Lots of commentators have been surprised by the magnitude of the swing against the government in the opinion polls. Given that the economy is going well, and that on most issues divisions between the parties are not all that sharp, why should people change their votes? There are a number of potential reasons, including the increased salience of climate change and the fact that Rudd is a more attractive leader than any of his recent predecessors.
But one fact that doesn’t get so much attention is that much of the swing to Labor is coming from changes in the population of voters, rather than in changes of mind among voters. It’s well known that the Liberals have more support among older voters, and that Labor gets strong support from young voters and recent immigrants. But no-one seems to have drawn the obvious implication. If no-one changes their mind between elections, Labor gets an automatic increase in support as young people and migrants are enfranchised, while Liberal voters are more likely to pass away through old age (I’m not sure about Australians who move overseas and stop voting as a result).
How big is this swing? My rough guess is that we’ve added a million new voters since the last election and lost around half a million. If we assume two-thirds of the new voters go for Labor, and two-thirds of the departed supported the Liberals, that leaves the Liberal vote unchanged, but adds half a million votes for Labor, equal to a bit over 4 per cent of the total number of voters. Since the number of voters has increased, that should be reflected in, roughly, an increase of 2 percentage points in Labor’s share of the 2PP vote, and a decrease of 2 percentage points in the Liberals.
Obviously, there’s more than that going on here. There was a swing against Labor last time, for example. Still if you go back to 1998, when Labor came out just ahead on the 2PP vote, but didn’t win enough seats, the cohort effect since then would give a shift to something like 56-44, which is exactly what we observe in the polls (though of course we still have to wait for the only poll that counts
All this points up a big structural problem for the Liberals. Just to stay in the same place, they have to make sure that some proportion of voters switch to them as they grow older, or (in the case of migrants) spend longer in the country. It’s a commonplace that this happens, but there’s no reason to suppose that the process is automatic.
And it provides an alternative explanation of the “paradox” that Labor wins at the state level, while losing Federal. On this interpretation, Labor has a natural majority which has been offset, until now, by the attractiveness of Howard relative to the opponents Labor has put up against him.
John Quiggin 
But how did we get to the situation where old voters are more likely to vote liberal? Since we don’t observe a steady trend towards increasing labor votes, this must be because people _do_ tend to change their vote as they get older.
So we could say that it Labor who has the more difficult task because they have to fight against this ‘natural’ trend in conjunction with the increasing mean age of the population.
Does this analysis completely ignore the ageing population, or does it assume that as voters move into the grey bracket (56+) they don’t become more conservative?
If I’m not mistaken, the proportion of total voters in the grey bracket is growing as our population ages, which is a boon for the Coalition as this age group tends disproportionately to vote for them.
It seems to me you might be either ignoring the number of people who have entered the 50+ bracket, or you’re assuming their voting patterns don’t change.
Third option is that I’ve missed something.
It’s worse than that. I have somewhere heard that Paul Keating also waived the fine for not voting for old people. It’s very like something Aristotle described, where a certain city had compulsory voting but the oligarchs waived it as a concession for the poor; Aristotle called that a fraud on the people.
The remedy is obvious. To our existing exemption, we should add an exemption for people receiving benefits and for people born after a cut off date, say 1980, thus correcting Keating’s thumb on the scales and grandfathering out the obnoxious compulsion while allowing parties a period of grace to relearn how to get the vote out. To my mind, not having to get the vote out has led all sides of politics to neglect their grass roots and fall out of touch, a very bad thing that crept up in the generations after compulsion was introduced.
Bruce, at the state level we have observed a long-term trend to Labor. I wrote five years ago that “In the past fifteen to twenty years, Labor has rarely lost a state election, except when it has displayed high levels of incompetence, arrogance or both.” and the experience of the period since suggests that even incompetent and arrogant Labor governments can win re-election (not that they all fit into these categories, but there are quite a few examples).
Kymbos – reread the penultimate para.
How about offering evidence that (a) Paul Keating waived the fine for not voting for old people – when, where, how; (b) point to the section of the current electoral act in which the precise nature of the waiver is described; before using the assertion as evidence to substantiate a claim of malfeasance (“thumb on the scales”) and to then use it as justification for pushing the non-compulsory voting barrow?
I think it is quite automatic, John. People get more conservative with age, and are therefore more likely to vote for a conservative party.
