Double Disillusion: The 2016 Australian Federal Election · 2 July 2016 (percentages)..... 112...

DOUBLE DISILLUSION

THE 2016 AUSTRALIAN FEDERAL ELECTION

DOUBLE DISILLUSION

THE 2016 AUSTRALIAN FEDERAL ELECTION

EDITED BY ANIKA GAUJA, PETER CHEN, JENNIFER CURTIN

AND JULIET PIETSCH

Published by ANU PressThe Australian National UniversityActon ACT 2601, AustraliaEmail: [email protected] title is also available online at press.anu.edu.au

A catalogue record for this book is available from the National Library of Australia

ISBN(s): 9781760461850 (print) 9781760461867 (eBook)

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Cover design and layout by ANU Press. Cover photograph by Mike Bowers/Guardian News & Media.

This edition © 2018 ANU Press

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/legalcodehttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/legalcodehttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/legalcode

This book is dedicated to the memory of Margareta Gauja (1950–2016)

Contents

Illustrations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiList of Abbreviations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xviiAcknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .xxiContributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxiii1 . ‘Double Disillusion’: Analysing the 2016 Australian

Federal Election . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1Anika Gauja, Peter Chen, Jennifer Curtin and Juliet Pietsch

Part One. Campaign Themes and Context2 . ‘I’m Not Expecting to Lose …’: The Election Overview

and Campaign Narrative . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .17Marija Taflaga and John Wanna

3 . The Ideological Contest: Election 2016 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .59Carol Johnson

4 . Turnbull versus Shorten: The Major Party Leadership Contest . . .81Paul Strangio and James Walter

5 . National Polls, Marginal Seats and Campaign Effects . . . . . . . .107Murray Goot

6 . The Campaign that Wasn’t: Tracking Public Opinion over the 44th Parliament and the 2016 Election Campaign . . . . . . . 133Simon Jackman and Luke Mansillo

Part Two. Reporting and Analysing the Results7 . The House of Representatives Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .159

Ben Raue

8 . The Senate Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .185Antony Green

9 . The States and Territories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .211Ferran Martinez i Coma and Rodney Smith

10 . Changing Leaders, ‘Mediscare’ and Business as Usual: Electoral Behaviour . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .235Clive Bean

Part Three. Actors and Arenas11 . The Australian Labor Party’s Campaign . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .257

Rob Manwaring

12 . The Liberal Party of Australia’s Campaign . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .277Nicholas Barry

13 . The Australian Greens’ Campaign . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .297Stewart Jackson

14 . The National Party of Australia’s Campaign: Further ‘Back from the Brink’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .317Geoff Cockfield and Jennifer Curtin

15 . The Minor Parties’ Campaigns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .335Glenn Kefford

16 . Independents Return and the ‘Almost’ Hung Parliament . . . . . .359Jennifer Curtin

17 . Interest Groups and the Election . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .381Darren R . Halpin and Bert Fraussen

18 . GetUp! in Election 2016 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .397Ariadne Vromen

19 . Still the Main Source: The Established Media . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .421Andrea Carson and Brian McNair

20 . Non-Mainstream Media Coverage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .453Peter Chen

21 . The Election Online: Debate, Support, Community . . . . . . . . . .475Scott Wright, Verity Trott and William Lukamto

Part Four. Policy Debates22 . Economic Policy Debates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .501

Damien Cahill and Matthew D .J . Ryan

23 . The Industrial Relations Policy and Penalty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .519David Peetz

24 . ‘Mediscare!’: Social Issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .549Amanda Elliot and Rob Manwaring

25 . ‘Continuity and Change’: Environmental Policy and the Coming Energy Transition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .571Rebecca Pearse

26 . Refugee Policy: A Cruel Bipartisanship . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .593Sara Dehm and Max Walden

27 . ‘Ignore Us at Your Peril, Because We Vote Too’: Indigenous Policy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .619Diana Perche

28 . Rainbow Labor and a Purple Policy Launch: Gender and Sexuality Issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .641Blair Williams and Marian Sawer

29 . Migrant and Ethnic Politics in the 2016 Election . . . . . . . . . . . . .661James Jupp and Juliet Pietsch

30 . Conclusion: The Implications of the 2016 Federal Election . . . . .681Anika Gauja, Peter Chen, Jennifer Curtin and Juliet Pietsch

xi

Illustrations

FiguresFigure 6.1. Trajectories of support for various parties

(voting intentions, per cent), 2013–16 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139

Figure 6.2. Jumps in voting intentions associated with the prorogation of parliament and Turnbull ascension . . . . . . . . . . 140

Figure 6.3. Trajectories of support for various parties (voting intentions, per cent), restricted to calendar year 2016 . . . . . . . 142

Figure 6.4. Polling organisation bias estimates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144

Figure 6.5. Performance of seat-specific polls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147

Figure 6.6. Performance of seat-specific polls by party and pollster . . 149

Figure 6.7. Performance of seat-specific polls, by party and over time (days until election) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151

Figure 7.1. Total House of Representatives candidates per election, 1990–2016 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163

Figure 7.2. Seats decided on preferences, 1993–2016 . . . . . . . . . . . . 165

Figure 7.3. Winners of federal seats in Australia, 1984–2016 . . . . . . 171

Figure 7.4. Non-classic races in federal elections, 1990–2016 . . . . . . 173

Figure 7.5. Greens vote in inner-city federal electorates in Melbourne and Sydney . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176

Figure 8.1. Informal vote at Senate elections, 1919–2016. . . . . . . . . 189

Figure 8.2. Sample Senate ballot paper . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191

Figure 8.3. Minor party vote at federal elections, 1949–2016 . . . . . . 199

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Figure 8.4. Use of above-the-line group voting squares, 1984–2016 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204

Figure 9.1. Distribution of first preference votes, 2016 federal election (Tukey box plots) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226

Figure 9.2. Distribution of first preference votes, 2013 federal election (Tukey box plots) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226

Figure 9.3. Distribution of two-party preferred swing, 2013–16 (Tukey box plots) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 228

Figure 11.1. ALP first preferences and two-party preferred vote, 1980–2016 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 260

Figure 11.2. ALP first preferences and swing, national and States, 2016 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 260

Figure 13.1. Greens election results, 1993–2016 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 299

Figure 14.1. Proportion of seats and primary votes for the Country–National Party for the House of Representatives . . . . 326

Figure 15.1. Per cent of first preference votes for minor parties and Independents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 336

Figure 18.1. GetUp! analysis: Where do the parties stand on issues? . 402

Figure 18.2. GetUp! – How to vote in Mayo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 406

Figure 19.1. The number of front-page stories in Australia’s daily mastheads’ Monday to Saturday editions during the 56-day 2016 election campaign . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 427

Figure 19.2. Number of positive and negative daily front-page stories by masthead for Liberal and Labor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 428

Figure 19.3. Number of positive and negative daily front-page news stories during the election campaign by political party . . . 429

Figure 19.4. Story sentiment of front-page newspaper stories during the federal election for Liberal and Labor . . . . . . . . . . . 430

Figure 20.1. Characterisation of reporting, by publication . . . . . . . . 460

Figure 20.2. Publications’ relationship with the median news agenda . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 464

Figure 21.1. The nature of debate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 485

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ILLUSTRATIONS

Figure 21.2. Election topics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 488

Figure 21.3. Election experience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 489

Figure 24.1. Media coverage of social issues at the 2016 election (number of articles) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 550

Figure 24.2. Issues most important to Australians, 2013–16 . . . . . . . 562

Figure 25.1. Support for the carbon price, 2012–14 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 576

Figure 25.2. Views on Coalition and Labor climate change plans by voter groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 577

Figure 26.1. Refugees and the 2016 election . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 604

Figure 28.1. Women as a percentage of Coalition and Labor MPs in the House of Representatives, 1977–2016 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 644

Figure 28.2. Rainbow Labor, 2016 Mardi Gras . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 649

TablesTable 5.1. Final pre-election public opinion polls for the House

of Representatives election, national voting intention, 2 July 2016 (percentages) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112

Table 5.2. Mean differences between the final national polls and the election results, 2016 (percentage points) . . . . . . . . . . 114

Table 5.3. Differences between polls’ estimate of party support and the final vote, single seats, campaign period, 2016 (percentage points) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120

Table 6.1. Summary of poll errors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147

