Elder Participation and Senior Power in Australian Electoral Politics

ABSTRACT

This article seeks to assess the “goodness of fit” between the social science literature on the impact of older voters on electoral outcomes and the Australian experience of the politics of aging. While the literature suggests that the notion of senior power is a flawed one, Australia's 2004 federal election campaign indicated that this is not quite so. This article offers a possible explanation for the difference between the literature and the Australian experience in terms of the calculus that underpinned the election campaign, namely, capturing the votes of swing voters in marginal seats including “silver” swing voters in seats with a disproportionate number of older voters. The preliminary findings of a small exploratory study of campaign strategists suggest that there may be a real basis to this explanation. Thus, there does appear to be some basis for asserting that “gray power” does play a role in Australian national electoral politics.

KEYWORDS:

• Politics of aging
• Australia
• elections
• gray power

Notes

1. Unlike the House of Representatives (the Lower House of Parliament), where members immediately lose their job when defeated at an election, senators are elected for a fixed term of 6 years. Thus, 15 defeated (and retiring) senators enjoyed a further 8 months of service after the federal election before departing the Senate.

2. Compulsory voting in Australian federal elections was introduced in 1924. There are about 30 countries in which voting is compulsory including, for example, Argentina, Brazil, Switzerland, Thailand, and Venezuela. However, Australia is one of only 10 in which it is strictly enforced. The Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters' review of the 2004 federal election in the latter part of 2005 briefly examined, among other things, the abolition of compulsory voting and a 4-year term for the Lower House. Bowing to public opinion, Prime Minister Howard provided an assurance that a move to voluntary voting was not on his agenda (Koutsoukis, 2005).

3. “Nine days out from polling day on October 9 …, after the Labor campaign launch, Labor's polling of its primary support bumped into the low 40s and stayed there for 48 hours. It was Labor's best primary vote performance and could have delivered a narrow victory” (Shanahan, 2005, p. 24).

4. A second Intergenerational Report was published in April 2007 (Australian Treasury, 2007). It found, among other things, that the amount by which spending was expected to exceed revenue by 2046–2047 was about 3.5% of GDP compared to a projected “fiscal gap” of 5% as reported in the first Intergenerational Report.

5. Going into the 2004 federal election, there were 12 seats that were marginal in New South Wales, 13 in Victoria, 10 in Queensland, 6 in Western Australia, 4 in South Australia, and 2 each in Tasmania and the Northern Territory. Of these seats, there were 6 in New South Wales where persons aged 65 and older represented 15% or more of the residents, 4 in Victoria, and 2 each in Queensland and South Australia (Australian Electoral Commission, 2005, pp. 2–5; Kopras, 2003, p. 37).