Politics in the 21st century: Labor first, Liberals last

Australia now has a Labor government in every state and territory, so there is no doubt that the conservatives are struggling to maintain relevance in modern day Australia.

The graph below shows just how things have changed over the past 30 years. It charts the percentage of combined seats held by the parties in all state, territory and federal executive chambers.

The parties were about neck-and-neck through to the end of the 80s, then in the 90s the conservatives started to move ahead as they dominated governments around Australia. 1996 was the conservatives’ high moment when they held 60 per cent of all seats in the country. But look what follows: it's all down hill from 1996 to 2007, by which time the position is reversed - 60 per cent of the seats in Australia are now Labor.

Tasmania presents a perfect illustration of the Australian centre-left triumph. The following table shows the Tasmanian primary and two-party preferred votes at the four federal elections held in the past ten years.

Tasmanian House of Representative (Federal) Vote Percentages

Except for 2004 when Labor’s Mark Latham was hardly Mr Popular in Tasmania, the Liberal vote has not gone past 38 per cent. Granted, the Labor primary vote declined, from 48.9 percent in 1998 to 42.8 percent at the last election, but the telling statistic is the two-party preferred vote. This has held steady for Labor in the mid to high 50s, while the Liberals languish in the low 40s.

Australian federal elections are won on preference distributions, not primary votes, and in Tasmania Labor has maintained about a 13 percentage point differential over the Liberals, helped by Green voters preferencing Labor.

The only possible conclusion to draw is that the 2007 federal election was a triumph for the ALP: it won back Bass and Braddon to return all five seats to Labor; it increased its two-party vote by more than two percentage points from the 2004 result; it recorded (bar the ACT) the highest Labor vote of all states and territories in the country - how much more could it do?

If anything, the state elections over the same time period are even better for Labor. The following table shows the primary votes at the three elections held since 1998.

Tasmanian House of Assembly (State) Vote Percentages

The Liberal low point was 2002 when leader Bob Cheek could scarcely get over a quarter of the votes. In 2006 Rene Hidding did better with 32 per cent, but Labor still romped it in by capturing 50 per cent of the voting public.

Putting ten years’ worth of federal and state elections together results in an unavoidable conclusion: in this new century, Tasmanians have largely rejected the Liberal party. Since 1998 scarcely more than a third of voters have marked their ballot paper with a Liberal candidate on top, while Labor has consistently attracted close to half.

There has been a steady rise in the Green vote at both state and federal levels (partly attributable to the demise of the Democrats) but Green voters still, and will always, preference Labor over Liberal by about 4:1; the maxim that “a vote for the Greens is a vote for Labor” still holds.

Just how good a decade it has been for Labor and how bad for the Liberals is graphically illustrated by a look at the number of seats each party holds.

The graph shows the percentage of seats held by the parties in Tasmania at the end of each year since 1999. In that time there has been a total of 57 seats available to Tasmanian politicians: 25 in the House of Assembly; 15 in the Legislative Council; five in the House of Representatives; and 12 in the Senate.

It can be seen that in the past decade Labor has consistently captured about twice as many seats as the Liberals.

The Greens have been lumped in with the independents, not because tracking their seat share is not valid (the Greens have gone from two seats in 1999 to six in 2007), but rather to illustrate how the Liberals, over the decade, have slipped in comparison.

The sobering truth is that, as 2008 dawns, the order of seats held in Tasmania is Labor first, “others” second, Liberals last.

A long last.

Elections aren’t due in Tasmania until 2010, when both federal and state come around again. That means more than two full years for the Liberals to recuperate and make some headway into Labor’s electoral supremacy.

One problem in holding so few seats is the corresponding reduction in resources. Seats mean money in terms of staff and electoral presence, so the Liberals find themselves in something of a catch-22: fewer seats, means less resources, which makes it harder to hold the seats you have, which means you lose more seats, and so on. It is a case of diminishing returns.

It is a reasonably fair political fight in the north with 13 Labor to the Liberal's eight - at least enough for a contest. But look at the south: 15 Labor to the Liberal's four. That's right, just four Liberals, state and federal combined, stationed south of Oatlands.

Tasmanian Federal and State Members - Electoral Offices 2008
* Cartyna Bilyk does not take up office until the new Senate is sworn in 1 July 2008

So it is no wonder the Liberals faired so badly in the south at recent state elections. Only one state member in each of Denison and Franklin, compared to Labor's three in each. No federal House of Reps and just two Senators. At every election Labor has the resources to put behind their candidate; resources the Liberals cannot match.

If that looks bad enough for the Liberals, it gets worse. Labor have the benefit of incumbency at both state and federal level. For example, Eric Abetz (I am told) has gone from 14 staff as a federal minister, to four as an opposition Senator.

I don't know how many staff the 15 southern Labor members would have in total - no one outside the party would - but a conservative estimate must be at least a 100 souls. The four Liberals would be lucky to muster, say, 16 between them.

Now, that's not a fair fight. But who says it should be?

We all know that political favour is cyclic and that the Liberals will, one day, come back to prominence. Those that have pronounced, with the defeat of John Howard, the end of the conservative politics in Australia are being far too premature.

Australian needs a viable conservative alternative at the ballot box to allow our Westminster system of government to operate successfully. Dominance by one political party cannot be good for democracy. It is certainly not good for Tasmania.