Quarterly Essay No. 96 titled ‘Minority Report: The New Shape of Australian Politics’ by George Megalogenis.
In general summary, this essay, published late in 2024, asks the question – What does the new political landscape look like in Australia?
As the publisher tells us, Australian politics is shifting. The two-party system was broken at the last federal election, and a minority government is a real possibility in the future. Politics-as-usual is not enough for many Australians. In this richly insightful essay, George Megalogenis traces the how and why of a political re-alignment. He sheds new light on the topics of housing, the changing suburbs, the fate of the Voice to Parliament, and trust in politicians. This is an essay about the Greens, the teals and the Coalition. In a contest between new and old, progressive and conservative, which vision of Australia will win out? But it’s also about Labor in power – is careful centrism the right strategy for the times, or is something more required?
In Minority Report, Megalogenis explores the strategies and secret understandings of a political culture under pressure. He writes “The sword of minority government hangs over the major parties. Neither side commands an electoral base broad enough in the twenty-first century to guarantee that power, once secured, can be sustained for more than a single three-year term. Now the question turns to whether a return to minority government will further damage our democracy, or, perhaps, revitalise it.” [George Megalogenis, Minority Report].
A worthwhile review of the Essay appeared on the website ‘Cannonball Read’ which I’ve taken the liberty of copying in full.
“In this Quarterly Essay, journalist Megalogenis unpacks the world of Australian politics as we plunge forward to our next federal election in 2025. It’s clear, as one looks at elections around the world, that the rules of the past in elections are gone. Polls no longer reliably predict winners. Incumbents no longer reliably get second terms. People don’t vote in blocks like they used to, and single-issue parties and politics are taking hold. It’s a fascinating (if terrifying) time to be alive. Megalogenis tries to unpack this trend. To explain how and why the political world has changed. The premise is largely that there is a desperate need for the electorate to get comfortable with the concept of minority government. For those who don’t have a Westminster system like Australia, a minority government is what is formed when no single party wins a clear majority. Instead, a minority government forms: a tenuous arrangement between the majority and minor parties/independents – enough to get the numbers to hack together a majority. It’s relies on personality politics and messy deals, and invariably leads to slow government progress. But it also forces the major parties to engage with the electorate in a way they usually are not forced to, which is not always a bad thing.
Though there are many factors unpicked in this essay to explain how things got here, the most glaring seems to be data on immigration. Australia is an extremely multicultural nation, but you wouldn’t know that when you look at our male, pale, and stale elected officials. Parties are failing to win majorities, or retain governments, because they are failing to inspire and win over immigrant voters. Compulsory voting exists in Australia after all – literally everyone gets a say (whether you like it or not). There’s no electoral college. It makes for a difficult task, which the major parties so far have failed navigate with skill.
Though the essay focusses on Australian politics, I’d say this topic has broader application. I’d recommend it to anyone who is struggling to understand how politics has changed, and will continue to change, over the next decade”.
This essay also contained correspondence relating to Quarterly Essay 95, High Noon [written by Don Watson] from Thomas Keneally, Emma Shortis, David Smith, Bruce Wolpe, Paul Kane, and, in response, Don Watson. At the time of reading that essay, I noted that it was ‘Certainly a wide-ranging piece of writing, and for a while I wondered when Watson was going to get to the point of the Essay, which did provide an interesting historical perspective leading up to both candidates, Trump and Harris [and written in advance of the actual 2024 US election]. Certainly, the subsequent correspondence seemed to be in general agreement with the main thrust of Watson’s essay, with the most perceptions of it coming from author Thomas Keneally.
In his own inevitable style, Keneally began his critique with the paragraph “What I like about Watson’s mind is his capacity to connect the mytho-poetic to the political, and he can do it without hearing from him, generally, any grunt of effort. The Trump he gives us, essentially, is a special kind of Ogre, and is a fascinating figure in that the more politically literate people insult him with words like autocratic, authoritarian, demagogue, misogynist, the bigger he grows. Elegant abuse is his meat, his drink. This is why one can call Watson’s essay charming, even if it is about the end of America and all of our traditional ties to America. And then, just as the poor old king doses off in the midst of discussing the Ogre with the Townspeople, two apparently ordinary folk wander in, Harris and Walz, who somehow, by nit having a lifetime of experience in politics, can find the words to diminish the Ogre. They were ordinary words, but they bring a previously unseen pallor to the Ogre’s cheeks. ‘Weird’ was one of those words. The people watched in wonder and hoped the code words would keep their power to make the Ogre smaller”. As we have seen subsequently, that did not occur.
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