How Australia’s Voting System Maintains Two-Party Rule

Australia’s two major parties — the Australian Labor Party (ALP) and the Liberal-led Coalition — are steadily declining in popularity, mirroring similar trends around the world. Both are largely very happy with Australia the way it is today and seek to preserve a status quo that is, for them, a happy one.

It’s not that they’re blind to the inequalities and injustices of today’s Australia. Rather, they see them as actively desirable at worst, or at best unavoidable.

Certainly, their perspectives are different. The Coalition’s vision for Australia is labor-antagonistic capitalism, while the ALP’s vision is a labor-inclusive version of capitalism, where “unions and business work together for the common interest.” But fundamentally, both seek to strengthen capitalism, not weaken it.

This has meant that a growing number of dissatisfied voters are looking for alternatives. Indeed, at the last federal election, in 2022, the primary vote share of the major parties combined reached the lowest-ever figure of 68 percent. Even though the ALP won that election with a majority of seats, the ALP’s primary vote dropped to only 32 percent — down even from the 2019 election Bill Shorten infamously lost with 35 percent of the vote.

You aren’t alone if you think it’s strange that an increasingly unpopular party with 32 percent of the vote could still win a majority of lower house seats and form a government. To understand how this can happen, we need to understand Australia’s democratic system — and most importantly, how it was designed to entrench two-party rule.

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