The campaign

The great debates

So far there have been two debates on an obscure television network, between representatives of Labor and the Coalition. Both debates demonstrate the inadequacy of the two-party system in dealing with important economic issues.

Albanese-Dutton

Three academics – Andy Marks of Western Sydney University, Andrea Carson of La Trobe University, and Emma Shortis of RMIT University – provide their impressions of the first Albanese-Dutton debate in a Conversation post. The title ­– No major gaffes and no knockout punch: the first leaders’ debate was a pedestrian affair – accurately summarises their impressions.

William Bowe, on Poll Bludger reports that the audience of 100 declared Albanese the winner but not by an absolute majority: 44 declared Albanese the winner, 35 declared Dutton the winner, and the other 21 were undecided. (It’s presumptuous to assume they should pick one of those two parties when they may choose neither. Statistically we would expect in a group of 100 there to be around 30 voting for others than Coalition or Labor.)

Bowe provides a link to the full one-hour session. He also reminds us that on that same day Dutton learned that his father had suffered a heart attack. Not the ideal conditions to be sparring with a seasoned campaigner.

The next Albanese-Dutton debate, on the ABC, will be at 8 pm on Wednesday.

Chalmers-Taylor

If you want to spend an hour listening to two men throwing around numbers out of context, then you could click on the Chalmers-Taylor debate, but you won’t learn much about the two main parties’ economic policies.

They both duck two serious economic issues.

The first issue they duck is the way the government should respond to a possible rapid downturn in the world economy. Almost every economist would suggest that as a response we should go for an expansionary fiscal policy, but Chalmers is terrified to mention this possibility, knowing that Taylor would double down on his accusation that Labor is a big-spending government, is wasting money, and is unable to keep the economy on track – all the usual unsubstantiated accusations. Taylor is in an even more difficult position, because cutting expenditure is a key Coalition platform. So the possibility of a stabilizing fiscal deficit gets no mention.

Both men are trapped in the obsession with the fiscal balance, as if it is the only thing that counts in economic management, and they are both slaves to the notion that a surplus is “good” and a deficit is “bad”. Our economic policy is held hostage by two dysfunctional public ideas – the fiscal obsession, and the notion that “small government” is good for the economy.

The other issue ducked in the debate is the need for structural reform. Taylor, with a lot of help from media – including ABC journalists – talks about “Labor’s cost of living crisis”.

We don’t have a cost-of-living crisis. Rather we have an underperforming economy, because over the last 30 years, mainly on the Coalition’s watch, our governments have not undertaken structural reform, and have not collected enough taxation to provide collective services. While most Australians are doing reasonably well, the consequences of that underperformance have fallen most heavily on the already most disadvantaged in the community – including the complaining voters picked up in the videoclips inserted in the debate.

Chalmers defends the government’s small steps towards structural reform, while Taylor makes it clear that a Coalition would simply put Australia “back on track”. That is to revert to the pattern of indolent government that has been the Coalition’s established pattern.

We could imagine how Keating might have performed if he were confronting someone like Taylor, who was trying to defend a pathetically weak economic policy. Perhaps Chalmers was advised by his political minders to stand on the government’s record and not to attack the opposition. Perhaps Chalmers has been so preoccupied with fiscal matters that he has allowed economic management to slip into the background. Or perhaps he knows, from experience, that every proposal for economic reform will be met with a hysterical scare campaign from the Coalition and its rent-seeking mates.

That is why our next Parliament needs strong voices, separate from the old established parties, ready to raise hard issues about structural reform.

The unbearable lightness of the campaign

The Conversation’s Digital Storytelling Team is running a Policy tracker, listing announced policies of the Coalition, Labor, the Greens and independents, under 16 headings.

From these lists anyone unfamiliar with Australian politics would find it hard to infer much difference between Labor and the Coalition. They would find some differences on “Workplace” policies where the Coalition’s policy is less worker-friendly than Labor’s. On “Education” and “Communications” the Coalition’s right-wing attitude on the school curriculum and the ABC is evident, and under “Foreign Affairs” the Coalition’s hard line on Israel is explicit. Looking at the parties’ stated policies on energy one would gain the impression that their differences are minor – except for those nukes.

These lists convey no impression that at times there have been basic philosophical differences between our two traditional parties. There still are, particularly since Dutton has carted the Coalition off to Trump’s territory, but in line with what political scientists call the “median voter theory”, the two old parties have hidden their differences.

Other aspirants for election don’t get much of a mention on these lists, but where they do get covered their ideas are a little more adventurous than those of the two old parties.

Because the Greens enjoy the luxury of having no likelihood of achieving executive government they can promise a wide suite of progressive policies. For example they propose that the economy should achieve net zero emissions by 2035.

