Take from me all my trumpery lest I die.
The line, from an evening prayer penned by C.S. Lewis, could moonlight as a wrap of last Saturday’s federal election. Not only because it (accidentally) invokes the US President, whose disruption of the geopolitical order factored into the outcome. But because the word trumpery, originating from 12th-century Middle English, refers to deceit, nonsense, or trickery. Mainstays of any election campaign, sure, but also unworthy diversions distracting from the real issues at stake – and on which the Liberals erred. On several levels, the election result saw Australian voters embracing the final line of Lewis’ prayer.
All polls suggested a relatively tight result, but what followed was the largest defiance of opinion polling in Australia’s history. Consensus was that Labor easily out-campaigned the Coalition. However, no one predicted a blowout. Instead, what was broadly forecast was a Labor win – with either a very slim majority or, more likely, a minority government in a hung parliament. Instead, Labor claimed a clear and strong majority – very unusual for a first-term government – with a more than 3 per cent swing to it on two-party-preferred terms. The swing was pretty much uniform and national (with only a small handful of seats bucking the trend).
Vote-counting continues, but the Coalition is set to fall to around 38–43 seats (or fewer) in Parliament. It’s the lowest Coalition primary vote ever, and the best two-party-preferred vote in a federal election for any party since the election of Ben Chifley’s government in 1946.
So how did it come to this? In a recent article, New York Times columnist David Brooks observed that Donald Trump’s influence threatens to go beyond politics, creating “a psychological and social atmosphere that suffuses the whole culture – the airwaves, our conversations, our moods.” Brooks is summarising his take on what has become known as grievance populism – a political posture that doubles down on cynicism, division, and negativity. Australians saw the dark clouds on the horizon and they rejected it.
This trend against grievance populism isn’t uniquely Australian. Last week saw three incumbent governments benefit from a public longing for stability in a turbulent and uncertain world: Canada, Singapore, and Australia. All three were struggling around a year ago, with Trump’s election undoubtedly playing a role in fuelling pro-incumbency sentiment. All three elections have been referred to by international commentators as anti-Trump elections – with incumbents not only holding on, but being given renewed and strengthened mandates. Jason Grieber from the ABC declared: “It was a resolute rejection of bunyip Trumpism.”
The reasons for election outcomes are always multi-factorial. However, on any measure, Saturday night was a decisive repudiation of the politics of negative alarmism, pushed by both the Coalition (from the right) and the Greens (from the left).
In a cost-of-living crisis and a housing affordability crisis, it’s telling that both the Coalition and Greens failed to capitalise politically. Both lacked nuance and pragmatism in their policies, and the Australian people didn’t like it. Such a pronounced swing to Labor suggests that the electorate wanted to send a clear message: extreme language and grievance populism don’t work in Australia. This isn’t America. This isn’t Gough Whitlam’s Australia. This isn’t John Howard’s Australia. For now, at least, class wars and culture wars don’t work here.
“After three decades of culture wars simmering under the surface of federal politics, we got a glimpse of a more civil and sensible public conversation.”
Keith Wolahan, who is likely to lose his formerly safe Liberal seat of Menzies in Melbourne, conceded that the Coalition too readily assumed a particular perception of Australian sentiments rather than more empathetically considering the lived experience and perspectives of people in metropolitan Australia. It was a telling acknowledgment of the empathy deficit at the heart of both right-wing and left-wing populism.
Conventional political theory dictates that in opposition, you spend a year or so playing to your base, and then as the election draws near, pivot to the centre to win undecided voters. Dutton started with his base and stayed with his base. Even in the final week of the campaign, he tried to make Welcome to Country ceremonies and announcements a campaign issue. Those who agreed with him were already voting for him. He refused to widen the appeal of his policies and rhetoric. He continued to swing at things that Labor wasn’t really talking about or running on (woke-ism, political correctness, etc.). Culture wars can work in politics, but only if both sides are up for the war. This time, Labor wasn’t, and the Coalition was left swinging at shadows.
With diminishing exceptions, the Australian electorate (at least for now) is increasingly centrist. More and more people are choosing competent – though, arguably, underwhelming – stability over outrage-fuelled upheaval. It seems that we don’t like changing horses when crossing a stream, especially when the stream is becoming a torrential river and the alternative horse is bucking and without a saddle.
In The Sydney Morning Herald, Sean Kelly claimed the election result a win for “kindness”. In a moment that symbolised the drivers of the campaign outcome, Kelly cited Albanese’s defence of Dutton when some Labor volunteers heckled him during Albanese’s victory speech. The Prime Minister instead declared that in Australia, we show respect to people. Albanese then wished Dutton and his family the best for the future. He went on to say he had had a warm conversation with Dutton on election night, and then remarked: “It’s a tough business, politics, there’s no doubt about that, and it would have been a tough night for Peter, but he was generous.”
Dutton’s graciousness – unfortunately not always on view during the campaign – also served as a punctuation mark on an election result that rejected the hostility on display during the campaign.
In reports of his phone calls with the Prime Minister and Ali France (the Labor candidate who defeated him in his seat of Dickson), Dutton was gracious, generous, warm and sincere. He wished the Prime Minister’s family well and told Albanese that his late mother would be proud of him. In his call with France, he told her that she would make a great member of parliament, and that her late son would be proud of her.
Politics can be a ruthless, divisive, and messy thing. But this election flouted pollsters’ expectations and revealed something of the Australian spirit: our desire for stability. Our aversion to cynicism. Our dislike of superfluous negativity. Our respect for competence over bravado. And our natural resonance with kindness and civility – even when we’re less than inspired. After three decades of culture wars simmering under the surface of federal politics, we got a glimpse of a more civil and sensible public conversation. The world is spiralling. Uncertainty is everywhere. Here, at least, the people have spoken: trumpery just won’t cut it.
Max Jeganathan is a senior research fellow at the Centre for Public Christianity. He served as a political and social policy adviser in the Rudd and Gillard Labor governments and is undertaking a PhD in law on human dignity.