The three-body problem of Australian politics
Our emerging system of deliberative government and the resistance it is likely to meet
Australia already has a multi-party system, though most political discussion carries on as if the choice were still between Labor and the Coalition. It’s time that changed. We are heading towards a federal election that will be unlike any previous election, and to maximise its democratic potential, we need to think about how multi-party power might work. Our own three-body problem, if you like.1
To make the point, let’s begin by considering what happened at the 2022 federal election.
Not only were six community independents elected in previously safe Liberal seats, the Greens picked up more seats than they have ever had, winning them from the Liberals and Labor, mainly in Queensland. Well-established crossbenchers like Andrew Wilkie and Rebecca Sharkie consolidated their position, while Labor came a buster when independent Dai Lei cut the strings from the parachute Labor had attached to their “star” candidate Kristina Keneally and won the “safe” Labor seat of Fowler. The crossbench retained the balance of power in the Senate.
Overall, Labor’s primary vote was down to 32.58%, “the lowest since the 1930s, and a 0.8 percent swing against Labor since the 2019 election that they lost.” The Liberals mustered a mere 23.89% for themselves, 35.70% when you add in their Coalition partners. What’s more, as the Australian Electoral Study reported, the “proportion of voters that always vote the same way [was] at a record low (37 percent).”
This is all evidence of voters crying out for change, no longer rusted on. It makes a mockery of the idea that we have two-party system and that the “natural” order should be majority government of either Labor or the Coalition.
What the 2022 result made clear—and it had been building for a while—is that if you give people a viable alternative candidate, someone who arises from the community itself, people are more than willing to vote for that person. And while the community independents turned dissatisfaction with Labor and the Coalition into a positive engagement with the political process in many electorates, there was also a level of disenchantment present more generally that couldn’t find candidates to attach to, so that we recorded the lowest level of participation since 1922, before we had compulsory voting: only 89.82% of us showed up to cast a vote.
Going into the next election, which has to be held before 27 September 2025, all of this means that one of the growing fault lines in Australian politics will be between those who take the Australian electorate’s obvious desire for a more diverse and deliberative parliament seriously, and those who want to resist this organic change to entrench the so-called two-party system.
It is no coincidence that one of the first things the Albanese Government did when they won power in 2022 was to cut funding to the crossbench, reducing their allotment from four staff members to one. It was the first sign of the way Labor—and ultimately the Coalition—might be willing to use the structural advantages that accrue to the major parties under the current system, and we are starting to see a concerted effort by both of them to undermine the possibility of the crossbench holding the balance of power.
The state election in Tasmania—which is reasonably likely to produce a deliberative parliament2—is providing us with a dry run of what to expect at the Federal level. Analyst Ben Raue notes that Labor in Tasmania has been distributing election material to scare people off the idea of any shared power arrangement, and that most of it is deeply misleading.
Of course parties are entitled to make their case for why people should vote for them, but there’s nothing in this document about why a Labor government would be better if people vote for them rather than voting for others. I think it presents a very immature approach to a multi-party political environment that isn’t going to go away in Tasmania.
Other signs that the Labor and the Coalition are looking for ways to ensure their own centrality are the way in which they are looking to reform campaign financing and the recent floating of the idea of fixed four-year terms which appears to have bipartisan support.
Australia’s campaign financing certainly needs reform, but the devil is in the detail, so we need to be careful of changes presented as trying to stop people like Clive Palmer using their wealth to influence elections but that, in fact, just make it harder for independents to compete. The independents are well aware of the potential wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing nature of any such reform, and it is worth reading Kate Cheney’s proposed electoral reform bill to get an idea of the issues at stake and how they might be approached.3
The push for four-year terms, recently raised by Prime Minister Albanese, was also supported by the new head of the Business Council of Australia (BCA), Geoff Culbert. His support goes hand-in-hand with his organisation’s push to set up a number of bodies that take decision-making power away from the parliament and vest it in unelected bodies free of any community oversight. Culbert has said he wants a “carbon transition” body formed that will be “…an independent expert body to work with all stakeholders on a multi-year target that is realistic and achievable.” He also wants “an independent expert, working with all stakeholders, to design a tax system that will meet the needs of generations to come”.
Bernard Keane and Glenn Dyer are right to see the BCA’s interest in such reform as a way of restricting democratic deliberation.
What Culbert is complaining about is the degraded ability of business to influence the rules of the games because of community opposition — opposition to cutting wages, opposition to climate inaction, opposition to company tax cuts and a higher GST, opposition to a whole slate of “reforms” championed by the BCA that transfer wealth and certainty from workers and households to his members.