As they say, if you’re not a socialist by the time you’re 20, you have no heart. If you’re not a capitalist by the time you’re 50, you have no head.
“All this points up a big structural problem for the Liberals. Just to stay in the same place, they have to make sure that some proportion of voters switch to them as they grow older, or (in the case of migrants) spend longer in the country. It’s a commonplace that this happens, but there’s no reason to suppose that the process is automatic.”
Isn’t it as reasonable to suppose that this process (the oldies swithcing) is automatic, as it is to suppose that young voters, etc. are automatically more likely to vote Labor. It seems that you are taking for granted one automatic process involving young people, etc. that is evidenced by the data, but then assuming the same data isn’t disclosing, with equal accuracy, another automatic process which affects old people. If it isn’t ‘automatic’, why has it persisted for so long?
BBB
I’m with Kymbos: We have to assume that as people get old they tend to vote conservative. It’s true from our every day experiences.
With the population aging, Labor is at an increasing disadvantage. And the suggestion that Howard is some sort of trend-bucking vote-magnet is extraordinary.
Sorry Proffy, this one doesn’t work. (Still interesting, but.)
(And P.M. Lawrence should give conspiracy-theorist nutters at the HS Chapman Society a wide berth in future.)
The Bureau of Statistics has undertaken a population projection based on different immigration levels and fertility rates. (For 2051, Series A projects a population of 33.4m, Series B 28.2, and Series C 24.9.)
Based on these figures, if one proceeds on the assumption that people are more likely to vote for conservative parties as they get older, then the Liberals should start measuring the drapes in ministerial offices.
There could well be another dynamic at play by then. Brian Toohey regularly fulminates against the social inequality of a (very) lightly taxed group of retirees being supported by younger taxpayers, struggling to raise a family and buy a house.
As the baby boomers retire, the proportion of taxpayers to retirees will decrease, and said younger taxpayers, with families to support may well demand that retirees, who have benefited from the changes to retirement savings brought in John Howard and Peter Costello, pay more taxed, or have their benefits more tightly means tested.
It’s probably more the fact that the 2 majors lack the organisation and overall depth(party grunts) to man up at both the Federal and State level nowadays. With Howard and Co dominating the scene Federally, Labor concentrated on the States. That will change fairly quickly with a Rudd win releasing Coalition talent to focus on the States. That aided by Labor with noone to blame anywhere, will quickly focus the electorate’s minds. Basically it will become a case of-Gotta problem-Blame Labor! The problems won’t go away quickly either. Housing affordability, petrol prices, food prices, water, untenable good war/bad war positioning, likely Tampa 2,3,4 ?, as well as the biggy in GW. With respect to this biggy, Rudd is already backpedalling on commitment and given the aforementioned, who could blame him? The education revolution will die a quick death, swamped by the need to shore up a rapidly bankrupting Medicare. That’s the huge sleeper in this campaign and Roxon is on a hiding to nothing to reduce those elective surgery waiting lists. Within Rudd’s first term, I expect the public purse to ditch funding abortions, IVF, plastic/cosmetic surgery and any other possible service it can think of, in order to try and save Medicare. As for the PBS, they’ll have to take the axe to much of it too. Kiss those tax cuts goodbye straight away. All this, even without a possible finacial tsunami. So will begin the halt of the pendulumn and the beginning of the long swing back. It could be much quicker than some think, particularly if the inexperienced Rudd Govt makes an obvious hash of it. They are going to be under some pressure when you think about it.
Forgot about practical reconciliation and given the rest, probably Rudd will too. My overall take-This will be the shortest honeymoon for an incoming Govt ever.
It could be that people get more conservative as they get older, but a large part of it is true cohort effects. Basically, for many people their political views are formed in their late teens – early 20s and they carry that through as their base preference (with occasional deviations) through their lives. There are US studies that show this as well. Australia voted conservative in part because there were relatively conservative cohorts whose formative eras were the 1940s and 1950s.
Much of that cohort effect is oppositional – young people now aren’t just disproportionately Labor voters because they are young, but also because they have grown up under Howard.
I read in the FT that France’s Sarkozy got in by overwhelmingly winning the over-60s. If only the under 60s had voted, Segelene Royal would have won easily.
Thanks, cb, that was my impression also. If anyone has some references that would be great.
