Honest politics demands that the independents not give their support to either Labor or the LNP before the election

All negotiation should be done on the floor of the parliament, not stitched up in advance

One of the things you are going to hear ad infinitum in the lead up to the 2025 federal election is demands for the independents to say in advance which party they will support if the crossbench holds the balance of power.

It is a complete furphy and we shouldn’t be fooled.

The Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons. Joseph Mallord William Turner, 1835

Such a demand is yet another example of how the dominance of the two-party system has distorted how we think about politics. That system has taught us to presume that parties are the same as governments—that we can only have an LNP government or a Labor government—but that is misleading.

In the event of no-one getting a majority, it is up to the parliament to decide who has the confidence of the House. This means that what is at stake isn’t support for a given party, but the composition of the new government. That is a process that rightly should happen on the floor of the House once the result is in and it shouldn’t be usurped in any way by independents saying in advance they will support Labor or the LNP.¹

How can they possibly do so in good faith?

The only reason it seems normal or desirable to demand that the independents tell us in advance of the election who they would support is because we are trapped in a two-party mindset. We are so used to the ALP or the LNP being “the government” that we expect everyone else to line up with one side or the other.

It doesn’t have to be this way. It shouldn’t be this way.

Again, what should be at stake is not the future of a given party, but the composition of the Australian government. This can’t be known in advance of the election. So, while it is right that all politicians be open and clear about their values and policy positions during the campaign, there is absolutely no obligation on the crossbench to say in advance which party they will support.

Apart from anything, would you trust either major party to not alter the terms of an agreement if they saw the chance to insist after the election that “circumstances have changed”? Would you then trust them not to try and paint the independents as having broken their pre-election commitment? Would you trust the media to report the matter other than in the most glaring and confrontational manner?

I mean, come on. No independent should be expected to sign that blank cheque.

Regardless, that is not my main argument, so let me set out what the real issue is here.

The crossbench has just as much right to be part of a government as anyone else and there should be no particular onus on them to say in advance which party they will support. The process should actually be about deciding what sort of government we have, not which party “gets to form government”. That is a distorted way to understand what is happening.²

I’ve talked about the underlying logic of this before, but it bears repeating.

Our national system of government was designed as a parliamentary system and we all know that the concept of parties is not even mentioned in the Constitution. In saying that, I am not making a first-principles argument that tries to cleave religiously to a tight reading of that document. It was written in such a way that it allowed a role for the parties of the time and even allowed for the two-party system to come to dominate in the way that it has.

But it allows for “minority” government too, and we need a more normalised understanding of that. Let me explain.

The development of political parties in Australia traces back to the late 19th century, before Federation, when the need for organised political representation became apparent. Parties in Australia, as elsewhere, were a response to the complexities of governance and the desire to aggregate diverse interests within the electorate. This historical context has shaped the contemporary political landscape, where parties have become entrenched as the primary means of political organisation.

There was a range of parties in Australia in the nineteenth century, and organised labour, in an era of immense workplace unrest, decided to go the path of parliamentary representation rather than pursue a more revolutionary consolidation of power. They formed the Australia Labor Party and set in train a series of reforms that had an immense (if understated and uncredited) effect on the organisation of parties, parliaments and congresses around the world.³

For our purposes, the moment to concentrate on is 1904, three years after the formation of the Australian Federation—the nation as we now understand it—when Labor unexpectedly won power in their own right. It sent a chill down the spine of the non-Labor side of politics. That non-Labor side then quickly organised into what was called the Liberal Party and the two-party system was set in place, consolidating in the general election of 1910.⁴

But it is important to understand that the way Labor organised itself as a party changed the nature of how parliament itself worked.

As I’ve noted before, political scientist Ian Marsh has called the ALP a “novel mode of political organisation” in which a “mass party shifted a number of functions from the legislature to the party organisation.” He argues that this “new concept of political party is probably the single most important factor explaining the emergence of the two party system.”

Under this novel form, “policy and electoral activity were…linked to an extra-parliamentary organisation” which thus “constrained and disciplined parliamentary candidates in new ways…”. This ultimately challenged the non-Labor parties, the fusion of other groupings and independents, to respond in kind, and Marsh notes that while “the differences remained great” Labor’s “refusal to qualify or compromise the electoral and agenda setting role of the organisation or its disciplinary control over MPs obliged the non-Labor groups to adopt practices and approaches that produced a parallel outcome, if by different means.”

It was this new conception of party, parliamentary procedure, and policy making which “provided the procedural foundations for the two party system.”

