SYDNEY — Capping off a turbulent decade in Australian federal politics and the longest election in 50 years, the center-right Liberal-National Coalition has clinched power.
Though vote-counting continues, returning Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s victory is certain.
But there’s a bigger story from the vote Down Under with resonance elsewhere in the political world: the strong showing by several populist parties led by Mad Max-style candidates who promise to disrupt the mainstream. That includes the resurgence of Pauline Hanson’s One Nation, a far-right, anti-immigrant party that campaigned on a platform echoing U.S. Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump’s Muslim migration ban, and the impressive debut of the populist Nick Xenophon Team.
For Australia, a key question remains unanswered: What does the rise of populist, right-wing and anti-trade parties mean for its global relationships? The rest of the world, meanwhile, should ask whether the results are a sign of more upheaval to come.
Here are five political lessons from the Australian election.
1. Coalition will rule, but tail could wag dog
On Monday, the Coalition (almost certainly) secured Capricornia, the 76th and final seat it needed to form a majority in the 150-seat House of Representatives, where Australia’s federal government is formed.
Even if it picks up another seat, as it predicts it will, the victory is far from comprehensive.
Unlike Labor, which forces MPs to vote with the party or risk expulsion, Liberal parliamentarians have the right to a free vote. The government is now perpetually one or two rogue MPs away from dead-on-arrival legislation. That means it may find itself pandering to independents to keep them on-side on controversial bills — a predicament being faced increasingly by fragile coalition governments in several countries.
2. The populist surge is everywhere
In Australia, support for the two major parties tends to be over 80 percent of the vote, higher than in similar countries like New Zealand, the U.K. and Canada. It is likely this election result will follow the trend.
Despite that, a host of populists are likely to pick up seats in Australia’s Senate, which has the power to block any bill introduced by the House of Representatives.
While the final numbers are still uncertain, the Coalition is projected to win roughly 30 of the Senate’s 76 seats, Labor 26 and the Greens nine. The Nick Xenophon Team and Pauline Hanson’s One Nation will likely take three each. Other minor parties led by Jacqui Lambie and Derryn Hinch will pick up one each. Up to five seats are yet to be determined.
Australia’s Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull declares victory for the ruling conservatives at a press conference in Sydney on July 10, 2016 | Peter Parks/AFP via Getty Images
The Coalition will need at least 39 votes to pass legislation — meaning it will need to secure additional support from minor parties, who will hold the balance of power in the Senate.
Hanson, a former MP, fish-and-chip shop owner and “Dancing with the Stars” contestant, is Australia’s answer to Trump. Hanson — who founded the One Nation Party in 1997, split from it acrimoniously in 2002, then rejoined in 2013 — wants to ban new mosques, Muslim immigration and halal certification, and to have surveillance cameras installed in all mosques and Islamic schools. Prior to the election, the party and its flame-haired founder were widely dismissed as political has-beens. Some insiders believe Hanson could win as many as five Senate seats.
While Turnbull said Hanson and her ilk weren’t welcome in Canberra before the election, he will most certainly be forced to deal with them now, whether he likes it or not.
Nick Xenophon, a firebrand populist and formerly independent senator from South Australia, is also making a victorious showing with his newly formed, eponymous party, whose name sounds more suited to motor racing than politics. In addition to its three senators, Nick Xenophon Team (NXT) has secured one seat in the House of Representatives.
On election night, Xenophon promised during an interview with ABC news that his party would be “pesky and persistent.”
Derryn Hinch, a radio shock-jock, campaigned on a platform of establishing a national public register of convicted sex offenders and looks assured a Senate spot.
Then there’s the Jacqui Lambie Network, headed by the woman herself. Lambie, a former army corporal and independent senator who once said during a radio interview that her idea of a perfect man was one with “heaps of cash” and “a package between their legs,” ran on an anti-Sharia law platform, among others. She will be her party’s sole senator.
Among political pundits, there’s no doubt that support for Australia’s populists came from the same sort of disaffected electorate that delivered victory to Brexiteers in the U.K.’s EU referendum and elevated the far-right and populists in the U.S., Austria, France, Hungary and Poland.
