I was invited to a party the night of the 2019 election. The night’s entertainment was invite-only, with long tables of bread and wine, and I stepped back from the sounds of celebration to hear the political coverage on my phone. Standing at the far window, I looked up to see people in the night below, out in the dark, silent. Behind me a party guest shouted over the noise ‘what happened?’ I looked away from those outside and answered: a loss.
The question was being asked outside the party too, where friends watched the ALP’s shock defeat alongside refugees on Temporary Protection Visas. The ALP had promised pathways to permanency and the election result of that night decided whether or not these refugees would remain safe or see their families again. The loss wasn’t just political for them.
Scott Morrison soon appeared to shout over the noise of his party and declared the election to be a ‘great victory’ for the ‘quiet Australians’, a vindication for listening to the apolitical and the aspirational. I asked my friend how it felt to hear that speech alongside refugees with a lived experience of displacement and torture. The room was quiet.
I heard similar stories from advocates, pastors, campaigners, friends. The ALP had invited a policy conversation that sought some progress on refugee justice, inequality, housing affordability, disability support, the climate crisis, and a First Nations voice to Parliament and Treaty. Many saw the 2019 election as a victory or a loss for a political party, but the question ‘what happened?’ depended on who you were asking. What was lost that night depends on who was being heard.
The noise grew louder in the aftermath, with parties and the media rushing to answer the question. Former Prime Minister John Howard claimed that Australians had rejected ‘envy driven politics’. Centre-right newspapers declared it ‘ScoMo’s Miracle’, that the quiet Australians had rejected Bill Shorten’s ‘big government and low growth agenda’, but this narrative reflected manufactured consent more than a majority consensus. Rather than a vindication of a centre-right ideology, Scott Morrison’s campaign had only added one seat to Malcolm Turnbull’s 2016 paper-thin majority of 76. The incumbent’s win was neither a miracle nor a mandate, barely claimed from an electorate expressing a level of disillusionment with democracy not seen since the Whitlam dismissal.
'Regardless of the election result, the story of what is lost can’t just be decided by the politics, but by those on the margins, by hearing them.'
The ALP’s own internal review asked what happened and blamed the loss on a weak strategy and an unpopular leader, where Bill Shorten argued that vested interests and the media had campaigned against the ALP. Clive Palmer had invested $83.6 million dollars of his mining company’s money on his campaign, spending $8 million in the last week, contributing to an ALP defeat. The majority of Murdoch’s print media also backed the LNP, as they have for most elections this century, (in a weakening media landscape that’s lost 5000 journalists over the last decade).
While Shorten didn’t reflect on the ALP’s disorganisation, or that he’d been the most unpopular party leader since 1990, he did point to an unprecedented level of noise in the campaign. Voters were exposed to online disinformation in Clive Palmer’s record-breaking online advertising, unsourced anti-Labor disinformation targeting Chinese Australians, and the Government itself running ‘death tax’ disinformation on MPs Facebook pages.
Was this election of disillusionment, disruption, and disinformation an example of ‘quiet Australians’ taking power, or a demonstration of power raising its voice?
I asked ‘what happened?’ in the weeks that followed to friends and co-workers. One prominent poverty advocate abandoned plans to work with a new government to resolve homelessness. One colleague spoke anxiously about their family who relied on the NDIS. Another had been counselling a refugee who had become suicidal. Some gave up on affording a home. Queer friends braced themselves for Scott Morrison’s promised Religious Discrimination Bill. Each answer was a story of loss, what the election had meant for those on the margins, for those who can’t afford to be apolitical or aspirational. That election was an act of power over the unheard.
Some see Australia as a party, where the tables are long with bread and wine and the sounds of celebration ring through the night. Elections are, at best, a night’s entertainment for those inside. Others aren’t always invited, however, and don’t get a place at the table. They remain outside, in the dark.
The result of this current campaign remains to be seen but the noise sounds the same. Facebook is attempting to combat disinformation, but Clive Palmer’s advertising is already expected to be worth $60-70 million. News Corp is repeating itself, and 112 newspapers are closing in the regions. Federal political advertising is not required to be factually correct and trust in government has been at a record low. Is anyone even listening?
No political party is the sole solution to a country’s challenges, (both major parties still receive the support of vested interests with a lack of transparency). Regardless of the election result, the story of what is lost can’t just be decided by the politics, but by those on the margins, by hearing them. What happens at the coming poll should be answered by those Australians too often silenced by power, and whether they might finally get a seat at the table.
Anthony N. Castle is an Adelaide-based writer. He has written for The Guardian, The Lifted Brow, Meanjin, and other national publications. He tweets @AnthonyNCastle
Main image: Candidates await results of Federal election in May 2019. (Brook Mitchell / Getty Images)