With all the attention on the role of Brendon Grylls and the Nationals as the kingmakers in the WA election result, the improvement in the Greens’ vote has slipped under the radar somewhat. Counting subsequent to election night has seen their vote climb to almost 12% of the Legislative Assembly total according to the WAEC (which is interestingly slightly higher than the Greens’ vote in the Legislative Council).
But, if the Fin Review is to be believed, the significance of a 4% plus swing to the Greens hasn’t escaped the attention of ALP wonks. “Labor hardheads” are quoted by the paper as concerned by the vote in Fremantle, and the implications for the seats of Federal Ministers such as Lindsay Tanner, Anthony Albanese and Tanya Plibersek. “Labor strategists” are cited as concerned about a drift away among “left-leaning voters”.
This is hardly rocket science. Any modern managerialist ALP government is bound to disappoint at least some left voters after the initial euphoria of a Tory defeat has worn off. And the Greens nationally are going to have a much bigger profile with a balance of power role in the Senate and new Senators who may develop a high profile. The article, however, leaves us none the wiser as to how “Labor strategists” think their party should respond.
The Labor Party’s response in the past seems to have often taken the form of “Extreme Green” propaganda. Kevin Rudd’s current disposition appears to be to ignore Bob Brown and the Greens altogether (perhaps because putting together a Senate majority comprising the Greens, Xenophon and Fielding is an inherently unwieldy act) and concentrate his rhetorical fire on the Liberals.
But at a deeper level, the fact that a party with almost 12% of the vote in WA goes unrepresented in the lower House (making something of a mockery about claims that it represents “one vote one value” because single member electoral systems don’t really do that) should cause progressives of all stripes to rethink things. There’s always going to be immense hostility from the major parties and all sorts of entrenched interests to any form of pr in any lower House (and Tasmania crippled its own governance by a Lib-Lab deal to shut the Greens more or less out of its version of Hare-Clark).
But Kevin Rudd should perhaps be thinking long term here (as he claims that he does). Tony Blair probably did want some sort of arrangement with the British Lib Dems – as demonstrated by his reaching out to then leader Paddy Ashdown and the inclusion of Lib Dem MPs and Peers in several Cabinet Committees. In the British context, even preferential voting would have been a significant innovation, however, and it was a bridge too far for Labour.
If, as has been reported, Rudd also has some sort of dream of a grand and enduring re-alignment which would consign the right of politics to a permanently embattled position, the best way to achieve this would be through electoral reform which would enable the ALP and the Greens to work together in a much less adversarial fashion. However, it’s hardly something that our Prime Minister, whose reputation for caution appears well deserved, would propose.
I think it’s time that we the citizens started pushing for this. MMP in New Zealand came about basically because of enormous distaste and alienation with business as usual “better of two evils” big party politics. This seems to me to be something an organisation such as GetUp! could well campaign on (and perhaps attractive to them because it would negate claims they’re an ALP front). It’s not as sexy as some of their issues, but it’s undeniably important. I suspect that it would actually be very much in the interests of trade unions to support such moves, because the disadvantages of putting all their eggs in the Labor basket should already be starkly apparent.
I wonder how long ALP would hold these inner city seats if they had some the rightist faction drones elsewhere sitting for them. They are hard pressed holding them even with the serious end candidates there now.
As long as the leakage of preferences from the Greens (ie Green prefs that go to the conservatives rather than Labor) is less than the votes the ALP can gain by drifting to the right, why would they change their positions?
The ability of the ALP to ignore Green sentiments is arguably more than even the Democrats in the US: first past the post means that votes lost to green parties are really lost; the ALP knows they’ll get most of them back in preferences because most Green voters are still going to put them ahead of the Libs/Nats. Optional preferential voting might change that. I’d be interested in seeing figures from Queensland where OPV has been used effectively to split the coalition vote.
And it’s not clear to me that the union movement will feel that they have much to gain by inviting more parties to the parliamentary table. They already have a huge hand in who the ALP preselects (although how much varies from state to state) – why dilute the value of that? Only if they’re abandoning the ALP wholesale, but it hasn’t come to that yet, and I doubt that it ever will.
Mark,
I was of the understanding that this was a left of center blog, not a ALP strategists guide. Are we really in the business of advising the Labor party how to “rig” the game against the conservatives?
