Australian General Election: Coalition victory that defied the opinion polls

2019 Australian Federal General Election Results

Majority 76 Seats required

Projected totals 19/05/19

The Liberal / National Coalition, after being behind in the polls for  years, have won the general election. At the time of writing the Federal Parliament is hung with the Coalition being three short of a majority, on 73 seats, and Labor on 65 seat, with 7 seats too close to call. There is a strong possibility of the Coalition returning to the government benches with a small majority and not having to rely on the cross benches to get through their legislation.

The Coalition’s vote is down a little when compared to the previous election, but Labor’s vote declined by 1.5%. When the vote is converted to two party preferred there was a 1.5% swing to the Coalition across the country. The only consollation on election night was Tony Abbott, the former Liberal Prime Minister, losing the safe Liberal Warringah seat to an independent.

The Labor Party had a disastrous night. The opinion polls had consistently pointed towards a Labor win. This proved to be wrong on the night. There is a lot of speculation as to why the polls were wrong. It appears that the traditional way of telephone canvassing by the various opinion polling companies has broken down as fewer people have landlines, leading to the pollsters having less of a scientific approach towards the results and applying various dubious ”weightings” that skew the results, or simply they didn’t believe what the information before them was telling them and adapted a narrative to suit their beliefs. This is something that is not just peculiar to this Australian election as it is a phenomena overseas e.g. recent UK elections and referenda. Because of this, toward the end of the campaign Bill Shorten became over confident and acted like the Labor Party had won on the eve of the poll.

Labor’s difficulties were not just caused by the over confidence of Shorten, but the Labor manifesto in general lacked coherent socialist policies.  At best it had piecemeal reforms for workers that were not well articulated and based on what capitalism could afford!  The biggest issues were on  climate change, pensions and the economy and the policies were based on tinkering.  No doubt stopping the the pension franking credits rort  for wealthy retirees is a good thing but as far as workers are concerned it does not solve their issues such as stopping the means-testing of the pension or reducing the age of entitlement back down to 65 or offering other  meaningful welfare reforms like increasing benefit levels that are now well below the poverty line. 

Additionally, climate change policy is definitely needed in Australia but policy based on  the market will not deliver the necessary changes needed nor will it convince workers whose jobs are sensitive to climate change to vote Labor.  The proof of the pudding was in Queensland where mining electorates returned the Coalition MPs as they feared for their job security and Labor were reduced to 4 seats in the state. 

The Coalition offered no real policy initiatives up to the electorate.    Scott Morrison spruiked that they are a safe pair of hands for the economy and that you don’t want to risk the economy with the tax and spend approach of Labor.  This gained an echo, and  enabled the Coalition to recover from the political  meltdown they were in,  in the run up to the election, to now being the government in waiting. The Coalition Government will be emboldened by the win.  The Coalition will attempt to intensify cuts in public services and the social wage as the economy stagnates and the failings of the capitalist system are put firmly onto the shoulders of the working class.   How will Labor deal with such a perspective?  No doubt the right-wing leaders of the Labor Party will be beginning to take stock of this election defeat.  Already there are media reports informing the right-wing Labor leadership that they should water down the manifesto to offer even less at the next election to workers.  If the right-wing Labor leaders take this advice from the ladies and gentlemen of the capitalist media and adopt such an approach it will only lead to more disillusionment in the Labor Party. 

What is required is for the Labor Party to adopt bold socialist policies that include the call for nationalisation of the top 100 Australian companies, including banks and insurance companies, and for workers’ control, A bold socialist approach will reinvigorate the Labor Party from top to bottom; like what has happened in the British Labour Party under Corbyn that is now the largest political party in Europe with half a million members.  This shows the way forward for Labor in Australia.