Table 7.1. Results of the 2013 federal election by party . . . . . . . . . . 161

Table 7.2. Results of the 2016 federal election by party . . . . . . . . . . 164

Table 7.3. Turnout 2013 and 2016 (percentages) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166

Table 7.4. Seats changing hands at the 2016 federal election . . . . . . 166

Table 8.1. Senate results compared to list-PR with highest remainder allocation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193

Table 8.2. Senate results in 2016 in States with six Coalition Senators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196

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Table 8.3. Senate election results, 2016 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197

Table 8.4. Difference in party support . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200

Table 8.5. Senators elected by initial quota status . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201

Table 8.6. Formal ballot papers categorised by method of completion and preferences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203

Table 8.7. Exhausted preferences by State . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206

Table 9.1. Average Coalition and Labor first preference votes in lower house State and Territory elections, July 1996 – June 2016 (percentages) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 216

Table 9.2. The States and Territories in 2016 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 218

Table 9.3. The major party leaders’ campaign visits to States and Territories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220

Table 9.4. Potential State effects on Coalition voting at the 2016 federal election . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222

Table 9.5. House of Representatives two-party preferred vote by State and Territory, 2016 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223

Table 9.6. House of Representatives first preference vote by State and Territory, 2016 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225

Table 9.7. Results of principal components analysis of State- and electorate-level contribution to variations in the vote, 2013 and 2016 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229

Table 10.1. Voter engagement with the election campaign, 2004–16 (percentages) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237

Table 10.2. Volatility and partisanship, 2004–16 (percentages) . . . . 238

Table 10.3. Vote by sociodemographic indicators in 2016 (percentages) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239

Table 10.4. Vote by socioeconomic indicators in 2016 (percentages) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 242

Table 10.5. Party and leader evaluations in 2016 (means on 0–10 scale) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243

Table 10.6. Perceived leadership attributes of Malcolm Turnbull and Bill Shorten in 2016 (percentage saying attribute describes leader extremely well or quite well) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 244

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ILLUSTRATIONS

Table 10.7. Importance rating of election issues (percentage describing issue as extremely important) and party differential (percentage saying Liberal–National closer on issue minus percentage saying Labor closer) in 2016 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 246

Table 10.8. Factors influencing the vote in 2016 (multiple regression). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247

Table 13.1. State and federal representation (number of MPs) . . . . . 300

Table 13.2. Press releases – top 10 topics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 307

Table 13.3. House of Representatives seats—Greens vote over 15 per cent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 309

Table 13.4. Results by State, 2013–16 (percentage) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 311

Table 14.1. Proportions of votes and seats for the National Party in the House of Representatives, 2016 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 327

Table 15.1. Minor parties contesting the 2016 federal election . . . . . 339

Table 15.2. One Nation results in the House of Representatives and the Senate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 344

Table 15.3. The Nick Xenophon Team results in the House of Representatives and the Senate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 348

Table 16.1. Results for Independents (and Katter), 2013 and 2016 . . . 371

Table 17.1. Ideological positions of Australian national interest groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 384

Table 18.1. Getup!’s 2016 Facebook posts with over 10,000 engagements, April–July 2016 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 410

Table 18.2. Facebook election posts with highest engagement – shares and comments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 411

Table 18.3. Reportage of election campaign issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 414

Table 18.4. Reportage of election campaign tactics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 415

Table 19.1. Ratings for free-to-air election night TV programs . . . . . 438

Table 20.1. Sample and comparator publications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 454

Table 20.2 Length of sampled articles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 457

Table 20.3. Media content of sampled articles (percentage) . . . . . . . 458

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Table 20.4. Policy detail in sampled articles, average . . . . . . . . . . . . . 461

Table 20.5. Top 15 topics, all publications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 463

Table 20.6. Policy issues, all publications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 463

Table 20.7. Names and organisations mentioned in sampled articles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 465

Table 20.8. Most commonly cited electorates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 467

Table 20.9. Articles syndicated from other news sources or containing significant references to other publications’ coverage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 468

Table 20.10. Syndicated content providers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 469

Table 20.11. Facebook likes for sampled articles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 470

Table 21.1. Reliability test results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 481

Table 21.2. Political affiliation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 487

Table 22.1. Policy summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 507

Table 23.1. Regression equation predicting two-party preferred swing to the Coalition, 2016 election . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 532

Table 25.1. Parties’ environmental policy positions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 581

Table 26.1. Overview of major party refugee policies . . . . . . . . . . . . 602

Table 28.1. Gender breakdown of the House of Representatives after the 2016 election . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 644

Table 28.2. Gender breakdown of the Senate after the 2016 election . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 645

Table 28.3. Gender breakdown of Cabinet, 2010–16 . . . . . . . . . . . . 646

Table 28.4. LGBTI representation in the House of Representatives after the 2016 election . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 647

Table 28.5. LGBTI representation in the Senate after the 2016 election . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 647

Table 28.6. Women’s policies at federal elections, 2007–16 . . . . . . . 651

Table 29.1. Australian electorates (selective): Languages Other Than English (LOTE) spoken at home. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 673

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List of Abbreviations

ABC Australian Broadcasting CorporationABCC Australian Building and Construction CommissionABF Australian Border ForceACCC Australian Competition and Consumer CommissionACCU Australian Carbon Credit UnitsACNC Australian Charities and Not-for-Profits CommissionACT Australian Capital TerritoryACTU Australian Council of Trade UnionsAEC Australian Electoral CommissionAES Australian Election StudyAFP Australian Federal PoliceAHA Australian Hotels AssociationAHRC Australian Human Rights CommissionALP Australian Labor PartyAMA Australian Medical AssociationAMWU Australian Manufacturing Workers’ UnionASIC Australian Securities and Investments CommissionAWU Australian Workers’ UnionBCA Business Council of AustraliaCATI computer-assisted telephone interviewingCDP Christian Democratic PartyCEFC Clean Energy Finance CorporationCFA Country Fire AuthorityCLP Country Liberal Party

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COAG Council of Australian GovernmentsCSG coal seam gasDAP Direct Action PlanDIBP Department of Immigration and Border ProtectionDLP Democratic Labour PartyDPMC Department of Prime Minister and CabinetEAC External Advisory CommitteeEBA Enterprise Bargaining AgreementEPBC Act Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation

Act 1999ETS Emissions Trading SchemeEU European UnionFECCA Federation of Ethnic Community Councils of AustraliaFF Family FirstFIRB Foreign Investment Review BoardFWC Fair Work CommissionFWO Fair Work OmbudsmanGDP gross domestic productGFC global financial crisisGP general practitionerGST Goods and Services TaxIAS Indigenous Advancement StrategyICAC Independent Commission Against CorruptionIMF International Monetary FundIR industrial relationsISDS Investor–State Dispute SettlementIVR interactive voice recognitionJLN Jacqui Lambie NetworkJSCEM Joint Standing Committee on Electoral MattersKAP Katter’s Australian PartyLGBTI Lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and intersexLNP Liberal–National Party (Queensland)

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LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

LPA Liberal Party of AustraliaMAE median absolute errorsMP Member of ParliamentNBN National Broadband NetworkNDIS National Disability Insurance SchemeNESB non-English speaking backgroundNFAW National Foundation for Australian WomenNFF National Farmers’ FederationNGO non-government organisationNSW New South WalesNT Northern TerritoryNXT Nick Xenophon TeamOECD Organisation for Economic Co-operation

and DevelopmentOH&S occupational health and safetyOSB Operation Sovereign BordersPBS Pharmaceutical Benefits SchemePEFO Pre-Election Fiscal OutlookPHON Pauline Hanson’s One NationPM Prime MinisterPNG Papua New GuineaPR proportional representationPUP Palmer United PartyQLD QueenslandRBA Reserve Bank of AustraliaRCA Refugee Council of AustraliaRCGP Royal College of General PractitionersRET Renewable Energy TargetRMSE root mean square errorRPC Regional Processing CentreRSAS Remote Schools Attendance StrategyRSRT Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal

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SA South AustraliaSHEV Safe Haven Enterprise VisaSTEM science, technology, mathematics and engineeringSTV single transferrable voteTAS TasmaniatCO2-e tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalentTPP Trans-Pacific Partnership TPV Temporary Protection VisaUK United KingdomUKIP United Kingdom Independence PartyUN United NationsUNESCO United Nations Educational, Scientific

and Cultural OrganizationUNHCR United Nations High Commissioner for RefugeesUS United StatesVIC VictoriaWA Western AustraliaWEL Women’s Electoral LobbyYRAW Your Rights at Work

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Acknowledgements

Bringing together 41 contributors to analyse the 2016 Australian federal election within a relatively short time frame has been a substantial undertaking, and the editors have many people to thank for their support as a result. First of all, our thanks go to Marian Simms, Carol Johnson and John Wanna for their guidance and wisdom in helping us get the project started and sharing the experiences they had in editing previous volumes of this long-running series. Much of this book was planned during an intense day of brainstorming at a pre-election meeting in May 2016, hosted by The Australian National University’s (ANU) School of Politics and International Relations who provided rooms and catering for the workshop. Thank you to all the participants who were able to attend and shape the structure and content of the volume. A post-election workshop was held in August 2016 at the University of Sydney, where contributors presented chapter drafts. This was supplemented by a panel session at the Australian Political Studies Association Conference at the University of New South Wales in September 2016 and the New Zealand Political Studies Association Conference, held at the University of Waikato in December 2016.