Unlike some of those countries, Australia is still governed mostly from the center. In large part, that’s due to its compulsory voting system, which ensures a high rate of participation and usually keeps flash-in-the-pan populists at bay. Admittedly, there have been some notable exceptions, most recently when controversial Australian mining magnate Clive Palmer founded the Palmer United Party and managed to gain 5.5 percent of the vote in the 2013 election.
With Hanson, Xenophon, Lambie and their ilk, along with the Greens, holding the balance of power in this Senate, the political center will continue to be disrupted.
The crossbenchers will be able to hold the government to ransom on issues such as migration (One Nation) and trade (One Nation, NXT, Lambie), in exchange for green-lighting government bills.
3. Trade agreements are at risk
The surge in support for NXT and One Nation, as well as the return of Lambie and the Greens, has another potential global effect, by threatening free trade agreements such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP).
Australia has signed the TPP, but hasn’t ratified it yet. That task is now looking increasingly daunting.
A spokesperson told The Australian Hanson “has expressed strong concerns over past and present trade agreements, and will strongly defend Australia’s manufacturing and jobs before the interest of other nations.”
Internal struggles ousted two sitting prime ministers during Labor’s stint in power from 2007 to 2013.
Xenophon campaigned on a platform of a free trade overhaul. He doesn’t want Australia to sign up to the WTO procurement agreement, which will allow foreign companies to compete for government procurement, and wants a “hard-headed” assessment of the TPP. Xenophon also wants to reduce the number of Australian shipbuilding jobs lost to Spain through outsourcing.
The Greens and Jacqui Lambie are also known to be hostile to free trade agreements.
The TPP’s passage through the Senate, in other words, will be far from smooth sailing. Unless it wants to risk holding another round of elections — which is highly unlikely — there won’t be much the Coalition will be able to do about it.
4. The Labor loss was really a win
When Labor leader Bill Shorten conceded his party couldn’t form a government on Sunday, he didn’t sound like a man defeated. That’s because while the center-left party can’t muster the support needed to govern, it has made a remarkable turnaround since the 2013 election, when it suffered a heavy voter backlash and lost 17 seats in the House of Representatives, winning just 55 to the Coalition’s 90.
Labor’s resurrection — the party will almost certainly win 67 seats, with a further two likely — sees it put a turbulent period of leadership instability behind it, and may give hope to the U.K.’s Labour Party.
Internal struggles ousted two sitting prime ministers during Labor’s stint in power from 2007 to 2013. Kevin Rudd lost his job at the helm of the party and the country in 2010, defeated by his deputy Julia Gillard, before he regained it in a counter-coup in 2013.
While Labor’s disunity handed the Coalition ample ammunition during the previous election campaign, helping steer it to a thumping victory, the Liberals’ own dethroning of a sitting prime minister, Tony Abbott, via a Turnbull-led coup last year, meant an end to that line of attack.
“I am proud that Labor is back,” Shorten said in his concession speech. “I am proud that Labor is united. I’m proud that Labor has found its voice in this election.”
The Coalition, for its part, acknowledges the 2013 glory days are gone.
“We have returned to normal conditions,” said Julie Bishop, the deputy Liberals leader, on election night, July 2. “Federal elections tend to be close. Now we’ve returned to a more normal pattern.”
5. All politics is still local
The 2016 election proved yet again the effectiveness of pork barrel politics, even in uncertain economic times.
Barnaby Joyce, Australia’s deputy prime minister, saw off a challenge from an independent after promising to move an entire government department from Australia’s capital, Canberra, to the regional town of Armidale, in his electorate.
In the small state of Tasmania, host to three battleground seats, both Labor and the Coalition promised $150 million (€102 million) in funds for the University of Tasmania to build new campuses.
And never have so many multi-million-dollar sports stadiums been promised to so many regional areas.
The election pork-barreling was all the more stark given a fall in commodities prices and an economic downturn have seen both sides of politics claiming Australia is facing a budget emergency.
The moral of the story: Electoral loyalty may not be worth much anymore, but it always pays to live in a marginal seat.