Andrew Barr, long-serving ACT Chief Minister is perfectly right in saying that it is not Labor's fault that Labor has been in power for such a long time. Canberra voters have consistently returned Labor for more than two decades. Usually by comfortable margins. That has not been because of any unfair electoral advantage. It has been because his main opponents, the Liberals, have until now seemed determined to lose.
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The ACT has repeatedly shown itself to be moderate, tolerant and liberal, particularly on social policies. It was the only state or territory to vote "Yes" for the Aboriginal Voice to Parliament. Its voters were heavily for same sex marriage. When the ACT legislature adopted liberal drug laws, it caused some minority ructions but that one interest group most openly and loudly resisting - the ACT side of the AFP - was more a signal about how police are out of touch with community feeling rather than the other way around.
ACT citizens are, on average, the best educated, and, on average, the best paid in the nation. A high proportion of its citizens - higher than anywhere else in Australia - wants more positive action on climate change. They want strong environmental protections. Most have favoured voluntary assisted dying legislation, and the entrenchment of abortion rights in ACT law. That the leaders of significant religious groups have been strongly against such so-called "woke" policies, and implied all manner of political revenge can be counted with the observation, against Catholic bishops for example, that Canberra's (or Australia's) Catholics are no less likely to use contraception, or have abortions than any other group of Australians.
That the politics are humane, or moderate, or in line with a modern rights-focused anti-discrimination approach is no proof that they are right. But it is almost impossible to deny that the laws in question are in line with Canberra majority opinion. Labor is alongside the majority and has usually played a major part in putting the laws on the statute book. So have Green members of the government. By contrast, many Liberals have been unenthusiastic, and some of the more conservative ones sometimes give the impression that they wanted to get elected to the Assembly just so as to throw such legislation out.
Canberra people are not greatly given to sectarianism these days (the contrary was true 70 years ago). The Liberal party is as heavily factionised as the Labor party, and the relative influence of the hard-line social conservatives and the more moderate groups waxes and wanes. The Liberal leader, Elizabeth Lee, is progressive in her general outlook, and a narrow majority of the present Liberal representatives support her approach. But others don't and do not hesitate to promote their own policy agendas, nor to snipe at and undermine her. Some of these tensions have flared up in embarrassing incidents during the campaign itself, leaving Lee open to the charge that her party is divided, and that many in it are disloyal to her.
Liberals have governed in the ACT. Kate Carnell and Gary Humphries were popular chief ministers, able to weave together coalitions of anti-Labor members to keep Labor from power. They wanted power and had policies designed to attract support. Their ideas of priorities in government, and of ideal economic policy, differed from Labor's. But neither Labor nor the Liberals were so far from the mainstream of Australian politics that the policy or philosophical differences were fundamental or profound. The........