Last Saturday, Canberrans voted for the territory’s parliament, the Legislative Assembly. The result was a strong one for independents and minor parties, with their combined vote exceeding 32% for only the third time in the territory’s 35-year history of self-government (at the time of writing; the count continues).

Canberra elected two independents, the first since 1998: Tom Emerson and Fiona Carrick. The independent vote grew at the expense of Labor, the Liberals and the Greens.

On the same day, community independent Jacqui Scruby won a by-election in the Sydney seat of Pittwater, taking a seat off the Liberal Party with a 7% swing on the two-candidate preferred, on top of a 22% swing towards Scruby at the last election. Pittwater is part of the federal seat of Mackellar, suggesting that support for community independents remains high years on from their successes at the 2022 federal election.

In the first few years of the 1980s, there were elections in every state and at the federal level; at every one of these elections, the major parties – Labor and the Liberal–National Coalition – won over 85% of the popular vote between them. In Queensland in 1983, the year Joh Bjelke-Petersen’s National Party won a sixth consecutive term, major parties won 97% of the vote.

These days, votes for non-major parties are at over 30% in the federal House of Representatives, and are on an upwards trajectory in most states and territories.

From 1980 to 2024 primary votes for minor parties and independents increased federally, in every state and in the Northern Territory. The one exception is the ACT, which started its life as a self-governing territory with a large protest vote against self-government. Even in the ACT, the 33% vote for minor parties and independents at the 2024 election is the highest for over 20 years.

In the 1980 federal election, the combined primary votes for minor parties and independents accounted for only 8%. By 2022, this had increased to 32%, the highest ever recorded.

A similar trend is evident at the state and territory level. In New South Wales, the minor party and independent primary vote was 5% in 1981 and 28% in 2023, a fourfold increase. In the ACT, minor party and independent votes rose from 22% in 2012 to 28% in 2020 – and the major parties have had to negotiate with the crossbench to form government for all but four of the 35 years since self-government.

The increasing support for minor parties and independents is reshaping the Australian political landscape. Over the last 20 years, all nine jurisdictions in Australia (the six states, two territories and the federal government) have experienced some form of power sharing government. Australia’s largest state, NSW, currently has a minority government and Australia’s longest-serving government, the Barr Government of the ACT, is a coalition government between Labor and the Greens.