Elections over the last week have seen some pretty good outcomes for the Greens and some very bad outcomes for both Labor and the LNP.
Here’s what ChatGPT came up when I asked for a representation of Green Labor
In the Brisbane Council elections, the Greens got 23.1 per cent of the vote, barely behind Labor on 26.9. The combined total of exactly 50 per cent wasn’t reflected in terms of seats, mainly because of preference leakage and exhaustion, but I want to focus on the longer term implications here.
In Tasmania, the incumbent Liberals suffered a 12 per cent swing on primary votes, falling to 37 per cent, after a series of elections in which they received an absolute majority, or very close to it, on first preferences. Most of the aggregate loss went to independents and the Jacquie Lambie network with Labor and the Greens each picking up small gains.
That doesn’t mean that all the people who voted for JLN and independents switched from Liberals. More likely, the Greens (and maybe also) Labor picked up some Liberal voters, but lost ‘protest’ voters to JLN in particular. What’s really striking here is that the combined vote of Labor and the Liberals was below 66 per cent. “Other (including informal/blank)” comfortably outpolled Labor, and came close to beating the Liberals.
Finally, in the by-election for the South Australian seat of Dunstan (vacated by the former Liberal Premier), the Greens polled 22 per cent of the vote. Starting from a primary vote of 32 per cent, which would once have been considered disastrous, Labor won the seat comfortably on preferences, a rare by-election defeat for an opposition party.
Despite this striking evidence of dissatisfaction with the two-party system, journalists reported the Tasmanian outcome as a “hung Parliament”. This is a nonsense way of describing the situation. A hung jury is one that can’t reach a verdict. An election in which no party wins an outright majority of seats is a verdict rejecting the idea that the Parliament, or at least the Lower House, should be a rubber stamp for the winning party (or rather for the leader of that party) in between elections, when the voters have a chance to switch one ruling party for another. For some years, Tim Dunlop and I have been pushing the term “deliberative parliament” to describe this outcome.
The two-party system is one which is familiar and comfortable for the political class, including political journalists. It’s striking to observe that, while there are plenty of journalists who are clearly identified with either Labor or the Liberals, or can be seen as balanced between the two majors, there are none who align with the Greens, or Jacquie Lambie, or the teal independents, even in general terms.
All of these parties, along with the various rightwing parties that have won seats in Parliament are treated by the Press Gallery as alien intruders who will soon be gone. Similarly, a “hung parliament” of which we have seen at least a dozen in Australia, in recent years, is treated as an unfortunate aberration.
For the left, the big problem here is the difficulty of establishing a working relationship between Labor and the Greens. The only place this has worked consistently well is the ACT, where some form of Labor-Green coalition has held office since 2008. There are two big problems here. The first is the general problem of a centre-left coalition (or less formal arrangement) in which the centrist party (in this case Labor) is dominant, and the left party (the Greens) must take responsibility for policies that disappoint their voters. The second, local factor, is the toxic relationship between (large groups of) Green and Labor politicians and activists, of which Anthony Albanese is a notable exemplar.
One way or another, these difficulties will have to be resolved. That will take time, and perhaps some generational replacement, so that those making Labor-Green agreements won’t be distracted by the question of who did what to whom in 2010. But the days of pliant parliamentary majorities are drawing to a end, and democracy will be the better for it.
John Quiggin 
Isn’t a benefit of a two-party system that a decisive vote cannot be obtained by a third unrepresentative party? Suppose for argument that the Libs and Labour each get 48% of the vote and a third party gets 4%. Then the unrepresentative party has the power to determine outcomes in a majority rule vote. It has a lot of power to form coalitions but only got a small fraction of the vote.
Harry Clarke
The end of big party politics can not come soon enough. Hijacking parliament to pander to the rested interests of big business and/ir unions must stop. Big business only represents less than one per cent of the population. Ancillary beneficiaries through the stock exchange may expand this to about fifteen percent. As for unions they would have less than twenty percent of the total workforce as members. The rise of independents is to be lauded. They can reign in the pork barrelling of governments and hold the big parties to account.
Somebody should tell ChatGPT that women work too.
@Harry That’s wrong. If the two parties with 48 per cent each agree, they can form a government with 96 per cent support.
If they can’t agree, they can make offers to the 4 per cent. The typical form of these offers is that the 4 per cent get a little bit of what they want, as do the various groups (say 12 lots of 4 per cent) who form the support base of the 48. Any of these groups, if they are dissatisfied can switch sides and put the other lot in.
James: Indeed. Also it appears that all the male workers are of the same age and (indeterminate/mixed) ethnicity.
The outcome for Tas could be that Libs drop their Big Pants attitude and adopt a more collaborative and consultative approach. This could be a win for Tas and serve as a model for Australia.
Or they could adopt a belligerent attitude and spend the next term in a state of constant nonproductive turmoil. Much like Russia.
John, Wrong? Clearly I am assuming that the two parties each want majority power and will not form a coalition with each other. That is reasonable. Supposing that each of the parties consists of 12 interest groups gaining 4% then there is no benefit to holding the pivotal 4% and the role of minority parties becomes moot. If the two large parties have internal cohesion then my result stands.
Moreover, it seems that the assumptions I make parallel reality in Australia better than your alternative assumptions.
Complications: (i) The Greens in Australia will never form a Coalition with the LNP. (ii) There may be more than one minority group (e.g. the Lambie Party in the Tasmanian state election) when the Greens vote became irrelevant.
Whether a single party winning a majority of seats in parliament is a desirable or an undesirable outcome depends on a lot of factors; or, putting it the other way around, whether it’s desirable or undesirable to have a parliament where no single party holds a majority of seats depends on a lot of factors. Different countries (and different sub-national units, like Australian States) have different constitutional and institutional structures, different parties and party systems, different histories, and different current problems: as a result, sometimes they’ll be better off as a result of an election giving a single party a majority of parliamentary seats and sometimes worse off. It might not be good to have a parliament which automatically endorses whatever the government wants, but then again it might not be good to have a parliament which regularly blocks what the government wants. I would neither acclaim nor deplore the Tasmanian election outcome without knowing more about what’s going on there.
If somebody with detailed knowledge of the Tasmanian situation wanted to tell me how this election result was a good thing, I wouldn’t dispute it; I don’t know better than they do, that’s my point.
The Tasmanian Liberal government was maintained in office from 1996 to 1998 (in the absence of a parliamentary majority) by support from the Greens (in an arrangement which admittedly fell short of a formal coalition).
“I would neither acclaim nor deplore the Tasmanian election outcome without knowing more about what’s going on there.”
Fair enough, but why spend so much time saying this? No need for you to comment at all.
“The Tasmanian Liberal government was maintained in office from 1996 to 1998 (in the absence of a parliamentary majority) by support from the Greens”
Sounds like you do know something about Tassie after all. But your info is out of date. The Greens have moved a fair way to the left in the last 25 years. Highly unlikely they would do a deal with Liberals now