Votes ebb and flow between the major parties from election to election. But the real lesson from Saturday’s election was not what changed, but what – for the first time –stayed the same. And that was the so-called teals and independents.
They here to stay. Likely nine of the 10 teals who were elected in hitherto safe Liberal seats in 2022 won their seats again. So did Bob Katter. Several other independents are set to join them and the Greens to form the largest crossbench in Australia’s history. It would have been larger if the Liberal Party had not given Labor seat-winning preferences over the Greens and independents in half a dozen seats.
Further, the cross bench in the Senate will be as large or larger than the Government benches and larger than the Opposition benches for the first time.
It has profound implications for the major parties. Labor cannot expect the Liberal Party to make such as hash of the campaign in the future. The Liberal party cannot expect the lost teal seats to come back.
Inevitably, before long, both major parties will need independents to govern – or to at least refrain from joining no-confidence and supply-blocking motions even if there are no active agreements.
That being the case, the major parties should now go out of their way to accommodate some of the independents’ wishes. Certainly, Labor should not adopt a winner-takes-all approach and run a timid government out of the Prime Minister’s office as it has done for the past three years.
After all, Labor did not so much win this election as the Coalition lose it. The Coalition’s niche right-wing agenda left many voters nowhere to go but Labor.
Labor could learn from the last seismic shift in Australian politics – the rise of the Greens and demise of the Democrats in the 1980s. Labor, having won the 1983, 1984 and 1987 election faced a leakage of support.
The then Environment Minister, Graham “Whatever it Takes” Richardson, actively courted the Greens and secured preference deals which just got Labor over the line in 1990.
Overall, progressives won handsomely in this election – so the voters will expect progress, both socially and economically. They will get peeved if the Government behaves like it has in the past three years with weak or no action on climate, energy, tax, and integrity.
In health, they will want more than just restoring bulk-billing to where it was in the 1980s. They might like dental care added to Medicare. In short, progress.
More importantly, on the economic front, the argument should not be merely about how the cake is sliced up, but how to have a bigger cake.
History shows us that – contrary to what the neo-cons say – a significant government role in industrial development leads to success. For example, the government-run NASA program in the US brought us micro-chips, computers, and a dozen other marketable things which the market alone would not have achieved because it cannot or will not invest in speculatory pure research.
The solar panel was invented in the US but left to just the market it went nowhere in the US. The Chinese Government seeded its solar-panel industry and took the sector over.
Markets are great up to a point. But without government organisation and capital, new wealth-generating products and industries rarely flourish.
The last time the US Government organised capital and research to produce a product it was a stunning success which saved or improved millions of people’s lives: the Covid vaccine. Yet the Trump Administrations have not celebrated their lightning-speed achievement because the Republicans hate government.
Australia has abundant, cheap land for solar energy. We have the technology for every household in Australia to have abundant free electricity. Big-scale solar arrays improve the carrying capacity in sheep country because of the condensation run-off. We should be getting on with this, using massive government start-up money.
We could then attract electricity-guzzling data centres and metal refining to Australia, now the US has given up on renewables. Our cake would be bigger. Same for electric cars. Forget a few cents off petrol. How about totally free vehicle propulsion?
(The snapshot of our household’s latest power bill which includes all the running of the electric car shows it can be done, especially if large arrays are added to rooftop solar. The graph shows our household generates more than we use.) But it will require major government intervention to push solar beyond standalone house rooftops.
About 10 per cent of our wealth is used up in fuel imports. Getting rid of them would almost solve cost-of-living pressures and have huge health benefits from removing pollution.
It would mean standing up to the fossil industry which is behaving more and more like the tobacco industry every day – continuing to peddle its poison for profits for as long as possible irrespective of the harm it does. Just like the gambling “industry”.
Our government should deliver a fairer more efficient tax system: taxing capital and consumption more and labour less. Stamp duty and payroll taxes should go because taxing more efficient housing use and taxing employment is just dumb.
The lesson from this election is that Australians do not want silly culture wars, misinformation and legal manoeuvring blocking progress on renewables, or retreat by government. Leaving it to the private sector alone is a path to economic stagnation.
If the Liberals ever want to govern again, they have got to leave this rubbish behind, stop letting the Nationals rule policy, and concentrate on where new wealth is coming from. Technological innovation improves people’s lives. Promoting it is smart. Resisting it is dumb.
Yes, Re-elected Prime Minister, we want kindness and fairness. But we also want intelligence, vision, and action.
Crispin Hull
This article first appeared in The Canberra Times and other Australian media on 6 May 2025.
Now is the time for the Prime Minister to take the new unassailable Labor mandate and implement real social progress in Australia. The incoming Labor government cannot be defeated by the Liberal / National Coalition in just three years time. Labor has at least forty more seats in the House of Representatives than their opponents. That is more than enough political capital to be daring. Moreover, there is a strong national mood for the reinvigoration of a traditional Labor vision of offering a ‘hand up’ to the marginalised and the younger generation now shut out of the property market. There is also an urgent strategic need to become as energy resilient as possible here at home. That is not only a daring policy but a vital national priority which cannot be ignored or deferred.
Like Crispin and many others, we don’t have an electricity bill any more. We are in credit. That is thanks to solar panels on the roof and the battery storage in the garage. Weeks go by without needing to fuel the plug in hybrid car which recharges every night from the battery. Electrifying the privately owned car fleet is ‘low hanging fruit’ which many more families could achieve and Labor during the election promised a subsidy on private battery installation to help with this financially logical investment. That is a wise and timely move to encourage mass take up by consumers. Bus fleets can be electrified and heavy transport, in time, can also be moved off diesel with incentives and an urgent roll out of charging points nationwide at existing fuel stations.
