The political commentary after the defeat of the centre-right Liberals in the Aston by-election, held over the weekend, was brutally honest and sarcastic. For example, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, commenting on the spectacular win of the centre-left Labor candidate, said that voters disliked the Coalition’s negativity and that the vote was supportive of the Voice referendum.
It is certainly true that the result constituted a disastrous result for the Liberal Party. It was the first time since the Kalgoorlie by-election of 1920 that a sitting government won a seat from the Opposition.
The swing of six percent to the Labor Party was substantial—there had already been a swing of 11.6 percent in the federal election of 2020 against Alan Tudge, whose resignation from Parliament caused the by-election.
The Liberal defeat is a harbinger of worse to come because it would appear there are no longer “safe” Liberal seats.
The reaction of Liberal powerbrokers to the defeat was as predictable as it was problematic. They all argued that it is necessary for the Liberal Party “to listen” to the message that the electors in Aston sent to their Party.
The Opposition Leader, Peter Dutton, admitted that “We have a lot of work ahead of us to listen to the messages sent to us today” but “listen to them we will.”
What Was Aston’s Message?
After a devastating electoral defeat, politicians, regardless of party affiliation, tend to claim that they will be listening to the electors and heeding the messages sent to them.Nevertheless, such claims are problematic because they typically fail to disclose the causes of the political party’s defeat.
How do politicians ascertain the proximate cause of electoral oblivion? Do they have to organise focus groups to find out the reasons for their defeat and hope that the views expressed in these groups represent the views of the general population?
She argues that it’s easy to say you don’t want to alienate voters but that “It is never going to be enough just to listen; one has to take action against the forces that mean certain voices are unheard in the first place.”
Indeed, the promise “to listen” to the people is often a vacuous, empty platitude, bereft of meaningful content. A message is only meaningful if it truthfully explains the causes that led to the defeat and encourages the defeated party to respond appropriately.
With regard to the Aston by-election, the only clear and verifiable message is that electors have decided to reject the Liberal candidate and elect the Labor candidate. Apart from that, it is difficult to ascertain what exactly the message was that Aston voters sent to the Liberal party.
The reality is that rather than really listening to people, defeated parties merely assume that their actions or failures to act have turned voters against them. But an assumption is always rebuttable, and it is conceivable that the Liberal analysts are wrong.
Considering possible causes of the Liberal debacle in Aston, it is certain that the Party has steered left and is now competing with Labor and the Greens for electoral appeal.
The Liberal Party appears powerless to stem the tide of the unrelenting adoption of divisive social engineering legislation so eagerly promoted by the ruling party.
In addition, the Liberal Party, when in government, failed to keep its electoral promises. For example, the previous federal Coalition government promised a religious freedom law but failed to deliver.
Labor Shouldn’t Get Overconfident
Not surprisingly, Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles, buoyed by the by-election success, confidently predicted that: “We are going to work tirelessly to see our recognition of our First Nations people through a Voice to Parliament referendum later this year and when that happens, it will be one of the great unifying moments for our nation.”
Most importantly, the Liberal Party has lost its most important electoral advantage, namely that it is the party with the best economic credentials.
That advantage was sensationally surrendered when the previous Coalition government, very early in the pandemic, decided to spend hundreds of billions of dollars which, perhaps unintentionally, facilitated demonstrable human rights abuses never before seen in this country.
If the Liberal Party abandons its natural advantage, there is obviously no longer a compelling reason to vote for it.
In the by-election, the spectacular infighting in the Victorian Liberals, involving a failed proposal to expel Moira Deeming MP from the parliamentary party, would almost certainly have been on the minds of the electors in Aston.
Although the Liberal defeat in Aston involves a rejection of the Party, it is possibly premature for Albanese to think that it means his Voice proposal is now popular and that a favourable result is a foregone conclusion.
The view that the Liberal defeat represents a vote in support of the Voice referendum is an example of uncontrolled hubris, which may yet provide the Liberal Party with an opportunity for redemption by committing itself to political equality for all Australians.
Perhaps that is the message the Party should be listening to in its review of the Aston debacle.