“How about offering evidence that (a) Paul Keating waived the fine for not voting for old people…”
No, not here and now. For the purposes of blog commenting, i.e. promoting discussion, it is sufficient to point out the hearsay nature and leave it to the curious to enquire more deeply. To do otherwise causes so much delay as to miss the topic (e.g. see how a comment of mine on the overwork/underwork thread sank without trace after spam trapping delayed it). It might be different if I were guest posting, say.
Having written that, I might go looking anyway. But don’t expect to hear anything within your attention span (by the way, I don’t frequent the HS Chapman Society materials, so I can’t have heard it there).
But what does it matter if the new cohort gets the same policies? As you say where are the real differences?
“It’s worse than that. I have somewhere heard that Paul Keating also waived the fine for not voting for old people.”
That is scurrilous rubbish PM Lawrence.
It has always been the case that Divisional Returning Officers will not pursue very elderly and frail voters for failing to vote, and in circumstances where an elderly voter is mentally incapable then, with medical assistance, the family can apply to have that voter struck from the roll.
None of this has anything whatsoever to do with Paul Keating.
However, you might be interested to know that some years ago the Liberal Party attempted to “relieve” the elderly of the compulsion to vote, ostensibly out of sympathy for the poor old dears being whipped to the polls, but with the buried implication that most of them are too muddle-headed and forgetful to get it right, and its like rounding up cats anyway.
The reaction was a tsunami of complaints from deeply insulted elderly voters who insisted they not only valued their right to vote and were not the least perturbed by compulsory voting, but were outraged that anyone should imply that they might be mentally incapable of exercising their vote responsibly.
The Liberal Party never raised the subject again, and these days have found nursing homes very profitable fields to plough.
If you want the evidence PM Lawrence, start with the archived public submissions to the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters and get back to us in a few years.
The key paper on this is by Ian Watson, available here.
Thanks, Andrew. That seems to confirm it. I also found a paper by Andrew Leigh which gives more qualified support to the same position, suggesting an apparent pro-Labor cohort effect for those born after 1960.
Rational voters can also determine that a government has been in power too long. If there was a credible NSW opposition the Iemma government would not have survived. I don’t think we have to keep looking for external effects like demographics, economy, interest rates etc. We have one of the most educated voting groups in humankind’s history. I think you would have to start with the electorate being sophisticated, policy aware, politically aware and rational.
Spot on cam. They’ve never got it wrong given the choices they faced, as far back as I can remember.
Pr Q says:
The large anti-govt swing is simply due to incumbency fatigue, revulsion against Work Choices and an appealing new ALP leader. I also think the anti-govt swing is overstated. I expect a 53-47 spread.
I am skeptical of generational theories of political preference formation and transformation. The overall population is ageing, with the over 55s comprising a larger proportion. Presumably these middle-aged to senior folk will tend to vote LN/P in increasing numbers. (Unless they are part of the aging hippy cohort.) This more than compensates for the death of elderly LN/P voters.
Also the overall share of young people aged 18-35 is surely declining. This is reflected in the declining votes of the GREENs and DEMs, which traditionally promote “yoof” issues.
The multicultural period immigrants, selected on ethnic criteria, tended to tilt Left. They owed their place to the New Lefts strategic change to Culture War after the failure of the Old Left’s class war. But the latest batch of immigrants, selected on economic criteria, may have a different frame of mind.
The women are deserting the Conservative side of government. There is even a new party called “What Women Want”.
There are many reasons for this. Work and family life, Workchoices and the impact on their wages and conditions, lack of maternity leave, pressure on the household budget are all significant issues.
However the issue which is probably hardening the attitudes of women against the government is exemplified through the interaction of Tony Abbott with women from the Labor side of politics.
On Mr Abbott’s day of apologies he managed to not only keep Nicola Roxon waiting half an hour to debate his health issues, he managed to swear at her.
Not content with that however he then went on Lateline and kept on interrupting Julia Gillard.
Both Nicola Roxon and Julia Gillard handled themselves exceptionally well in comparison and handled the situations with humour and good grace.
He shows a lack of respect for the women in question but also for women in general with his behaviour. Others in the Liberal Party have made nasty personal remarks about Julia Gillard.
“If there was a credible NSW opposition the Iemma government would not have survived.”
Do you think that’s because the Libs couldn’t man up at both State and Federal level simultaneously? It’s certainly the case in SA too. The Lib Oppositions have been woeful, but they’re beginning to make inroads of late. Is that a problem of shrinking party memberships more generally?
