As a self-proclaimed "airport economist", I travel a lot and have seen the election system at play in many economies (nay countries).

In lead-up to the Australian election, I thought about the passengers who pass through the three terminals of Sydney Airport and how, in some sense, they represented the demographics of the Australian electorate.

In Terminal 1, the international terminal, you have a mix of regular business travellers from corporate Australia. They are a mix of high-income, mainly Liberal Party voters but with some professional class Labor Party voters and Greens as well.

But there are also young voters (back packers and students who are traditionally Labor and now increasingly Green) and an increasing number of Australians from across the income spectrum who can now travel overseas for holidays thanks to the strong Australian dollar and increasing competition among airlines, especially in Asia.

The strong Australian dollar is causing a once in a generation structural change in the country's economy, with Australian businesses exporting to Asia, Australian consumers buying retail online from the United States, and Australian tourists vacationing in Tuscany (Italy) and Thailand rather than Townsville or Tweed Heads (both in Australia).

But through Terminal 1 passes another major segment of the Australian electorate that always matters - immigrants. Immigrants pass through the terminal not only to fly back to see their relatives (or welcome new family members, like Italian and Greek migrants used to in the 1950s and 1960s at the docks), but also to check out the airport. Who do see doing all the work there? Who do they see cleaning the airport, serving in the shops, or handling the baggage, driving the taxis or airport buses or helping people check into hotels? Immigrants. And not surprisingly, many of them are newly arrived.

Australian Bureau of Statistics data show that one in every four Australian was born overseas. And according to data from Sensis (which publishes Australia's White Pages and Yellow Pages telephone directories), one in every two Australian exporter was born overseas. On average, immigrants do the work, create the jobs, make excellent employers and exporters, and their children and grandchildren will probably go to universities or become highly skilled workers.

Immigrants in the high-income bracket, but immigrants (most of whom are in low- or middle-income group) have traditionally voted Labor.

Terminal 2, used by Virgin Airlines and Jetstar Airways among other airlines, services regional Australia. A lot of National Party of Australia voters use this terminal (to go to Taree and Coffs Harbour, Dubbo and Wagga Wagga), but some vacationers, too, use it for cheap flights to Byron Bay Ballina or the Gold Coast. With the rise in income, however, self-employed voters (traders, contractors and other small businesspeople), as a new constituency, are up for grabs.

Many of these voters (as employees and trade union members) would have voted for Labor leaders Bob Hawke or Paul Keating, even though Liberal leader and Prime Minister Tony Abbott (and John Howard before him) has had some success in wooing them. Many of them would have voted for former prime minister Kevin Rudd (of Labor) in 2007 because the Howard government's work-choice legislation was too radical and employer-centric for a moderate, practical Australian electorate.

Terminal 3 is Qantas Airways' domestic hub and attracts mainly corporate Australia. Electorally, it is similar to the Qantas Club in Terminal 3 - catering to professional, middle- to high-income passengers split between the Liberal Party-led Coalition on one side and the Labor and Greens on the other but leaning toward the Coalition.

So what happened in Australia on Sept 7, the voting day? Abbott kept his traditional votes in Terminal 3, and got enough of the Australia-born self-employed votes of independent contractors and traders to win enough seats. He did well in Tasmania and Victoria states, which had gone heavily for former prime minister Julia Gillard-led Labor Party last time. But the expected swings in western Sydney, and other traditional immigrant areas which favor the Labor Party, did not go into the Coalition column.

So did the switchback in Labor leadership and prime ministership from Gillard to Rudd work? It did in a sense that Labor hung onto the seats in Queensland, Western Australia and Sydney, which it was expected to lose six or even three months ago. With the Coalition winning about 90 seats compared with Labor's 55 or so, it was a comfortable majority, even though the Senate will be controlled by "micro parties" rather than minor parties next year.

The Labor Party can probably be relieved that it saved a number of key seats of the future generation of leaders, which they will need to turn to as they rebuild the party.

So what does the election mean for the Australian economy and Sino-Australian relations? The Australian economy will continue on its merry path and amazingly "the budget emergency", as claimed by the Coalition, seems to have disappeared overnight.

The main question is how quickly the Coalition can abolish the carbon tax without a Senate majority and how it will deal with the challenges of climate change.

Will the relationship with China be any different? The Liberal and Labor parties both know that China matters a lot to Australia's economy, so the new government is likely to have stronger economic ties with China. The important thing for the Coalition government is how the Liberal Party deals with its National Party allies, which enjoys some popularity among rural residents and whose national deputy leader Barnaby Joyce in a way opposes Chinese ownership of agricultural land in Australia.

However, in a break from a tradition of more than half a century, Abbott has taken the trade portfolio off the National Party and given it to the more free market Liberals (likely to be Andrew Robb), which may be a better outcome from Beijing's point of view.

The author is the JW Nevile fellow in Economics at the Australian School of Business, University of New South Wales, and has the book, The Airport Economist, to his credit.

(China Daily 09/23/2013 page9)