Since June, Abbott’s approval rating has slipped four points to 36 per cent, and Shorten is down six points to 36 per cent, according to a Fairfax Ipsos poll. (An Essential Poll also had him as third most preferred ALP leader, behind ‘Someone else’ and ‘Don’t know’). With net approval for both leaders less than minus 20, the data have been referred to as “the worst set of numbers recorded by a prime minister and leader of the opposition in the recent history of polling.”

It is hard to look at such figures and feel that these leaders are the best the country can do in terms of leadership. If politics were a sport, both teams would be losing. Perhaps it is time to reconsider the game itself?

Australian politics’ dominance by two political parties is no longer the status quo worldwide. While English speaking democracies have tended to be two party systems, which remains the case here and in the United States, the trend worldwide is towards coalition governments.

The primary vote for both parties has also been on a predominantly downward trend since the Liberal Party, National Party, Country Liberal Party and Liberal National Party formed The Coalition in 1949.

“I see two party politics as going the way of the dinosaurs,” said Ben Eltham, Research Fellow at Deakin University and National Affairs Correspondent at New Matilda. “We used to have a society and an economy that was based around a couple of big powerful corporations; Qantas and Virgin, News Limited and Fairfax… some of these duopolies are breaking down over time and slowly federal politics is going to follow.”

The country has recently had a taste of what that future could look like, with the Gillard government failing to secure a clear majority and thus controlling the House Of Representatives with an effective coalition with The Greens and independents Andrew Wilkie, Rob Oakeshott and Tony Windsor.

Watched by treasure Wayne Swan and Australian Greens party members Prime Minister Julia Gillard and Greens leader Bob Brown shake hands after signing a parliamentary agreement in Canberra, Wednesday, Sept.1, 2010.

Source: AAP

“I don’t think the public saw the hung parliament as a successful form of government… the public had a real concern about the erosion of executive power,” said Eltham.

“Having said that, in policy terms it was a very effective parliament; it got a lot of legislation passed.”

Minority parties and independents have the ability to reframe political debate and enable issues that have been shut down by a two-party system to be discussed, such as The Greens’ success in getting climate change policy on the national agenda.

“It can be more representative when minority parties represent a genuine minority of the electorate,” said Eltham. “But when a major party is able to capture an absolutely majority of the vote then we can truly say that the majority of the electorate is behind a particular government’s mandate.”

“As the major party system erodes and we have more minor parties in coalition, it’s increasingly harder to say that’s the case,” he said.