For more than a century, Australian politics has been a two-party contest, leaving voters with a simple choice on election day to vote for either Labor or the Coalition. But as the next federal election looms, that old rule book is being torn apart with independents and minor parties expected to capture around a third of the vote in the new parliament.
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TVTranscript
00:00When we were doing this story, we looked around the country to see if we could find some data
00:06that really talked about a cost of living election and how bad it was going to be.
00:11And we couldn't really find it.
00:12So what we did is we went and got the UNSW and a data analytics firm to have a look at
00:18some data for us.
00:19And what they came back with was actually pretty startling.
00:22First of all, three years ago, just before the last election, around a majority of households
00:29were in financial stress in 8% of electorates.
00:32So 8% of electorates, a majority of households were in financial stress.
00:36Now if we fast forward to today, that figure is now 82%.
00:40So that tells you just how bad it is and how difficult it's going to be for Prime Minister
00:46Anthony Albanese.
00:47I guess if you look at what does this mean politically, because we don't have a presidential
00:53system here, we go seat by seat.
00:54So if you look at the 20 marginal seats that Labor's defending at the next election, 19
01:01of those are in pretty acute financial stress.
01:05So that tells you the challenge for the Labor government and Prime Minister Albanese as
01:09he comes into this election.
01:11What about the Greens, Angus?
01:12Yeah, interesting one there.
01:14I mean, they are defending three seats up in Brisbane and also the seat, Adam Bandt's
01:19seat in Melbourne, which is definitely not in play.
01:22But those three seats in Brisbane are definitely in play.
01:26We've seen some, I think, older voters move away from the Greens.
01:31They've been a little bit shocked, I think, by some of the antics of Max Chandler-Mather,
01:36the housing spokesman, getting on the stage with the CFMEU, terrible look for them.
01:42But also some pretty, you might call, radical housing policies around putting a sort of
01:48rent cap on to try and freeze rents.
01:51Look, everyone thinks that's a terrible idea, most economists, the Grattan Institute, people
01:55like that.
01:56But we went and dug into the data and actually you can see that, well, there's a reason for
02:02that and that is because those three Green seats in Brisbane, you've got Griffith, you've
02:07got Ryan and you've got Brisbane, all of those have really elevated levels.
02:12So about 80% of those electorates are in serious rental stress.
02:17So 80% of households in those three seats are under rental stress.
02:21So that might tell you why the Greens are so keen to push this policy and how they're
02:25speaking to their base.
02:26And how are the independents approaching this election?
02:28Yeah, this is going to be the wild card, I think.
02:31I think we're not going to see a huge amount of movement between the two major parties
02:35in seats.
02:37But I think the independents is going to be the big story again in this election.
02:41So Simon Holmes of Court and his Climate 200, they've got their backing candidates in third
02:47party seats and all the focus is really on whether they're going to retain their seats,
02:53the so-called Teals in Sydney and Melbourne and also Kate Cheney over in Perth.
02:58But I think the really interesting contests are going to be some of these regional independents.
03:03So we've got in the seat of Wanan, we've got a guy, Alex Dyson, 36-year-old comedian, taking
03:10on Dan Teen, a former cabinet minister.
03:13On the Gold Coast, there's a couple of independents there that are going to do some things.
03:16In the seat of Groom, Toowoomba, LNP heartland for years.
03:20That's going to be an interesting battle.
03:21And also outside in some of the regional areas in Melbourne or outside of Melbourne.
03:26So I think they've been quite strategic also and they've targeted these seats where the
03:33sitting members are retiring and there's a three or four way contest.
03:37So it's going to be a messy preference flow, things are going to be fractured there.
03:41So I think that's going to be the story of the election.