We are grateful for the significant financial assistance for the May and August workshops that was provided by the University of Sydney (from grants funded by the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences and the School of Social and Political Sciences) and the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia (ASSA).

We would also like to acknowledge the financial support of the ANU Press Publication Subsidy Fund and the generous editorial support and guidance provided by the ANU Press Social Sciences Editorial Board, in particular, Frank Bongiorno and Marian Sawer. Our thanks go to the manuscript’s anonymous reviewers, who also provided valuable feedback

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to the editors and contributors, and to Carolyn Brewer who undertook the copyediting work for this book. Max Kiefel and Martin Kear also provided valuable research and editing assistance.

Finally, we owe a huge debt of thanks to all our contributors, who responded so willingly to our tight timelines, who have—collectively—produced an analysis of the 2016 election with a depth of research that we hope will be read for years to come, and who are testament to the vibrancy and quality of Australian political studies today.

Anika Gauja, Peter Chen, Jennifer Curtin, Juliet PietschMay 2017

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Contributors

Nicholas Barry is a Lecturer in Politics at La Trobe University. His main research interests are in Australian politics, political institutions and contemporary political theory.

Clive Bean is Professor of Political Science at Queensland University of Technology. He is a co-principal investigator of the Australian Election Study and author of numerous publications in national and international journals on electoral behaviour.

Damien Cahill is Associate Professor in Political Economy at the University of Sydney. His research focuses on neoliberalism as well as on the institutional foundations of capitalist economies.

Andrea Carson lectures in political science at the University of Melbourne and is an honorary fellow at the university’s Centre for Advancing Journalism. Andrea was a journalist at the Age (Fairfax Media) and worked in radio (ABC 774, 3RRR) television (ABC 7.30) and online (the Age, ABC).

Peter Chen works in the Department of Government and International Relations at the University of Sydney.

Geoff Cockfield is Professor in Government and Economics at the University of Southern Queensland. His research foci include rural policy and politics and natural resources policy. He has co-edited and contributed to a book on the future of the National Party and written journal articles on the electoral performance of the party.

Jennifer Curtin is Professor of Politics at the University of Auckland. She writes entries on Australian elections for the European Political Science Data Yearbook, and is co-author of Rebels with a Cause: Independents in

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Australian Politics (2004) with Brian Costar, and author of The Voice and the Vote of the Bush: The Representation of Rural and Regional Australia in the Federal Parliament (2004).

Sara Dehm is a Lecturer at the Faculty of Law, University of Technology Sydney. She researches and writes in the areas of international law and institutions, migration and refugee law, and legal theory. She is currently an Associate of the Australian Human Rights Centre, University of NSW (UNSW), and a member of the Emerging Scholars Network, Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law, UNSW. She was previously a Senior Fellow at the Melbourne Law School, University of Melbourne.

Amanda Elliot works in the Department of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Sydney. Her primary research interests include the transformation of work and welfare in the twenty-first century and, more recently, politics, identity, work and play in the digital economy.

Bert Fraussen is an Assistant Professor at Leiden University, Faculty of Governance and Global Affairs, and a Visiting Research Fellow at The Australian National University, School of Politics and International Relations. His research agenda integrates the organisational design and development of political organisations, notably interest groups, and their involvement in public policy. Particular topics of interest include relations between interest groups and policymakers and the role of stakeholders in policy advisory systems. Bert’s work has been published in journals such as the European Journal of Political Science, Public Administration, Political Studies, Policy Sciences and the Journal of European Public Policy.

Anika Gauja works in the Department of Government and International Relations, University of Sydney. She teaches and researches in the areas of political parties, comparative politics and Australian politics. She is the author of Party Reform: The Causes, Challenges, and Consequences of Organizational Change (2017) and The Politics of Party Policy: From Members to Legislators (2013), as well as the editor of Party Rules? Dilemmas of Political Party Regulation in Australia (2016, with Marian Sawer) and Party Members and Activists (2015, with Emilie van Haute).

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CONTRIBUTORS

Murray Goot is an Emeritus Professor in the Department of Modern History, Politics and International Relations at Macquarie University. His most recent book is The Conscription Conflict and the Great War (2016), co-edited with Robin Archer, Joy Damousi and Sean Scalmer. He is currently working on the history of political campaigning (with Sean Scalmer) and the history of opinion polling.

Antony Green AO has worked as an election analyst with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) since 1989. He is a leading psephologist and publishes a blog on electoral matters at blogs.abc.net.au/antonygreen/. He is also an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Government and International Relations at the University of Sydney.

Darren R. Halpin is Professor of Political Science at The Australian National University. His work focuses on interest groups and other political organisation, with particular focus on their engagement in public policy. He is co-editor of the journal Interest Groups & Advocacy.

Simon Jackman is Professor of Political Science and CEO of the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney. His research interests span public opinion, polling, election campaigns and electoral systems. His poll averaging algorithms were pioneering in the field, adopted by many scholars, practitioners and media outlets around the world. His 2009 book, Bayesian Analysis for the Social Sciences, details many of these methods. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Society for Political Methodology.

Stewart Jackson is a former youth worker, public servant, political operative and now lecturer in politics at the University of Sydney. He is currently researching the development of Green parties in the Asia–Pacific, and is co-researcher on an ongoing project examining protest activity in Australia.

Carol Johnson is a Professor of Politics and International Studies at the University of Adelaide. She has written extensively on Australian politics and the politics of ideology and discourse, and also publishes on issues of gender and sexuality, technology and the politics of emotion. She has contributed to several of the previous election volumes and was a co-editor of Abbott’s Gambit: The 2013 Australian Federal Election (2015).

http://blogs.abc.net.au/antonygreen/

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James Jupp AM is a Visiting Scholar at The Australian National University’s School of Demography. His special interests have included immigration and multiculturalism for over 30 years. He has produced three major encyclopaedias of ethnicity and religion. Since 1948, he has reported on general elections in Britain and Australia, including eight Australian election studies.

Glenn Kefford is a Lecturer in the Department of Modern History, Politics and International Relations at Macquarie University. His research interests include political parties, elections and campaigning.

William Lukamto is a PhD candidate at the University of Melbourne. His research focuses on analysing online censorship behaviour and policies in authoritarian and authoritarian-democratic regimes. He has also worked as a researcher for government agencies in Australia and Singapore, analysing social media trends and future industries. He currently tutors in digital research methods at the University of Melbourne.

Luke Mansillo is a PhD candidate in the Department of Government and International Relations and the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney. He is interested in elections, political behaviour, public opinion and parties in Australia and other advanced democracies in addition to quantitative social research design practice. He has published in the Australian Journal of Political Science and holds a Bachelor of Arts with first-class honours in political science and Masters of Social Research from The Australian National University.

Rob Manwaring is a Senior Lecturer at Flinders University, based in Adelaide. Rob’s research interests include social democratic and labour politics. Rob’s book, The Search for Democratic Renewal: The Politics of Consultation in Britain and Australia, was published in 2014.

Ferran Martinez i Coma is Research Fellow at the Centre for Governance and Public Policy and the Griffith Asia Institute at Griffith University. He has published in Electoral Studies, Party Politics, the European Journal of Political Research and the Australian Journal of Political Science, among others. Previously, he was Research Associate at the Electoral Integrity Project at the University of Sydney.

