Prospects for the Two-party System in a Pluralising Political World Australian Journal of Public Administration • 61(2):33–50, June 2002 © National Council of the Institute of Public Administration, Australia 2002. Published by Blackwell Publishing Limited SYMPOSIUM — THE REGIME CONTEXT Political commentators argue that the major political parties are in decline. This article sets out evidence for this view: minor parties and independents securing 20 percent of the vote at federal elections, declining strength of voters’ party identification, and issue movements playing a large role in setting the political agenda. Possible causes for these trends range from the political, such as policy failure, undermining traditional constituencies, and ignoring public opinion, to sociological forces, such as postmaterialism, individualism and serious disaffection. However, the article argues Labor and the Coalition will be the dominant political players for the foreseeable future. In most lower houses, the electoral system favours the major parties which on balance is a good thing. The major parties have taken concerns of interest groups into account, while balancing these against majority opinion. They simplify choice for an electorate only moderately interested in politics, and can be held accountable in a way minor parties and independents cannot. Andrew Norton Research Fellow NSW Centre for Independent Studies By any world standard Australian political life is remarkably stable. Not only are the revolutions, coups and civil wars found in many other countries’ history books absent, but there has been a long federal duopoly between the Labor Party and the Liberal-dominated Liberal– National Coalition. Nobody younger than their mid-1970s has ever had a serious chance of voting in a federal government that was not Labor or Liberal and, if you count the Liberal predecessor parties as representing some kind of continuity, then nobody alive has ever had an ultimate choice except between Labor and Liberal. One international survey of 18 Western democracies found Australia in the late 1990s had the second lowest proportion of seats held by a party without a significant record of governing. Only the USA had a lower proportion (Strom 2000:205). 1 While the Labor–Liberal government duopoly remains strong, pluralising and individualising influences in Australian politics have changed the environment in which the two parties operate. This has led some like Ian Marsh to look to a ‘possible future for politics beyond the familiar two party system’ (Marsh 1995:1). There are two trends that signal a pluralising political world. The first is the rising vote for independents and minor parties. In 1951 the major parties received a massive 97.9 percent of the vote in the House of Representatives, and a not much smaller 95.6 percent in the senate. Nearly half a century later, at the l998 federal election, voter support for the major two parties in the House of Representatives hit a postwar record low of 79.6 percent, and the senate vote was lower still at 75 percent. The major party vote rose only slightly in the 2001 poll, to 80.8 percent in the House of Representatives and around 77 percent in the senate. 2 In isolation, the 1998 and 2001 House of Representatives votes could be idiosyncrasies. The strong One Nation vote in 1998 declined substantially in 2001, and the lift in the Greens vote in 2001 may be Labor voters temporarily defecting over the refugees issue. However, looking at the 1990s as a whole, a pattern appears of lower major party support than in the past. Averaging votes over a number of elections weakens the influence of one-off factors. In the 1990s the average major party vote was 84.4 percent, compared to 92.2 percent in the 1980s, 92.4 percent in the 1970s, 90.5