The enshittification of Australian democracy
The two-party system is demonstrably damaging the country and we need to fix that
The collusion between Labor and the LNP to rig our electoral system in their own favour, as per new laws being pushed through parliament as I write, is not just evidence—straight from the horse’s mouth—of the collapse of support for those major parties, it is further evidence of how this two-party system is undermining any chance we have of living up to the promise of Australia being a fair and egalitarian nation.
Enshittification is a word I hate, mainly because it needed to be coined at all.
That coining was done by author Cory Doctorow as a way of describing how the tech companies suck us into using their online platforms—from Google to Twitter to Facebook—and then gradually diminish the user experience in the name of maximising profits. Initially, as Wikipedia notes, “vendors create high-quality offerings to attract users, then they degrade those offerings to better serve business customers, and finally degrade their services to users and business customers to maximize profits for shareholders.”
I don’t want to stretch the metaphor too far, but it is clear something similar is happening in our political sphere. Political parties form, in the first place, to aggregate and represent particular sections of the community, and they compete against each for our vote. There is always room for other players, including smaller parties and independents, but in most countries that democratic practice is gradually diminished as parliaments and congresses consolidate into either a straight two-party arrangement (literally two parties) or, as in Australia, the formation of two major blocks that act as a two-party system.
Everything, from the way political wages and staffing levels are set, to who gets to hold ministries, to who gets to be on parliamentary committees, to the ways in which we vote, and, of course, the ways in which political campaigning is financed are then gradually—formally and informally—shaped around the needs of the dominant parties. The two-party system becomes so entrenched that even our political language comes reflects its primacy and so we talk misleadingly about hung parliaments, balance of power, and minority government.1
Once that two-party dominance is normalised, the stage is set for the sort of platform decay that is currently threatening Australia, which manifests in the sidelining of the common good in favour of consolidation of the power of special interests that major parties come to represent.
It is pure enshittification. Trapping people on the two-party platform rather than equalising the playing field so that true democracy—as genuine self-rule—can be enacted.
Mostly this process is hidden from us, deeply internalised by the political class, particularly the media, who have a vested interest in normalising it and keeping in place the structures that support it (and them).
Every so often, though, the fix becomes obvious.
Just as Elon Musk tweaked the Twitter algorithm to ensure that his own views and the views of his fellow fascists dominated the platform he paid for and made X, Labor and the LNP are in the process of rigging the political system in their own favour.
The new campaign finance legislation is designed to make it harder for smaller parties and independents to run, while showering on Labor and the LNP public money to entrench their own position. As independent senator David Pocock wrote in his recent newsletter:
[T]he bill is packed with loopholes designed to crush independents and minor parties:
Spending caps rigged in favour of the majors – While independents are restricted to around $800,000 per seat (or $600,000 in the ACT Senate), the major parties can spend millions in an electorate as long as they don’t mention the candidate's name.
Unlimited transfers from shadowy “nominated entities” – Last election, the Coalition pocketed nearly $10 million from the Cormack Foundation, and Labor took $6 million from Labor Holdings. This bill does nothing to stop that.
A sham cap on election spending – A loophole called “administrative funding” lets major parties spend freely without it counting towards their cap.
A hike in taxpayer funding for votes – From just over $3 per vote to $5 per vote, shoveling even more public money into party coffers.
And yet, the bill ignores real electoral reform Australians are calling for—like truth in political advertising or banning the use of deepfakes at elections. Instead, it’s being rammed through with no real scrutiny. No senate inquiry. No proper debate.
It is actually worse than enshittification.
We aren’t just talking about some social media platform that delivers a degraded experience online; we are talking the entire operating system of our nation, and this new legislation is designed to undermine the democratic wishes of a significant section of the country.
It is the latest and most blatant example of how, when threatened with actual democracy that challenges their cosy duopoly, the Coalition and Labor are happy to converge on practices and policies that entrench their own power against the wishes of the people.
Make no mistake that this is what is happening, and it is part of a longer process of convergence.
The parties lined up on neoliberalism in the 1980s, undermining the power of organised labour in the interests of capital. They have both engaged in various forms of privatisation of public services and the empowering on non-elected institutions like the Reserve Bank that enforce particular capital-friendly economic prescriptions. Since the 1990s, the two parties have been as one on demonising asylum seekers, financialising housing, casualising work, and making tax for wealthy individuals and corporations almost voluntary.
Anthony Albanese has taken this collusion to new levels of indistinguishability, running at the last election on the LNP’s stage three tax cuts2 and, worst of all, the AUKUS agreement. Both strip huge sums of money from our national accounts for decades to come, money that could otherwise be spent on improving the lives of ordinary Australians. Even with a fascist-adjacent government now in power in the United States, threatening the most basic democratic structure of the world order, Albanese and Dutton are falling over themselves to win the Donald’s favour.
Enshittification for all to see.
Many people feel what is happening as a loss of security, concern about their ability to house themselves or support themselves and their families in retirement, and in many other forms of cost-of-living pressures.
But this enshittification is much more than a vibe, as the recent report by Monash University laid out:
The share of wealth held by Australia’s bottom 40% has declined sharply in the last two decades while 3.3m live below the poverty line, a damning report into Australia’s track record on quality of life shows.
Monash University’s third Transforming Australia report, released Thursday, shows progress on more than half of the 80 indicators has stalled or is in freefall, painting a deteriorating picture of the country’s social, economic and environmental wellbeing.
Without a change of course, including a focus on long-term policymaking beyond the three-year federal election cycle, Australia will continue to lag behind the developed world, the report warns.
The report, which uses long-term data sources to analyse Australia’s development over the years, found inequalities across wealth, housing, health, and education were worsening.
As I said the other day, the two-party system is the final sluice gate through which power in our country is funnelled. The influence pedalled by corporations and the various lobbying groups who work for them only work in the way they do because of the primacy of two-party politics. It is why the sort of inequality detailed in the Monash University report has been able to happen: because the two-party system has become captive to special interests and unresponsive to the electorate as a whole.
The good news is we still have the power to challenge this enshittification, and the bigger the crossbench we have after the next election, the more chance we have of fixing things.
Thank god he was pressured into modifying them.
So true, Tim, and I am outraged about this slimey action on the part of Albanese (Dutton is just behaving as we knew he would).. Like you, I thought the promotion of democracy in all its aspects was the name of the government game. Sigh.
Just one thing, if it's not too late - I think you need to clarify that this change won't take effect until 2028, so we only have THIS election to fix things.
Thank you as always,
Deb
When it finally hit me that there was a convergence was when Labor supported the bid for Mathias Cormann for his OECD gig.
Cormann had spent years constantly lying about the previous Labor government's economic record and the GFC stimulus yet they rewarded him then one of the first things the lying hypocrite said after pulling the job was that the best way to mitigate climate change was a price on CO2 pollution, exactly what Labor brought in, Cormann lied about and then with his party voted to drop the scheme.
I decided that if Labor couldn't be bothered standing up for their own reputation then why should I do it. If Labor thinks it is acceptable for so many lies to be told about them then I don't support that policy. They also gave the Coalition a 'get out of jail free' card by allowing them to draft legislation for NACC when if they had drafted it with the cross benches, the Coalition would have been toast for all their dodgy schemes and contracts, especially Dutton. Now instead of cleaning up the corruption that is part and parcel of right wing politics we have Dutton level pegging in the polls.