That move, to get cars and commercial vehicles off petrol and diesel, is a strategically urgent priority. Generating energy, instead of importing it, and minimising Australia’s dependence on imported fuel, coming in tankers across thousands of miles of ocean, would raise our national resilience in the face of the possibility of interdiction of supply by enemy action at sea. Our extended Sea Lanes of Communication (SLOCS) would all need close defence in wartime. That is a nearly impossible task for the RAN and RAAF with their severely limited number of anti submarine frigates and destroyers and limited range of our few ASW aircraft. Pre positioned sea mines, waiting to be remotely activated, are a sophisticated and potent method for an enemy to sink ships coming to Australia as they approach maritime choke points and ports. Modern sea mines work by breaking ship’s backs with a pressure wave from below. Australia is not well prepared to counter this deadly threat. Neither is any other naval power.
We can easily feed our population here on this island continent and with enough renewables and local gas, we can keep the lights on. But we are far too dependent on the importation of refined fuel from what could be called ‘tank farms too far away’. As at February 2025 90% of Australia’s crude oil and petroleum products are imported by sea. Without that inflow parts of the nation would start to grind to a halt in about a month.
The immediate priority is to repatriate the national strategic oil reserve. Currently up to 714 million barrels of Australia’s Strategic Oil Reserve can be held in tank farms along the coastline of the Gulf of Mexico. Similar facilities to hold this large national stock need to be built in Australia. The oil needs to be relocated to well distributed storage fields, near out ports and major cities, where tankers can access it when needed. If we leave it where it is in the US bringing it to Australia across contested seas could be dangerous and therefore unlikely to be attempted. It could become a stranded national asset effectively in US hands, not Australian.
Logistically there is no guarantee that we could move it if we wanted to. We bring our fuel to our ports in ships we do not own and therefore cannot control because they do not sail under the Australian Red Ensign. That strategic ‘black hole’ needs addressing as a top order priority for this new government. We need to buy or lease a national tanker fleet able to be ‘taken up from trade’ when the government needs it. Approaching tanker self sufficiency will take time, but it needs to be commenced because it is not optional if we want certainly that we will have the hulls we need when the demand for them spikes as every country tries to stock pile fuel.
By definition, when a crisis in international relations erupts into hostilities it is already too late for strategic actions that should have been taken in good time. Memorably, Winston Churchill, as the First Lord of the Admiralty in 1940, when faced with the urgent need for many more small warships to escort vulnerable convoys across the U Boat infested Atlantic, said: “When this problem could have be solved it was ignored. Now that it is thoroughly out of hand we propose to apply, too late, the measures that would have prevented it.”
Churchill’s sage observation is highly relevant to our current national strategic situation at sea. It is past time that both our expensive usage of oil and our maritime vulnerability were addressed with urgency and serious investment in Australia’s logistical resilience. Only the new Government can ‘prime the pumps’ that will allow Australia to avoid a sudden national energy emergency.
Actually, the most interesting thing about you electricity bill is the amount of electricity you use from the grid. I am constantly amazed at people complaining about the price of electricity when it is actually the AMOUNT of electricity that people manage to use that is the real issue. Our usage from the from the grid is less than 1/10 what you use and our total usage (including from solar) is about 1/4 of your grid usage (total use is on average about 5kwh/day with 2kwh/day from the grid). Since we have had solar we have not had an electricity bill (and that is AFTER adding back all the rebates we have had).
If people were much more careful about their electricity consumption, they would have much lower bills and a lot less to complain about.
The common denominator across necessary policies is “modernisation.” Taxation, defence, energy, health, industry, transport et al require intergenerational thinking, research, innovation, and development. Albanese’s job is to garner suitable Ministers to shift policy into the future with sufficient freedom and flexibility. They, in turn, need to garner suitable executives to formulate and deliver policy directions.
Medicare, taxation, energy and defence as prime examples do not need a cobbling together of old systems with multiple adjustments. They need modern systems that maximise telecommunications and international best practices that are fit for purpose into the future. The old parties should now recognise our Constitution, Federation and Parliaments are also in dire need of modernisation.
Most of those things will happen except tax reform. Scare campaigns are easy. There is a broad consensus on energy and renewables because they are cheaper, and aspects of education early and technical. Housing will stabilise with a nudge from government. The rest will be a slow slog.
Crispin
Once again a simple and excellent summation of where we should be. To understand the simple use of power generation is logical. It is a shame the government does not understand this nor how to use the abundant amount of water in Australia to make our farms more arable.
Unfortunately we have no real strong leaders with a vision. I can’t see any on the horizon.
Weak leaders lead to bad times, bad times find strong leaders, strong leaders create good times, and the cycle continues. Unfortunately, pessimistically, I see bad times ahead before we find a strong leader.
From an oldie person in their 80s.
Unfortunately I suspect that the government will do nothing about the massive inflow of people into Australia. Other than making the GDP figures look good what does it achieve ? The cake gets bigger but each person’s slice is not. We will continue to see house prices go up and up and up and the young being frozen out of the housing market. We have so called environmentalists supporting this massive inflow of people while at the same time complaining about loss of habitat for koalas.