What gains has the freedom movement made politically in 2022?

As a Melburnian who witnessed both the enormous 'freedom' rallies in front of Parliament House, Melbourne, in November 2021, and also the follow-up 'Convoy to Canberra' rallies at our nation's Capital in February 2022, I would like to investigate what impact the freedom movement might have made, and what gains it may have achieved politically. For on the streets, it appeared to be a huge movement, with potential to impact the upcoming federal and state elections of 2022.

In particular, this article will view the impact of this movement through an assessment of upper house voting in the recent Victorian state election.

A people movement is birthed

After the second successive year of heavily restrictive COVID lockdowns in Melbourne began to ease in the Spring of 2021, the discontent against government overreach became evident, as growing numbers of protesters converged on Melbourne's CBD. Regular Saturday rallies during November 2021 were being measured in the tens of thousands. The rallies peaked with the 'Worldwide Freedom Rally' on 20 November 2021, beginning in front of Parliament House, and then proceeding towards the Flagstaff Gardens for the main speeches.

Estimates of the crowd were upwards of 200,000, although the ABC only reported 'thousands'. Underreporting and bias against the rallies by the mainstream media was a feature of all anti-lockdown protests dating back to early 2020. Yet video footage taken by ordinary citizens with their telephones, as well as by alternative media abound. So these days it's becoming harder for mainstream media to hide the truth. The possibility that there were 200,000+ protestors in the CBD on that day can be evidenced in this video, uploaded to YouTube by True Arrow, Hundreds of thousands march in Melbourne

Even without an exact figure, it's hard to doubt that this was the largest ever single political gathering in Australia, larger than the Vietnam moratorium protests of May 1970, estimated to be perhaps 70,000 in Spring St, Melbourne. The 'Freedom Rally' of 20 November 2021 could even claim to be one of the largest single-day gathering of people of any description in Australia's history, if also one of the most underreported.

As feelings of outrage grew against mandated vaccinations on Australian citizens, the focus of the protests switched to Canberra. The 'Convoy to Canberra' protests of February 2022 were easily the largest political protests in Canberra's history. Not only for size, but also for their organic nature, what happened was unprecedented. It was uncanny how so many people from all over mainland Australia, including myself, at the drop of a hat without any organisation, impulsively just got in the cars and drove to Canberra.

These protests were partly inspired by the trucker protests in Canada. Canadian truckers, angry at being compelled to take mRNA or other experimental injections, convoyed in from across their vast nation to their Capital buildings in Ottawa. The truckers were seen as leading the fightback against Trudeau-style attacks on bodily autonomy and personal freedoms, and had influence on several countries around the world, not least Australia and New Zealand, where freedom activists also gathered outside their Parliament buildings in both Canberra and Wellington. For evidence of the huge numbers to arrive in Canberra, the largest protest being on Saturday, 12 February 2022, see this video uploaded to YouTube, Thousands converge on Canberra to stand for medical freedom.

In the week that followed, the ABC aired a summary of the events in Canberra on Leigh Sales' 7:30 Report. The 7:30 Reportwould admit that the series of ongoing protests in Canberra was clear evidence that there were many from all cross-sections of Australia who felt 'genuinely aggrieved by pandemic restrictions and vaccine mandates'. And while this 7:30 Reportdidn't commit to an estimate for the numbers present, simply quoting 'more than 10,000', the reporter did ask a very pertinent question with regard to how big and significant this growing anti-government sentiment really was. That is, could the movement sustain this momentum in the leadup to the coming federal election in May?

In which political parties do they trust?

It was clear that the freedom movement had felt betrayed by both major political parties, which were seen as colluding with each other and the mainstream media to create a single public narrative. Only one line of thinking was permitted in polite conversation: fear COVID, and fear each other. The prescription was for cold isolation, and the public was then directed through an intense media campaign towards faith in a trial vaccine program as the only solution.

The voices in Parliament who would dare to challenge the narrative and lend any support to the concerns of protesters were few, but they were clear. Federally, there were Senators Gerard Rennick, Alex Antic, and Matt Canavan from the Liberal/National coalition, who showed that the Coalition were allowing for some amount of independent thought on the issue. However, to be truly able to speak his mind freely, lower house MP, Craig Kelly left the Liberal party to become the main spokesperson for the United Australia Party.

In Victoria, it was upper house MP from the Liberal Democrats, David Limbrick, who became the Parliament's de facto opposition leader against Premier Dan Andrews' seeming willingness to keep the populace in a permanent state of emergency, or locked out of its workplace if it wasn't willing to submit to the experiment. While certain other MPs had also consistently voted against Andrews' draconian lockdown measures, especially those from the minor parties, such as Sustainable Australia, and Derryn Hinch's Justice Party, or against Andrews' new ongoing emergency powers, such as Labor outcast, Adem Somyrek, who later became a lead candidate for the Democratic Labour Party.

Therefore, hope arose for the freedom movement to give their electoral support to what became termed the 'freedom friendly' minor parties. Before the May 2022 federal election, grassroot support and party membership grew rapidly from amongst freedom advocates towards parties such as UAP, One Nation, and Liberal Democrats. Recognising the need to join forces and consolidate their vote, candidates from these smaller parties were often campaigning together, and educating their supporters to exchange each other's preference votes to support the other like-minded smaller parties. And with some limited success, as these preference votes shared were necessary to allow UAP candidate Ralph Babet to be elected to the Senate from Victoria.

