There is a palpable sense that we might be on the cusp of a serious political fracture |
Among the many conceits of political discourse are the words used to explain outcomes as if they are temporary aberrations.
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Familiar terms like "pendulum", "two-party preferred" and "swing", capture the drama of election night, but they also carry within them an underlying sense of continuity.
The electoral cycle is a self-reinforcing concept in which new phenomena are shoe-horned into a longer-run pattern that emphasises stability.
Could the pendulum swing too far to the right, or could shrillness and volatility become the norm? It is never asked.
We assume instead that Australian voters coalesce in the rational middle ground, and will return there after this little tantrum.
But what if the longer-term pattern has already ended? Would we know what to look for and how to weigh the evidence in real time? Or would we stay trapped in the arrogant assumption that our "two-party system" in which the major parties call themselves "institutions", will always prevail?
The idea that normal transmission will be resumed shortly is seductive, yet modern Australian history has many examples of political parties which burned bright for a while but then just burned out.
Recall the United Australia Party, or more recently the hyper-rationalist Australian Democrats which went from influential to unsubstantial.
The major parties are barely major if measured in first-preference vote-share.
There is a palpable sense that Australia might be on the cusp of a serious political fracture.
The starkest signs are showing up most conclusively on the political right - accelerated, bizarrely, by the dogmatic refusal of the Liberal Party to embrace what its educated urban base wants: fiscal discipline balanced by enlightened social and environmental liberalism.
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