Brian McNair is Professor of Journalism, Media and Communication at Queensland University of Technology (QUT). He is the author of many books and articles on political media, including Journalism and

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CONTRIBUTORS

Democracy: An Evaluation of the Political Public Sphere (2000), Politics, Media and Democracy in Australia: Public and Producer Perceptions of the Political Public Sphere (with Terry Flew, Stephen Harrington and Adam Swift, 2017) and An Introduction to Political Communication (6th edition, 2017). He is a Chief Investigator within QUT’s Digital Media Research Centre.

Rebecca Pearse is a Lecturer in the Department of Political Economy, University of Sydney. Her research spans environmental political economy, social movement studies, feminist political economy and the sociology of knowledge.

David Peetz is Professor of Employment Relations at the Centre for Work, Organisation and Wellbeing at Griffith University. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia, author of Unions in a Contrary World: The Future of the Australian Trade Union Movement (1998), Brave New Workplace: How Individual Contracts are Changing our Jobs (2006) and Women of the Coal Rushes (2010) and co-editor of Women, Labor Segmentation and Regulation: Varieties of Gender Gaps (with Georgina Murray, 2017), in addition to numerous academic articles, papers and reports.

Diana Perche is a Senior Lecturer and Academic Coordinator at Nura Gili Indigenous Programs Unit at the University of New South Wales. Prior to this, Diana lectured in public policy at Macquarie University from 2005–16 and was the director of the Master of Politics and Public Policy. Diana has worked in a number of policy-related positions, including in the Australian Public Service, and has a keen interest in the interplay between policy research and policy practice. Her expertise in Australian politics and public policy includes an interest in the use of evidence in policy formulation and a particular focus on Indigenous affairs.

Juliet Pietsch is an Associate Professor in the School of Politics and International Relations at The Australian National University. Her current research focuses on the individual, institutional and contextual factors that hinder the social and political inclusion of migrant and ethnic minority groups in western multicultural societies.

Ben Raue is an electoral and data analyst who writes about elections for the Tally Room and the Guardian Australia. He has been writing about elections in Australia and around the world since 2008.

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Matthew D.J. Ryan is a postgraduate research student in the Department of Political Economy at the University of Sydney. His current research is on the relationship between neoliberalism and democracy; he is also broadly interested in state theory and economic history.

Marian Sawer AO is Emeritus Professor and ANU Public Policy Fellow in the School of Politics and International Relations, The Australian National University. Her most recent book (co-edited with Anika Gauja) is Party Rules? Dilemmas of Party Regulation in Australia (2016).

Rodney Smith is Professor of Australian Politics in the Department of Government and International Relations at the University of Sydney. His current research includes a project on changing voting methods in Australia and another on mass and elite views about policy responsibilities in federal systems.

Paul Strangio is an Associate Professor of Politics in the School of Social Sciences at Monash University. He has written extensively about political leadership and political parties in Australia and has recently completed (with Paul ‘t Hart and James Walter) a two-volume history of the Australian prime ministership: Settling the Office: The Australian Prime Ministership from Federation to Reconstruction (2016) and The Pivot of Power: Australian Prime Ministers and Political Leadership 1949–2016 (2017).

Marija Taflaga is an early career researcher at The Australian National University. Her major research is on political parties and particularly the Liberal Party of Australia. Her research interests also include comparative Westminster parliaments and oppositions, the career paths of political elites and Australian political history. Marija has undertaken research fellowships at the Australian Parliamentary Library and the Australian Museum of Democracy, Old Parliament House. She has also worked in the Australian Parliamentary Press Gallery as a researcher at the Sydney Morning Herald and the Age.

Verity Trott is a PhD candidate at the University of Melbourne. Her research examines the organisational structures of activism with digital technology and the relationship between technology, society and feminism. She tutors in new media and digital research methods.

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CONTRIBUTORS

Ariadne Vromen is Professor of Political Sociology at the University of Sydney. Her research interests include political participation, social movements, advocacy organisations, digital politics and young people and politics. Her new book, Digital Citizenship and Political Engagement: The Challenge from Online Campaigning and Advocacy Organisations (2017), looks at the emergence of online advocacy organisations and the effect of GetUp! on campaigning in Australia.

Max Walden is the Southeast Asia reporter for Asian Correspondent and a Research Assistant for the Sydney Asia Pacific Migration Centre at the University of Sydney. He has previously worked in the civil society sector in Australia and Indonesia.

James Walter is Emeritus Professor of Politics at Monash University, with interests in leadership, biography, policy deliberation and the history of ideas. His latest book (with Paul Strangio and Paul ‘t Hart) is The Pivot of Power: Australian Prime Ministers and Political Leadership 1949–2016 (2017). He is now completing a history of the Australian government and patterns of policy deliberation between the late 1940s and the present.

John Wanna is the Sir John Bunting Professor of Public Administration at The Australian National University and national research director for the Australian and New Zealand School of Government.

Blair Williams is a PhD candidate in the School of Politics and International Relations at The Australian National University. Her work largely examines media representations of women politicians and political leaders. Her general research interests include women politicians, feminist theory, Australian politics, the media and queer theory.

Scott Wright is a Senior Lecturer in Political Communication at the University of Melbourne. He has published in the top-ranked media, communication and politics journals, including New Media & Society and the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication. He has held grants from the United Kingdom’s Economic and Social Research Council, Research Councils of the United Kingdom and the European Union amongst others.

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1‘Double Disillusion’: Analysing the 2016 Australian Federal Election

Anika Gauja, Peter Chen, Jennifer Curtin and Juliet Pietsch

After six weeks of a faux campaign followed by eight weeks of official and vigorous campaigning, the night of Saturday 2 July 2016 proved an anticlimax for election observers, particularly those expecting a clear result. Australia’s seventh double-dissolution election did not deliver the political ‘cut-through’ intended by the Constitutional framers—inspiring the title of this volume: Double Disillusion.

Making his election-night speech to the party faithful assembled at the Wentworth Hotel in Sydney, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull did not declare victory. Rather, he cautiously relayed the news that:

based on the advice I have from the party officials, we can have every confidence that we will form a Coalition majority government in the next parliament. It is a very, very close count … so we will have to wait a few days (Herald Sun 2016).

Although more upbeat in his election night speech to Labor Party supporters at the Moonee Valley Racecourse in Melbourne, Opposition Leader Bill Shorten began in a similar tone:

Friends … We will not know the outcome of this election tonight. Indeed, we may not know it for some days to come. But there is one thing for sure—the Labor Party is back (Herald Sun 2016).

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In what was reminiscent of the 2010 Australian federal election count, which produced a hung parliament and a minority Labor government (see Simms and Wanna 2012), the result of the 2016 contest took several days to finalise. With counting still to be officially completed, Bill Shorten conceded defeat a week later on 10 July 2016, and Malcolm Turnbull claimed victory with what would turn out to be the slimmest of majorities in the lower house: winning 76 seats for the Liberal–National Coalition in the 150-seat House of Representatives.

Similarly, the outcome in the Senate did not provide additional certainty for the government: 20 crossbench Senators were elected in the highest primary vote for minor parties since the postwar consolidation of the Australian party system (see Glenn Kefford, Chapter 15). In some ways, this representative outcome was not surprising given the low quota of a double-dissolution election, but it also typified the type of result predicted by the ongoing trend towards minor-party voting in the upper house over the past half century. While this result will begin to be reversed at the next half-Senate election as the new Senate voting system starts to deliver its intended effect (see Antony Green, Chapter 8), the representative balance created by the 2016 federal election has once again brought to the fore the necessities of Senate negotiation—a process that plagued the Abbott administration, albeit recreated this time with different political actors.

The title Double Disillusion also reflects the fact that, for many political commentators, the uncertainty of election night and Turnbull’s lacklustre and somewhat sullen speech compounded what was regarded as a ‘surprisingly formulaic’ (Kenny 2016) and dull campaign—‘one defined by extreme boredom and a lack of mistakes’ (Australian 2016). While the campaign itself did not provide the theatre many had hoped for, it did produce a dramatic result with seemingly little capacity to resolve the political deadlock that had arisen in the previous parliament. Not only had a first-term government lost a net 14 seats and was reduced to a majority of one in the House of Representatives, the strength of the minor party vote in the Senate ensured that seven different parties would be represented on the new crossbench.

As far as elections go, the 2016 result was a ‘wake-up call’ to the government; however, perhaps more significantly, the election provided important insights into some of the contemporary challenges (both domestic and international) facing Australian society and representative democracy. Globally, 2016 was a year of political upheaval

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1 . ‘DOUBLE DISILLUSION’

and enduring uncertainty, manifested by the Brexit vote in the United Kingdom in June, the election of Donald Trump in the United States in November and the increasing prominence of populist politics across Europe and Latin America.