For the approaching November Victorian election, new political parties intent on limiting government intrusion into our daily lives and businesses were formed, such as the Freedom Party, the Victorians party, and Restore Democracy Sack Dan Andrews party, while others such as the DLP and Family First were rejuvenated. The main strategy for these minor parties was to focus on winning upper house seats. While acknowledging that it would be starkly impossible for any of the smaller parties to win government in the lower house, aiming to win enough seats to gain the balance of power in the upper house could be more feasible, and a way of countering the totalitarian impulses or excesses of any power-crazed Premier.

However, the issue of sharing preference votes became a heated controversy amongst these smaller parties, despite their philosophical similarities. Victoria's GVT preferencing system for one-above-the-line votes enables parties to make strict and advantageous deals with other parties. In his consultative role, the 'preference whisperer' Glenn Druery was seen to be overseeing a syndicate of smaller parties, assisting them in making preference deals amongst each other.

However during the COVID period, while some of these smaller parties that were aligned with Druery had voted consistently against lockdowns, such as the LDP and Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party, others in Druery's group had supported Andrews' emergency powers extensions, such as Animal Justice Party and Transport Matters Party. Therefore, some 'freedom' parties outside of the syndicate saw these preference deals as collusion with the enemy and betrayal. Whereas the 'freedom' parties within the syndicate saw this strategy as a necessary tactic in combatting major party dominance.

The outcome from the Victorian state election

I find it useful here to focus on the results of upper house voting alone as giving the best representation of voter intensions. For every Victorian has the opportunity to select from all of the parties in upper house voting, whereas the smaller parties often did not field candidates in every lower house district. Also, the upper house is more likely to give a more proportional representation of seats won compared to a percentage of first-preference votes.

Here are the resultsfor the 2022 Victorian Legislative Council (the upper house), totalling 40 seats, showing a percentage of votes each party received across the state, and the number of seats won.

(The percentage figures below have been rounded for the sake of simplicity.)

Labor: 33% of the vote, 15 seats

Liberal/National: 30% of the vote, 14 seats

Freedom friendly: 15% of the vote, 4 seats

I have grouped these eight parties together, loosely defined as the 'freedom friendly' parties. Included in this grouping are: Labour DLP 3.5%, Liberal Democrats 2.5%, Shooters & Fishers 2%, One Nation 2% (each winning one seat,) Family First 2%, Freedom Party 1%, Sack Dan Andrews 1%, & UAP 1%.

The Greens: 10% of the vote, 4 seats

Legalise Cannabis: 4% of the vote, 2 seats

Animal Justice: 1.5% of the vote, 1 seat

Others: 6.5% of the vote.

These 'Others' include Derryn Hinch's Justice Party 1.5%, Socialists 1.5%, Reason Party 1.25%. etc.

Comparing percentages of the vote to the previous 2018 election upper house voting,

The eight 'freedom friendly' parties increased 7%

Legalise Cannabis increased 4%

The Greens increased 1%

Liberal/National stayed the same

Animal Justice dropped 1%

Derryn Hinch dropped 2%

Labor dropped 6%

My conclusions for the freedom movement concerning the 2022 Victorian state election:

The 'freedom friendly' parties made some good gains, with a notable 7% increase in the vote among this collective group. This is reflective of the passion and energy we saw among those who took to the streets last summer, and they have made some noticeable change in the state's voting pattern.

Previously indifferent voters and neutrals, these new freedom enthusiasts who were suddenly handed a reason to enter the political domain during the COVID era, learned a lot about politics last year. One thing they've learned is that things won't change overnight. A ship turns slowly. Daniel Andrews is still here, as are most of the Labor Premiers around the country, and the goal of winning the balance of power in Victoria's upper house was not achieved. With the new prominence of the Legalise Cannabis Party, Labor won't have it all their way, but it will still likely be able to control both houses after negotiations with The Greens and Legalise Cannabis.

There are world trends. We've seen those with a taste for tyranny rise in the form of Trudeau in Canada, Ardern in NZ, McGowan in the West, Gunner in the NT, along with Andrews (100 press conferences in 100 days) and others. We can but wonder or debate why voters in Western democracies are proving so satisfied and compliant with the penchant towards autocratic rule.

There are many new faces to the Victorian upper house. Legalise Cannabis is new. Renee Heath's election in Eastern Victoria sent waves of contention through her own Liberal Party, even before the election day. Pauline Hanson's One Nation won a seat for the first time ever in Victoria.

David Limbrick of the LDP, was re-elected after his first term in office as genuine reward for leading the challenge against the Premier's excessive decrees, even once being arrested by police along with 400 others simply for being found present at the anti-lockdown rally in front of Parliament on November 3, 2020.

Family First Party, traditionally known as having a Christian supporter base, who was only reregistered as a political party by the VEC less than two months before the November election, won a few percent of the vote in many places. And even if it did not win a seat, some of their preferences helped get other conservative voices into Parliament, such as the DLP candidate.

By strict proportionality of seats won compared to first-preference votes, some parties have more seats than they deserve, some have less, and some of this relates to preferences. If 'freedom friendly' parties were more consolidated or coordinated with their vote preferencing, it might have been possible for them to win perhaps a few more seats.

For the 'preference whisperer', Glenn Druery, the group of minor parties under his umbrella collectively dropped from 8.75% of the upper house vote down to 5.6% compared to the 2018 election, with their collective ascendancy on the crossbench being broken, dropping from 9 seats down to just 3. Yet, by helping to win those 3 seats (Shooters & Fishers, Liberal Democrats, & Animal Justice,) Druery continues to show that his method of preference dealing can be effective, since by percentage of votes compared to seats, it is still punching above its weight.

So there is clear evidence of political green shoots after COVID. Enough to bring the freedom movement some impetus going into the future.