Electoral Politics and Voting in Australia

With the July 2nd Federal election looming large in Australia, the airwaves, and the internet and print media have become engulfed with the usual onslaught of political advertisements, commentary, sound bites, ‘gotcha’ moments, and everything else that characterises modern election campaigns. In amongst these messages, there have been a number of calls to action (particularly from the mainstream political ‘left’), telling us how important it is to get out to vote and to enact our democratic rights, which are both a privilege and a responsibility. Prominent among these has been Waleed Aly’s passionate plea to the 500,000 Australians between the ages of 18 and 24 who are not enrolled to vote, asking them “what are you thinking?” when it is within their grasp to “completely change the outcome of this election” if they just went out and enrolled. Implicit in these messages is the assertion that we can change Australia for the better, if only we work within the political system, and take the election and its options seriously, which young Australians do not appear to be doing. A few questions arise, however: Is it really that important to take elections seriously and to vote? Do average voters really have the power that they are being made out to have? And, are elections in Australia and other western democracies really vehicles for progressive social change as is assumed? In answering these questions, I will argue that a belief in the importance of elections could in fact hamper positive long-term change. At the same time, however, I will argue that your vote can make a difference, and will outline (for what it’s worth) what I plan to do on election day.

In order to answer the questions posed above, it is necessary to explore how the political system in western parliamentary democracies, such as that found in Australia, actually functions. In the idealized model, elections represent those occasions when the population comes together to choose, from amongst their number, those representatives who best capture their own views, and who will most forcefully fight for their interests. The population is assumed to be fully informed on all issues, and their voting decisions are outcomes of compromises between all possible positions on all possible issues that confront the nation at that time and into the future. The Median Voter Model (MVM) – which probably best captures this idealized view in the Political Science literature – suggests that political parties form around blocks of voters with similar views, and that political parties will emerge to represent all the blocks across the entire political spectrum of views within the society. Over the longer term, the political parties are thought to converge around the ‘median voter’; that is, the hypothetical person who best captures the centre of the political spectrum, and who represents the point of most equal and fair compromise between the views of the population as a whole. From the MVM perspective, parliaments are truly democratic, and embody what a population believes on all important issues at the time of an election.

Mainstream discourse on elections implicitly (or explicitly) assumes the MVM to be a true and accurate portrayal of the functioning of parliamentary democracies, such as Australia’s. Politicians regularly appeal to the “average Australian” when announcing policy platforms; political commentators grumble that this or that legislative change will not be to the liking of “middle Australia”, and governments commonly claim to have achieved a democratic mandate for change after winning an election. The evidence for the MVM is not strong, however. First, its assumption that the population is fully informed on all issues is not only implausible, but demonstrably false. Second, confidence in political parties in Australia is quite low, with as few as 31% of Australians believing that political parties represent them (e.g., Martin, 2011). Third, members of the Australian parliament are not drawn proportionally from the different classes that make up the Australian population, with politicians being more likely to have attended private school, more likely to have attended university, more likely to own property, less likely to have been beneficiaries of (low SES) welfare provisions, and generally more likely to be wealthy than the average Australian. Finally, and most importantly, it is well known that the political establishment and the population – and by extension the ‘median voter’ – differ markedly on a whole range of issues, including health and education funding (the population typically wants more); support for overseas military intervention (the population typically wants less); support for climate change mitigation (the population typically wants more); and support for same-sex marriage (the population is strongly in favour), amongst many others. These points all undermine the MVM as an accurate and parsimonious account of elections and the political system in Australia.

An alternate model to the MVM is the Investment Theory of Party Competition (ITPC). The ITPC suggests that public policy arises not from competition for the median voter as the MVM suggests, but rather emerges from competition between business interests. Investors are thought to coalesce around political parties, and invest in them, as vehicles to protect and drive their interests. Those issues on which the groups of investors agree will be uncontested and invisible to the population, irrespective of the population’s interest in those issues. On those issues on which groups of investors disagree there will be fierce competition, again irrespective of the population’s interest or otherwise in those issues.

Within the ITPC, the interests of investors are thought to frame and constrain public policy throughout the life of any government that gains a majority. The population, however, only plays any significant role during election campaigns. Voters do not frame or constrain public policy, but they must be appealed to during elections, and therefore political parties must court them for their votes, which they typically do with issues that do not affect the core business interests of the investors that they represent. Capital-intensive industries – that is, those with lower labour costs and more capital investment – are able to court voters with higher wages, better working conditions, more progressive social policy, and can align themselves with unions, because these do not affect their core business interests. Labour-intensive industries – that is, those with higher labour costs and less capital investment – on the other hand, are unable to court voters with these same policies, because anything that increases the cost of labour will have strong negative effects on the profitability of these industries. As such, labour-intensive industries, and the political parties that represent them, commonly compete with rival parties on “values”, and induce fear, patriotism, and other such devices to court voters. In Australia, though the boundaries can be quite fluid, capital-intensive industries have typically supported the Labor Party, and labour-intensive industries have typically supported the Liberal Party (see, for example, AEC records on political donations).

The evidence for the ITPC, unlike the MVM, is quite strong (though admittedly no study that I am aware of has been conducted in the Australian context). First, the ITPC makes no prior assumptions about the degree to which voters are informed or otherwise, as the consequences of information flow in a money-run political system are peripheral, because the population is made to be largely peripheral. Second, the ITPC is entirely consistent with the class differences that exist between members of parliament and the general population. Third, the ITPC provides a plausible explanation for the emergence of the two-party systems common in western democracies, suggesting that they are an outcome of a deep schism in the interests of capital-intensive and labour-intensive industries. Third, various studies in the United States and in Europe have shown that public policy aligns strongly with the opinions of those at the top of the income ladder, and becomes increasingly divergent as you descend to the lowest rungs. And finally, and perhaps most importantly, careful research into the outcome of presidential elections in the United States, from the 1933 ‘New Deal’ election of Franklin D. Roosevelt to the election of Bill Clinton in 1992, provides direct support for the ITPC. This research tracks the views of investors, their relationships with party figures, and the money that flowed to the Democratic and Republican Parties in each election, and shows that public policy, and the results of the elections, largely arise from an interplay of these factors. The ITPC appears to explain existing political systems well, particularly those, such as Australia’s, where wealth and power are concentrated in the hands of a privileged few.

