Has Labor finally become the natural party of government? This would once have seemed an absurd question to someone of my age, growing up in the 1950s and 1960s, when the Liberals were in office in Canberra for an unbroken period of 23 years. But most of this was the product of Labor’s split in 1955 which led to the creation of the Democratic Labor party and their flow of preferences to the Liberals. Even when Labor finally broke through under Whitlam in 1972, the presence of the DLP contributed to the victory being a relatively narrow one. Since the election of the short-lived Whitlam government the two parties have divided the time in office at the federal level almost equally, although Labor will pull ahead with its new three-year term and, given its majority in the House of Representatives, the overwhelming likelihood of a further three-year term at the end of the present one. Labor holds office in four of the five mainland states and has been in government in the ACT for 24 unbroken years. It is true that the Liberals are in office in Queensland and the Northern Territory, although, prior to the last election in Queensland, Labor had been in office for almost 30 of the proceeding 35 years. As for Tasmania, arguably nobody is in government there and neither of the major parties has a majority in the parliament.

There are two demographic trends that highlight the problems of the Liberals. The first is their vote in the 18-to-34 age group. Polls and actual elections obviously vary to some extent over periods of time but in recent years they have indicated a figure of approximately 20 per cent for the Liberal vote in this group. This no doubt reflects the fact that many of these voters are relatively recent graduates of universities whose academic staff and administration are consistently hostile to the Liberals. It may also reflect the apparent indifference of this group to public sector debt and deficits which makes it difficult for the Liberals to espouse one of their traditional strengths in the form of sound economic management, although it must be said that in recent times federal Liberal governments have mirrored their opponents in seeing increased government expenditure as a solution to every problem in society. The other demographic trend that poses a problem for the Liberals is the still-increasing urbanisation of the Australian community – a model that appears to favour centre-left parties generally. There has never really been, as there is in the US, a small-town Australia but the sprawl of the major cities continues to advance relentlessly. In the US the urban clusters in a particular state tend to give a majority to the Democrats while the rest of the state offsets this vote – sometimes successfully and sometimes not – with a Republican surplus. In Australia the National party holds a number of seats outside the cities but at the last election the suburbs of the major cities were largely held or gained by Labor.

One of the advantages that Labor has is its ability – as evidenced at present in New South Wales and the ACT – to govern with the support of the Greens and/or a number of independents even though it has failed to secure an absolute majority in the House of Representatives. And in the case of upper houses, where it is almost impossible for either of the major parties to obtain a majority because of the electoral system that produces their members, it is usually possible for Labor to rely on the Greens and/or independents, as currently occurs in the Senate and the Labor states, to largely enact their legislative program. In addition to these strengths, Labor has, beginning in the 1980s, acquired the support of a range of public and private institutions in a way that is almost reminiscent of the subservience of the equivalent bodies to the regimes of the Soviet satellites in eastern Europe prior to 1990. The mainstream media, particularly the ABC, the Sydney Morning Herald, the Melbourne Age and the Guardian, are generally hostile to the Liberals, as are a variety of smaller publications, such as the Monthly and the Quarterly Essay. It is true that the News Limited journals are more objective, although they are far from uncritical in their coverage of the Liberals. As already noted, university staff, both academic and administrative, are overwhelmingly unsympathetic to the Liberals and discourage any attempts by dissident staff or students to express a contrary view. There is a similar collective mentality in the administrators of literary festivals and other cultural functions where political correctness is enforced to ensure that no dissenting opinions are heard on or off the stage.

It might be thought that the business sector – once a traditional bastion of support for the Liberals – would campaign against Labor in election periods in the same way that the union movement provides financial and moral support for Labor not only during election campaigns but at all times. Yet the voice of the peak business bodies has been noticeably muted during recent federal elections, whether through fear of reprisals if a Labor government is elected or just indifference of their members to the consequences of such a result. In addition, many of those on the boards of the major corporations are wary of expressing any views other than the conventional wisdom, fearful perhaps of adverse media publicity or being removed from consideration by the honours and awards system administered on behalf of the federal government.

None of this means that the Liberals cannot win one or more elections at the federal or state level in the future but, because of some of the changes in Australian society over recent decades, it is probably true to say that Labor has become the natural party of government in this country and it will be no easy task for the Liberals to mount a challenge in the immediate future to this current dominance.