3 years later, the result of the
2022 Australian federal election was a loss for Morrison's Coalition. The Opposition
Labor Party formed majority government, with
Anthony Albanese as the new Prime Minister. The
Australian Greens had unprecedented success, and several Liberal seats were lost to
teal independents. In the leadup to the election, media outlets and politicians invoked the Quiet Australians: Senior Liberal MP and Treasurer
Josh Frydenberg played down polls suggesting he was in danger of losing the blue-ribbon (very safe Liberal) seat of
Kooyong, by saying “There are many – as the Prime Minister calls them – quiet Australians out there.” Frydenberg ended up losing the seat to teal independent
Monique Ryan. The Sydney Morning Herald published an opinion piece on various types of voters in Australia, and quoted Rodney Tiffen, a Sydney University political science professor, who identified the label as more of a tactical grouping and an assertion that the loudest opinions may not be the majority, rather than a distinct group. The article compared the quiet Australians with the "Canberra bubble" - a term for political insiders who are out of touch with the expectations of mainstream Australian society. The Guardian argued that while in the previous election Morrison targeted quiet Australians, this time he was instead appealing to anxious Australian parents by focusing on
transgender people in a "
culture war" After the election, media outlets attempted to explain the result by again invoking the quiet Australians:
Sky News Australia argued that the Liberals should support the construction of a
nuclear power industry, as an alternative to
fossil fuels, to win back quiet Australians who had deserted the party for teal independents who campaigned for action on
anthropogenic climate change.
Paul Osborne, writing for the Australian Associated Press, argued that Morrison had angered the quiet Australians and turned them "cranky."
Peter Hartcher wrote in
Sydney Morning Herald that "the quiet Australians spoke and they said 'enough.'" Hartcher argued that Morrison had tried to transform the Liberals into a
right wing populist party and thus had lost the support of
fiscal conservatives and
liberals to teals, while at the same time Morrison's failures of crisis leadership had lost working-class and middle-class seats to Labor. Hartcher identified all these groups as quiet Australians. The Guardian commented on the Greens campaign strategy of mass door-knocking and conversations with voters, reporting that the Greens planned to repeat this "social work" strategy to target quiet Australians. Morrison stepped down as Liberal leader and commented on his election loss, saying he looked forward to going back to being a quiet Australian in
the shire of Sydney. ==See also==