Mike Freelander (Macarthur, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to say a few words about elections. Elections are strange and marvellous things. They go beyond winners and losers. They are about much more than turnover at the top or the fate of those who lead. Elections can change the focus and momentum of politics. They can realign the electorate and reset attitudes and voting habits for many years. Elections are about ideas and values, even if we do not always realise it. They are instructive. They can remake the collective mindset of a nation. Their strangeness can extend to winners being losers and losers being winners. They allow the reassertion of hope, the renewal of purpose and a reinvigoration of public life. Elections can warn and they can offer catharsis. Although they are an endpoint of sorts, they are not the end of the political process, nor are they an end in themselves.

For many of my generation, their first election memory is of Gough Whitlam's triumph in 1972. It was inspiring. It was inspiring to me and it was inspiring to my generation. It renewed the way we thought about public life and it helped liberate the thinking of the next generation of Australians. It broke the mould. Between 1964 and 1972, when the Whitlam government suspended the scheme, over 800,000 20-year-olds registered for national service. Some 200 national servicemen died in the Vietnam War. Whitlam's victory not only ended conscription and Australia's involvement in Vietnam but hastened the overdue extension of the franchise to 18- to 21-year-olds. Never again would 20-year-old Australians be obliged to fight in a war before they could exercise the right to choose their government. Others of a similar vintage may remember Harold Wilson's shock election loss to Edward Heath in 1970, where a prepoll lead of close to eight percent and an over-100-seat majority in the House of Commons evaporated overnight.

Every election allows the disenfranchised the chance to demonstrate that they too have a place in the light. In choosing hope, they reassert a much broader faith in a free and open society. Against the backdrop of the terrorist atrocities in Manchester and London, two suspensions in election campaigning and the very real possibility that the election might be deferred, a higher proportion of Brits voted than in any election since 1992 and a good many before then. Many voted for the first time.

By most accounts, younger UK voters hold similar concerns to many 18- to 24-year-olds here. Never accept that your vote does not matter. Two of the UK seats were decided by incredibly slim margins. And never accept that the system cannot be reinvigorated or rejuvenated. Never, never accept that there is no place for idealism in politics. Idealism is its lifeblood. Politics without idealism or hope is, even at its best, administration masquerading as leadership. It is Hamlet without the prince.