Amidst these political convulsions, the 2016 Australian federal election campaign had seemed isolated and largely immune. For all the political salience of Australia’s hard-line border control policy, the country remained unaffected by the record mass displacement of migrants and refugees and the associated resentment of immigration, open borders and globalisation seen in parts of Europe (see James Jupp and Juliet Pietsch, Chapter 29). As with the failure of the global financial crisis to significantly impact on the 2010 federal election (see Simms 2010), Donald Horne’s ‘lucky country’ appeared again insulated from global trends and global problems. References to global affairs were largely subsumed within the call by Turnbull and the Liberals to vote for ‘stability’ and avoid chaos by re-electing the incumbent government (detailed by Marija Taflaga and John Wanna, Chapter 2), though the specific emphasis of the risk—global uncertainty or Labor’s history of internal disunity—remained ambiguous.

As an agenda-setting event signalling future policy and policy contestation, the 2016 election was extremely underwhelming. The array of issues considered in the campaign remained largely constrained to narrow debates about limited economic growth and austerity, with both major parties wedded to extremely conventional economic management theories (Damien Cahill and Matthew Ryan, Chapter 22). Both parties played to their policy strengths: the Coalition emphasised stability and measures for budgetary restraint, which Labor was quick to mirror. Labor focused on the protection of Medicare with its controversial ‘Mediscare’ strategy (Amanda Elliot and Rob Manwaring, Chapter 24). In many areas, policy domains were reduced to synecdoche issues for wider concerns; for example, threats to the Great Barrier Reef instead of a wider debate about environmental management (Rebecca Pearse, Chapter 25), same-sex marriage over social inclusion (Blair Williams and Marian Sawer, Chapter 28) and penalty rates over wider industrial relations terrain (David Peetz, Chapter 23).

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A politics of disillusionmentA comprehensive chronology and analysis of the main events of the 2016 campaign is provided by Marija Taflaga and John Wanna (Chapter 2); rather than covering this same terrain, our main aim in this introduction is to highlight some of the key themes that unite the diverse chapters in this book. Drawing on the expert opinion of the collective authors of this volume, we contend that the 2016 federal election, often characterised as lacking spark, dynamism and interest from the public (Clive Bean, Chapter 10), can be better viewed as a ‘magnifying event’ reflecting the politics of the nation—a popular disillusionment with Australian political institutions and actors. We suggest that this can be seen in both structural and behavioural terms.

• From a structural perspective, the 2016 election brought into question the capacity of the Australian political system to deliver political and policy outcomes to the electorate. This has a number of sources, including the pluralisation of a society that employs a majoritarian institutional arrangement; as well as the significant challenges to the capacity of political parties and governments in middle powers like Australia to respond to the policy problems facing a diverse and global society.

• From a behavioural perspective, within a general scepticism about institutions (Edelman 2016), there is a popular sense that established parties are too focused on strategy, too factionalised, and lacking in capacity, to address the complex policy issues of the day. There is increasingly a disconnect between the ‘promise’ of elections as a mechanism of democratic accountability and the ‘reality’ of their use as a tool of political strategy.

Taken together, these themes further illustrate why this book is titled Double Disillusion, a play on the descriptor ‘double dissolution’. First and foremost, the 2016 federal election highlighted the fact that although elections formally function as the opportunity to provide a ‘voice’ to the people to hold politicians to account, several aspects of the electoral process can be managed by political parties as a tactical mechanism to prolong periods in government and achieve their legislative programs. Operating with a three-year window that has some flexibility, federal governments will routinely time the announcement of an election in line with their calculations of electoral success, even if, as in the case of 2016,

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these calculations may not bear out. Although useful from the federal government’s perspective, voters do not always view early elections in a positive light. The manipulation of electoral timing can be perceived as a self-serving strategy.1

In 2016, the issue of strategy was heightened by the government’s decision to invoke provisions in the Australian Constitution to dissolve both Houses of Parliament, and thereby achieve an early election not only for the House of Representatives, but the full Senate.2 As Antony Green discusses in Chapter 8 of this volume, as a measure to break political deadlock, section 57 of the Constitution provides that if both Houses of Parliament fail to agree on the passage of a bill, in certain circumstances the Governor-General may dissolve both Houses of Parliament simultaneously—what is commonly referred to as a ‘double-dissolution election’.

The ‘trigger’ for this mechanism in 2016 was the Senate’s inability to pass bills on union governance and the re-establishment of the Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC). However, as Taflaga and Wanna argue in Chapter 2, the alternative strategic motivation behind the double-dissolution election was to ‘clear out’ the Senate crossbenchers, who had provided a source of frustration for the government in attempting to legislate its policy program in the previous parliament. This misfit between public interest in trigger bills (Irving 2015: 40) and the underlying strategic import of the prime minister’s actions serves to further underline a disconnection between popular concerns and political practice.

The timing of the 2016 election and the use of the double-dissolution trigger also needs to be understood in the context of reforms to the Senate voting system, which were passed by the parliament in March 2016. Designed to address the growing electoral importance of ‘micro-

1 Given this scepticism, it could be argued that moving to fixed-term elections may be one way to reduce disillusionment and to ‘modernise’ the Westminster model of parliamentary democracy, following in the footsteps of the United Kingdom (2011) and Canada (2007). The majority of Australian States and Territories also follow this model: New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Victoria, Western Australian, and the Northern and Australian Capital Territories.2 On 21 March 2016, Malcolm Turnbull formally requested the Governor-General to prorogue parliament with effect from 15 April as per section 5 of the Constitution, thereby allowing for a reintroduction of the trigger bills and the Budget to be read before the cut-off date of 5 May. A double dissolution cannot occur within six months of the end of a three-year term of the House of Representatives, so the PM’s initial request essentially set the election date for 2 July.

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parties’ and preference-harvesting arrangements leading to democratically questionable outcomes, the changes instituted a system of optional preferential voting and removed ‘group-voting’ tickets.

The voting system reforms were lauded on the grounds that they increased transparency and restored true choice to voters, rather than results being driven by preference deals engineered by parties and so-called ‘preference whisperers’ (Kelly 2016: 98). By the same token, the reforms were also criticised as creating a significant disadvantage to new entrants, making it more difficult for minor parties to be elected and consolidating the power of the incumbent political parties (Lee 2016).

As several of the chapters in this book suggest, while the government’s strategy of clearing out a previously difficult Senate may have backfired, with a plethora of new parties now present, the politics behind the electoral law reforms, the timing of the election and the use of the double-dissolution trigger were clearly in the interests of the established parties of government and, as we argue, contributed to the climate of disillusionment surrounding the 2016 federal campaign.3 This notion of an ‘insider class’ of self-dealing and privilege was again in the media at the end of 2016—the expenses scandals (Riordan 2017) and political donation debates highlighting the opaque nature of politicians’ use of public resources and party financing (Baxendale 2017; see also Gauja and Sawer 2016).

Second, and a prominent theme in the chapters throughout this volume, is the necessity to understand and engage with the growing complexity of electoral politics in Australia. In particular, attention must be paid to shifting attitudes and forms of engaging with politics, and the constantly evolving landscape of actors involved in election campaigns, as well as the arenas in which political talk occurs. We suggest that the increasing myriad of political actors involved in the electoral process highlights the importance of looking beyond traditional arenas to assess the extent and impact of political debate.

Previous editions of the Australian federal election book have noted the decline of partisan attachments and the increasing professionalisation and personalisation of election campaigns (see, for example, Johnson, Wanna

3 It is worth noting that only half of the new Senate will have six-year terms; the other half will be up for re-election under the full quota in three years. This means it is likely that the number of micro-party representatives will decrease.

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and Lee 2015), trends that could be associated with electoral discontent, instability and declining party membership. In this volume, we try to draw attention to the changing nature and heightened complexity of the electoral landscape—in particular, constraints on individual political actors, as well as the blurring of formal and informal arenas of political activity by parties, politicians and citizens.