I’m actually all for Multi-Member electorates and more proportional representation compared to primary vote, but never should a system be drafted that is designed solely to leave a political party at an electoral disadvantage. You talk of the Joh era with such disdain (rightly so, of course), and talk of how he was so easily able to hold onto control by abusing his power as premier to ensure that the rural areas of the state were overrepresented. What your suggesting is little different from that.
An electoral system that supports cooperation between parties is good, but it should not be used as an excuse to favor one side of politics over the other. Regardless of what we think of their policies and practices, all candidates should be given an equal chance, lest we end up locking in another terrible choice.
PinkyOz
PinkyOz: let’s assume for the moment that greater Greens/ALP cooperation, and MMP elections, led to a “permanent majority” being entrenched. sooner or later, the right of politics would get sick of losing and change their policies.
For instance, they could take the odd leaf out of the current playbook of the British Tories, whose rhetoric on climate change is far stronger than Australian Labor, as I understand it. They could offer the Greens an alternative partnership.
As long as the leakage of preferences from the Greens (ie Green prefs that go to the conservatives rather than Labor) is less than the votes the ALP can gain by drifting to the right, why would they change their positions?
I think if Labor continues to differentiate themselves so very little in key policy areas from the Libs, the number of Green voters preferencing the ALP automatically will decline significantly. While people understandably tend to think that Greens are simply the lost left faction of the ALP (which explains why the ALP often does more Green-hatin’ than some conservative blocs), in actual fact the Greens also attract a significant amount of conservatives who see conservation as part of their philosophy, and also notice that the Greens in terms of fiscal policy aren’t a cut-and-paste left approach at all. Groups like Doctors For Forests in my head form a good ‘marker’ if you like of this group.
IOW, I think the presumption that Green voters are nearly all disenchanted ALP voters who, when push comes to shove, automatically preference the ALP, is likely to be challenged quite strongly in the future, particularly if the Libs do move away from Howard’s hard-right Thatcherism, as the British Tories largely have.
It’s also noticeable in WA that the Nats there have quite a lot in common with the Greens too.
As you’ve pointed out, Mark, the ALP need to radically rethink it’s approach to the Greens, and as part of that, whether its path to electoral victory really requires it to hang on so hard to Howard-era policies as Rudd is doing. I can only hope that they at least have the level of introspection and honesty to be deeply regretting preferencing Steven Fielding into the Senate at this point.
Who are they going to preference if not Labor? According to Hockey, the Greens even preferenced One Nation ahead of the liberals in the recent Mayo bi-election.
Robert,
Of course, that is part of the system we built, we elect members of parliament who represent us on issues we feel to be important, so parties ‘realigning’ to match the public interest makes sense in that context.
What I’m more worried about is using the electoral system to favor certain viewpoints over others, effectively locking out candidates who genuinely represent their electorates. Call me a hopeless idealist, but the electoral system itself should show no bias towards a specific ideology, what deals and alliances we make outside that system then becomes a matter of public debate. For example, what would the repercussions of a Labor-National government be in WA? As long as the electoral system is balanced those views can be reflected on Election Day, and if things go pear-shaped during that term, then those parties will have to justify that position before the next poll.
It’s fairly unlikely that we will ever have a system with no underlying bias that everyone understands well enough to use effectively, but that should be the ideal. Good policy should speak for itself, and if Labor and the Greens are producing good policy they won’t need to entrench their current electoral advantages.
PinkyOz
Hi Chris,
If the Libs revive themselves and offer an option akin to the British Tories, the ALP with its current suite of policies, very similar to Blair New-Laborism, would struggle to hold a lot of Green voters I think.
You’ll pardon me if I take Mr hockey’s word with a grain of salt. I’d like to see some documentation of that claim before I believe it.
I also think that the preference reporting double standard has to end. Presently the major parties are apparently allowed to preference whom they please on the basis of realpolitik calculations to win seats, and face minimal criticism for this; whereas if the Greens utilise the same tactics, which are practically built into our electoral system, they are called unprincipled hypocrites.
