 Halfway through federal election night, even Antony Green (one of our favourite geographers) was confused. He confessed something like, “I don’t know what’s happening, I’ve never seen anything like this”.
In hindsight, what was happening was different in almost every electorate. Sure, there were big consistent moves away from the major parties. Labor lost a parachuted candidate in a highly culturally diverse seat – hello! Long-held blue-ribbon seats were lost by the Liberals to independent women concerned about climate and corruption and social justice. Western Australia performed differently from the rest of the country. And the Greens winning seats in Queensland?
Ask any door-knocking independent or Green and they’ll tell you their success was all about listening to local views. Big picture trends always hide the nuance of local areas. But this time local nuance prevailed, rearing its head to tip the scales.
Later this month the 2021 Census will be published and we will hear about the big picture trends. Has population growth slowed? Are the regions outgrowing the cities? Are household sizes growing? Is medium-density housing playing a more important role? Are we continuing to age? How unaffordable can housing get?
While these big picture stories are interesting, if there is a lesson to be learnt from the election results it is that informed decisions are made at community-level geography. If you’re making strategic decisions about service delivery, building facilities or reallocating resources, pay attention to local-area nuance.
At .id we’ll be sharing our big picture stories from the Census, but it’s the local area stories where the gold is. We’ll be sharing them too.
Ivan |
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