They’ve become less necessary with Labor moving right unfortunately.
Regardless you need a strong opposition to move and challenge the status quo.
Absolutely. In the US the Dems tried to move right and lost the left, here Labor seems to have picked up votes without losing enough.
In America elections are fought on turnout. The Democrats in their infinite wisdom thought swinging right would allow them to win on swing voters while losing massively on turnout. To top it off one of the few swing demographics is unions (who are often conservative and, obviously, pro-union) and Schumer lead the charge in abandoning them for the suburban progressive vote a few decades back, and then they threw away the progressive vote by going in hard for Israel.
In Australia, swing voters genuinely do decide elections. The most effective leaders in Australia are radical pragmatists. Furthermore Labor never really abandoned the unions (despite some hickups). If the Liberals get their way with optional preferential voting then Labor may be stuck between a rock and a hard place and we’ll end up like Japan with a century of uninterrupted Liberal government though.
Regardless you need a strong opposition to move and challenge the status quo.
South Australia is not a favorable environment for the Libs. Just about the entire population lives in the Adelaide metro area. It has been a huge struggle for conservatives since the Playmander was removed. Though Playford was far from a typical conservative.
There are some very socially conservative people in SA and we produced Bernardi and Antic and parties like Family First. But Labor has that covered. They have the Catholic branch of the party/union movement, the SDA which produced Atkinson, Farrell and not least our premier Malinauskas, who was likely influential in the national adoption of social media laws. When Family First were resurrected in 2021 it was by two ex-labor ministers in opposition to a Liberal government that at the time was mostly under the moderate influence of a broadly popular Stephen Marshall.
The drift to what has been described as Trumpist influences from the Antic crowd is a dead end for the Libs here and it kills one of the great strengths of both the ALP and Liberals which is their broad representation and competition of interest and ideas.
Lack of a quality opposition is bad for the democratic process. It is bad for voters. The only democracy we have plays out in the Labor party room and it is cheaper to buy a party than an electorate. The damage to the Libs is mostly self inflicted. The only path to power for them is through broad mainstream appeal. They are betting on moving us all to their position instead of moving to ours. Good luck with that.
