What do you get when you mix an unpopular do-nothing government, with a say-nothing opposition, and throw in a few big disruptions like bushfires, floods, "me too" and a pandemic? Answer: A mess - Coalition voters wandering off like Browns' cows. Some to Labor, some to populists, others to community independents and Greens.
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And voters leaving Labor too. Its small target strategy giving them no cause to stay. The cost of this miscalculation could be an otherwise obtainable majority.
By mid-evening a few things were starting to be clear.
First, Scott Morrison's superficial tactical style of divide and dither, has been comprehensively shredded by voters. How disillusioned was Australia, his destroyed colleagues might ruefully ask.
The Miracle Man has turned out to be no more than a political huckster. Having led his party down a few useless side-alleys, and studiously done nothing to address the well-known concerns of his party's most loyal blue-ribbon base, Morrison has now led it over a cliff.
Second, voters wanted to get rid of the Morrison government but many harboured real doubts about why they should install and Albanese Labor government because, well, Labor had deliberately avoided providing any compelling reasons.
Labor's small target cost it support to its left flank and may have helped install more Greens into the House of Representatives. The damage of that error may be irreversible as it has turned out to be in Adam Bandt's seat of Melbourne. Before now, the sole Greens MP in the lower house.
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Third, from this result it can be seen that climate change has finally asserted itself in Australian politics in ways it has promised to for years - and it has happened during a galloping cost of living crisis. Who would have imagined that was possible?
The signs were there. The ABC's Vote-Compass which had some 1.5 million respondents (a lot), listed climate change as easily the biggest concern for voters at 25 per cent with cost of living a distant second on 16 per cent.
It is no coincidence that climate was the clearest rallying principle for the "teal" independents in the south-eastern states, and emerged also as the driver of a huge Greens uptick in south-east Queensland.
Fourth, all the tub-thumping about the escalating China threat has backfired. Leaks from security briefings, Peter Dutton's farcical press conferences to warn of Chinese warships nearby and claims of Manchurian candidates in Labor, have merely hurt the Coalition - splitting it from the Chinese diaspora.
Dutton's reckless sabre-rattling which Scott Morrison so eagerly embraced, may yet prove instrumental in the loss of several Coalition seats. It was a major own goal.
At the start of the ABC's coverage, an angry Barnaby Joyce railed at voters for flirting with independents. You know you're in trouble when you start off the night having a red-hot crack at voters.
And so it turn out to be.
A long-overdue period of generational change beckons. And for Scott Morrison's Liberals, a genuine examination of what that name even means.
- Mark Kenny is The Canberra Times' political analyst and a professor at the ANU's Australian Studies Institute.