The contributors to this book emphasise, perhaps in a more optimistic way, that although political parties and their leaders remain central to Australian election campaigns, the universe of participants is far more diverse than this. Contrary to their representation in elite and emerging media (see Andrea Carson and Brian McNair, Chapter 19; Peter Chen, Chapter 20), we argue that elections are not monopolised by leaders, parties and media elites (the ‘whales’ of political journalism). The 2016 contest saw ongoing participation by a wide array of interest groups (see Darren Halpin and Bert Fraussen, Chapter 17), marginalised communities (see Diana Perche, Chapter 27; Williams and Sawer, Chapter 28), independent candidates (see Jennifer Curtin, Chapter 16) and online campaigning organisations—most notably GetUp!—(see Ariadne Vromen, Chapter 18).

Some of these activities, like the intervention of GetUp! in asylum-seeker policies (constructed by political parties over time to ‘wedge’ political opponents—see Sara Dehm and Max Walden, Chapter 26), demonstrate new modes of participation and illuminate political actors that can be important in shaping campaigns and campaign narratives. Others, like the coalition of individuals and groups who developed and promoted the Redfern Statement on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs, remain in a state of potentiality. Without these alternative voices, the 2016 election would have been far less dynamic than even its current low reputation attests. Thus, while the discussion of Senate reforms point to a closure of the competitive space of campaigns, the ideational nature of elections may remain even in a political system dominated by parties following the cartel trajectory.

Finally, we suggest that much of the disillusionment with the 2016 Australian federal election is linked to critiques of the major parties’ capacities (particularly that of the government) to deal with the significant policy challenges facing Australian society and to represent the interests of an increasingly diverse community (see Jupp and Pietsch, Chapter 29). Specifically, this volume reveals how these policy areas were approached

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and emphasised (or de-emphasised) by the various actors (parties, interest groups, social movement organisations, and others) involved in the campaign and the political strategies involved in the process. As many of the authors contend in this volume, much of the 2016 election was fought over traditional ideological divisions: economic management versus social provision (see Carol Johnson, Chapter 3). In a complex political environment, this demonstrates enduring class divisions and the importance of inequality and material concerns in the lives of everyday Australians. Several chapters in this book are critical of the ability of the political community to generate significantly new policy ideas. In some areas, it appears they are ‘searching’ for new solutions during a period in which conventional policy models in a number of key economic, social and environmental domains appear no longer to have efficacy, while in other areas authors identify agenda closure by parties and other elites.

In providing an expert analysis of the actors, policies and, importantly, the political strategies involved in the campaign, this collection gives readers a much more nuanced understanding of why the 2016 Australian federal election was one that represented a ‘double disillusion’. It is evident that voters were disillusioned, but, looking beyond the negative tone associated with the title, we suggest that many of the characteristics of the 2016 Australian federal election may also represent a longer-term shift in Australian electoral politics. This shift is signified by a period of party and electoral fragmentation leading to a richer universe of political and campaign participants, increased policy complexity in a climate of growing economic uncertainty and inequality, and an ever-present public cynicism with leadership churn and the political manipulation of electoral rules.

Continuing the tradition: The 2016 federal election volumeThe post-election analysis of Australian federal campaigns is well established in the discipline of Australian political science. These volumes date back to 1958 (Johnson and Wanna 2015: ix). In this, the 16th edited collection of post-election analyses, a larger editorial team has worked to bring together 41 contributors. This expanded scope, we hope, provides an unprecedented depth of expertise to this key political event by bringing together an interdisciplinary group of established and emerging scholars.

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Each of the chapters goes beyond political commentary, being written on the basis of in-depth and original research and analysis providing new and important insights.

The analysis in this volume is divided into four sections.

The first provides the context and outlines key contests in the 2016 Australian federal election. Observing the importance of this volume for the historical record, it begins with a chapter that maps the chronology and provides a detailed overview of the campaign (Taflaga and Wanna, Chapter 2). In this chapter, the authors demonstrate the connection between the disruptive leadership change before the election and the temporal and policy constraints faced by the prime minister in ‘setting up’ the double-dissolution election. This context is followed by a discussion of the ideological (Johnson, Chapter 3) and leadership contests (Paul Strangio and James Walter, Chapter 4). Both chapters demonstrate a ‘narrowing’ in Australian political practice: the first highlighting this narrowing at the ideological and ideational level; the second underlining the way political practice has become personalised in the figure of the party leader. With the unpleasant return of the leadership principle and its populist turn in politics at the global level, it is valuable to be able to observe how Australian political leadership is constructed and made manifest today. Finally, in the context of the surprising results in the United Kingdom’s ‘Brexit’ vote and the United States’ presidential race, the final chapters in this section examine the impact and accuracy of Australian election polls in detail (Murray Goot, Chapter 5; Simon Jackman and Luke Mansillo, Chapter 6). Given that professional polling is one of the most prominent features of modern political campaigns and the source of considerable ‘meta-commentary’ on politics by the media, it is important to assess how effective contemporary polling is and look behind the figures to understand how these numbers are constructed.

The second section of the book reports and analyses the results of the election. This takes a number of forms. The first two chapters look at the results in aggregate: first for the House of Representatives (Ben Raue, Chapter 7) and second for the Senate (Green, Chapter 8). Reminding us of the important lesson that there is no ‘uniform swing’ in Australian elections, these chapters look at those seats that changed hands and those that did not. Given the importance of the Senate in this race and the institutional changes that preceded it, Green’s chapter provides

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commentary on the outcomes, but also looks in detail at the way elements of the new Senate voting system influenced the result, and how they were also interpreted strategically by the competitors.

Narrowing the focus from these aggregate results, the following chapters in this section provide additional thematic analysis and explanation by examining the way different constituencies were considered (or not) in the campaign, and the impact of different types of electoral grouping on the outcome of the campaign. Two very different chapters examine these topics. The first looks at federalism and regional variations in campaigning and results (Martinez i Coma and Smith, Chapter 9). The second reports on data from the 2016 Australian Election Study (Bean, Chapter 10)—that long-running survey of voter behaviour and opinion that allows both demographic factors and issue salience to be examined in more detail.

The third section of the book explores the campaigns and the impact of a variety of different political actors. Keeping with tradition, we include chapters that focus on each of the main parties: the Australian Labor Party (Rob Manwaring, Chapter 11), the Liberal Party of Australia (Nicholas Barry, Chapter 12), the National Party of Australia (Geoff Cockfield and Jennifer Curtin, Chapter 14) and the Australian Greens (Stewart Jackson, Chapter 13). Recognising their growing role, this volume also includes an in-depth analysis of the key minor parties that were significant in the 2016 election campaign (Kefford, Chapter 15) as well as the independent candidates for office (Curtin, Chapter 16). Breaking with the tradition of previous editions of the post-election book, each of these chapters is written by academic experts rather than party practitioners. Parties’ and candidates’ campaigning techniques and practices are covered along with the main policy issues they campaigned on, an analysis of their strategies and their respective electoral strengths before and after the election.

Further expanding our appreciation of the electoral arena in Australia and the variety of actors involved, this section also includes chapters on the conduct of interest groups and their motivations for participation in elections (Halpin and Fraussen, Chapter 17), a specific chapter on GetUp! as an electoral actor worthy of analysis on par with many of the parties contesting the election (Vromen, Chapter 18), the established media’s coverage of the campaign (Carson and McNair, Chapter 19) and new entrants into the Australian media market (Chen, Chapter 20). Recognising the interactive nature of new media in facilitating and magnifying ‘folk’

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political speech, this volume incudes a chapter that explores the incidence of election ‘talk’ in everyday online spaces (Scott Wright, Verity Trott and William Lukamto, Chapter 21).

The final section of the book shifts the focus from actors in the campaign to policy issues. Included here are chapters providing analysis from experts in their respective policy fields: the economy (Cahill and Ryan, Chapter 22), industrial relations (Peetz, Chapter 23), social policy (Elliot and Manwaring, Chapter 24), the environment (Pearse, Chapter 25), refugees (Dehm and Walden, Chapter 26), Indigenous policy (Perche, Chapter 27) and gender and sexuality (Williams and Sawer, Chapter 28). The final chapter in the volume, by James Jupp and Juliet Pietsch (Chapter 29), analyses not only policy issues that surround a multicultural Australia, but also the importance and treatment of ethnic constituencies and issues. Many of these contributors come from fields outside of political science and their contributions cement the richness of the collection with additional expertise and insights.

Overall, this volume provides the ‘continuity with change’ promised by the prime minister in outlining his intentions upon coming into government in 2015 (Henderson 2016). This has been a deliberate strategy to ensure that this volume provide useful continuity back to its forbears in the late 1950s, while focusing on the phenomena, issues and actors relevant to explaining both the election itself and the political milieu in which it sat.

