It was the only state or territory to win a majority yes vote in the Voice referendum last year, and on Saturday the Australian Capital Territory returned Labor to power for the seventh consecutive election.
Another minority Labor government reliant on Green support – images that federal Labor will not seek to highlight.
Yes, the ACT is completely disconnected from the rest of the nation. Their progressive creed is anathema to the more conservative values of mainstream voters spread across marginal seats across the country.
The place where Australia’s federal political class spends most of its time is a bubble far removed from the challenges facing most of the country.
Being out of touch is one of the worst insults that can be hurled at a mainstream politician, but in Canberra it’s a way of life.
It’s one of the reasons John Howard decided not to settle there, at The Lodge. He preferred to reside in his home state of New South Wales, where he dominated electoral politics at the federal level for more than a decade.
Albo is happily ensconced in The Lodge as polls suggest support for the Labor Party in New South Wales is declining.
The Prime Minister’s colleagues are increasingly questioning whether he is too removed from the concerns of voters whose support he needs to retain a majority government.
The ACT is an island unto itself. A political jurisdiction dominated by voting bureaucrats who clearly lean left.
And don’t forget that the parliamentary press gallery is also located there. No wonder he rarely understands mainstream complaints.
After 23 years in power, with another four years guaranteed, the Labor Party in the country’s capital is dominant. Despite the continued presence of a powerful cross bench.
Anthony Albanese has settled into the Canberra bubble and settled into the Lodge. Above with Chief Minister Andrew Barr and Jodie Haydon earlier this year.
Not only does Labor win at territorial level, but at federal level it holds all three ACT seats on offer, sharing the two Senate seats with independent senator David Pocock.
The Liberals can’t even win a Senate seat in the ACT these days.
The left-leaning reality of the ACT is why the territory has supported all manner of progressive social policy trials over the years.
Heroin injection rooms, euthanasia and, just last year, even decriminalizing methamphetamine – a policy change opposed by liberals in the territory.
Anyone looking to read tea leaves ahead of the federal election needn’t bother spending much time understanding what happened in the ACT on Saturday night.
It is a territory disconnected from any other place.
A more interesting electoral precursor to the federal election will be next weekend’s showdown in Queensland. A state with a growing population base that can sometimes decide federal elections on its own.
The Queensland state Labor government will struggle to stay in power, but a change of government at state level in the Sunshine State will not bother Albo too much.
If anything, he will hope that a statewide annihilation of Labor in the north will help voters get the “shit out of their livers on us”, as one federal Labor MP colorfully described it to me yesterday.
The only problem with that hope is that polls reveal Albo is less popular in Queensland than (soon outgoing?) Labor Premier Steven Miles.
The Canberra Center shopping centre, above (file image)
And the premier is also less popular in Queensland than federal opposition leader and hometown boy Peter Dutton.
All that said, the Liberals and Nationals already hold the majority of federal seats in Queensland. The Labor Party is therefore not at serious risk of backsliding.
Another election showdown worth watching ahead of the federal election is the WA state election, which will be held on March 8 next year.
There remains a small possibility that Albo will go to the polls before that date. Otherwise, how well the Labor Party fares in the West in the post-Mark McGowan era will give us an idea of how the federal Labor Party might fare as well.
McGowan took center stage in launching Labour’s 2022 federal election in the west. His sky-high approval ratings, courtesy of the pandemic, were a major factor in the landslide victory Albo enjoyed to help him secure a majority government in 2022.
Retaining the seats won in the west last time is the key to Labor retaining majority government at federal level. Liberal insiders are concerned there is no strong desire for change in WA, which could limit their electoral return on election day.
It has also emerged that the Labor Party plans to personally attack Peter Dutton during the next federal election campaign, believing that doing so could scare enough voters into staying with the government of the day.
It’s a risky strategy when the sitting Prime Minister is generally on the nose, and only serves to highlight that the Labor Party at federal level doesn’t have much to boast about as a positive reason to support his re-election.
That said, campaign professionals know that negative messages work. And first-term governments rarely lose.
The last one to do so at the federal level was back in 1931.
