One of the by-products of every election is the instant analysis, often in the form of small books that read like extended newspaper articles. The success of the teals at the 2022 federal election has already produced extensive speculation about whether this signals a sea change in Australian politics.

In their new books, both Margot Saville (The Teal Revolution: Inside the movement changing Australian politics, Hardie Grant Books, $22.99 pb, 116 pp) and Tim Dunlop (Voices of Us: The independents’ movement transforming Australian democracy, NewSouth, $29.99 pb, 224 pp) offer a rosy-eyed view of what happened in May 2022. ‘Australia,’ writes Dunlop, ‘voted not for change in individual seats, but for a major realignment of the way in which our political system worked.’

‘Australia’, of course, did no such thing. In most electorates, the choice was between the major parties. Their share of the vote may have fallen, but they still retain ninety per cent of seats in the House of Representatives, with a much smaller percentage in the Senate. Many of us are tactical voters, well aware of the preferential system, and much of the Greens vote is in effect a vote
that flows to Labor and also sends a message that Labor should move to the left.

For many commentators, the high point of the May election was the rise of the teals. (Even the Australian National Dictionary Centre has declared ‘teal’, the colour originally adopted by Zali Steggall, the ‘word of the year’.)

That Labor won government with less than a third of the primary votes owes much to the teals, who captured seven of the wealthiest electorates in Australia, swelling the crossbench to an unprecedented sixteen members. Impressively, as Simon Holmes à Court makes clear in The Big Teal (Monash University Publishing, $19.95 pb, 91 pp), the teal candidates were chosen by enthusiastic community groups within their electorates and raised considerable resources beyond those he himself funded through his Climate 200 organisation.