Vote early, but not often! The tallyboards are about to light up!

This evening at midnight a quirky feature of Australia’s electoral system comes into effect. A 48 hour ‘media blackout’ is enacted. This means that no election advertising material is permitted to be broadcast either on radio or television.  However, neither social media advertisements nor newspaper political material are curtailed. The aim of the blackout is to give Australian voters pause to reflect on their forthcoming choice on Saturday. Well, pause for those who have not already voted. As of yesterday some 3.2 million Australians had already exercised their democratic right.

Blackouts have become a political issue around the world. Spain and Portugal suffered a highly disruptive power blackout this week bringing trains, planes and banking to a standstill, along with play at the Madrid Open.  How power is generated and the cost and effectiveness of renewable energy supplies are issues that dominate the world’s political landscape. To frack or not to frack. To use nuclear fusion or not.  To drill or not to drill. These are the questions.

It occurs to me that when an electorate votes, it is a metaphorical form of power supply that generates our democracy. Voters connect to their electoral grid with their collective decisions energising the nation’s majority party to govern. The lights shine for a government and are dimmed for the opposition.

History is full of political slogans and allusions to the power of light. Consider English Foreign Secretary Grey’s observation on the eve of World War One. He was emerging from a Cabinet meeting in the early hours of the morning and saw workmen turning off the street lamps around Whitehall. Grey commented to a friend, "The lamps are going out all over Europe and we shall not see them lit again in our life-time.”

Following the dismissal of the Whitlam government in 1975 in Australia, the Liberal Opposition surged to victory on the slogan of “Turn on the Lights”.

Biblically, John’s Gospel reminds Christians that “what has come into life has come through God and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it.”

The Christian blessing given to the Pope at his funeral service and to all dearly departed is: Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them.

Today, is the anniversary of the lights going out on America’s global invincibility when Saigon fell to Ho Chi-Minh’s troops in 1975. The images of people clamouring to escape the new regime are some of the most haunting of the last century. 

America’s defeat in Vietnam had profound consequences for the world, most tragically for neighbouring Cambodia where Pol Pot’s sociopathic genocidal rule over his “killing fields” began soon after. For Australia the arrival of “boat people” refugees from South Vietnam was another chapter in the dismantling of the nation’s mono-cultural demographic.

This week the voters of Canada have re-ignited the lamp of the Liberal government, returning them, albeit as a minority government, for a fourth successive term. Canadian voters, who according to opinion polls were ready to banish the Liberal Party to electoral darkness for most of the past year, rallied behind their new Prime Minister, Mark Carney.

Carney campaigned successfully by creating an aura of nationalistic fervour focussing on repelling President Trump’s tariff assault and provocative comments about Canada becoming the 51st state of the union.  In a twist that not many predicted, the Opposition Leader, Pierre Poilievre, lost his seat.

Does electoral lightning strike twice? Will the policies and utterances of a populist conservative leader guarantee the election of another left-wing progressive government in Australia on Saturday as Trump's narrative did in Canada?

Labor Party diehards have a vision splendid of a maple leaf encore. They sense the possibility of the government being returned in its own right, with the added hope of Opposition Leader, Peter Dutton, losing his Queensland seat of Dickson.

There are many reasons for the ALP to have this confidence:

-The Trump factor: the President’s ramblings, rantings and confusions can only have worked to the advantage of the incumbent government.  People do not vote for change frantic change, especially economic,  is occurring around them.

-Electoral history: Australians have not voted to remove a first term Government since the Scullin Labor government, divided by the effects of the Depression lost office in December 1931, having been elected in October 1929, a fortnight before the Wall Street Crash.

-The campaign: Everything that could favour a government during the campaign has. Punctuated by Easter and ANZAC Day Weekends, Trump’s Liberation Day announcement and the death of a Pope, the campaign has provided few opportunities for the Opposition to gain ascendancy. The Prime Minister did not make any dreadful errors in the Leaders’ Debates. A compelling case for change has not taken hold in the electorate. Opinion polls have consistently shown a clear preference, after preferences, for the ALP government.

-Doubts about Dutton: Dutton, a conservative Liberal, has been portrayed as a ‘Trump lite’ figure. His decision to reverse his Working from Home policy and plans to retrench fixed numbers of public servants did not help his credibility.

Many in the Liberal Opposition despair that a government that they see as fiscally irresponsible being able to have portrayed itself as the “safer pair of economic hands.” They are equally furious that the government has been able to argue that they are the saviours of the government’s national health scheme by making spurious and unaffordable promises about increasing rates of bulk-billing, that is entirely cost free visits to doctors.

Modern politics, alas, is a game of perceptions, not substantial policy debates. It is also a cruel irony of modern politics that voters may be entirely dissatisfied with a government’s performance, but still, because of other extraneous factors, are reluctant to remove it from office.

So, has the Opposition any chance to win the election in its own right? Nothing is impossible; however, such a result would greatly surprise.

The best the Opposition can hope for is to win enough seats to be able to form a minority government.  This also seems unlikely.

All predictions must be circumscribed by the reality that neither major party in Australia attracts anywhere near their previous levels of support. The days of governments being formed by parties who gain 40% or more of the primary vote are over.  Both major parties are in the doldrums of attracting primary votes in the low 30% range. Consequently, the flow of preferences under Australia’s compulsory optional preferential voting system, from primary votes cast for minor parties and Independents will be especially critical in determining results in closely contested electorates.

For all of that, I do not expect to see a radical redrawing of the nation’s political representation on Saturday.

After all, the French have told us for many years that “the more things change, the more they stay the same.”

Happy voting!