More lessons than one in WA's vote
Labor's victory is not only due to One Nation. Australia's party system
is unravelling.
The Age (editorial), 13/2/2001
WESTERN Australia's extraordinary election, in which the ALP has been
propelled into power with a majority that defied all opinion poll predictions,
has focused national attention on the resurgence of Pauline Hanson's One
Nation. The long-term lessons of the WA result, however, go beyond the
influence of Mrs Hanson and her followers. As we argued yesterday, it is
scarcely credible to claim - as Prime Minister John Howard, among others,
is claiming - that the WA outcome has no implications for next Saturday's
election in Queensland and for the federal election that must be held by
the end of the year. The discontents that have led to the revival of One
Nation are not unique to WA, and, if Mrs Hanson carries out her threat
to repeat in the federal election her party's tactic of directing preferences
away from most sitting members, the Howard Government could well be swept
away as the Court government has been. But the result in WA is not only
to be explained by the threat that a strong One Nation vote poses to incumbency.
It is true that on the basis of the increase in its primary vote alone,
a mere 2 per cent, the ALP would have struggled to win enough seats to
topple the Court government. But Labor's leg-up did not come from One
Nation only. Its pledge to ban logging in old-growth native forests won
it Greens preferences, and the strong showing of the Greens in WA - the
party eclipsed the Australian Democrats as an alternative party of the
left - may hold another key to the shape of the next federal parliament.
In the overall voting pattern, the WA election confirmed a trend already
evident in the 1998 federal election: the major parties' share of the primary
vote is dwindling, and almost a third of the electorate now votes for minor
parties or independents. The reality is that Australia no longer has a
two-party system.
It remains true, of course; that in the new multi-party politics there
are still only two parties that explicitly contest elections in order to
win national office and have the capacity to do so. Mr Howard is trying
to remind voters of this when he says that traditional Liberal voters who
cast a protest vote for One Nation will effectively be voting for a Labor
government. It may be doubted, however, whether such warnings will deter
the growing number of voters who are drawn to minor parties because they
believe that the Coalition and Labor increasingly resemble each other.
Such voters are more likely to relish the opportunity to punish an incumbent
than to fear an outcome they regard as Tweedledum's displacement by Tweedledee.
Still others will split their vote, opting for Labor or the Coalition in
lower house seats but for third- party candidates in upper house elections.
This eroding of traditional loyalties, and the consequent volatility of
recent elections, reflects the fact that some Australians have enjoyed
a greater share of the benefits of economic restructuring than others,
and that both Labor and the Coalition remain committed to the broad thrust
of this restructuring.
If volatility simply means that it is now extremely difficult for any
party to win three consecutive terms in office, it is no bad thing. Reasonably
frequent changes of government make for a healthy democracy, as does the
need for governments to negotiate the passage of contentious legislation
through upper houses in which no party commands a majority. The risk lies
in whether such haggling ultimately makes for legislative gridlock, and
governments that cannot act decisively.