The exact record will depend on the final results, but it seems likely that this election result will produce more seats than the 90 seats won by Tony Abbott in 2013. There’s a chance Labor could surpass John Howard’s result in 1996, although I don’t think they’ll quite get there. As for Labor results, this is their best result in seat terms since 1943, and I don’t think any other result before that was any better.
For the Coalition, this looks like the worst result for any major party since 1943, even producing a lower seat proportion than Whitlam’s Labor in 1975. Of course the ballooning size of the crossbench means the defeat of the Coalition is a bit more impressive than Labor’s victory – an exaggerated version of the mismatch we saw in 2022.
For this whole campaign we have been looking at the declining major party votes, and what is amazing is that Labor has achieved this enormous victory while barely raising their primary vote.
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The final point I want to touch on is the Greens’ performance. At the moment it looks like they will scrape by in Melbourne and potentially win other seats like Wills and Ryan. Their result wasn’t particularly impressive, but I want to emphasise how much they are victims of the electoral system. Nationally the Greens vote is steady, just over 12%, and part of the story is that the Greens suffered primary vote swings in many of their best seats while gaining votes elsewhere. The map at the end of this post makes this very clear in cities like Melbourne and Brisbane, although you don’t see it in the same way in Sydney.
But in a number of their seats, their defeat did not primarily come due to a dropping primary vote, but a rearrangement of their opponents. In Brisbane and Griffith, the rising Labor vote pushed the LNP into third, and thus LNP preferences will elect Labor.
It’s a perverse part of our system that the most conservative voters decide who wins in some of the most progressive seats. Elizabeth Watson-Brown likely will survive while Max Chandler-Mather will be defeated because she represents a more conservative seat where the LNP is the main opponent.
And this is a challenge for the Greens because so many of their best seats are now Labor vs Greens contests where Labor will easily win the 2CP on Liberal preferences.
How do you suggest The Greens step up?
Well, i kind of said in my comment before, they made a tactical mistake last year by failingvto give themselves a way to back down from their housing policy blockage.
Their strategy, ‘to push for ever greater housing reform’ was popular, and they managed to deliver a win for themselves the first time round by securing, was it extra HAFF funding? But the second time round they didn’t have a plan b when Labor didn’t play along, that was a mistake.
So my point was they need to be more alive to the Parliamentary games they need to play.
Its a sign of their importance and success that this is now needs to be a consideration.
Next time housing comes up, they need to setvup their debate with possible off ramps, where they can still claim some success and not lead to a months long stand off, or worse cede the legislative ground to a Liberal preferred option, which tends to be bad for the Greens stated policy directions.
???
But the Greens did pass Labor’s housing policy. After forcing Labor to improve it, and refusing to back down after Labor tried to play games by agreeing to improve it but then reintroducing the unimproved version in Parliament.
The Greens’ only failure is one of PR. That Labor supporters have been so successful in their lies that even people on left-leaning Lemmy believe them. I’m not sure what actions the Greens need to take to counter this very effective PR, because it almost feels like people want to believe it.
I don’t think theres need for a conspiracy here Zag, if i’ve forgotten a concession the Greens managed to get in the Bill that went through around November time, thats just my poor memory. My bad.
As such i’d still call it a pyrrhic victory due to the amount of time wasted on a key issue the electorate wants action on.
There’s no conspiracy. It’s just…politicians playing politics. It’s spin, the same thing politicians do all the time, to varying levels of success. In this case, to enormous success, because people are constantly accusing the Greens of being obstructionist despite the complete reverse being true. The Greens have always been open to negotiations, and on both the HAFF and HtB Labor played the obstructionist by refusing to negotiate, relenting after months on the former, and threatening the nuclear option if the Greens didn’t capitulate in the latter.
The concessions I was referring to were in the Housing Australia Future Fund bill, passed with amendments negotiated by the Greens in September 2023. It sounds like you’re talking about the Help to Buy bill, which was introduced in 2023 but after passing the House of Reps in February 2024, Labor waited until September to even begin debating in the Senate, and eventually passed with Greens support in November 2024.
It doesn’t help that despite both of these bills being ostensibly based around affordable housing, Labor has explicitly gone on the record saying they do not want house prices to fall. The Greens do want that. So of course they push Labor to do better. Frankly, I would have preferred them not to pass HtB because it’s inflationary tinkering-around-the-edges rubbish. But they passed it anyway because it might help some small number of people (even if it does create more problems for everyone else), and they don’t want to be obstructionist. Unlike Labor.
Much more time was wasted by Labor for the timing of the bill in the Senate than by the time from when it began debate to finally being passed. And even that time could have been more than made up for by enacting its 40,000 places over 3 years instead of 4, as the Greens suggested. Or it could have been reduced by Labor doing their job properly and negotiating to improve policy so that it gets popular support.
Labor did none of this. Because they’d rather play politics and be seen to get a “win” in the press than to actually do the right thing. And it worked for them. The media eats up their nonsense. The public eats up their nonsense. And the country suffers for it.
Welp, i think you’ve convinced me on that.