What I personally expect in this regard of the Greens is that they’ll negotiate hard for a preference deal that gives them the best chance of winning the seat, whilst ensuring as best as possible that in doing so, their preferences won’t help elect a candidate with unacceptable views. To use a Labor eg, if the ALP in Vic had preferenced the Greens, then FF in the Senate in an effort to drag the Libs down, and this had inadvertantly given FF the seat, I wouldn’t be angry. But they preferenced FF ahead of the Greens, and hello Fielding.
PinkyOz, but you seem to be assuming the electoral system has no bias. It does. That’s why I’m suggesting that it ought to be changed to reflect more accurately how people actually vote – note, for instance, the lack of representation of the 12% of voters who gave the Greens their first preference in WA in the lower house. Parties often act for essentially partisan reasons and I don’t see a problem with pointing out what might be in the long term partisan interests of the ALP if it happens to coincide with what I see as being the public interest in a fairer electoral system. As I indicated, I’d be extremely surprised if they adopted any substantive reform to the electoral system – which I think is both dumb from their point of view and undemocratic from the point of view of us citizens.
Chris – PS
I’d point out that not all Lib (& ALP) candidates are the same. For the sake of a purely hypothetical eg, I’d preference Petro Georgiou (hope I spelt his name right) over Martin Ferguson any day, and I vote Green.
I can understand why lefties in the ALP such as those listed above by Mark get shitty when the Greens go after their seats – but only for a few minutes. The ALP has no divine right to such seats or Green preferences. They have to earn both. And one only has to look at issues such as climate change to see that as left as the talented Plibersek might be, her Party’s a disgrace on many of the issues she holds dear for many lefty voters.
Perhaps instead of focussing on who the Greens preference and why, we should be asking why people like Plibersek and Georgiou hang around in parties that clearly betray their publicly espoused views on a regular basis, and don’t find a new home, such as in the Greens, instead.
Lisa Singh down here in Tas is another case in point. I’ve got friends who all earnestly tell me how she’s ‘paying her dues’ so she can climb the greasy ALP pole to a ministry -well what’s the freakin’ point if to do so you not only sell out your principles on issues like the pulp mill, but also betray your electorate’s views and blink repeatedly on an issue with severe negative consequences for this state?
myriad @ 10 – I generally agree with you, though I think the Greens represent a lot more to the people who vote for them than just environmental issues. And so even if the liberals shifted their policies in that area there are many others which would make voting for the liberals very difficult for traditional green voters.
Long term I do see problems for the ALP – I think they’re going to get squished in the ideological middle with no room to move, much like the Democrats did.
Given the criticism that the Greens have made of preference deals in the past that also very much surprised me. I’d really like to know if it is true. I did try to google a bit, but didn’t find anything.
Mark,
I probably didn’t make my argument as clear as I wanted to. I do appreciate that there is existing bias, It’s obvious by looking at the primary vote results compared to seats won. Probably the stronger ones are the Geographical bias favoring Nats over Greens and Preference Biases, which are a bit scattered, but tend to help Labor in the lower house and conservatives and micro-issue parties in the upper house. As for …
“… pointing out what might be in the long term partisan interests of the ALP if it happens to coincide with what I see as being the public interest in a fairer electoral system.”
Well, that’s in the eye of the beholder. A little worrying maybe, but at least your honest about it, which is more then I can say for most.
I also agree that electoral reform by the major parties is either going to be suspicious or internally unfavorable. But that leaves us in an awkward position, where we know there is a bias in our electoral system, but we aren’t going to do anything about it. How do we reform an electoral system in a meaningful way without it being seen as a partisan move?
PinkyOz
I think the whole “OMG! Preferenced One Nation!” thing is a bit shopworn. It was invented by the ALP as a stick with which to beat the Libs and Nats, but at the time ON were a serious threat, which they aren’t any more. I also don’t know if the claim is true.
PinkyOz, forgive me for a quick reply as I have to be somewhere else, but that’s why I’m suggesting it would be better for a citizen led campaign for electoral change. It seems to me a much more urgent priority than a Republic, for instance. I’m going to do some reading about the NZ experience, and I’d really be grateful if anyone who knows the NZ story jumped in, but my impression is that it was really public pressure which forced a change to MMP in NZ.
