NSW election result opens way for a radically centrist approach

The first is the evident voter disinterest in the political fringe. If ever fringe candidates were going to do well, the NSW election was their opportunity. The social demographic centre of Australia - suburban rather than inner city, conventional in social outlook rather than bohemian, family-oriented without religious dogma, self-reliant in lifestyle without intolerance – is clearly the only social space in which a new political formation aiming to fill the vacuum can situate itself.

It's clear, too, from the NSW results, that the social centre in Australia is aligned with a policy centre that eschews fringe causes and vested interests. When the Greens cannot even take Marrickville and Balmain, it is apparent that even in these electorates there is a kind of residual allegiance to the public interest that checks (and in these cases overrides) the pull of sectional cultures or differentiated localities.

But it is in ideology that the centre in Australian politics is in most urgent need of expression. The Labor machine in NSW (as in the rest of the country) has no ideology other than manipulation of the public sector and its resources for outcomes that fit the interests of the machine at any moment in time. There is nothing else. For NSW voters, the state of public services require comprehensive reform so that they might at long last serve the public. This hope for systemic public services reform was not going to be met by the incumbent machine, the localized Independents, or the Greens. It might perhaps be met by the Liberals, if they sat down and thought about it seriously, but there is no guarantee of that.

The only ideology on offer in Australia that confronts the parlous state of public services is the thinking and innovation generated by Third Way activists Noel Pearson, Peter Botsman, and, in his early pre-leadership period, Mark Latham. Their work constitutes a Radical Centre in policy reform, reworking government and markets to strengthen society, expand citizen and consumer choices, and fortify rather than undermine the formation of social capital and communities. It is radical because of its disdain for failed ideological projects of both Left and Right, and centrist because of its orientation towards marrying public investments with market mechanisms to enhance citizen and family self-determination.

Everyone knows that a new political configuration is needed in Australia to fill the political vacuum. The question is how it can be done. A great deal of public debate is needed about the process of political renewal. We can begin, though, by saying to the political machines in our country, as we can now say of the NSW Labor Machine: "The Emperor has no clothes".