So where does this leave us with regard to the importance of voting in elections in Australia? Assuming that the ITPC provides an accurate portrayal of the functioning of the political system in Australia, a few points logically follow. First, the political parties on offer, particularly the two major parties, are unlikely to represent anywhere near the views of the electorate. From this it follows that the decision for many Australians on election day will be how to choose the least bad option from those they are being offered. This could go some way to explaining the disengagement of young Australians (and should, perhaps, be taken into account by anyone who ever feels like blaming other groups – particularly disaffected groups of less privileged people who have been made to focus on their own, often ethnocentric, interests – for the government we end up with after an election[1]).

It also follows from the ITPC that the way in which the population in Australia votes likely has very little impact on public policy, and is unlikely to lead to large-scale positive social change. Taking a historical perspective, it is quite clear that parliaments are in fact very conservative institutions, and rarely, if ever, lead the way in effecting change – a fact predicted by the ITPC. The history of slavery, workers’ rights, women’s rights, LGBTIQ rights, environmental action, and so on, shows that progressive social change arises from movements in the population, and that legislative changes follow much later, if at all.

Following from this point, the ITPC predicts that social change of the most progressive and revolutionary kind cannot occur until the power of investors to control the political process is curtailed. This could take various forms, the most obvious of which is the formation of trade unions embedded in the working population, something which has been attempted with some success in the past. In the long-term, however, only dismantling institutions in which power is concentrated, and democratizing them, is likely to lead to public policy that represents the views of the population. Minor parties can and do arise to challenge the political establishment (the Greens are the most obvious contemporary example in Australia), but their success can only be limited in the long-term. In the first instance, these parties will be ignored and will not have the resources to promote themselves or their policies. If they are able to survive this initial period, they will then become threatening to the political establishment, and will become targets for attack. If they are able to survive these attacks and establish themselves as a legitimate political force, they will become attractive to investors, who will begin to court them, invest in them, such that their policy positions will gradually start to reflect the views of those investors (a process that I think is beginning to play out at this moment with the Greens, and that can be seen in the history of the Labor party). If by some miracle, a party such as this survives with its values intact and wins government, then other means are available to concentrated power to undermine legislative changes. Large amounts of money can be invested in further attack campaigns (as occurred for the Carbon tax), prices on monopolized goods and services can be increased[2] (as occurred in Venezuela when the Chavez government enacted mildly progressive social policies), or investment capital can be moved across state borders, thus destroying the national economy (as occurred in Bolivia in the face of land reforms). Only the democratization of concentrated private power, and the spreading of wealth outside the hands of a few can truly lead to a political system that represents the views of its population.

In light of these points, it is perhaps not as clear as is often assumed, by Waleed Aly and others, that enrolling to vote, and voting in the upcoming election is as important as it is made out to be. By focussing all our attention on the election, and who we should vote for, when these actions will likely have little long-term effect, and will, for most, be a choice between a bad option and a worse option, we may in fact be distracting ourselves from what history has taught us: positive change comes about through mass popular movement, through the creation of solidarity among diverse groups with diverse interests, and through the dismantling of institutions of concentrated power. Positive social change comes about through working together, outside of the electoral cycle and outside of the political system, not through elections or through voting for candidates whose policy positions we have little impact on. Elections – though a privilege, given the long and violent struggles by past generations for the franchise – are not that important if the goal is to bring about progressive social change.

Having said all this, I want to finish by emphasizing that I do not believe that voting in the upcoming election is completely unimportant. The differences between the parties on some issues are very real, and will have very real consequences for people’s lives. The Greens’ positions on asylum seekers, climate change action, violence against women, and penalty rates, for example, are far more humane, and will be of far greater benefit to a greater number of people, than anything on offer by the Liberal or Labor Parties. These differences matter.  These differences particularly matter if you live in a marginal seat, where your vote can determine the outcome of the election. These differences also particularly matter in the senate, where your vote can determine how much the more destructive policies of whichever major party forms government can be curtailed. For what it’s worth, I will be voting informally (i.e., “donkey voting”) in the House of Representatives, and preferencing the Greens in the Senate. The safe Liberal seat in which I live means I can get away with a protest vote, and allows me to live up to what I really believe in. In the Senate, however, where my vote really matters, I do not want to see the more destructive elements of the political establishment gaining unbridled power, and I want to see progressive amendments made to any legislation that comes before that House. Whatever you decide to do on the 2nd of July, remember that your ability to bring about positive change extends well beyond your vote on that one day every 3-4 years.

[1] It is always a good idea to remember that, when systematically surveyed, Australians mostly hold quite socially progressive, and socially democratic views in most policy domains. It is also worth remembering that vulnerable, disaffected, less educated people are not the cause of the sickening policies (e.g., toward asylum seekers, women, indigenous Australians etc.) enacted by the government, and that with a bit of positive engagement (rather than the all-too-common comments about these people’s stupidity), we could all in fact be allies in the fight against the real oppressors who hold social, economic, and political power.

[2] When economists and business leaders predict increasing costs after some policy change that they are not fond of (for example, increases in electricity bills after the introduction of the carbon tax), I often think that these should be taken not as predictions, but rather as threats.