It sounds like an acute sewerage burst, but as much political commentary rests on the tired cliché, we see the language of liquid velocity apply to parties that suddenly emerge in the polls as portentously relevant to watchers and news cyclists. They “surge” away, giving hacks and pundits room to fill in column space while scraping psephologists can pack consultancy briefs and newsletters with apparently scientific information about the permanently transient.
Of late, those electoral quarriers at Redbridge Group have been doing much to add building material to One Nation’s momentum. First came a poll in May which conducted a seat-by-seat mapping of the Commonwealth with Accent Research. The findings, published in the Australian Financial Review, suggested that an election, were it to be held then, would result in the comprehensive liquidation and displacement of the conservative Coalition. “The extent of the predicted Coalition collapse is so large,” suggested Accent Research, “that it is estimated the Coalition parties will not win any seats in Queensland, Western Australia, South Australia or Tasmania.”
The second Redbridge Group/Accent Research poll, conducted this month over May 25-28 sampling 1,005 respondents, found One Nation passing Labor in the primary vote with 31% to Labor’s 28%, leaving the Coalition gasping on 20%. Government members received a typical flogging in the opinion sampling: Prime Minister Anthony Albanese down by ten points to -19; Treasurer Jim Chalmers, subterranean at -18 with a fall of 13 points. Opposition figures also fared poorly, with only One Nation’s Pauline Hanson up from a single point to net zero.
It is also worth noting that Redbridge’s second poll, along with YouGov, Morgan, Fox & Hedgehog (is there no end to these puffing astrologers?) were taken after the Labor government’s federal budget. Government budgets, largely because they are perused and examined for reasons of self-interest and selfishness by the voting public, are rarely popular, a fact psephologists could do more to point out.
The flames have been magnified in the commentary. There is the boilerplate speculation, with little in the way of verification. (The problem with polling is that it is never verifiable, always contingent and rarely stable.) Nonetheless, this is the view the veteran journalist Michelle Grattan, yet another hack to be propelled into the groves of academe as a professorial fellow, gives her readers: “One nation, it seems, is the party that’s received a ‘bounce’ from an unpopular budget, up four points in a month, while both Labor and the Coalition went backwards.”
Sky News, with its own collaborative poll with YouGov, gave political reporter Oscar Godsell room to herald the arrival of Australia’s “most popular political party […] as Labor tanks to an all-time low amid ongoing fallout over the government’s broken budget promises.” (Labor received 26% to One Nation’s 29%.) But Godsell does not stop there. He offers tactical advice on what the conservative bloc of Australian politics might do come the next election. “Amid discussions about a potential Coalition-One Nation alliance, the bulk of voters said they wanted the two conservative parties to team up.” Again, the media-psephology complex exercises its insidious influence through the shabby construction known as “voter intention”.
YouGov’s Director of Public Data, Paul Smith, had to add his expansive, immodest prediction on the results: “Working class voters are the majority of voters in most electorates, so the battle for the working class vote between Labor and One Nation will decide the next election.”
Hanson has little in the way of work to do. The media stable is doing it for her. Sky News is doing its bit by asking dotty questions that require necessarily silly responses. Andrew Clennell, for instance, wondered if Hanson wished to be prime minister. This is fatuous on a few levels: No party leader, even one presiding over a mere two elected members in the lower house, should ignore the chance to burnish credentials for the top position, however unlikely in the Westminster system. Either you do so with genuine eagerness, for which you can be seen to be foolhardy though brave, or feign self-deprecatory lack of interest, for which you can be accused of being insincere and covetous. Hanson, to her credit, lacks any sense of self-deprecation, though given the chance, will be as covetous as the next aspirant. “Do I want to be prime minister? Well, I’ll tell you what, I won’t knock back the job Andrew, because I believe that I have the ability to do it. I’m not to underestimate myself or say ‘no, I can’t do it’ because you know, have a look at what we’ve got now. Really? Honestly?”
To her credit, the ABC chief digital political correspondent, Clare Armstrong, offered softening caveats. Take such polling results seriously, but “a poll can only reveal so much.” (You don’t say.) Polling was useful for picking up trends and offering glimpses of momentary sentiment. They should never be seen “as predictors of results.” Despite playing to the stalls on her prime ministerial ambitions, Hanson is also sober about the Redbridge Group’s latest findings. After telling listeners in an interview with Melbourne radio station 3AW that there was “a movement” fed by “unrest from [the] general public right across the whole country”, this was, she conceded, “only a poll.”
It may well be that One Nation becomes the main opposition party, gobbling up the Liberal-National base, and consuming the blue-collar voters in Labor seats. There is more than a whiff in the air that Australian politics is being further altered after the triumph of the independents and Teals in 2022. The major parties are withering and weary, something they have every reason to blame themselves for. Polycentric blocs of interests and voting experimentation are emerging, as they are in the United Kingdom, that other model of Westminster restraint. But there is some time till 2028, and the other parties have time to convince voters that the malaise they face can be addressed credibly. That’s about as much optimism as is warranted. The rest is, till it happens, fantasy.
Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He currently lectures at RMIT University. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com
