From Sports Media. I'm Daniel James. This is seven am. Australian politics is changing, and it's changing fast in ways. It seems the Labor Party and the Coalition really haven't come to terms with and as the electric splinters, it's harder than ever for governments to last more than three years. Just months from an election where a minority government looks likely, scare campaigns about unholy alliances have begun. I signed that the two major parties are rather by the prospect of
what's to come. Today. Author of Minority report The New Shape of Australian Politics, George metlagenis on the new battle lines between the city and the suburbs and how the results of the Voice referendum are still reverberating. It's Friday, December sixth George. We may just be a few months out from the next federal election. So who's going to win. Who's going to win?
I think the people of Australia might win if they hang the parliament again.
Yeah.
I think we've got about three plausible scenarios and the most likely one at the moment minority Labor government. We've Labor finishing a few seats ahead of the coalition and been able to form minority government and a stable one at that. The sort of second best scenario is a bit of a dead heat on the floor if it is going to be a hung parliament, with the possibility that Peter and Data might be in a chance of former minit a government. But he sort of come at
this term of parliament the wrong way around. He's sort of been yelling at the Teals, yelling at the Greens, and that's the cross bench that will determine the next government in the event of a hung parliament. And the other scenario, which I probably would rule out now, but it maybe even six months ago I wouldn't have ruled is that Labor holds its majority, even increases it slightly because the Coalition are too far from power. But we're
in a cost of living crisis. We're in a global inflation shock, and your history tells you that inflation is a government killer. It doesn't matter how newer old the
government is. We're already seen at the state and territory level far out of the last eight elections at the state and territory level of Senate change of government, and that's since twenty twenty two, so Whilst Albernese's government is one of those governments that came to power from opposition, that doesn't change the fact that we're in an anti incumbent cycle.
So what's driving the this shift, this diminishing in the primary votes of both the major Parties's what's happening here.
So what we've had since twenty ten, and it really begins with a thudded in twenty ten, we've had a net swing away from both parties, So I swing away from the geopoly in two ten to thirteen to sixteen, two ninety two five elections. Row never happened before. It didn't even happen in the depression.
So that's a trend. That's a trend. So that's your trend.
Right Labour loses it from its left flank, the Coalition's lost at it from its center, and so the two of them have at a one piece of the puddle, which is the progressive the other piece of the puzzle, which now is coming off both sides as well as that Palmer Hansen grouping, which is around nine or ten percent of the last federal election. And this is the problem for both sides because it's coming off both their piles. It's not the same story that we've seen in the past.
And one of the coalition's key attack lines has been that we can't risk having a minority Labor government, that the Tills and the Greens would end up with too much power over the country. It will be a disaster.
If you think the Albanezi government is bad, now, wait for it to be a minority government with the Greens, the Green Tials and Muslim independence.
What have you made of those scare campaigns.
I find them a little desperate now because the electorate at the last election broke to thirds. Labor Party's primary was just under thirty three percent, the coalition is just under thirty six and a bit over thirty percent, highest highest in the post war period past. Outside of a depression for minor parties in independence, then none of the
above vote. I think when you begin with a base that's above thirty percent for independence and minor parties, to tell that third of the Australian electorate that they made a mistake the last time is probably not the best, probably not the best way to go about engaging with the diverse and fractured electorate. So I don't think it's
that bright. If you roll back to the twenty twenty two campaign when that sort of till where it started to form, sort of very late in the term, when the tills were looming as a as a as a new force. Scott Morrisson said, don't.
There is a choice, and it's a choice between where you want the Liberal and Nationals to run the country and continue manager or you.
Want the Labor Party supported by the Greens and a cavalcade of independence where you are inviting chaos and weakness.
A strong economy, and.
The electorate said sure we will, We'll do it anyway. Neither of the major party leaders would be making their best case for reelection if they're blaming the electorate for the very low primary votes on both sides at the last election. There was a primary vote swing against Labor and a primary vote swing against the coalition. Coalition losing a landslide Labor just creep over the line. You've got a very vulnerable government on arrival.
Because the Alberdezer government as we see there only has two seats.
Two seats to play with. I mean they picked up Aston in the outer east of Melbourne at a by election in twenty twenty three, and then promptly lost the cutos from that because Peter Dutton then decides to go hard on the referendum and before you know, the electritory polarized around that issue.
And you've been looking into that, What do the Voice results tell us about how the electorate has changed? What did you find?
So this is a bit of a surprise because I think the nation was a bit stunned. Now you'd recall all the way to about August the national vote was tracking just above fifty percent, but the composition of that bare majority was interesting. So Aboriginal tor Austrade Islanders are in the seventies and the eighties very very high support for the Voice. The next strongest group were non English speakers so New Australia, so New Australia and First Australians
were essentially the grand alliance for the Voice. Where that majority lasts up until that final quarter of the of the referendum when the disinformation campaign really hit art. In micrant communities, there's been shrinking in the progressive zones of the major capitals, our inner cities in Melbourne and Sydney, been the case in Canberra for a while now, also in parts of Brisbane are actually getting whiter through gentrification.
All the Urban cross Bench, all of it, every single one of them except for Fowler, So Fowler is a direly independent in Western Sydney. All the others, so the Teales, the Greens and Andrew Wilkie, all of them vote yes for the Voice, all of them. And the problem for Peter Dutton looking for a majority Liberal National Coalition government at the next election is that he's pretty much taken those ten seats off the board. That's obviously not where
he's looking to get back to. Powry's looking at the outer suburbs, where the further he got out of the CBD, the lower the yes vote.
