Earthquake: the election that shook Australia

When the Coalition government was overthrown in 2022, it was tempting to portray the loss as merely a personal repudiation of Scott Morrison. And when opposition leader Peter Dutton torpedoed the referendum on establishing an Indigenous Voice to parliament, his credibility as a political leader improved at the expense of the prime minister’s. That was when, according to Niki Savva, the conservative Coalition thought it had the forthcoming election in the bag.

But Niki had noticed the ground shifting. Back in December 2021, she flagged the emergence of the teal independents and the long-term threat they represented to the Liberals. In March 2023, she warned that Dutton saying no to the Voice referendum would ‘win the applause of the Sky After Dark sirens, whose counsel will only lead him to another glorious defeat’. And in August 2023 — 20 months before the 2025 election — she noted that, ‘The 2022 federal election result was no ordinary defeat, not just part of a normal cycle of wins and losses. It delivered last rites to the broad-church party that Robert Menzies created.’

In her highly popular columns, Niki Savva captured all this and more in her typically uncompromising, penetrating, and prescient way. Now, following on from So Greek, The Road to Ruin, Plots and Prayers, and Bulldozed, she provides a detailed, considered analysis of what went on behind the scenes, accompanied by her trademark access to important players and eyewitnesses, of an election that transformed Australian politics.