Sometimes evolution can be quite quick, almost revolutionary. Politics is similar to biology that way.
Politicians and political parties think they are part of the political environment, but they are more like organisms within it and if it changes, they will die out if they do not respond adaptively. Only the fittest survive.
At the beginning of the 19 th century, the Peppered Moth was coloured like white pepper, camouflaging it against the trees in which it lived. Then the Industrial Revolution covered the trees in dark soot and birds could easily pick off the white-pepper-coloured moths. But some rare dark-coloured moths survived and multiplied. By the end of the century 98 per cent of the moths were dark.
With pollution control in the 20 th century, however, the light-coloured moths got back the advantage and now nearly all are light coloured.
Political evolution is slightly different in that political moths do not have to rely on a random colour gene to survive. If they are smart they can actually change their own colour themselves to best suit the changing environment – or not.
The Liberal Party – or at least a majority of its elected members – is right now in the “or not” stage. This ground has been well-covered – failures to deal with the new communications landscape and failure to adopt policies which align with the changing views of much of the electorate, particularly urban, younger, and female voters.
But another change in the political environment is happening which can be seen in the Farrer by-election campaign. We will know the result in a little over a week, and we will be able to see how significant the change is.
In the 2020s the major parties have each lost more than 10 percentage points of their support – about a quarter of it. In 2025 Labor still managed to get a lot of seats (60 per cent of them) with its 34.5 per cent of the primary vote. And the Coalition got nearly 30 per cent of the seats with its 32 per cent of the vote. So, the façade of the two-party system remained intact.
However, it is a thin façade, and getting thinner. This is because increasingly more voters are concluding that neither major party seems capable of delivering the policies they want. On the progressive side, Labor is seen as just tinkering and not dealing forcefully with major issues: reliance on fossil energy, tax, housing, gambling, and so on. Similarly, on the conservative side: immigration, housing, secure jobs, cultural alienation, and so on.
One Nation has exploited the resentment of working-class voters, mostly males without university education, and have picked up enough support to look like challenging the Coalition to be the main Opposition party.
The more significant new phenomenon, however, is the rise of issues politics, especially on the progressive side. The working-class social conservatives are fleeing to One Nation. The educated progressives, on the other hand, are not drifting to other political parties. Rather their politics is one of issues-picking.
It has already manifested itself with Climate 200 backing the teals – mainly hard-working female candidates in hitherto conservative seats.
More recently, the Australia Institute and GetUp have been campaigning on specific issues by broad communication with fairly compelling evidence-based information and conclusions.
These campaigns are funded by masses of small donations. GetUp says it has 670,000 members or donors. Of those, 57,000 have made a donation in the past year, many of them multiple donations. Of those, 97 percent of them less than $100.
It indicates issue-by-issue concern.
This contrasts with the very small number of corporate and organisational high-spend donors contributing to the major parties, particularly the Coalition.
Both lots of donors want their policies acted upon, but the Climate 200, Australia Institute, and GetUp donors are not giving to political parties. They have given up on the major political parties for a very good reason. That is because the major parties have given up on them and have become more beholden to big money: fossil fuels, mining, gambling, retail, property, and so on.
For the Farrer by-election GetUp has raised more than $400,000 and plastered the electorate with posters and advertising pointing out One Nation leader Pauline Hanson’s support for US President Donald Trump’s attack on Iran and support from Australia’s richest woman, mining magnate Gina Rhinehart.
The campaign bit. It prompted Nationals defector now One Nation MP Barnaby Joyce last week to call GetUp members “A crazy left-wing cabal of bitter people”.
GetUp donations surged again with more money to point out that One Nation, far from being a panacea for the disenchanted, will act against their interests.
The campaigns (including direct-email campaigns to MPs) are likely having an important side-effect. They can give politicians ammunition to resist the lobbyists for big money. I call them the Orange Lanyards because the visitors’ passes given to lobbyists at Parliament House have orange lanyards and permit the holder to stalk around Parliament House unescorted where they can proliferate their quiet, well-funded campaigns in their paymasters’ interests and invariably against the public interest.
If they were smart, maybe they should ask for grey lanyards so they could be – like the peppered moth – less conspicuous.
The change in the political environment here is the rise of targeted, evidence-based, fact-checked, single-issue, policy campaigning with money raised in small amounts from many people.
It has only been made possible by the combination of a mass email reach combined with the cheap, efficient, internet-based methods of quickly transferring lots of small amounts of money.
Those politicians and political parties that do not adapt will be picked off in the new landscape like unadapted light-coloured peppered moths.
Crispin Hull
This article first appeared in The Canberra Times and other Australian media on 28 April 2026.