The best path to win an election is to listen
to voters, be prepared to modernise on its
own terms, while fighting the old party factions hard,
that's the best insurance against a Corbynite insurgency
in this country.

Foxy,

I would love it if the labor party fell victim to Corbynism. The self immolation of the Labour party is a delight to watch.

Shadow, you are completely ignorant of the fact that the long term voting trend for both major parties has been consistently downwards. In 1960 the two major parties commanded 90% of the primary vote, by 1990 that had declined to about 80%, and today it stands at around 75%. That in itself presents little danger to the big two parties, given the biased two party preferred system in operation. Where votes are lost to minor parties and independents the system simply allows Labor and the Coalition to claw the lost votes back. The danger is with an uneven voting pattern, and as their vote declines one or the other major party will slip to third position in the count and then their votes will flow to the minor party candidate or independent. That point is not far off, if Labor and Liberal reach parity at 35% each then neither can expect to command a majority in the lower house, with a significant number of minor party candidates and independents being elected. There are rumblings from within, that the big two should do a preference swap in critical seats to freeze out third parties. That will work in the short term, but is doomed to failure as it drives more and more of the disgruntled to third parties and independents.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-07-03/election-results-historical-comparison/7560888

cont

cont

There was a once held belief that between them, Labor and the Coalition if they presented a moderate center view, and espoused policies that reflected a substantial degree of moderate politics, given 95% of their DNA was the same, then one or the other, depending on popularity prevailing at the time would form government with a workable majority. Wanting to sit at the center of the political spectrum may be a false premise today, as more and more voters feel disaffected and marginalized by center left/right politics and by the parties that espouse such policies. Voters are more and more likely to see an advantage in supporting parties and independents of the more radical persuasion. The trend is not for voters to polarize to the center, but to embrace more radical politics like One Nation, and the progressive Greens along with a host of others including Independents.

Paul,

Sometimes I think you have dementia as we have discussed the drift away from the major parties before. I think that the rise of smaller parties is facilitated by the preferential system, and I believed for a while that a "Conservative" party with overlapping values with liberals would help by capturing those disaffected by the liberal drift to the left, (as the greens captured those disaffected by labors drift to the right) .

Unfortunately this was preempted by the rise of One Nation which has filled this niche. However, preferencing ON above the Greens and Labor would have labor sweating as ON while taking a majority of its votes from the libs, will also be taking a fair chunk from labor, especially with ON now projected to get as many votes as the greens.

Shadow, you always suffer a self inflicted degree of forgetfulness. The bounce in the One Nation vote post election was to be expected, particularly where it had be most successful in Queensland. In the wake of the disunity displayed during the Rod Culleton affair, it remains to be seen if Hanson can hold her party together longterm.