Australian federal elections are not won and lost on the northern tip of the Gold Coast.
But byelections are important tests for the performance of the government and opposition – even though they take the electoral temperature in just one small part of the country.
Saturday will see a byelection triggered by Stuart Robert’s resignation in Fadden, a Liberal National party stronghold and practically the back yard of the opposition leader, Peter Dutton.
Neither side thinks the conditions are right for an Aston-style upset, a once-in-a-century win of a seat off the opposition by the government at a byelection, although a swing to Labor would itself be unsettling for the LNP and Dutton particularly.
There are superficial similarities between Aston and Fadden in that both were triggered by former Coalition ministers quitting, and Labor has again re-fielded their 2022 candidate.
Both also suffered from low turnout in prepoll, which the Australian Electoral Commission is frantically trying to rectify in Fadden with more than half of electors who gave additional contact details receiving emails and texts reminding them to vote.
But the differences are greater. In Aston, the Liberals attempted to replace MP Alan Tudge with Roshena Campbell, who was derided by voters in Melbourne’s outer suburban east as a barrister from Brunswick.
In Fadden, they’ve gone with the local councillor Cameron Caldwell. This avoids any suggestion of parachuting a candidate in but it seems the lesson from Aston was: pick local, and solve lack of diversity and gender equity another day.
Then there’s the strength of the trend in the electorates’ voting pattern and the margin to consider. Mary Doyle slashed an impressive 7.3% off Tudge’s margin in 2022 then finished the job with a further 6.4% at the byelection. Letitia Del Fabbro took a more modest 3.6% off Robert at 2022, and still needs another 10.6% for victory.
Postal vote applications have mostly held up in Fadden, which could favour the LNP with its older support base, while prepoll voting is down 30%, which Labor fears could mean young people not turning out.
In addition to turning out the vote, Labor has tried to remind voters of the Coalition’s “disgraceful” legacy on robodebt and harness anger at Robert’s decision to quit midterm or to “ride out of town”, as the government services minister, Bill Shorten, puts it.
This is part of a broader project of discrediting the Morrison government.
Within Labor, it is believed that one of the early failings or at least missed opportunities of the Rudd government was to not more thoroughly discredit the legacy of the Howard government.
Without establishing that the Howard-Costello government had squandered the huge revenues of the good times it became very hard to argue that the persistent deficits during the global financial crisis were anybody’s fault but Labor’s.
The Albanese government has made no such mistake. In every portfolio, every minister has taken their turn bashing the Coalition legacy.
We hear it in the taglines: that the Coalition racked up a trillion dollars of debt “with nothing to show for it” in the economic portfolios; that it governed by press release but didn’t deliver in infrastructure; that grants programs were rorted; that it caused nine years of “denial and delay” on climate action, with 23 energy policies and it couldn’t land one.
We see it in the decision to release the solicitor general’s advice that Scott Morrison’s multiple ministries “fundamentally undermined” representative democracy and hold an inquiry into the same; and to hold a royal commission into robodebt, with adverse findings against Morrison, Robert, Tudge and Christian Porter, all of whom deny wrongdoing.
Dutton wants the byelection to be a judgment on cost of living increases and has argued the government has taken its eye off the ball by advocating for an Indigenous voice in the constitution.
The LNP has thrown in some law-and-order politics too, judging that the Palaszczuk government is on the nose and this could rub off on federal Labor.
Labor has to get on with the business of governing regardless of whether there are any votes in it. Anthony Albanese visited Europe this week for a Nato meeting and made further commitments to Ukraine; Richard Marles and Linda Burney went west to campaign for the voice; and on Friday the government opted to defenestrate the Reserve Bank governor, Phil Lowe.
As Burney says, when cost of living grumbles are introduced into the voice debate: the government can walk and chew gum at the same time.
In Fadden campaigners will tell voters that “Labor is delivering for the Gold Coast” as they go to the polls. On cost of living, Labor can point to its budget measures: cheaper childcare, more bulk-billing incentives, 60-day medicine dispensing and electricity bill relief.
After 12 interest rate rises and skyrocketing rents, it’s fair that voters are ambivalent about voting again and peeved about the economy.
The true significance of Fadden is whether we’ve reached a turning point and voters are starting to blame the new management or continue to punish the old.
Dutton says that just winning the seat will satisfy him, but if a heartland seat swings to Labor while the cost of living crunch is at its worst, perhaps even a narrow win should be a warning sign.
