Australia’s Federal Election of 2022: Political Processes in a Distant Continent, with Observations on Climate-Change Action
On Saturday, 21 May 2022, more than 17 million eligible Australians either made their way to vote in-person at over 7,000 polling stations across the nation and at selected overseas voting centres, or chose to send in their votes by the post instead. Voting is compulsory for all citizens, aged 18 or over and registered with the Australian Electoral Commission. Voters select their preferred candidates for 151 seats in the House of Representatives, with equality of representation ensured by roughly equally-sized electorates of around 100,000 eligible residents. A system of preferential voting ensures that no votes are wasted, as votes are redistributed if no single candidate wins an absolute majority, but is also responsible for the frequent formation of coalition governments. The election results can be considered to truly reflect the views of the population as a whole, unlike the many non-representative elections held around the world that are marked by voter apathy and low turnouts.
Even before all the votes had been counted, incumbent Prime Minister Scott Morrison, aka “ScoMo”, conceded defeat, allowing Labour Party leader Anthony Albanese, alias “Albo”, to be sworn in on 23 May as Australia’s 31st Prime Minister, just in time for a “Quad” summit in Tokyo, with the US President and the Prime Ministers of India and Japan, the following day. Mr. Albanese, a republican with working-class roots, promptly identified himself as the first Australian with a “non-Anglo Celtic name” to run for Prime Minister, as Australian national politics continues to advance into more inclusive territory. Looking at the bigger picture, 96 per cent of the members of the most recent 151-seat lower house (House of Representatives) and 76-seat upper house (Senate) were White in an increasingly multiracial nation, where one in five citizens come from a non-European background.
Anthony Albanese was born illegitimate, to an Irish-Australian mother and an Italian father who was working as steward on a cruise ship when they met in 1962. His father died soon after his parents married, and he was raised by his mother, on disability benefits, in public housing in the inner-west Sydney suburb of Camperdown. His political activism began at the age of 12, when he helped organise a rent strike in protest at plans to sell off the Camperdown housing facility where he lived to private developers. Albanese went on to study economics at the University of Sydney and was elected President of Young Labour, the youth wing of the Labour Party, aged 22. He entered the House of Representatives for the Grayndler Division of New South Wales in 1996 and was elected unopposed as leader of the centre-left Labour Party in 2019, having gained ministerial experience and served as Leader of the House in the interim.
The key election issues included the rising cost of living, climate change, inflation, housing affordability, gender inequality, and concerns over political integrity and transparency. Mr. Morrison’s “bulldozer” leadership also came under scrutiny, leading to the incumbent to declare, in his defence, that he had “changed”. The ruling Liberal-National coalition faced a backlash from Australians concerned about what they see as the government’s continued climate inaction. Several traditionally Liberal-held seats, in affluent inner-city neighbourhoods and elsewhere, fell to the Greens and to so-called “teal” Independents, whose identifying teal (a dark blue-green) colour is a blend of “blue” Liberal views and “green” beliefs.
Despite considerable natural variability in weather patterns and its longer-term climate, recent concerns about climate change in Australia have arisen as a result of earlier, more intense, and prolonged bushfires and the increasing frequency of other extreme weather events, including heatwaves, “rain bombs”, flash floods, tropical storms, tornadoes, and droughts, not to mention the degradation of the Great Barrier Reef and other marine ecosystems. Human-made climate change in Australia has a long history, attributable to environmental degradation caused by indiscriminate land clearances (forests, woodlands, mangroves), drainage of wetlands, redirection of watercourses, creation of pasture land for beef cattle, and mining or drilling for fossil fuels (coal, natural gas, petroleum) and minerals (iron ore, bauxite, copper, manganese, nickel, tin, uranium, zinc).
The issue of climate change and what to do about it has dogged successive Australian governments, whether Liberal-National coalition or Labour, as many proposed “greening” measures have been perceived as harmful to Australia’s economy and its industrial competitiveness. Australia possesses 6 per cent of the world’s coal and 2 per cent of its natural gas, and is the second largest exporter of coal and sixth largest exporter of liquefied natural gas. Domestic electricity generation is dominated by coal and the electricity sector accounts for one-third of Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions.
Australia’s fossil fuel and minerals industries have considerable financial muscle, ideological support, and political clout, and benefit from market distortions brought about by subsidies, tax concessions, and low-interest loans. This is reflected in Australia’s response to climate change. Scott Morrison pledged Australia to net zero emissions by 2050 under the Long-Term Emissions Reduction Plan, which promotes low-cost, low-emission technologies, including clean hydrogen, ultra-low-cost solar power, low-emissions aluminium, cement, and steel production, and carbon capture and storage, and emphasizes “choices, not mandates” and the role of the free market in the energy sector, while not committing to timelines. Some Liberal politicians have criticised the plan and even blamed it for Morrison’s electoral defeat. Whatever your views, there can be no escaping the fact that fossil fuels will remain important to Australia’s economy over the coming decades. ‘The Plan to Deliver Net Zero: The Australian Way’ puts it succinctly: “While emissions-intensive exports like coal and gas will face global headwinds in the long term, there will be demand for those exports for many years to come”.
The Labour Party’s Powering Australia Plan, which aims to reduced national greenhouse gas emissions by 43 per cent to 2030, based on 2005 levels, focuses on boosting renewable energy and electric vehicles, but will also “protect the competitiveness of Emissions Intensive Trade Exposed industries by ensuring they will not face a greater constraint than their competitors”. This latest plan has been criticised by the Greens for not going far enough in its emission-reducing targets.
Australia’s voters have had their say. It will be interesting to see how climate-action strategies develop under the Labour government, with the balance of legislative power favouring Greens and teal independents, in a nation whose economy is so heavily dependent upon fossil fuels and where scepticism over climate change has such entrenched support- back in 1997, Australia and the US were the only two industrialised countries to initially refuse to ratify the Kyoto Protocol. There is room for hope, however, as the ‘Lucky Country’ is well-endowed with solar and wind power, as well as many other relevant natural resources, that can help propel Australia’s green transition if chosen for that purpose.
Ashis Banerjee