The fury around the housing Australia future fund is the sound of new political identities taking form, a once rigidly binary system fragmenting as a growing number of voters look to take a walk on the wild side.
The Greens’ gambit to staple a rental freeze on to the Albanese government’s social housing initiative is brazenly calculated to woo a growing cohort of younger voters for whom the housing consensus offers little but platitudes and ongoing pain.
In the sort of politics traditionally the preserve of the cynical establishment parties, the Greens are deliberately building their brand as the champion of the kids while portraying Labor as a grumpy parent imposing a fiscal curfew.
There are clear risks here for Labor; this week’s Guardian Essential report shows the old class-based divisions are giving way to new income, gender and geographical fluidities as the majority of Australians declare themselves either politically diverse or diverse-curious.
While Albanese Labor is governing with a strong two-party preferred lead, its primary vote is heavily contested, with 16% routinely opting for an alternative, another 19% dabbling and a further 23% indicating they are ready to give it a try.
Most striking is the number of young people who are now untethered from an established partisan home – a new generation of political renters – with nearly 80% refusing to commit to the old duality.
The large proportion of voters now in play are the product of three distinct disruptions over the past three decades: the drift of Labor’s working-class base to the right, the rise of the progressive Greens to the left and the teal revolution which has eviscerated the Liberal party.
The first group are ageing swing voters who turned on Labor in the wake of the deregulation of the Hawke-Keating years for the allure of Pauline Hanson’s economic nativism.
The genius of John Howard was to repudiate One Nation’s overt racism and sense of grievance while harnessing it via dog-whistle border policies to construct a new cultural base that has underwritten the Coalition’s federal dominance since.
The second group to break loose were the educated, inner-city lefties who Whitlam first attracted and Hawke-Keating inspired, but who were left underwhelmed by Rudd-Gillard’s performance in power; notably its failure to land climate action and decision to jettison the mining tax.
The subsequent 2010 campaign “This time I’m voting Greens” directly appealed to people wanting a taste of something different without a long-term commitment, the swing contributing for the first time to a formal power-sharing arrangement.
Now the new teals have provided a crushing repudiation of the Coalition’s values-free transactional model of conservativism, rejecting the way climate, gender and integrity were gamed and diminished.
The rise of the teals extends the socially progressive base in parliament while exposing the inability of the Greens to build a broader post-material movement that would provide a single counterpoint to the major parties.
But on rental housing, there is a clear opportunity for the Greens to build a long-term generational base around an economic issue that is profoundly material. Why wouldn’t they have a crack?
Their success will largely be determined by the government’s own capacity to embrace community demand for greater ambition on key policies while fulfilling its more limited electoral mandate and keeping a tanking economy afloat to boot.
When it comes to environment issues, the Essential report suggests the government is getting the balance right on most things.
Adam Bandt is playing somewhat of a “Green Albo” persona, locking in change for now but pushing for more ambition on climate, a similar position to that taken by the teals. With the balance on the rollout of EVs and renewables perceived to be about right, all sides seem to recognise the folly of re-prosecuting old wars over targets.
Where the rubber will hit the electoral road is how the government mitigates the impacts of development in a time of downturn, not the least the expansion of coal and gas projects and the broader project to protect wildlife, forests and waterways.
It is on broader economic issues that Labor may be more vulnerable on its progressive flank, stymied by the compromises they consciously made to secure power.
On tax it has not only repudiated removing property investor tax concessions but waved through regressive stage-three tax cuts. Both the Greens and teals argue the changes should be reversed, while the electorate sends a clear message they need and expect more.
There is even greater demand for ambition on cost of living and housing, where more than two-thirds of voters say the government is not doing enough on rental affordability. This housing deadlock serves as a broader snapshot for the current fragmentation of the electoral compass.
Labor offers a significant structural change, a permanent funding base for social housing via a mini sovereign wealth fund. The Greens demand more, arguing that it doesn’t go far enough to solve the housing crisis consuming the nation, while rejecting the underlying idea of a permanent wealth fund (which it characterises as punting on the stock market).
The teals and Jacqui Lambie (who has morphed from a Clive Palmer-populist to the occasional voice of working-class decency) back in the government, siding with many advocates and civil society that it’s better to achieve something than just do cosplay.
Meanwhile, all the Coalition can really do is keep up appearances by sounding loud and angry and doing diddly-squat to win back any of those voters they have given up.
If for all this huffing and puffing, nothing happens on the most wicked social and economic problem we are currently facing, more people will conclude it is government that is the problem rather than the insurgents.
As the Albanese government matures, its ability to find a way to chart these fissures will only become more consequential in its pursuit of longer-term power. The firsts step might be to recognise that while the voices for greater ambition are competitors, they should not be enemies.
If it gets it right, Labor may be able to secure the long-term loyalty of both the Greens and these lost Liberals, probably never as primary voters but as long-term preferencers, which in an intersectional political world is probably just as important as fidelity.
• Peter Lewis is an executive director of Essential, a progressive strategic communications and research company