And candidates. I’m thinking of how green Nicole Cornes was to be dumped in the deep end so soon.
“If there was a credible NSW opposition the Iemma government would not have survived.”
I was frankly surprised at the ease with which the Beattie government was returned here in Queensland.
In that case though it could hardly be blamed on the Opposition – Lawrence Springborg ran a strong campaign against a government burdened by the Patel scandal.
I genuinely believe that voters unhappy with the Federal government but unwilling to trust the Labor leaders on offer nationally have vented their resentment on State Liberal and National politicians.
cam, and observa: are you talking about oz? and not joking?
The 1998 had its own kind of paradox. Labor didn’t waste more votes in safe seats than the coalition. It lost because its vote was spread so evenly in the close ones. 10 seats needed 1% to win and there were another 9 under 2.5%. They only needed 8 more to take government.
I think one interesting generational shift in voting patterns over coming decades will occur as the current cohort of women over 60 (who were socialised in pre-feminist times, and a majority of whom will have experienced at least some years absence from the paid workforce for homemaking duties during their working years) age and die, and are replaced by cohorts of women who have been socialised since, and under the influence of, second wave feminism, and a growing proportion of whom will have experienced continuous attachment to paid work and the related challenges of balancing work and family. This may well entirely eliminate the gender gap in the Coalition’s favour amongst older female voters, and lead to the emergence of a gender gap in favour of left-of-centre parties amongst women overall.
I would think that this doesn’t help the labor party as much as you’d suspect.
A significant proportion of the younger people that Vote against John Howard will vote Green, not Labor.
In fact in my experience at Uni and just among friends, very few people my age vote Labor, because they aren’t socialist enough for your typical youthful socialist.
There is also a whole new thread to be posted in response to some of the comments about advancing age manifesting itself in more conservative voting patterns.
I think there is something to be said for the idea that the process of ageing, and also the experience of being a parent, tends to foster a disposition towards being more risk-averse, more sceptical of progress and anxious about change, more respectful of tradition, and (if one is ageing badly and/or mean of spirit) resentful of the strength and carefreeness of the younger generations and of the fact that the kids haven’t turned out quite the way you intended, and fearful of their cultures.
However it is far from obvious that this translates straightforwardly into more right-wing political proclivities.
Conservatism of age could translate just as plausibly into concern for one’s beloved local environment at risk from developers and their right-wing political backers, or bewilderment at why some reasonably serviceable publicly owned service or utility should be privatised and/or corporatised (and the services for your age group reduced and/or made more expensive) in line with the economic theories of a bunch of young brain-in-a-bottle upstarts.
And older women are the demographic most likely to react badly to a male politician standing over a female counterpart and swearing at her, as we saw on television this week.
I’m still not convinced. Major party politics is about capturing the middle ground. If the electorate overall becomes less socially conservative over time, as we can expect, the politics of the major parties will shift accordingly. That’s how they work. We can’t assume that political parties will remain static while society changes.
At the margins, a more progressive party will remain of more interest to the youth, and a more conservative party will remain in favour with more elderly people.
“If you want the evidence PM Lawrence” – but I don’t, precisely because – “…and get back to us in a few years.” I could as easily ask you to do it, just as Pedro thought I should. Though I have to say, the cohort effect makes it unlikely that the Liberals contemplated that for self-interested reasons, though they might have as part of winding back compulsion.
But why do you state that my comments were scurrilous rubbish and come out with much the same yourself? If it is that there is no backing provided, that applies to your stuff too, and if it is that it implies low motives, why, that applies to your stuff too.
Yobbo, don’t all those voter’s preferences end up with Labor?
pm lawrence, since you raised the thing about paul keating, you should be able to back it up. if you can’t prove it you should withdraw it.
No, snuh – I reported a limited statement. I did indeed hear that, somewhere. I would only be under the burden you describe if I had asserted something much stronger.
Only if the Greens preference Labor Tom, which is hardly a sure thing these days.
If the greens don’t get the promises they want, they will not preference labor, they have previously split their how to vote cards and preferences.
For everyone who’s assuming that people automatically start voting for more right-wing parties as they age, the US is an interesting counterexample. Apart from the under 30 set mostly being Democratic, there is no obvious correlation between age and voting behaviour.