Coming up after the break was Julia Gillard's minority government. Tell us about what's ahead. So, George, I want to ask you about the twenty ten election, which was the last time Australia had a minority government. Can you tell me about how the government worked in terms of implementing its agenda and whether it was effective.
If you were to say minority government in Australia, what would it look like if it would function, it would be a government that had a little bit of the rest of the country. That didn't belong to it. So you had a couple of regional mp sociding with a Labor government.
Labor linked to the magic number of seventy six with a backing of just two of the three Country independents, rob Oke Shot and Tony Winter say they went Julia Gillard's way for stability and for country Australia.
And a Labor government has effectively through its Green sole Green member in the Lower House, Adam Bant, was in his first term for the electorate of Melbourne, and the Greens had the balanced parents set in their own right for the first and only time at a federal election. That parliament is stable minority government. But it's a stable parliament and of course was able to legislate. It was able to legislate a price on carbon.
The science is clear our planet is warming, that warming is caused by carbon pollution, by human activity, and we need to cut carbon pollution.
It was able to introduce the NDAs.
The reason we're so determined to deliver a National Disability Insurance scheme is we want to make a difference for the lives of four hundred and ten thousand Australians who have serious disabilities.
So that parliament worked, and it was one of those hung parliaments where there's a handful of cross benches, only five of them. There were sixteen at the last election. We didn't get a hung parliament. But I don't think the parliament the way it's functioned in this term has behaved like a parliament that has had a certain force projected onto it, which is a progressive force. The parliament
has behaved like a geopoly. You still hear Peter Dutton's voice, even though the coalition numbers on the floor of the House of Representatives are the smallest as a share of the parliament ever for the modern Liberal Party. The Liberal Party itself is the minority party in the coalition. So two thirds of Austrainers live in the capital cities, so why is he the dominant voice the last year and a half. So in a way, the system is still
behaving like a geopoly. And one of the reasons why that is happening is weirdly Labour has a narrow majority, doesn't control the Senate and the tials, which are the party or the grouping that can drag the Liberal Party back to the center, because it now holds seats that were atritional liberal seats.
And the capitals.
They don't really have the balance of power.
Yet, right, So the twenty ten Hung Parliament had a cross bench that was mostly a handful of rural seats. A future minority government will have a broad cross bench made up considerably of tials inner city electorates. So how different is the hypothetical twenty twenty five Hung parliament going to be from twenty ten in practice?
Yes.
One of the things I've been thinking about is what does a Hung parliament look like in terms of who you hear every day in a political debate. So in twenty ten you heard Gillard and Abbott, but especially Abbot. The next tongue parliament with a much deeper cross bench that's more send it in capital cities. So you've got sixteen and of that sixteen, a good dozen in the capital cities. That cross bench cooperating, pushing against, arguing with
a labor government. You're going to mark the success of that minority government terms of what it gets through. Are you going to hear the opposition leader at that point? And I think this is almost the unknowable, but part of me thinks that another election with the Liberals too far away from majority government. You know, that's the electric saying it twice to them, which is we've kicked her out of the cities for a reason. They obviously think
that there's another majority forming somewhere. They think there's a realignment forming in the outer suburbs, which means that they don't need to worry about the inner city. But they did have a post election report which Arthur Sinad Ernest and Joan Hume co wrote which warned them that there's no credible path back to power from the regions.
Alione.
Now, the worst case scenario, even if the lower House looks relatively functional, is that there's incentives after the election, both in the lower House and especially in the Senate, for major party members to term themselves in independence. Five senators since the last election changed starts already.
Is that all? And it's a mess up there anyway.
Yeah, there'll be a few of them will get the temptation to go silo.
So, George, it sounds like you're pretty convinced that the two party system is over. So if that's the case, what do you think about that personally? How do you think it's going to serve voters as we move forward? Yeah.
Look, whilst I'm probably not as terrified of a hung Parliament this time around, I think in the long run do you need to have a contest around the Senate in Australia, so you need two very very strong major parties. So I don't think in the long run this is a good thing. It's good to give them a lookick up the backside. I mean maybe if Australia gets used to the idea of minority government and that functions, the opposition is muted in this period because Australians don't want
to hear from the side that lost. I'd still like to see a system where the majors can agree on the problems we want to solve them, then have an argument about the best way to solve them. At the moment, we're in this kind of half world where a clue has some big problems out there, but one side is in denial on some and the other side is sort of two week to lead on them. And that's not where you want to be as a country.
George, thanks so much for your time.
Really appreciate it. Thank you, Daniel.
George Medalagenis's courtly essay Minority Report is out now It's a fascinating read and I highly recommend it. Also in the news today, New South Wales Premier Chris Means has called an ikak referral against him outrageous and not supported by the facts. Newsbroke on Wednesday that a parliamentary committee looking into government plans to develop Rosehill Racecourse into twenty five thousand homes would be referred to the State corruption
watchdog when the report is released on Friday. The inquiry will allege that Men's friendship with racecourse owner Steve McMahon is a conflict of interest and bitcoin is at an all time high worth US one hundred thousand dollars per bitcoin. That's around one hundred and fifty five thousand Australian dollars for a single bitcoin. Since election day, the value of bitcoin has grown forty five percent. Meanwhile, the value of the Australian dollar has slumped in the face of slower
GDP growth than expected. Seven Am is a daily show from Schwartz Media and The Saturday Paper. It's made by Atticus Bastow, Shane Anderson, Chris Dangate, Zolten, Vetcho, Travis Evans, Sarah mcveee, Ruby Jones, and myself Daniel James. We'll be back on Monday, m