clothes. April has barely slept, paranoid that Liberal supporters will tear down the bunting in the night, but it is all still up and crowds out the Liberal material.
Later in the day I duck across the street and head into the booth to vote absentee. Re-emerging, I pull on a Dreyfus campaign shirt and start handing out how to vote cards. There are two or three Liberal volunteers on the booth and a lone representative of the Greens. Tension is a definite possibility.
In the past I’ve volunteered at booths where verbal altercations have broken out, but this time things are congenial. We all chat as we hand out our cards, joking light heartedly as we discuss the issues of the election, democracy in full flow around us. I take a break for lunch and then come back. An older man stops in the middle of the footpath and shouts ‘They’re all liars, thieves and fuckin’ parasites!’ More people reject all party’s cards than ever before.
April and I hand over to other volunteers and go back inside. Dad has gone, down to the Peninsula to volunteer at a different voting booth. Exhausted, April and I flop down on the couch and switch on the election coverage. Munching on potato chips, we watch as a clear picture fails to emerge.
Anthony Green disgorges statistics and makes calls, but while the Liberals stay a few seats ahead of Labor they fall short of a majority. Electorates are coming down to the wire all across the country. The Greens retain their one seat and threaten a few more, whilst Independents are getting in everywhere. A hung parliament becomes likely, then it becomes apparent that the election won’t be decided tonight.
Richard Di Natale gives a speech for the Greens at the head of an army of under-30 volunteers, and I slap my leg in support. Dad gets home. Later, the coverage cuts to Bill Shorten. Uncharacteristically energised, he boldly declares that ‘Labor is back!’ He’s not wrong. Labor went into this election expecting defeat, but now Malcolm Turnbull is staring down the barrel. What happened?
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That is the question on everyone’s lips as of the time I write this. The media is bending over backwards trying to provide answers, but until the Australian Electoral Commission delivers its verdict all anyone can do is speculate. In the absence of a strong two-party narrative, this has become an election of individual stories, and so many stories there are.
In Queensland, a largely conservative northern state, noted racist Pauline Hanson has propelled her party One Nation into the Senate. One Nation is the modern day incarnation of the White Australia policy, but with the result so finely balanced Hanson could end up with disproportionate power and she attracted 4% of the primary vote in the election, proving that in these troubled times xenophobia will always flourish. On the other hand, Labor’s Linda Burney has won the Sydney electorate of Barton and become Australia’s First Indigenous female Member of Parliament.
Down in Tasmania, a small southern island with an ageing population, a trio of Liberal MPs known as ‘the three amigos’ have been knocked off by a strong Labor surge that has turned the whole island red on electoral maps. South Australia has hosted a victory for high profile independent Nick Xenophon, who once earned media brownie points after he was told that a particular vote would likely last past midnight and so showed up to parliament house in his pyjamas. Now a powerful figure thanks to the likely hung parliament, he is being hailed as this election’s kingmaker.
In my home state of Victoria, a handful of seats have come down to the wire and Labor Premier Daniel Andrews is being blamed for sabotaging potential victories with his atrociously timed attack on the Country Fire Authority. Daniel Andrews is seen by many to have done good works since his election, but his aggressive move to empower the United Firefighters Union at the cost of CFA volunteers has damaged Labor’s prospects in the rural electorates of Corangamite, La Trobe and Dunkley.
In Dunkley where my father campaigned, Labor’s Peta Murphy is behind by less than 1400 hundred votes despite a swing of over 5% towards her. In my home electorate of La Trobe the margin is even smaller, but the Liberals’ Jason Wood is expected to win. So given that the area is heavily forested and volunteer firefighters are hailed as local heroes, one can’t help but feel that Daniel Andrews is to blame. In metropolitan electorates the race has been between Labor and the Greens, with Batman which encompasses Melbourne’s CBD just edging towards Labor. In better news, Mark Dreyfus kept his seat in Isaacs and increased his support margin, with the Edithvale Primary School booth recording a higher than average swing towards him. Looks like all that bunting I was doing was worth it.
Still, there is no result. It may take weeks.
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Still, there is no result. It may take weeks. Bill Shorten has called for Malcolm Turnbull’s resignation. Tony Abbott, who remains a Liberal MP, has won his own seat and there are calls from a few for him to replace Malcolm. Richard Di Natale has vowed to oppose Pauline Hanson. Daniel Andrews watches the election news from a throne of level crossing barriers. He considers burning them, but isn’t sure who will help if his house catches fire too. In a draughty hall somewhere, Kevin Rudd’s 2013 concession speech is winding down before an audience of cobwebbed skeletons. At home, Julia Gillard is drinking wine and savouring the sweet, sweet taste of karma.
Laugh or cry, this is Australian politics and for now at least, all we can do is wait.
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Photo: GettyImages