On CNN’s exit polls, Gore’s best performance was among over 60s for example. Having said that, it was only by a couple of points, and that group was also Kerry’s (equal) worst group – equal with the 30-44 group.
It might be interesting to get more fine-grained patterns from elderly American voters. Perhaps the median elderly voter prefers the kind of centre-right position that is basically part of the Democratic coalition in America and part of the Liberal coalition in Australia. Or perhaps it’s just a quirk of (20th century?) Australia that people vote for more right-wing parties as they age. I think we’d need a lot of evidence to separate out the various hypotheses. Cliches about people getting more pro-capitalist as they age (as if that’s a reason to vote against Rudd!) hardly help.
PM Lawrence,
What you reported was less than hearsay by your own admission. This should not have even seen the light of day. If you decide to denigrate others there should be some basis in fact rather than repeating something which you don’t even remember where or when you heard it.
———————————————-
There is a degree of conservatism which arises from the aging process. Firstly the person concerned has seen many cycles of ideas and knows that many enthusiasms have been tried before with or without success.
Conservatism is marked by beliefs about their ability to maximise their wealth – often whatever the social and environmental impacts on others. There would be mixed views on this by older people who are still concerned about something radical like Workchoices as they know that the Industrial Relations system has mostly delivered fair outcomes in the past which has led to Australia being one of the best places to live.
However there is no doubt that the conservation of wealth amongst older people becomes more critical as losses are not easily recovered and there are still many who fear an impecunious old age. Thus the small rebound in John Howard’s fortunes when he announced the pensioner bribe.
There have been many changes in Australia’s demography. Demographically, I imagine that there are few more dynamic countries than Australia. and many of these demographic changes will be reflected in changing voting patterns.
But of great importance among these many changes is the sudden evaporation of support for the Coalition from its erstwhile most loyal support base — the over-54s.
It’s not hard to see what’s happening here. The baby-boomer cohort is entering this terminal bracket. Meanwhile the baby boomers’ parents are departing for a place where they get to vote only in Chicago.
Ever since baby boomers started to vote (in 1972) they have been less inclined to support the Coalition than either their elders or the next generation down.
And now this huge cohort dominates the 54+ bracket. Gen Y and baby boomers outweigh Gen X and the fast-dwindling Wrinklies.
Result: Labor landslide.
No, Jill Rush. It served perfectly well as introduction to the other material – even fiction would have served for that – and it was not “less than hearsay”; it is a fact that it is present somewhere in circulation, which is itself material. As for denigrating – it does not in any sense denigrate anybody to state something about them that does no more than confirm existing attitudes about them. Seriously, does anybody believe Keating (or Howard, for that matter) incapabable of gerrymandering?
I have had a look at the recent Newspoll data which breaks down political preferences by demographic cohort. The figures show that the LN/P’s voter losses amongst young, middle-aged and older voters are all the same – about 6%.
The actual LN/P vote for 2004 election:
18-34: 40
35-49: 42
50-+ 52
The average LN/P preference for 2007 Newspolls:
18-34: 33
35-49: 36
50-+: 46
The electoral pedulum swing appears to have swung against the LN/P accross the demographic board. So the amazing turnaround in the Coalition’s electoral advantage over the past couple of years is not due to any obvious age-related political tendency emerging.
The old-aged (50+) cohort of these polls merges the first half (~1945-55) of the post-war baby-boom cohort (now aged ~55-65 yrs old) with the older and ideologically more conservative pre-war demographic. So it is possible that this understates the “progressive” shift amongst the elderly.
The one major problem I have with the “aging baby boomer theory of AUS partisan alignments” is that it does not seem to have any profound ideological conseqences. BOth major parties, as I predicted about four years ago, have converged on the populist Centre in their politics, if not policy. But baby boomers signature ideological issue was cultural liberalism.
If the populus was shifting to the Left owing to the death of the blue-rinse, white-shoes brigade and their replacement by the latte-sipping, tree-hugging aging baby boomers then we would expect the parties to shift to the cultural Left, to accomodate the more liberal elderly demographic.
In fact, both parties have shifted to the “corporal” Right and away from the liberal Left in their cultural identity and national security policies eg border security, forward leaning regional defence, war on drugs, immigration integration, aboriginal intervention, law and order, anti-terrorism, straight marriage etc.