ReferencesAustralian. 2016. ‘Federal Election: Day 54’. Australian, 30 June. Available

at: www.theaustralian.com.au/federal-election-2016/federal-election-2016-day-54/news-story/b3e9fb2d4f3c623f7d21e112cac961b3

Baxendale, Rachel. 2017. ‘Backlash over Malcolm Turnbull’s $1.75m donation to Liberal Party’. Australian, 2 February. Available at: www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/backlash-over-malcolm-turnbulls-175m-donation-to-liberal-party/news-story/5dc9e968a08ee1b3ad5e94adae496a9f

Edelman. 2016. 2016 Edelman Trust Barometer: Australia. New York: Edelman.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/federal-election-2016/federal-election-2016-day-54/news-story/b3e9fb2d4f3c623f7d21e112cac961b3http://www.theaustralian.com.au/federal-election-2016/federal-election-2016-day-54/news-story/b3e9fb2d4f3c623f7d21e112cac961b3http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/backlash-over-malcolm-turnbulls-175m-donation-to-liberal-party/news-story/5dc9e968a08ee1b3ad5e94adae496a9fhttp://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/backlash-over-malcolm-turnbulls-175m-donation-to-liberal-party/news-story/5dc9e968a08ee1b3ad5e94adae496a9fhttp://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/backlash-over-malcolm-turnbulls-175m-donation-to-liberal-party/news-story/5dc9e968a08ee1b3ad5e94adae496a9f

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Gauja, Anika and Marian Sawer. 2016. Party Rules: Dilemmas of Political Party Regulation in Australia. Canberra: ANU Press. doi.org/10.22459/PR.10.2016

Henderson, Anna. 2016. ‘Malcolm Turnbull shares “continuity and change” slogan with US political comedy Veep’. ABC News, 22 March. Available at: www.abc.net.au/news/2016-03-22/turnbull-shares-continuity-and-change-slogan-with-veep/7265992

Herald Sun. 2016. ‘Malcolm Turnbull, Bill Shorten, election night speeches in full’. Herald Sun, 3 July. Available at: www.heraldsun.com.au/news/malcolm-turnbull-bill-shorten-election-night-speeches-in-full/news-story/174939d437baf0b536bba7dda8cddd6a

Irving, Helen. 2015. ‘Pulling the trigger: The 1914 double dissolution election and its legacy’. Papers on Parliament 63: 23–42.

Johnson, Carol and John Wanna. 2015. ‘Preface and Acknowledgements’. In Carol Johnson and John Wanna with Hsu-Ann Lee (eds), Abbott’s Gambit: The 2013 Australian Federal Election. Canberra: ANU Press, pp. ix–xi. Available at: press-files.anu.edu.au/downloads/press/p309171/ pdf/preface.pdf

Johnson, Carol and John Wanna with Hsu-Ann Lee (eds). 2015. Abbott’s Gambit: The 2013 Australian Federal Election. Canberra: ANU Press. doi.org/10.22459/AG.01.2015

Kelly, Norm. 2016. ‘Party registration and political participation: Regulating small and “micro” parties’. In Anika Gauja and Marian Sawer (eds), Party Rules? Dilemmas of political party regulation in Australia. Canberra: ANU Press, pp. 73–100. doi.org/10.22459/PR.10.2016.03

Kenny, Mark. 2016. ‘Election 2016: As entertainment, the leaders’ debate was diabolical, but it got even worse’. Sydney Morning Herald, 30 May. Available at: www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/federal-election-2016/election-2016-as-entertainment-the-leaders-debate-was-diabolical-but-it-got-even-worse-20160529-gp6q7v.html

http://doi.org/10.22459/PR.10.2016http://doi.org/10.22459/PR.10.2016http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-03-22/turnbull-shares-continuity-and-change-slogan-with-veep/7265992http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-03-22/turnbull-shares-continuity-and-change-slogan-with-veep/7265992http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/malcolm-turnbull-bill-shorten-election-night-speeches-in-full/news-story/174939d437baf0b536bba7dda8cddd6ahttp://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/malcolm-turnbull-bill-shorten-election-night-speeches-in-full/news-story/174939d437baf0b536bba7dda8cddd6ahttp://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/malcolm-turnbull-bill-shorten-election-night-speeches-in-full/news-story/174939d437baf0b536bba7dda8cddd6ahttp://press-files.anu.edu.au/downloads/press/p309171/pdf/preface.pdfhttp://press-files.anu.edu.au/downloads/press/p309171/pdf/preface.pdfhttp://doi.org/10.22459/AG.01.2015http://doi.org/10.22459/PR.10.2016.03http://doi.org/10.22459/PR.10.2016.03http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/federal-election-2016/election-2016-as-entertainment-the-leaders-debate-was-diabolical-but-it-got-even-worse-20160529-gp6q7v.htmlhttp://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/federal-election-2016/election-2016-as-entertainment-the-leaders-debate-was-diabolical-but-it-got-even-worse-20160529-gp6q7v.htmlhttp://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/federal-election-2016/election-2016-as-entertainment-the-leaders-debate-was-diabolical-but-it-got-even-worse-20160529-gp6q7v.html

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Lee, Jane. 2016. ‘High Court dismisses Senator Bob Day’s challenge to Senate voting reforms’. Sydney Morning Herald, 13 May. Available at: www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/federal-election-2016/high-court- dismisses-senator-bob-days-challenge-to-senate-voting-reforms-2016 0513-gou776.html

Riordan, Primrose. 2017. ‘Sussan Ley stands aside over expenses scandal’. Australian Financial Review, 9 January. Available at: www.afr.com/news/ sussan-ley-stands-aside-over-expenses-scandal-20170108-gtnz97

Simms, Marian. 2010. ‘Preface’. Australian Cultural History 28(1): 1–4. doi.org/10.1080/07288430903414057

Simms, Marian and John Wanna (eds). 2012. Julia 2010: The Caretaker Election. Canberra: ANU E Press. Available at: press.anu.edu.au/publications/julia-2010-caretaker-election

http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/federal-election-2016/high-court-dismisses-senator-bob-days-challenge-to-senate-voting-reforms-20160513-gou776.htmlhttp://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/federal-election-2016/high-court-dismisses-senator-bob-days-challenge-to-senate-voting-reforms-20160513-gou776.htmlhttp://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/federal-election-2016/high-court-dismisses-senator-bob-days-challenge-to-senate-voting-reforms-20160513-gou776.htmlhttp://www.afr.com/news/sussan-ley-stands-aside-over-expenses-scandal-20170108-gtnz97http://www.afr.com/news/sussan-ley-stands-aside-over-expenses-scandal-20170108-gtnz97http://doi.org/10.1080/07288430903414057http://press.anu.edu.au/publications/julia-2010-caretaker-electionhttp://press.anu.edu.au/publications/julia-2010-caretaker-election

Part One. Campaign Themes and Context

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2‘I’m Not Expecting to Lose …’:

The Election Overview and Campaign Narrative

Marija Taflaga and John Wanna

The countdown to a combative electionThe quotation from Malcolm Turnbull in the chapter title reflected the restrained optimism of the newly installed prime minister facing his first election as leader in the dying days of the 2016 federal election campaign. He spoke these prophetic words reluctantly when asked persistently by TV personality Annabel Crabb on her show Kitchen Cabinet about his expectations of the outcome. While Turnbull’s prediction would ultimately prove accurate (only just!), Turnbull and his Coalition colleagues would get the fright of their lives when the counting began.

This chapter provides a chronology of the federal election campaign of 2016. It explores the antecedents of the main events and outcomes, and looks to provide reasons for the largely unexpected closeness of the eventual result. The chapter is broadly divided into five parts: (1) the background context and government’s leadership transition along with the delicate timing and deliberate preparations for a double-dissolution election; (2) the flurry of last-minute policy announcements and budgetary measures; (3) the meandering nature of the lengthy campaign from the standpoint of the main protagonists followed by the resort to

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banal sloganeering; (4) the volatile election outcome and the descent into uncertainty; and, finally, (5) the immediate aftermath of the election and an assessment on the wisdom of calling a double dissolution.