By contrast with all three parties most independents have policies on climate change that are both strong andachievable. And it’s only from independent MP Allegra Spender that we see reference to the need for tax reform.

The guide’s authors claim it to be: “Your guide to the major policy issues of the 2025 election. How will Labor, the Coalition, the Greens and the independents make Australia better?”. But it’s more like a comparison between Coles and Woolworths on the prices of Tim Tams, laundry detergent and tomato ketchup.

That is not a reflection on the authors: they are simply reporting on what they observe. What they record is petty and disconnected from Australia’s challenges, needs and opportunities, particularly at a time when a madman in Washington is hell-bent on upsetting the world’s fragile liberal economic order.

By contrast with the insipid offerings of the main parties, the policy priorities we should be addressing are listed in a summary article by the Grattan Institute’s Aruna Sathanapally: The five policy challenges Australia must confront. To summarise her summary, they are:

These priorities relate back to the Grattan Institute’s pre-election Orange Book, published in March, and linked in the roundup of March 22. Trump’s “liberation day” moves do not change these priorities: they make them more urgent.

It is not as if our politicians are unaware of these challenges. If one digs through the list, and reflects on the modest reforms the Albanese government has pursued, often facing stiff resistance from the Coalition in Parliament, it is clear that Labor is ahead of the Coalition in shaping policies to meet these challenges. But these basic differences aren’t at the forefront of the election campaign, the messages of which appear to be generated by the day-by-day deliberations of focus groups and the findings from polls.

It’s a sad comment on the state of our democracy.

That “backflip”

Labor stalwarts would have felt a little Schadenfreude when the Coalition left it to Michael Sukkar to explain why the Coalition abandoned its proposals around cutting public service numbers and abolishing work-from-home provisions for public servants.

In the Radio National interview Patricia Karvelas put it to Sukkar that the Coalition has had three years to prepare for this election. Had they tested these ideas much earlier they would have found that they weren’t going to go down well. With this late reversal they give the impression that they are making policy on the run.

Michelle Grattan sees the original policy in terms of a struggle between the Liberal Party’s last remaining moderates and the men and women of the hard right who have gathered around Dutton. The hard right had to back down when they saw these proposals were costing votes: Dutton backs down on working-from-home crackdown after outcry threatens to cost votes.

The ABC’s Jacob Greber sees it in much the same terms: Dutton struggles to maintain Liberal Party's 'broad church' after Trump tariff rampage.

These explanations are plausible, but why do parties go to elections with proposals for such specific ideas, such as trying to specify the working conditions for public servants? The more such proposals come forth, the more likely they are to clash with other proposals, or, in this case, be found to go down badly with voters.

Polls

William Bowe is now updating his Poll Bludger site daily. Unsurprisingly he is reporting on a torrent of polls, generally showing that Labor’s prospects are improving, and that established independents are in strong positions to hold their seats and that some other independents are doing well.

The polls confirm that Victoria is the state where Labor is most at risk of losing seats, and they suggest that dissatisfaction with the state government will influence many Victorian voters in their federal vote.

All these polls have a margin of error. Even the best polls do a poor job at detecting support for minor parties. And in seats with more than two strong contenders, tiny movements can tip the outcome.

Bowe’s BludgerTrack filters out most of the noise in polling and in consolidating several polls it gives a reasonable indication of where the electorate is moving. It has moved a little in Labor’s favour this week. Last week BludgerTrack’s TPP estimate had Labor on a 50.3:49.7 lead; this week its lead is out to 50.9:49.1.

The Coalition’s primary vote continues to fall, but Labor’s primary vote is not rising. It is possible that the Coalition is losing ground to One Nation, whose support seems to have been rising according to polls that survey it separately.

As a note of caution, we should remember that while we can correct for biases and sampling errors in individual polls, there are times when polls can have a collective bias, as Peter Brent points out in his Inside Story contribution: Notes on a resurgence.

Election outcomes explained

It used to be so easy when the House of Representatives was neatly split between Labor and the Coalition parties.

Zareh Ghazarian of Monash University has a neat Conversation contribution How might the House of Representatives shape up after the 2025 federal election?.

It’s less prophetic than its headline suggests, but it is very useful for anyone trying to work out where the present parties and independents are coming from, covering the 2022 election, resignations and the outcomes of by-elections.

Those who are interested in the intricate details of vote counting may enjoy a Late Night Live session in which David Marr interviews Antony Green, who, after this election, will be handing over to Casey Briggs: Last dance at the tallyboard. Forget about the Governor General, concession speeches and other conventions: it’s Green who has been calling election outcomes since 1993.