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Australia’s zombie election This battle of personalities is missing a personality

A lifesaver votes in Bondi Beach (PETER PARKS/AFP via Getty Images)

A lifesaver votes in Bondi Beach (PETER PARKS/AFP via Getty Images)


April 20, 2022   5 mins

Australia’s election may have kicked off a little over a week ago, but aside from the TV pundits giddy at the prospect of filling airtime with banal updates of the location of the Prime Minister’s plane, it’s hard to find much genuine excitement for the main parties, or belief that they will address the country’s problems. As one voter put it, the choice is between “two bad eggs”.

In the blue corner, we have the conservative Coalition government, led by the current Prime Minister, Scott Morrison. In power for nine years, the Coalition’s record isn’t exactly inspiring. There’s the harsh immigration policy of indefinitely locking up asylum seekers in camps across the Pacific that even Donald Trump found objectionable. There’s the $144 billion tax cut, 80% of which benefitted the top 20% of income earners. There’s the ongoing internal warfare over climate policy, which has resulted in emissions going up and no credible plan for decarbonising one of the world’s most fossil fuel intensive economies. There’s the billions wasted on defence equipment, including submarines that won’t surface until 2040, ships that are too slow, fighter jets that don’t fly, and tanks that the country doesn’t need. Meanwhile, wage growth is the weakest it’s been since the Thirties, inequality has increased, and housing in increasingly out of reach for those without rich parents.

Rather than address any of these issues, the Coalition has instead spent its time in office attacking enemies and rewarding friends. In regards to the former, the unions and universities have been its preferred targets, while the government has distinguished itself by outsourcing everything — from service delivery to policy design — to favoured private providers, with spending on consultants more than doubling during its tenure in power. Even then, it has failed to deliver the industrial relations reforms demanded by big business, or the religious freedom laws sought by the churches, simply giving up rather than trying to negotiate them through Parliament. All this tells the tale of a government lacking organic links with society, happy enough to rule the void between citizens and the state by simply remaining in power and kicking problems down the road.

The one area where the government does claim success is its management of the pandemic. Certainly, by international standards, Australia’s Covid-19 death toll was low, and the government provided unprecedented economic support to people losing their jobs and businesses struggling to stay afloat during lockdowns. But while the economy has bounced back impressively, with respectable growth rates and record low levels of unemployment, the pandemic response was also marred by multiple failures of the government’s making. These included a botched vaccine roll-out which prolonged lockdowns around the country, an aged care system which failed to protect the most vulnerable, and a failure to prepare a rapid testing regime for when the country opened up during the Omicron wave.

In any case, even as the government tries to brush over these failures, the reality is that the public has moved on. Covid-19 isn’t a major election issue; instead voters are concerned with rising inflation and cost of living, the state of the health system, climate change, stagnating wages and housing affordability. On all of these issues, the Coalition has done little, and the public know it. Only 35% rate its performance as good or very good.

Yet the polls show that the government and opposition are virtually tied, with neither party’s primary vote currently high enough to govern alone and a hung parliament a real possibility. Why is this?

Enter the Australian Labor Party (ALP). The centre-left party — out of office for 20 of the last 26 years — is still haunted by losing the “unlosable election” in 2019 against a Coalition government riven with divisions and tanking in the polls, which had only recently installed Morrison as leader in a Hail Mary play to save the furniture. During the campaign, the ALP put forward a relatively ambitious Third Way agenda, proposing to wind back tax cuts for the rich, close loopholes for investors and speculators to increase housing affordability, ramp up spending on social services, health and education, and commit the country to modest action on climate change.

But on election night, it was Morrison who pulled off a “miracle” win for the Coalition, thanks in no small part to low and middle-income voters who would have most benefited from Labor’s redistributive agenda. The reasons for this, according to a post-mortem internal review, were Labor’s deeply unpopular leader, Bill Shorten, the party’s inability to communicate its diffuse policy agenda, and a highly effective scare campaign from the Coalition that Labor represented “the Bill that Australia can’t afford”.

But the rot ran deeper, with the campaign exposing the void between the ALP and society, with its once-strong links to the union movement, community organisations and civil society eroded by decades of Third Way centrism. In such a context, it’s difficult for a Left-wing party to offer an ambitious agenda to a sceptical and depoliticised electorate more concerned with maintaining slipping living standards. Faced with an agenda full of promises made by a party they didn’t really know or trust, these “Quiet Australians”, as Morrison called them, chose to stick with the devil they knew.