The most noteworthy aspect of the 2016 federal election was that the election campaign really mattered. Both major contending parties went into the lengthy eight-week campaign with considerable negatives and political drawbacks (so-called ‘lead in the saddlebags’)—both were headed by relatively inexperienced leaders who were untested and had not previously led a national campaign; both faced mounting disaffection from their constituencies and swinging voters; and both major parties were frustrated by the dire fiscal situation with no additional money to spend unless they were prepared to allow the deficit to increase. Polling indicated that both sides would struggle to lift their primary vote back to their historical average, well into the 40 percentages. But the main battlelines of the campaign returned the contest to old-fashioned terrain—one fought over the traditional ideological contours of economic management (Liberals and Nationals) versus social provision (Labor and the Greens). Perhaps the major difference between the two sides was that the Coalition attempted to mount a bland but positive campaign focused on ‘jobs and growth’, whereas Labor opted for a scare campaign in the final weeks, pretending that the government had a secret plan to privatise and dismantle Medicare. At the same time, Labor emphasised health, education and jobs.

The previous federal election in September 2013 had turned out largely to be a foregone conclusion; Labor was not competitive and suffered a ‘thumping defeat’ while the Coalition, led by Tony Abbott, scored the second-largest majority in the parliament since 1945 (Rayner and Wanna 2015). Tactically, ‘Abbott’s gambit’ in plumping for a strategy of outright opposition across a small number of wedge issues paid off and made the result somewhat inevitable (see Bean and McAllister 2015; Johnson and Wanna 2015). By contrast, the 2016 election was a real competitive contest and, although many commentators correctly predicted the Coalition would be returned with a reduced majority, the eventual outcome surprised many by the closeness of the result and the many closely contested seats finishing on tight margins.1

1 Arguably, the 2016 election resembled the 2010 federal election, where a first-term prime minister had just been ousted and was taunted for not being the ‘real’ character. The contest was close, neither major party could assemble much enthusiasm for its re-election, and the campaign largely consisted of the protagonists going through the motions.

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2 . ‘I’M NOT ExPECTING TO LOSE …’

The Coalition was elected in 2013 on the back of a cynical campaign that whipped up a significant protest vote. Having achieved victory (becoming only the seventh opposition to win office since World War II), the new Abbott administration settled into office without a clear agenda beyond a few three-word slogans about ‘stopping the boats’, ‘axing the (carbon) tax’ and ‘fixing the budget’, and a vague promise to create 2 million jobs. It meant that the government found it hard to craft a positive narrative or prioritise its agenda beyond disassembling Labor’s failings. Peddling the mantra that Australia was saddled with a ‘budgetary crisis’ of Labor’s making (due to compounding annual deficits from 2008 and mounting debt levels expected to reach $470 billion by 2018), the government attempted to take tough action in the 2014 Budget. It announced a long list of austerity measures (a scatter gun of irritants and other budgetary tightenings, rather than radical downsizing) designed to end the ‘age of entitlement’. Future funding to States was reduced (by claims of up to $80 billion from notional funding for health and education), a 2 per cent additional levy on higher income earners was imposed for three years, indexation rates for welfare payments were reduced, tougher means tests for family benefits were announced, the age at which people were entitled to the aged pension was increased to 70, cuts to government departments were imposed and a $7 GP copayment was proposed to help ration medical spending. The 2014 Budget was widely considered as unfair and not well received in the community. Together with other policy ‘failures’ such as university deregulation, the withdrawal of ‘business welfare’ leading to plant closures and a contentious bid to amend the Racial Discrimination Act, these incidents damaged the government’s standing in the electorate. Following much protraction and bungled negotiations, many of the proposed measures were not acceptable to the Senate, leaving them as so-called ‘zombie measures’ haunting the government’s budget bottom line.

Although the Coalition had won a comfortable victory, in government it remained deeply divided. Criticisms of Abbott’s leadership grew, especially concerning his abrasive personality. A series of gaffes highlighted his errors of judgement, his polarised personal standing with the electorate and the party’s consistently low polling, along with his refusal to compromise on controversial issues, and his penchant for consulting only a few hand-picked advisers, such as his chief of staff Peta Credlin, exacerbated the situation (Errington and van Onselen 2015; Savva 2016). Abbott was put on notice by his party in February 2015. He survived a leadership spill

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motion 39–61, even though no challenger was prepared to contest the ballot. In a sudden opportunistic coup, the Liberals voted, in September 2015, to replace Abbott with Malcolm Turnbull, a mere 12 months before the next election was due. Abbott’s party colleagues had more confidence that Turnbull could communicate effectively on economic policy and win the next election.

Closer and closer to the pending abyss: Gambling on a double dissolutionWhen Turnbull became PM there was a collective sigh of relief, mixed with widespread bewilderment. The Liberals, who had promised ‘grown-up government’ and attacked Labor’s disarray, infighting and leadership instability, had, by their own hands, suffered through similar leadership turmoil. But the aura surrounding the seemingly affable Turnbull’s ascendancy soon diminished as his vacillating and indecisive style of leadership transcended into a sense of national disappointment. With its own conservative wing hostile to major changes, the Turnbull government, challenged by State government leaders, influential pressure groups and think tanks, soon found itself struggling to manage the policy debate in the media.2 Meanwhile, the Opposition Leader Bill Shorten, who many had underestimated or written-off as a one-note union official, suddenly rose to the occasion and began to make the dishevelled Labor caucus look electable.

Once Turnbull assumed the prime ministership, speculation about the likelihood of an early election dominated Australian politics during the initial months of 2016, especially as the government appeared to be comfortably on top in the polls and Turnbull’s personal standing was high. The year 2015 ended with the Coalition 4 percentage points in front of Labor (or 52 per cent to 48 per cent in two-party preferred terms).3 Nevertheless, while Turnbull’s honeymoon appeared to be holding up

2 The Turnbull government’s policy difficulties arose from two sets of factors. The first set was the result of previous policy decisions undertaken by the Abbott government, as that government vacillated between arrogance and its ‘born to rule mentality’ and indecisiveness. The second was the product of Abbott’s decision to stay on in politics, which emboldened the right faction within the Liberal Party and resulted in increased timidity and indecisiveness by the Turnbull government. 3 Used throughout this book, the term ‘two-party preferred’ refers to the vote for Labor and the Coalition when other parties have been excluded and have had their preferences distributed.

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into the early months of 2016, a series of political events began to fan dissatisfaction. As early as February 2016, media commentary reported that there was a ‘faint air of chaos’ among the executive, with Turnbull ‘less in control than he might pretend’. Two stalwarts of the previous government, Warren Truss and Andrew Robb, both resigned their portfolios and indicated they would step down at the next election (Kenny 2016a). This caused a minor ministerial reshuffle, with Barnaby Joyce becoming the new Nationals leader and deputy prime minister (retaining his agricultural portfolio) and Senator Fiona Nash emerging as his deputy.

Turnbull was also unsettled by a ‘forced’ ministerial resignation, when it was revealed that Human Services minister Stuart Robert had gone to China to secure a trade deal between two mining companies, China Minmetals and Nimrod Resources. The latter company was headed by Paul Marks, a major Liberal party donor (Henderson 2016). After trying to rebuff Shadow Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus’ attack over many days in Question Time (often with monosyllabic answers), Turnbull stood Robert down. Turnbull then asked his head of department, Martin Parkinson, to undertake an investigation into whether Robert had broken the ministerial code of conduct. Parkinson responded that Robert had not benefited financially from the activity, which was not within his portfolio responsibilities, but that he had nevertheless acted ‘inconsistently’ with the expected ministerial standards. Robert resigned on 12 February 2016 and was replaced by Alan Tudge (Human Services) and Dan Tehan (Defence Materiel and Veterans’ Affairs). Steve Ciobo (Trade) and the Nationals’ Darren Chester (Infrastructure and Transport) both joined Cabinet (Hudson 2016a).

During March, the government began to prepare the groundwork to engineer a double dissolution (the first to have occurred since 1987) over the issue of the Senate having rejected its two bills on union governance and the re-establishment of the Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC). The government believed that these were politically salient issues on which to fight a double-dissolution election, even though, since December 2013, it already had an earlier ‘trigger’ with the Clean Energy Finance Corporation (Abolition) Bill. In late March, Turnbull gave parliament an ultimatum by reintroducing the industrial relations bills for a second time. He demanded that the bills be allowed to pass or the Senate would face a double dissolution (Grattan 2016). Senators voted down the bills for a second time on 18 April—in effect sealing their fate.

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But the preparations for a double dissolution also included the government announcing its intention to reform the Senate voting system, in an attempt to reduce the influence of party preference flows that had allowed ‘preference harvesting’ by minor parties. Instead, the government opted to empower the voters by allowing them to allocate their own preferenc

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