​The Best Showdowns of the 2016 Australian Election

With the building industry anti-corruption bill failing on Monday, Malcolm Turnbull now has the trigger he needs to call a double dissolution election on July 2.

But forget Turnbull v Shorten. As much as we like to pretend it's not the case, Australia doesn't directly vote for its prime minister. Instead, the battle plays out between obscure candidates across dozens of minor electorates throughout the country. To get an idea of what these will look like, and why you should care, VICE takes a look at the best political showdowns in the lead up to the (almost certainly happening) July federal election.

Barnaby Joyce v Tony Windsor
New England

Deputy prime minister, loose unit, and infamous dog hater Barnaby Joyce may have won the seat of New England during the 2013 election. But his victory came only after the electorate's much-loved independent member Tony Windsor announced his retirement.

Now Windsor is back, challenging for the seat he held for more than 12 years. "I'm serious about this. We'll mount a full-scale grassroots campaign," he told reporters. "I'm fully aware it will be a David and Goliath event."

Joyce—with the full support (and money) of both the Nationals and the Liberals behind him—is the Goliath in this metaphor. The government doesn't want to see its second-in-command rolled in what should be a safe seat. But progressive Windsor's unshakable popularity in what should be a conservative seat means anything is possible.

Plus this is political meets personal. In 2010, Windsor threw his deciding vote behind Julia Gillard instead of Tony Abbott, allowing her to form government. As Annabel Crabb wrote: "The personal loathing between Mr Windsor and Mr Joyce is pretty much unchartable, not to mention unprintable, and this is the first opportunity they've had for a direct scuffle."

Trevor Evans v Pat O'Neill
Brisbane

"If you'd said twenty years ago that the two major parties would both put up openly gay candidates in a marginal Queensland seat at a federal election, you'd have been dragged down to Fortitude Valley and stoned to death with XXXX tinnies," commentator Bryce Corbett wrote in the Financial Review. Yet here we are.

This year's election will see Labor candidate Pat O'Neill take on the LNP's Trevor Evans, previously head of the National Retailer Association. Both men are openly gay.

O'Neill, who graduated from the Royal Military College Duntroon before serving in the Australian Army for over a decade, is campaigning on marriage equality, public school funding, and support for Safe Schools.

A former chief-of-staff to immigration minister Peter Dutton, Evans last year backed down from a challenge to Brisbane's current MP Teresa Gambaro, who is retiring at this election. After winning pre-selection, he's promised a campaign focused squarely on economic and business policy, with no mention of same-sex marriage. "My priorities, like those of the Turnbull government, are economic and business growth to create the jobs we need now and into the future," he told the Sydney Morning Herald.

Mike Kelly v Peter Hendy
Eden-Monaro

In every election since 1972, Eden-Monaro on the NSW south coast has voted in a candidate from the party that went on to win the federal election. It's known as Australia's most reliable "bellwether" seat. A go-to predictor for elections.

Under John Howard it was held by the LNP's Gary Nairn, until 2007 (#kevin07) when Labor candidate Colonel Mike Kelly swept in with a 6.67 percent two-party preferred swing. Kelly was defeated by Liberal candidate Peter Hendy in 2013, the election that saw Tony Abbott come to power.

Kelly has been pre-selected by Labor to recontest the seat during this year's election. However, Hendy doesn't think it will be a close race. "I've barely seen Mike Kelly in the electorate since the [2007] election," he dished to the Sydney Morning Herald. "I don't think he's been working hard enough between the last election and now to warrant being elected."

The other thing working in Hendy's favour could be the electorate boundary changes that have been going on across Australia. Eden-Monaro just gained 25,000 more voters, which may expand Hendy's lead from a meagre 0.6 percent to a far more comfortable 2.6 percent.

Minor Party Senators v Statistical Inevitability
An Australia-wide battle to the death

Back in March, the government pushed through Senate voting reforms, with the help of the Greens and independent senator Nick Xenophon. The biggest change under the deal is preferences: your vote will no longer be funnelled to some candidate you never intended to support because of backroom deals.

In 2013, there were more than 100 candidates listed "below the line" in NSW alone. These included some of the biggest losers under these new reforms. All of those micro parties who scraped into the Senate—the Motoring Enthusiasts Party, Glenn Lazarus Team, Jacqui Lambie Network—and made it the all-in free-for-all it's been over the past few years will be likely swept out.

A double dissolution election will mean Senators will need fewer votes to win a place (because every seat is up for grabs, as opposed to only half in a regular election). However, these reforms will make is statistically impossible for most of these micro parties to get enough votes.

Clive Palmer v the Corporations Act
Federal Court of Australia

Ahh, Clive. What is there left to say? You rode into the 2013 on a wave a public dissatisfaction with the major parties, savoured bending the government to your will, even hosted Al Gore for a deeply weird joint presentation on climate change.

But then your party candidates started deserting en masse: Jacqui Lambie, Glenn Lazarus, Alex Douglas, Xavier Kurrupuwu, Larisa Lee. The list goes on. And your businesses, which made you Australia's leading self-declared billionaire, started to crumble—first your dinosaur park, then Titantic II, and now Queensland Nickel (QN).

Allegations emerged last week that Palmer used a pseudonym (Terry Smith) to siphon around $224 million from QN in order to fund his political aspirations. While he's still committed to the idea of running in this year's election—potentially in the Senate—it's likely Palmer has a bigger foe to overcome: prosecution under the Corporations Act. As Lee Zachariah wrote, "In a best case scenario Palmer now faces a very awkward expulsion from politics. The worst scenario sees him going to prison."

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