Australian voters’ behaviour

Press, 21 April 1979, Page 17

Australian voters’ behaviour

Society and Electoral Behaviour in Australia. By David Kemp. University of Queensland Press.'4ol pp. Index. $14.95. (Reviewed by Alan Mcßobie) During the last 40 years the electoral fortunes of the Australian and New Zealand Labour Parties have traversed broadly similar paths. In both countries Labour Governments were defeated in 1949 after having ruled throughout the decade. Both won substantial victories at the end of 1972 after a long period in the political wilderness, only to be unceremoniously turned out of office three years later. This parallelism is broken only by the New Zealand Labour Party’s short-lived electoral victory in the latter half of the 19505. Why have the Labour Parties of both countries been so unsuccessful during the last 3 years? David Kemp seeks an explanation for the Australian Labour Party’s lack of electoral success during this period in the changing nature of Australian society. Kemp’s basic argument is that postwar Australian society has been characterised by increasing industrialisation and urbanisation which, together, have significantly

altered the way in which Australians view politics and their political parties. His analysis of data gathered between 1946 and 1975 points to five structural changes in that society: an upward shift in occupational status, increasing urbanisation _ and (more importantly) suburbanisation, the rapid development of mass communications, a growing affluence with its accompanying materialism, and the growing availability 7 of higher education. Together, these trends have altered the bases on which electors’ perceptions of their political interests have been formed; their effect has been to “homogenise” the electorate as the traditional divisions of society, based on class, religion, and the urbanrural split have broken down. The result of these changes has been a marked convergence in the distribution of support for Australia’s major political parties, with the net result being a significant decline in electoral support for the A.L.P., particularly among those voters who are regarded as providing its traditional basis of support — the blue-collar workers, Roman Catholics and those living in urban workingclass districts. While the A.L.P. is seen as “the party of protest,” in recent years footloose voters have cast

around among minor parties in an attempt to give visible expression to that protest. How relevant is this argument to New Zealand? Unfortunately we have no means of knowing since no longterm data exists for New Zealand which could be subjected to secondary analysis of the kind undertaken by Kemp. Nevertheless, the New Zealand Labout Party’s electoral record is very similar to that of the A.L.P., and New Zealand society has been subjected to similar changes to that experienced by Australia since 1945 and with similar results: accelerating urbanisation, the growth of the property-owning democracy, increasing affluence and materialism, the rapid extension of the mass media, and the rapid expansion of avenues of higher education. Further, the electorate has become increasingly volatile in recent years with the Values Party fulfilling a similar role to its Australian counterpart, the Australia Party. Kemp’s study does not provide definitive answers to questions about the failure of the New Zealand Labour party to come even close to sharing s political power since the Second World War, but it does suggest useful avenues which might be followed in an investigation of this problem.