There are plenty of reasons to avoid reading too much into the election results from both Canberra and Pittwater in Sydney on the weekend.
The Pittwater state byelection, in which neither Labor nor the Greens ran candidates, was caused by the resignation of its incumbent Liberal MP due to being charged with child sex offences. Canberra, meanwhile, is routinely dismissed as several hundred thousand out-of-touch progressives — though people older than 40 might remember how that media narrative was suddenly ditched in early 1995 when the ACT and the federal seat of Canberra swung to the Liberals (suddenly Canberra was a bellwether for the Keating government’s imminent demise).
But the Liberals’ vote fell in Canberra despite the extraordinary age of the incumbent Labor-Green government. It’s hard to remember when Andrew Barr and Shane Rattenbury didn’t run the ACT, let alone a time when the Liberals were in power. This time around the ACT Liberals at least gave themselves a chance by not putting up for chief minister a feral right-winger two standard deviations to the right of most Canberrans — the prescription that also led to flat-earther Zed Seselja being given the flick at the last federal election, thereby banishing any federal Liberal representation from the ACT.
While leader Elizabeth Lee is a moderate, the feeling persists that the ACT Liberals are never more than one step away from declaring the ACT shall henceforth be called Gilead. And while Lee seems perfectly sensible and her concession speech illustrated a rare magnanimity in politicians, the charming photo of her giving the finger to a journalist last week probably didn’t help — indeed, it might have cost her the election.
Still, as both Lee and one of her moderate colleagues agree, the ACT Liberals are still too far to the right for affluent Canberra.
It’s hard to avoid a similar conclusion about the Liberal brand more broadly from Pittwater, where Jacqui Scruby, independent candidate and former adviser to federal teal MP Sophie Scamps, broke the state-level hoodoo on the teals in NSW. The Liberal loss in Pittwater was despite a NSW Labor government that is already tired and sloppy — and noticeably more anti-climate action than its Liberal predecessor.
No doubt the council election debacle damaged the Liberal brand in NSW. But the right-wing putsch launched by Peter Dutton in the wake of that stuff-up has faced its first electoral test, and failed: there’s no sign yet of any buyer’s remorse on the part of affluent voters in Sydney’s northern beaches who fell for the teals in 2022.
Under Dutton, the federal Coalition has been dismissive of teal voters. It has moved even further to the right than the Morrison government on climate and energy — Dutton has ditched even Tony Abbott’s minimal emissions abatement targets for 2030 and promised to extend coal-fired power and ramp up gas power, which is as bad or worse for the climate than coal.
And under Dutton — a Queensland LNP member rather than a Sydney Liberal, like all of the federal Liberal leaders this century — the Coalition has embraced big government, committing to an unprecedented Commonwealth push into power generation with a nuclear power program costing nearly $100 billion. Dutton’s opposition to an Indigenous Voice to Parliament was also at odds — often profoundly so — with the sentiments of voters in teal seats: Mackellar, in which Pittwater is located, voted 50.8% in favour; Warringah 59.5%; the now-abolished North Sydney 59.9%, Wentworth 62.5%; Goldstein in Victoria 56.2%, Kooyong 59.8%, Curtin 51.4%.
Dutton has gone further than Scott Morrison in trashing the Liberal brand in the eyes of teal voters. Where does an affluent voter who wants smaller government, recognition of Australia’s history and serious climate action go now? Obviously not the Greens, especially under the extreme-left claque currently in charge of the party federally. Obviously not Labor, which is little better than the Coalition on climate.
Given how poorly Labor is polling, would-be teal voters understand that the chances of their candidate exercising a significant influence over the government after the next election are greater than ever. Between Dutton and the chance of forcing a dud Labor government into minority, teal candidates might look even more appealing next year than in 2022. There’s no evidence yet that affluent voters think otherwise.
