The aftershocks from the recent Liberal Party leadership spill continue to dominate current political punditry. While the focus is on plots and personalities, less is being said about the current state of our political parties (as opposed to party politics…), which any rational calculation would indicate are on the endangered species list.

Image: Daniel Mohr; Source: Flickr; Some Rights Reserved

The parliamentary party system may have served us well for the first 100 years of Federation, but the past 10 years of political farce would suggest political parties are either increasingly irrelevant to modern democracy, or they are distorting the electoral process.

First, let’s look at some numbers:

1. Rarely over the past 20 years has either of the two major parties commanded more than 50% of the primary vote, as expressed in the regular polls.

2. Even on the two-party preferred basis, neither party can command more than 55% in the polls (although that may have changed in recent weeks as the Labor opposition has probably benefited from the disarray of the Coalition government).

3. Perversely, even though Labor is well ahead of the Coalition in the party polls, the Labor leader continues to lag both as preferred Prime Minister, and on net satisfaction rating. To me, this suggests that voters want to hedge their bets as to the outcome of the next election – or they are confused about what each major party and/or their respective leaders stand for.

4. The number of people who are members of political parties is minuscule, so how can parties claim to be representative of the population at large? At best, the lack of active party participation could be put down to public apathy; at worst, people place little value in party membership, or are disengaged with the whole party process.

Second, because of the emphasis placed on the party system (and the voters’ dissatisfaction with the choice they are being forced to make), federal elections are increasingly determined by swing voters in a handful of marginal seats – with a disproportionate number of those seats in Queensland. How can that be truly representative of voter intention?

Third, listening to the binary arguments between any government and opposition politicians duking it out on TV and radio each morning, I can’t help thinking that we need a new approach to policy debates – one that does not rely on towing the party line. Politics should not only be about who wins, but how specific policy outcomes are decided and implemented. With such poor standings in the primary vote, both major parties risk losing what remaining legitimacy they have unless they are willing to collaborate on policy – out with the hide-bound ideologies, and in with creative solutions, regardless of the tired party pedagogy.

The last Federal election further revealed deep-seated sociopolitical fault lines that do not fall nicely within the “traditional” demographics of either major party – so, we have inner urban progressives vs the outer suburban marginalised; mining communities vs regional agriculture; organised labour in the construction, manufacturing and public sectors vs flexible, self-directed digital nomads and freelancers working in the gig economy; outward-facing free traders vs inward-looking protectionists.

The traditional party structures are increasingly irrelevant and only support factionalism and horse-trading of the worst kind (and as exploited in the Senate preferences for the last Parliament). I previously did the ABC Vote Compass, and it indicated I was equally aligned to the ALP, LNP and the Greens, based on their stated policies and my personal values. (It also suggested that none of them deserved my primary vote outright!) Which is why, whoever forms the next Government, Parliament has to adopt a much more collaborative approach to policy making, not continue the entrenched party divisions.

Next week: Banks under the spotlight (again)