Australian Election Surprise: What Happened and What’s Next?
Australia’s political class, pollsters and election watchers are reeling from the extraordinary and unpredictable Liberal National Coalition win during Saturday’s election. When announcing his victory, the devout Prime Minister, Scott Morrison said he believed in miracles –which will surely become the leitmotif of his next government.
And it is his miracle alone. Mr. Morrison fought this election Trump style, as a one-man-band, keeping his team and even the Liberal Party brand far away from the spotlight.
Counting is still underway, but it appears that this next parliament won’t look much different from the last, with Mr. Morrison’s conservative Coalition likely to govern in a minority with support from aligned independents, or with a one-or-two seat majority.
The Opposition Labor Party had basked in three years of successive opinion polling that said it would triumph with certainty, which almost everyone, including many in the Government, believed. Incredibly, over 50 consecutive polls- including both political parties’ internal polling- were spectacularly wrong.
In his amazingly unsuccessful bid to become Australia’s 31st Prime Minister, Opposition Leader Bill Shorten presented an ambitious set of reformist policies, shaped as a “fair go for working Australians”. In doing so Labor made themselves a target for the mostly negative Morrison campaign, labelled ‘scaremongering’ by some. However, scare campaigns profit from confused and poorly explained messages. Labor’s radical tax policy was just that. It called out ‘the big end of town’ and multinational tax avoidance at the same time it targeted retiree share tax credits and property investment arrangements, thereby losing its aspirational voter base.
On the other hand, climate change, a weakness for the Morrison Government, was supposed to be a major voter concern and thus hand victory to Labor with its suite of renewable energy and environment policies. However, what was consistently labeled “the climate change election”, did not materialize. Indeed, only one Independent (former Olympic skier, Zali Steggall) successfully campaigned climate change when she trounced former Prime Minister, Tony Abbott who had held his blue ribbon seat for 25 years. However, it is arguable that other factors, including Mr. Abbott’s personal style, contributed to his loss rather than his infamous statement that climate change was crap.
Business is now calling on Mr. Morrison to institute an energy policy that provides investment certainty and includes incentives for renewables. In the absence of real policy, business has gone it alone and instituted technologies to address supply and climate change concerns. Additionally, with a slowing economy, negligible wage growth and high cost of living, tax reform remains a major concern for investors, businesses and workers. There are also calls for Prime Minister Morrison to repair the recently testy relations with Australia’s largest trading partner, China, following the banning of Huawei from the 5G network.
Mr. Morrison has some ministerial vacancies to fill following the retirement of several experienced team members, but we expect the Treasurer, Finance, Foreign Affairs and Defense ministers to remain the same as in the previous administration. Labor is in turmoil, searching for a new leader following Mr. Shorten stepping down on election night.
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Edited by John Files, Hana Ford and Helen McCarthy