And here we are.⁵⁶

But if common practice was that parties came to dominate and overwhelm what we might call the original intent of the written constitution—so that the two-party system became the norm—then the pendulum is currently swinging back in the other direction. This means we must once again step outside the two-party mindset and into a space where we can figure out the norms and expectations of deliberative government.⁷

I mentioned in the previous article that in the 1970s, 72 percent of people always voted for the same political party during their lifetime, from one election to the next. In 2022 the figure dropped to almost half that—37 percent.

As Timothée Chalamet has famously said, the times they are a changin’.

The desire of Australians to move away from reflexive support for the major parties was reinforced as recently as Saturday’s by-election in Werribee in Victoria. The Labor Party and the LNP could only muster 56% of the primary vote between them! Labor had a 16.2% swing against them but less than one-tenth of that protest vote (or disaffected vote or whatever it was) went to the Liberal Party. As Richard Denniss from the Australia Institute said on BlueSky, “Seems voters have figured out you can be frustrated with a government without wanting to vote for the opposition.”⁸

The situation is complicated, but fewer and fewer of us trust the LNP or Labor to rule in the interests of the country and we are actively looking for alternative representatives. If viable ones are provided to us, there is a better chance than ever we will elect them.

Thus spake the people.

So, if there are enough members on the crossbench for them to be part of a new government after the next federal election, it is right that there is an open debate on the floor of the house about what shape that government will take. It is right that there will be give-and-take. Actual political argument. We need to recognise that as democracy, not instability. And under such circumstances, the independents need to be strong-spined players in that process, not apologetic supplicants who have committed in advance to one party or the other.

At this stage, no politician from a major party should be ruling out who they will form government with. Nor should any independent candidate be saying in advance which major party they will support. The only democratic obligation on every member of parliament—and it should be inviolate—is that they will negotiate. And then that they will abide by whatever terms of governing are set.

None of this necessarily destabilises parliament, even if it does destabilise the two-party system. But arguably, a destabilised two-party system is precisely what voters are trying to achieve.⁹

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1. The independents should vigorously resist backroom negotiation and deals. Their own success, and the stability of the multiparty system we are heading towards, depends on radical transparency.

2. There is a logical implication in this argument that members of the crossbench should be able to occupy ministerial positions, and they should imho, but I will deal with that in a separate discussion at some point.

3. Australia has always been a democratic innovator.

4. For more on why I think this two-party system has become moribund, see this earlier piece.

5. See Marsh, Ian. Beyond the Two Party System: political representation, economic competitiveness and Australian politics. Cambridge University Press. (Note, for some reason Marsh doesn’t like hyphens.)

6. I realise that I am simplifying somewhat, ignoring, for instance, the role of the idea of “responsible government” that was developed, in part, as a response to the alleged corruption of multi-party politics. I’ll do another post that sets out the strengths of the two-party system: if only to reject the argument, given contemporary developments.

7. Deliberative government, not minority government. Minority government is a misleading and increasingly redundant linguistic offshoot of the two-party system. See my list of other outdated terms here.

8. We need to be careful in how we read the results of the by-elections in Werribee and Prahran that were run this past weekend. As I write, it isn’t clear that Labor will hold Werribee, though the figures I just quoted hold. In Prahran, the Greens lost to the Liberals in the absence of a Labor candidate. Our letterbox (we’re in the Prahran electorate) filled up with how-to-vote (htv) cards for independent Tony Lupton, which included a strong endorsement from former Labor Premier, Steve Bracks. Lupton’s htv card put the Libs second. There was a primary-vote swing against the Greens of 0.6% despite Labor—who received 26.6% primary in 2022—not running, some evidence that Labor votes shifted to the Libs, not the Greens. But it is also important to note that the turnout in Prahran was low, about 60% on the last figures I saw, suggesting a lot of Labor voters stayed home. In Werribee, the Victorian Socialists received a 7.6% primary vote (doubled since last time), which is just shy of the 7.7% that went to the Greens. The range of independents who showed up in Prahran polled poorly, but they mostly hadn’t done the groundwork that has been necessary to get independents elected. Independents tend to fail in the absence of strong name recognition or an extended campaign of community engagement (and in the absence of adequate funding). Again, caution is required, but the Prahran result for the Greens is consistent with other research showing a weakening of their position in inner Melbourne.

9. I am making this argument as strongly as I can, but it shouldn’t be read as a naive dismissal of the power of two-party politics in Australia. The ability of the LNP and the ALP to affect outcomes remains strong, both psychologically—as I say, we still tend to think in terms of “governments” being the same thing as the major parties—but also in terms of their ability, in concert and individually, to protect their position. Whether it is legislation about campaign financing, how they suggest we direct preferences (as set out on htv cards), or even in choosing whether to run candidates or not, the two-party system still has enormous sway over our politics. Further, none of what I argue should be read as suggesting the end of parties.