In response, rather than trying to reconnect with society, the ALP’s lesson from 2019 was to abandon having an agenda altogether. It junked most of its key policies, and spent the past three years adopting a strategy of “bitch and fold”: criticising government policies in Parliament only to vote them through for fear of becoming the target of a new scare campaign. The end result is a party scared of its own shadow, with a small-target agenda that apes most of the government’s policies while promising to do them better, coupled with small spending commitments in areas such as health, childcare and education.

Absent a policy agenda, the ALP has instead framed the election as a contest on personality and competence between Albanese and Morrison. Certainly, they’ve got plenty to work with. Recently leaked messages from Morrison’s own party have revealed his colleagues think he is “a fraud”, “a psycho”, “a horrible, horrible man”, and “a hypocrite and a lair”. Likewise, his cosplay as a scruffy suburban dad has increasingly worn thin with the electorate, with voters describing him as “smirking, unkempt, immature and dishonest”. After his vaccine roll-out failure, and his shirking of responsibility during the Black Summer bushfires of 2019 and recent devastating floods in Queensland and New South Wales, Morrison’s reputation is of a leader who is always “a day late and a dollar short”. In this context, he makes an easy target.

Yet the problem for the ALP is that two can play this game. Labor’s leader, Anthony Albanese, is a party-machine man who, despite spending 26 years in Parliament (six of them as a minister in the previous Labor government), remains an unknown quantity to the electorate. Focus groups describe him as “dull” and identify the fact that he “wasn’t Bill Shorten” as his only strength. Likewise, he had a terrible start to the campaign, unable to remember key economic data such as the unemployment and interest rates. So much for competence. The Coalition could scarcely believe its luck, quickly rolling out another scare campaign, warning voters that “it won’t be easy under Albanese”.

In short, the upcoming Australian election is shaping up to be a contest over personality and competence between two parties led by men who exhibit neither. Nevertheless, both seem happy to fight on this terrain to compensate for the lack of a political agenda, and to paper over the void between their parties and the rest of society. In this context, it’s not surprising there’s little enthusiasm among voters, with one describing the election as “like going to a restaurant and you look at the menu and there is nothing you are really desperate to eat”. Faced with nothing appetising on the menu, the voters might just end up ordering the same as last time.


Tom Chodor is a Senior Lecture in Politics and International Relations at Monash University.

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Eamonn Von Holt
Eamonn Von Holt
2 years ago

As an Australian living in Brisbane I think the article is pretty accurate.
However, it is rather disappointing the author fails to mention the big problem is that Labor has become the party of wealthy elites with their “luxury beliefs” and the radical activism that goes with it.
Think of the obsession of pushing extreme race,trans and gender ideology in schools, work places etc, along with pie in the sky climate change interventions that only the truly wealthy can afford and that might provide a clue as to why a fairly useless PM with no backbone (as we saw by his refusal to challenge the Labor State Govts on arbitrary lockdowns, border closures during Covid) has a good chance of being re-elected.

Last edited 2 years ago by Eamonn Von Holt
Russell Hamilton
Russell Hamilton
2 years ago

I think Labor has a problem with their ‘brand’, which originated as a party that furthers the interests of the working classes. They don’t really do that anymore (even many unions don’t represent the interests of their members anymore) because the working class shrunk and Labor has become a party of and for the middle-class.

This leaves them in a difficult place … how to support environmentalists, and also the jobs of miners? How to make housing affordable without upsetting property investors? How to reconcile their past with their present – to speak to the middle class as well as the less well off? Their answer is mostly epic ‘spin’ which can just look like hypocrisy. The conservatives can wholeheartedly push their message of small government and low taxes and at least you know they mean it.

Brendan O'Leary
Brendan O'Leary
2 years ago

I agree about Labor’s dilemma, which you’ve articulated well.
The supposedly conservative Libs may talk small government and low taxes but they don’t deliver, seemingly confident that their alienated core have nowhere else to go.
Anyway, the massive growth in government has been largely created by the states, who are mostly returning Labor governments responsible for this. Or ditching Tweedledum Libs like Marshall in SA whose policies were indistinguishable from Tweedledee Labor.

Russell Hamilton
Russell Hamilton
2 years ago

Perhaps I could have been more succinct: Labor wants the money it gets from the unions, but to win the votes it needs from the middle class. Not easy to reconcile.

