The centre ground in Australian politics is remarkably weak given that, even in these days of electoral fragmentation, the clear majority of Australians vote for the centre-left and centre-right parties. The two major parties (counting the Liberals and Nationals as one) have dominated voting and representation for years, and still do in the House of Representatives despite being derided in some quarters as Tweedledum and Tweedledee. They take responsibility for any national crises because they are the parties that form governments. The buck stops with them.
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The natural tendency of Australian politics is to pull away from the centre towards the edges. This happens because of the major parties' need to manufacture separate identities, even though they often have much in common. The middle-of-the-road representatives of both parties share many natural inclinations and policies.
But you wouldn't know it from what goes on during election campaigns and in the House chamber. The major parties rage at one another in question time and their respective teams barrack loudly as their leaders launch attack after attack at their opposite numbers.
We learn that Malcolm Turnbull is a hollow man beholden to big business and Bill Shorten is a hypocrite beholden to trade unions. The character of Australian society is effectively reduced to big business versus big unions, which is a caricature.
Any suggestion that the two major parties should work together and share ideas is frowned upon, at least at the rhetorical level, as a sign of weakness. Competition is the preferred mode of operation. For some party leaders, that comes naturally, but others find it harder.
That is the context for the supreme insult thrown at Turnbull's leadership by former prime minister Tony Abbott, when he said the government had become "Labor-lite". The equivalent would have been for Kevin Rudd to accuse the Gillard government of being "Coalition-lite". Abbott presumably meant by this throwaway line that the Coalition government hadn't moved far enough away from Labor policies and needed to be demonstrably more conservative. That's when he offered his own prescriptions for how to do this.
Neglecting the alternative plausible scenario, that the Turnbull government has neglected the centre by being far too conservative, Abbott framed his remarks not as a leadership challenge but as a suggestion for winning back One Nation voters to the Coalition. Once again, by damning the centre, Abbott was pulling Australian politics towards the outer edges.
Yet given Australia's preferential voting system, the major parties don't need to go to extremes to protect themselves from the fringes. As well as protecting as far as possible their first-preference vote, they just need to make sure that they are more appealing than their opposite number when second preferences are allocated.
On the left and centre left, the situation is relatively straightforward. There are only two parties to worry about. For Labor, that means the relationship with the Greens must be managed. There are still bitter fights in inner-city electorates and the Labor leadership will launch occasional tirades at the Greens, but Greens voters can be relied upon to deliver 80 per cent of their votes to Labor via second preferences.
On the right and centre-right the situation is more crowded, with at least three major blocs: Liberals, Nationals and One Nation, as well as some stragglers. The Liberals have largely sorted out their Nationals problem by exchanging preferences and avoiding three-cornered contests between the two parties, which disenfranchises some liberal-conservative voters by giving them no choice whether to vote Liberal or Nationals.
But the Liberals and the Nationals haven't sorted out their One Nation problem. One Nation is less tractable and its voters are less predictable. That problem is where Abbott and the state Liberal leadership in Western Australia and Queensland are now focused. They use it to hammer any Liberals, such as Turnbull, who in their eyes are catering more to the centre than the fringe.
Consequently, it's seen as a greater insult for Abbott to label a Turnbull-led government as Labor-lite, against all evidence, than to label the government Nationals-lite or even One Nation-lite. The only evidence that is thrown around is Turnbull's personal inclinations and past record. But he has clearly subjugated them to the Coalition majority. There's not much more that Turnbull can do for his government to seem more conservative other than resign as leader for someone who looks and acts more conservative.
Enter Abbott. The short-term consequence of a senior Liberal MP labelling the government Labor-lite is to weaken the government and to enhance One Nation's power. Its leader, Pauline Hanson, revels in that description of the major party on the right because it clears the ground for her. The recent Newspoll suggests that's exactly what happened.
The longer-term consequence may be to push government policies further in a One Nation direction. Some of Abbott's prescriptions – such as cutting immigration, the renewable energy target and the Human Rights Commission – would do this. One Nation would claim any such moves as indirect victories for their perspectives on what's best for Australia.
That outcome would reject the sensible centre of Australian politics in favour of fringe views. It would be a culmination not just of current Liberal leadership politics but also of the way Australian politics is structured. The common ground shared by the bulk of Liberal and Labor representatives is neglected in favour of the extremes. Turnbull and Shorten have more in common than they are willing to admit.
John Warhurst is an emeritus professor of political science at the Australian National University. john.warhurst@anu.edu.au