I conclude that the partisan re-alignment is purely pshephological in form, rather than ideological in substance. THe baby boomers prefence for the ALP is nominal, with no true belief. They have made only one life-long committment: to never vote for the LN/P.
yeah well i hear pm lawrence just goes around making things up in comment threads. this is of course a limited statement. i did indeed hear that, somewhere.
I heard somewhere that John Howard plans to rig the vote on 24 November. He and Tony Abbott have already decided the result – a narrow win for the government.
I have also heard that several years ago Tony Abbott was subjected to rectal examination by Tralfamadorians and they left something behind; this explains his sometimes odd behaviour.
However, as I just “heard this”, I am only reporting it. I am under no obligation to back it up with any evidence or even reasoning..
Pretty cool, huh?
“THe baby boomers prefence for the ALP is nominal, with no true belief. They have made only one life-long committment: to never vote for the LN/P.”
While this statement suffers from the vice of vast generalisation, it is probably true that more baby boomers vowed never to vote for the Coalition than those who vowed never to vote for the ALP.
The Coalition did represent for many baby boomers some of the more irritating and threatening factors that clouded their youth. Conscription and the threat of being sent to a cynically ridiculous war in Vietnam were prominent among those threats and irritants. Recently Malcolm Fraser had the decency to apologise. But the rest of them, including Howard, remain obdurate.
Maybe if Howard halted during one of those increasingly shambling walks/media events and confronted a camera with the following words:
“I have something to say to the baby boomers. As leader of the Liberal Party I wish to confess the craven cynicism of previous Liberal governments in our foreign policy toward South East Asia in general and Vietnam in particular. And I also want to apologise for the needless and expensive irrelevancy that was conscription.”
then Howard might yet win the election.
Be brave Johnny! How badly to you want to lay your head on a Kirribilli pillow on the night of 25 November 2007?
Mr Yobbo’s comment reveals that he doesn’t understand how preferential voting works. The voter does the preference distribution not the party on the ticket. How-to-vote cards only suggest the way the party distributing the ticket would LIKE the voter to vote. In any case, most Green voters would be to the left of the ALP hence it is inconceivable that a Green voter would then put Liberal or National second to the detriment of the ALP.
No, snuh and Pedro – it is self-evident that you made your stuff up, simply from reading this thread. I, however, really did hear what I reported. Feel free to find stuff that you genuinely did hear, then report it, and you really will be comparing like with like.
Katz Says: November 3rd, 2007 at 4:04 pm
I doubt that the prospect of conscription* to the Vietnam war was the policy that alienated the majority of baby boomers from the LN/P. The ADFs presence in Vietnam was winding down by the end of the 70’s when the boomers started to make ominous noises.
Most of the baby boomers (1945-65) came of age way too late to be eligible to be conscripted for active service. Only the 25% or so of boomers born b/w 1945-50 would have had a chance to face any serious action.
Remember it was the Cold War DEMs in the US that launched conscription and the Vietnam War. The AFL-CIO was fiercely anti-communist. Yet the DEM party remains popular amongst the typical US baby boomers.
In any case I daresay you will find that many similar countries not involved with the VN war or conscription are now being run by aging boomers who have a similar aversion to the Right wing party. For example the UK.
Boomers have an instinctive aversion to the LN/P because they identify it with an inhibitions to their freedom. The boomers primary personal value is individual autonomy. (My goodness dont they love their cars – freedom machines!)
Their personal ambition is to not live the lives of their parents, who were mainly burden-bearers in the service of some form of institutional authority (church, state, unions or extended family). So Boomers are burden-dodgers, whether it be taxes, union dues, military service, childbirth, censorship etc.
THey identify the Menzies and to a certain extent Fraser LN/P with the burdensome imposition of social controls, whether it be fitting in with the oppressively conformist Anglo-Celtic provincial culture.
That is why the Dismissal of Whitlam is probably the more significant factor in the boomers alienation from the LN/P. Much more than the Commie can-kicking or union-bashing. The Dismissal meant a premature end of the party and a return to drudgery. “Life wasnt meant to be easy.” THey did not like to be reminde “What a drag it is getting old”!
A complementary aspect of Boomers long march to freedom is their desire to sweep away arbitrary social barriers to status-ascent. The baby boomers were the first generation to give minority groups (young, women, coloureds, gays, atheists) a fair go. They resented the elderly, patriarchal, caucasian, white, christian hegemony. And it is no secret that the LN/P was the party of the Old Establishment.
