There is an adage in politics which says that "all politics is local." The problem with that is that it is consistently proven wrong. The Western Australian state election might have very well once again proven that adage to be wrong because the results bears out no obvious internal analysis.
Mark Mcgowan's Labor Government has been resoundingly returned with at least 52 of the 59 seats in the Legislative Assembly. The National Party has 4 and the Liberal Party has 3 at best. Quite apart from the fact that despite help from The West Australian (7West Media), News Corporation, and Nine Entertainment Co, Liberal leader Zak Kirkup openly gave up before the campaign had ended; so voters may have had an inkling that they didn't want to vote for the losers. To be fair, with the amount of privatisation that has gone on in Western Australia over the last four years, it may even appear that the Labor Party in moving to a central right set of policies, has eaten the Liberal Party's lunch. However not even that is enough to explain the absolute thumping that the Liberals and Nationals got at the ballot box. This is far more visceral.
The elephant in the room is that we are at one of those moments in time which represents a far bigger shift in society. I suspect that the biggest single shift in demographics in this election can be summed up with one word - women. I also think that the message that they want to send loudly through the ballot box can also be summed up in three words - stop raping us.
I do not find it a coincidence that this election which was held on the weekend of the centenary of Edith Cowan being elected as Australia's first female parliamentarian, would return a result like this; especially given the marches that we saw yesterday and will see today.
Ever since Elizabeth Higgins brought her complaint against being raped by a fellow Liberal Party staffer inside Parliament House in Canberra no less, we have seen the Liberal Party especially and their masters at News Corporation running an apology campaign for this.
This prompted some women to come forward and report an alleged historical rape campaign against Christian Porter who is the Attorney General. He has vigorously denied it and in the meantime, the Prime Minister denied ever having received the letter, the Australian Federal Police also denied receiving the letter despite it being forwarded by Labor Party members, the NSW Police has not carried out an investigation because Katharine Thornton is dead and the standard of proof to investigate can never be met any more and now The Australian newspaper has published excerpts from her diary.
All of this has prompted a series of marches around the country in protest (#March4Justice #EnoughIsEnough) and as at 7am this morning, the Prime Minister has point blank refused to meet with the leaders of the protests in Canberra, much less have to listen to what they have to say.
Christian Porter has not stood down as Attorney General and will not be stood down by the Prime Minister. It must also be noted that there also will not be a by-election because the current majority of the coalition in the federal parliament is 1 seat.
What does this have to do with Western Australian politics in particular? Spectacularly, not much. The fact that Christian Porter is an MP from Western Australia is almost incidental to this. Had he been from any other state, I still think that the result would have been the same. Dare I say that state politics and even the relationship between state and federal politics in this moment counts for exactly naught.
What this looks like is that Western Australian voters have decide to punish the Federal Liberal Party. This is even different to the usual set of reasons why state elections are the electorate trying to punish federal politics.
The wipeout of the Liberal and National Parties on the floor of the parliament means that neither of them will have party status under the rules of the parliament; which technically means that there is no statutory opposition. My hope is that Mark McGowan extends monetary support to at least keep democracy operationally alive for the term. A government with no credible opposition has its own problems.
I think that what the result of the Western Australian election shows is that politics isn't always local but is sometimes even bigger than parliaments. In principle, if the colours of the parties had been swapped then I do not think that the result would be broadly different.
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