Last edited 2 years ago by Russell Hamilton
Justin Clark
Justin Clark
2 years ago

interesting! the similarities with the UK are striking…

Stuart Sutherland
Stuart Sutherland
2 years ago

Sounds just like the Labour party here in the UK!

Katy Hibbert
Katy Hibbert
2 years ago

Labor has become the party of wealthy elites with their “luxury beliefs” and the radical activism that goes with it.

Just like Labour in Britain.

Mark Duffett
Mark Duffett
2 years ago

I can’t agree it’s accurate, in particular the bit about “The one area where the government does claim success is its management of the pandemic”, when in fact it has been trumpeting economic success quite loudly, in particular the now-infamous 4% unemployment figure. Never mind the debt incurred, but “the economy has bounced back impressively, with respectable growth rates and record low levels of unemployment” is no small thing and worth more than the light skip given it here.

Ludwig van Earwig
Ludwig van Earwig
2 years ago

Yes, you have to wonder why the author studiously ignored the elephant in the room – the contemporary left’s obsession with radical identity politics. That is what is keeping Scomo’s chances alive. And though you say he’s spineless, at least he has pushed back against gender whisperers in schools, and will have no truck with trans ideology.

Last edited 2 years ago by Ludwig van Earwig
Malcolm Knott
Malcolm Knott
2 years ago

The photograph is unfortunate. It suggests, at first sight, an activity other than voting.

Justin Clark
Justin Clark
2 years ago
Reply to  Malcolm Knott

clearly was attempting to spoil his vote

Francis MacGabhann
Francis MacGabhann
2 years ago

Unprecedented support for people during lockdown? They made the lockdown happen, and the fact that Australians don’t hold that against them tells me a) what modern Australians are made of and b) that they deserve everything they’re obviously going to get after the election, regardless of which lot get in.

Russell Hamilton
Russell Hamilton
2 years ago

Australia has a federal system – state governments were responsible for the lockdowns.

Francis MacGabhann
Francis MacGabhann
2 years ago

Ah, nothing to do with me, guv. My mistake.

Russell Hamilton
Russell Hamilton
2 years ago

I’ve been a pretty close follower of politics here in Australia for the last half century and I think this article is 100% accurate – a very good summary of the situation. I haven’t read as good and unbiased a description anywhere else.

Last edited 2 years ago by Russell Hamilton
Neil Cheshire
Neil Cheshire
2 years ago

Underwhelming leadership in both major Australian political parties. For the Liberals – Morrison who has many of the attributes of a low end used-car salesman and for Labor – Albanese who appears to have had a charisma by-pass operation and has been promoted beyond his capabilities.

Justin Clark
Justin Clark
2 years ago
Reply to  Neil Cheshire

do they have a first past the post model as per UK? that would explain the lack of alternatives, as per the UK!

Graeme Cant
Graeme Cant
2 years ago

Written before Katherine Deves got her dander up. Somebody I can – and will – vote for. A worthwhile successor to Tony Abbot. And Morrison has decided to back her. At last something he’ll fight for..
This just might be an election that changes the discussion around the world.

Last edited 2 years ago by Graeme Cant
Brian Villanueva
Brian Villanueva
2 years ago

Based on this article, Australia has the same problem as America: two parties talking past each other on issues the public doesn’t gives a hoot about. The solution to that is called “populism”.

ARNAUD ALMARIC
ARNAUD ALMARIC
2 years ago

Hear hear!

Mark Bristow
Mark Bristow
2 years ago

Why did I subscribe to unherd when I can read the same stuff in The Guardian for free.

Billy Bob
Billy Bob
2 years ago
Reply to  Mark Bristow

Tone down the tribalism would you. Just because the writer is critical of the centre right government (fairly in my view) doesn’t mean that it’s anything remotely like the biased tripe you see in the Guardian.
If you think he’s wrong, then state where you think he is incorrect or where you think Morrison has actually done a good job. To me the criticism of the Aus PM and opposition seem justified, and largely back up what I’ve heard from friends over there

Roger le Clercq
Roger le Clercq
2 years ago
Reply to  Mark Bristow

Funny. The Guardian keeps trying to make me pay. Maybe they have stopped now?

Matthew Povey
Matthew Povey
2 years ago

If you’re going to start the last paragraph with the words, “in short”, then why not just give me a tl;dr at the top?