*which is the fairest way to allocate labour in a war, if you are an egalitarian statist. But we know that most boomers are not that egalitarian if it requires a tax-increase. Or libertarian if it risks a crime wave. NIMBY.
The baby boomer-ALP tilt thesis fits the facts of recent AUS psephological history at federal and state level. But it has had a perverse effect on the ALP’s ideology of mateship. THe boomers ALP preference is a partisan alignment without much ideological substance.
The first time the boomers cohort (1945-65) all got the chance to vote en masse was in a federal election was in 1983. Not coincidentally this was the first time in AUS history that a federal ALP govt won enough popular support to obtain a long term period in office.
And, as Pr Q observes, the ALP has been the default party in power in the states for most of the past twenty odd years. But state govts got a lot less ideological over this period.
State ALP govts are mostly run by machine men apparatchiks who enjoy lucrative careers by awarding govt contracts, flogging off state utilities or doling out plum govt jobs to their uni mates. And the union heavies have to be paid off to be kept sweet. The branches are notorious for stacking or planting by ethnic businessmen keen to get a slice of the action.
The boomers are pro-ALP, but they are not neccessarily pro-Left wing. Unless the self-righteous demand for more more state entitlements and civil rights is some how “Left”.
The boomers forced the ALP to the New Right on economic matters in the eighties. And they forced the ALP to the Old Right on cultural matters in the noughties. These policies may have been a good thing or a bad thing. But they were not a Left-wing thing.
“The ADFs presence in Vietnam was winding down by the end of the 70’s when the boomers started to make ominous noises.”
Not true.
The anti-war, anti-conscription movement reached a crescendo in 1970 with the Moratoria. The bulk of demonstrators were young people who had not yet voted in any election. The Vietnam War was indeed winding down in 1970, but the Coalition government had promised to continue conscription, and did so until it lost the 1972 election. The Vietnam War aroused the awareness of baby boomers but Conscription brought them out into the streets in unprecedented numbers.
“Most of the baby boomers (1945-65) came of age way too late to be eligible to be conscripted for active service. Only the 25% or so of boomers born b/w 1945-50 would have had a chance to face any serious action.”
True, but not relevant. No one out of government at the time knew whether or when the Australian government might ramp up its military engagement in South East Asia. As late as May 1970, at the precise time of the first Moratorium, Nixon invaded Cambodia. This looked like a major escalation in which it was quite legitimately suspected Australia may have played some military role.
“Remember it was the Cold War DEMs in the US that launched conscription and the Vietnam War. The AFL-CIO was fiercely anti-communist. Yet the DEM party remains popular amongst the typical US baby boomers.”
So? Australian baby boomers made no distinction between US political parties. And in any case by the time the mass movement got started Nixon had made Indochina his war.
“In any case I daresay you will find that many similar countries not involved with the VN war or conscription are now being run by aging boomers who have a similar aversion to the Right wing party. For example the UK.”
This is true. Vietnam was seen by the New Left as simply one face of imperialism, militarism, military authoritarianism, racism, etc. In Europe, the soizante-huitards spread this message, as did Oz magazine and just about every major rock, pop and blues band. It would have happened in Australia if Australia never went to Vietnam and if there had been no conscription. However, in Australia these were the catalysing issues, and these issues were also major accelerants. There were many paths to boomer-consciousness.
“Boomers have an instinctive aversion to the LN/P because they identify it with an inhibitions to their freedom.”
Instinctive? What a strange word. Surely these beliefs and behaviours were learned and socialised.
“That is why the Dismissal of Whitlam is probably the more significant factor in the boomers alienation from the LN/P.”
No. The Dismissal hardened already established positions. They were very few baby boomers who were Liberal supporters in 1974 who changed political sides as a result of the Dismissal.
“Much more than the Commie can-kicking or union-bashing. The Dismissal meant a premature end of the party and a return to drudgery. “Life wasnt meant to be easy.â€? THey did not like to be reminde “What a drag it is getting oldâ€?!”
There is some truth in this statement. And amazingly to many non-baby boomers, baby boomers seem to have dodged some of the more depressing aspects of the aging process. And this observation returns us to the question of the effects of cohorts on Australian election results, and the coming Labor landslide.