Although it was not the main topic in the Australian election—as it never is—climate change was the dominant policy issue, and all of the winners—Labor, the Greens (who added two seats to their lower house majority), and the teal independents—campaigned for more aggressive action and aggressive goals.
The election was successful for climate action for the first time in a long time. Undoubtedly, it included the “black summer’s” lasting legacy. However, we must not minimize the significance of the impact of the teal independents’ emergence and the seismic shift in Australian politics that it signifies played in this situation.
Anthony Albanese’s Labor Party administration has vowed to cut emissions by 43% by 2030 compared to 2005 levels. One of the co-authors of this article, Malcolm Turnbull, pledged to a target of 26-28% in Paris in 2015 while serving as prime minister, with the hope that the objective will be raised. Australia’s strongest friends, including the US and the UK, were enraged by his successor Scott Morrison’s failure to do so at the 2020 Glasgow COP.
Although it is difficult to imagine now, once both major parties were in favour of creating an emissions trading program (ETS). John Howard, the former prime minister, first suggested it in 2006, and Malcolm Turnbull, then the environment minister, later that year introduced the first piece of legislation to establish it.
An ETS was not one of the issues that divided Howard and Labor leader Kevin Rudd during the 2007 election.
Rudd kept the same group of government employees who had been working on the ETS under Howard after the election, and they came up with what Rudd called a carbon pollution reduction system (CPRS).
Turnbull lost the leadership to Tony Abbott in a party room coup, however, as a result of a growing right-wing insurgency supported by the coal industry and the Murdoch media. Abbott then launched a shamefully dishonest but highly successful campaign against the CPRS.
After 13 years and five prime ministers, any type of ETS is now politically fraught, and Labor’s climate policy makes no mention of it.
Morrison ran a more aggressive campaign than ever before during the past election to portray Labor’s modest 2030 ambitions as risky economy wreckers. He had the support of the Murdoch media.
You would miss the actual story if you thought that the election was about replacing a climate-lagged government with one that took a more activist stance.
Yes, Labor won the election, and now that we have a new prime minister, Australia, the only developed nation that did not raise its 2030 target at Glasgow, will be able to rejoin the global effort to reduce emissions with confidence.
Gaining support of majority of the members of the House of Representatives or its equivalent is necessary to form a majority administration under a parliamentary system like that of Australia. Therefore, it is usual for a political party to have some electorates where its members have enormous majorities and others where the majorities are small – only a few per cent. These marginal seats determine whether government is gained or lost; they can go down one election and come back up the next.
In contrast, the “teal” independents—so named for the colour of their campaign livery—were successful in capturing six of the Liberal Party’s safest seats in the most recent election, including Turnbull’s former riding of Wentworth, which he had previously held with a 67% majority.
This meant that nine of the safest, wealthiest seats held by the Liberal party were now held by independents, all of whom were women, who had persuaded thousands of lifelong Liberal voters to switch parties. Three additional seats were won in earlier elections.
Once an independent wins a seat in Australia, they are typically exceedingly challenging to unseat.
What implications does this have for the contentious climate policy discussion in the world’s largest producer of carbon dioxide, the United States?
How, for instance, did Australia defeat the Murdoch climate disinformation machine that has been so successful in waging years-long war against US climate policy? Fox News and Wall Street Journal editorial pages, two Murdoch publications, are largely responsible for the asymmetric polarization of the American political right that currently stands as such a severe barrier to effective climate action.
Murdoch controls the Australian media with considerably more sway. However, the Australian electoral system was resistant to Murdoch’s influence due to a number of factors. There are no gerrymanders since an impartial election commission determines the boundaries of parliamentary districts, as it has done for decades. Voting is required, and participation rates are consistently considerably above 90%.
Both policy objectives are admirable, but in the US, they face an uphill battle that will probably be bitterly fought along red-state/blue-state divides.
However, the final and most significant point is that Australia uses ranked-choice voting, in which voters must put a number next to each candidate’s name to indicate the order in which they are chosen. Only two US states now have ranked choice voting laws in place, and curiously enough, neither of them is a blue state. Instead, Maine and Alaska are deep red states.
This may help to explain why Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins, the two Republican senators from those states, are more centrist than the majority of their Trump-dominated caucus.
With levels of bipartisan support that are unprecedented in today’s hyperpartisan American politics, an increasing number of cities and municipalities have adopted ranked choice. And 29 states are now debating whether to put it into effect.
In Australia, teal independents were standing against incumbent Liberals, the majority of whom would typically receive a first-preference vote of 50% or more. To the contrary, if they could capture a sizable portion of that and reduce the incumbent’s primary vote to 40% or less, and if they placed second, they would likely prevail thanks to Labor and Green preferences. And this is essentially what took place.
Therefore, a broad-based political party was taken over by the political right and forced to take positions that did not align with the ideals of many of its steadfast supporters on a number of issues, particularly the environment. However, because preferential voting is so flexible, an independent candidate might bridge the gap and appeal to voters’ preferences for personalities and policy positions.
Murdoch was defeated by popular power. It might succeed in the US.