So, Culbert says, let’s put someone else in charge who can ignore community opposition.
Of course, such “reforms” are at the heart of most neoliberal models of governance and are part of the reason we have an “independent” Reserve Bank, a status that Treasurer Jim Chalmers has sought to entrench.
It all adds up to what is looking like a concerted effort by various incumbents—political and corporate beneficiaries of the systems already in place—to resist the sort of dispersal of power the Australian electorate has been reaching towards for the last few elections. This means that those of us who want to see the current oligopolies undermined in favour of a system of governance genuinely responsive to citizens, not lobbyists, need to be aware of the battle that is already underway
In amongst all this, we need to be careful not to be dragged into distracting arguments but concentrate on leveraging the influence from the balance-of-power the crossbench might receive to enact substantial structural reform.
For instance, you are going to start hearing a lot of specualtion about what policies the crossbench might pursue in the event of minority government, along with endless, breathless speculation about which party such-and-such an independent will support in the event of minority government. And while it will be important to understand how that process might unfold, I am hoping the crossbench will be more ambitious than to settle for some guarantees on a handful of key policies.
I would like to encourage them to consider using any leverage they have to pursue reform of a sort that displaces the logic of the two-party system we have in place now. That system is a democratic zombie, dead but dangerous, still lurching around, and we need to develop new systems that institutionalise the sort of community power that got the independents (and Greens) elected in the first place so that the whole country can benefit from that sort of participation.
High on their list should be some sort of permanent citizens’ body in which voters get to involve themselves in policy deliberations and whose recommendations cannot be ignored by whomever happens to form government on the floor of the House.
I will have more to say about the design of such an institution over the coming months, but the central point to make at this stage is that we must adjust our thinking from the idea that stable government is a by-product of installing a single-party majority government to the reality that stable government inheres in the parties willing to work together to act in the interests of the entire country. As Ben Raue puts it:
I think voters should be considering how potential crossbenchers would decide to act in a hung parliament situation and ask questions on that basis. But they should also hold the major parties to account on how willing they are to work with others and come to a deal for stable government. These arrangements go both ways. And if one party is more able to work with the crossbench they may find themselves in a better position to form government, even if they don’t win as many seats.
He also makes the excellent point that a “Labor majority government would be different to a Labor minority government” and I think we need to recognise the opportunity that insight implies. The forces of the status quo—including the mainstream media—will push back strongly against any notion of minority government, so we have to keep making the case that a strong and stable democracy requires diverse representation, with power taken out of the hands of parties the majority of people no longer support.
The Three-Body Problem in physics and classical mechanics involves predicting the motion of three objects (like planets or stars) as they exert gravitational forces on each other. While we can solve the motion of two objects orbiting each other quite easily (like the Earth and the Moon), adding just one more object to the mix makes the problem unsolvable with a simple formula. This is because the gravitational interactions create a system that is chaotic and sensitive to the initial conditions, meaning a tiny change at the start can lead to vastly different outcomes 1, 2. (References generated by Perplexity AI.)
I am going to try and use terms like “deliberative parliament” to describe a situation in which the crossbench holds the balance of power, rather than inherently negative and disparaging terms like “hung parliament”. It would be nice if the mainstream media followed suit.
To gain a sense of how the incumbents rig the system in their own favour, it is worth reading Climate 200’s submission to Victorian Parliament’s electoral matters inquiry, and also this report from the Australia Institute.
"And if one party is more able to work with the crossbench they may find themselves in a better position to form government, even if they don’t win as many seats."
Julia Gillard achieved exactly that in 2010, when she got the Greens onside by promising a carbon tax, She also wooed two independent former Coalition MPs to vote against their former parties - and the then Opposition leader Tony Abbott - and support hers. They did this primarily to ensure proper broadband services to regional areas. Well one of them managed to get that; the other was lost in the rush to destroy FTTP and implement Turnbull's 'mess' after the following election. I'm hoping Albo will do the same in 2025. And that climate will be the main clincher, finally forcing Labor to act to reduce emissions.
Shaun Carney in 9Enterainment opining today is below. Apart from confusing cause and effect, it's very much the insider view that we auspol journos know what voters *really* want. Spare me the insidersplaining, and election not even scheduled.
"I suspect most voters would find a minority government difficult to accept. Yes, there’s an irony here, given that the people get the parliament they have elected. But our highly combative political culture is not conducive to governments made up of shifting multi-party alliances in the style of European and Scandinavian democracies."