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I understand that crossing the aisle is fairly common in American politics, because American political parties have very little way to punish it. A lot of factional politics in America therefore occurs within parties, rather than between them, as in Commonwealth countries.
It's pretty dangerous, but not necessarily suicidal - it depends on the particular party and your position in it. In Labor's case, it is usually suicidal, because Labor is unusually strict about party discipline. (They occasionally try to make hay of this by accusing the Coalition of being a disorganised rabble; the Coalition reply is usually that they have more respect for the consciences of individual members. This plays well with the perception of Labor as being more collectivist and focused on solidarity, with the Coalition as more individualist and focused on liberty.) There are a few statistics here - notice that every Coalition leader has faced MPs crossing the floor, while it is much more rare for Labor. Anthony Albanese is now only the second Labor PM since 1950 to have had a defection. As noted, your position in the party also matters - Barnaby Joyce did it a lot, but Joyce was popular in his own state, and he was a National. The Liberals have limited ability to punish a National member they don't like, due to the terms of the coalition agreement, which gave him more protection.
The Coalition also tends to be more vulnerable to it because the Coalition is more ideologically diverse than Labor - the Coalition has a moderate and a conservative wing, and both wings need the other in order to hold on to power. Sometimes MPs from one wing will defy the other, usually over a social issue, and remain within the party. (For example.) Labor in theory has factions as well - there's a Labor Left and Labor Right - but Labor's factions are less well-defined and tend to fight each other less as well. Same-sex marriage is a good example of the dynamic. As I mentioned in the top-level, Labor exercised very strong discipline on it, to the extent that even gay Labor MPs opposed it as long as the party opposed it, and then when the party supported it, everybody got on board. On the Coalition side, the moderates supported it and the conservatives opposed it, and there was much more outrage about whether or not the Coalition would allow a 'conscience vote' (i.e. every MP votes for what they think is right, party line be damned) on the issue. (There was a Labor discussion of a conscience vote - the pro-SSM side criticised the idea of a conscience vote there, because apaprently moral consistency is for suckers.) But I think that hit more strongly because the Coalition is known to be more divided than Labor on a range of issues.
At any rate, the answer is probably just "it depends". I think it is significantly more dangerous than in America, though, because in Australia the parties themselves have more direct control over their membership.
This is kind of the opposite of the truth. Labor's factions are much more defined and organised. For example, they have a longstanding rule that the deputy leader has to come from the opposite faction to the leader (e.g. Albanese is from the Left, Marles is from the Right). Cabinet positions are allocated by quota among the factions. Specific seats and senate ticket positions are allocated to specific factions. Their infighting has often been extremely bitter.
Conversely, while the Liberals have had some nasty factional warfare over the last few decades (though mostly calmed down at the moment), their factions are more ephemeral and fluid. E.g. it used to be just the wets and the dries, but then Scott Morrison effectively created a three faction system, with his own centre-right group operating distinctly from the Turnbull moderates and the Abbott conservatives.
It's a little out of date but this article provides a great explainer of the Labor factions.
You think? Where I'm coming from is the sense that it's very easy to tell at a glance the difference between a moderate Liberal and a conservative Liberal - most famously, Malcolm Turnbull and Tony Abbott were practically from different parties. By contrast, I find it hard to name the specific wedge issues that might separate the Labor Left and Labor Right? For instance, Bill Shorten was from the Right faction, and Albanese is from the Left, but I would struggle to clearly define the policy differences between them.
There's a couple of factors here. One is that Labor is much more disciplined about hashing out their policy differences behind closed doors and everyone singing from the same songsheet in public while the Liberals are more free about having their policy arguments in full view. E.g. the infamous interview where Bill Shorten supported Julia Gillard's position without knowing what it was. I assure you that policy differences are just as stark in the Labor caucus as in the Liberal partyroom, you just don't hear about it on the news as much. For example there's hardcore anti-abortion, anti-gay marriage social conservatives on the Labor benches - but you'd never know that from the media coverage.
Another is that factional divisions are often more about building personal fiefdoms and less about actual policy. You still have to sign up to a specific faction, and you vote in lockstep with your faction in internal deliberations, and you have to be loyal to that faction... but there's a certain amount of flexibility about what you can actually think.
And a final consideration is that Labor tends to give their leaders more license to take public positions for strategic reasons (currently at least). For example while Albanese is to the left of Shorten, he's also more ruthless about publicly moderating for electoral advantage. Whereas a Liberal who tries that tends to run into serious and usually public pressure from the backbench.
That's a fair point - Albanese ran a relatively centrist, small-target campaign for election, and then in government he hasn't been particularly radical either.
Still, I am prepared to accept your correction here as completely reasonable, and would offer only that, as you say, the perception of division may be different. Labor minimise the appearance of disunity more effectively than the Coalition, so, fair enough.
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Cool thanks. Yeah it's definitely different in America, where the congressmen are independantly elected and the parties have very little direct control over them. Sounds like in Australia they're... mostly under the thumb of the parties, but not completely?
Pretty much. I also reckon that's the main reason why America has such a strong two party system - individual politicians can just take whatever policy view they want and vote how they want and as long as they have local support the party can't do anything about it. Whereas our stricter party control leads to more discontent with the rigid party line and consequently more people splitting off to start their own parties and more space for independents and minor parties to exploit gaps left by the one-size-fits-all approach of the major parties.
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