I think the preference issues are a bit wider than that. Do you preference people based on how well their policies match your own, or based on what will increase your chances of getting elected the most? There has been quite a bit of criticism of the preference deals in the past by the Greens because of FF getting elected and in other cases where they have been excluded. But its only a result of the latter choice of doing preference deals to maximise your own election choices – sometimes things won’t go the way you expected and you’ll end up with a surprise result.
If its true that they preferenced One Nation in Mayo I’m sure it was just because they thought it would maximise their own chances – I can’t believe they think One Nation policies better match their own compared to even the liberal party.
hi again Chris – last comment for the day just so you don’t think I’m rude
myriad @ 10 – I generally agree with you, though I think the Greens represent a lot more to the people who vote for them than just environmental issues.
we’re in full agreement. While the whole sustainability biz is at the heart of most Greens’ politics, social justice is a huge issue too – why I picked on Georgiou as a good eg of that ‘cross over’ effect if you like.
that lens of sustainability produces very interesting economic policy that cuts across traditional Labor and Liberal positions (eg user pays including for externalities & real free/fair trade + strong welfare safety net).
I’m hoping one real positive that will come out of the Greens getting increased attention in the Senate is that their/our economic policies might actually get discussed factually, rather than the frothing, screaming unfactual hyperbole that usually passes for serious comment on it during an election campaign.
cheers
By attempting to decouple the local member vote from the party vote, it is possible for a Green to preference a Georgiou over a Ferguson without risking a Howard as PM. The MMP system (modified to accommodate preferential voting in the local electorate vote) is the way to go, without a doubt. Local members responsive to local issues are elected on their own merits rather than their party affiliation but the party vote ensures that a party gains a share of the seats commensurate with the size of their vote.
MMP doesn’t build any bias into the electoral system and allows the fairest electoral result, in terms of share of seats, to occur. Our current system is only vaguely proportional within any given seat and even then fails the Condorcent criterion (the candidate being most preferred most of the time is the winner). One need only look at the election where the ALP had a majority of the 2PP vote but not a majority of the seats. MMP ensures that only a party with a majority of the party vote gains a majority of the seats and that more voices are heard within the parliament.
12% of WA thinks that the Greens have good policy yet they have no representation in the Legislative Assembly. Single member electorates and no proportional representation system discriminate against minor parties unless they have geographically concentrated support (like the Nationals).
One of the few (decent) arguments against proportional representation systems is the lack of local members (representation) – which is one of the reasons I do love the NZ system. Though any multi-member proportional system based on geographical smaller electorates will approximate same.
And yes, couldn’t agree more. We have a major party cartel system, or at least where prefs are mandatory. There are some strengths, but you cant ignore the straight anti-democratic outcomes like the Nats getting fours seats to none in WA, with less than half the voter support.
… less than half the Greens voter support, I mean, of course.
>>”Figures from Queensland”… Well the main figure from queensland for the Greens is …0, zero, zip, nought – that’s how many reps the Greens have managed to get up, even at the local council level.
How they are supported is a different matter. The latest qld poll was the local gov’t ones and a (slightly arcane) google of
grn site:ecq.qld.gov.au/elections/local/lg2008
shows 4 greens candidates got above 20%. The strongest result was the Gabba ward, where the encumbent labor candidate got in with just 35.79% cf Libs 37.15%, and Greens 25.64%.
Obvious Green/Lib preference swap territory really,- in fact, in the Morningside ward, the Greens how to vote did recommend Libs 2, Labor 3.
But
LibsLNP’ersPineapples preferencingGreensWatermelons en masse, could that happen?Well, the LNP.org.au web page, when it was first set up, referred to building “a greener queensland”. So, if there was enough motivation, if the prize was worth the price …
The inner metropolitan parliamentary seats, like Tanner’s, where the green numbers threaten labor, in Qld, containing the above green local gov’t voters, are … South Brisbane and Griffith, held by… Anna Bligh and Kevin Rudd. So it’s a very big ask, but very big prizes, the Premier’s and Prime Ministerial scalps.
For Anna Bligh in 2006, the numbers are 12636, her primary vote, and 11481, Grn/Lib (5269/6212) combined, a difference of 1155, out of 24977 total votes, a 4.7% margin.
So if 5% of those Labor voters had been honest and brave enough to vote Green, and 5% of the Lib voters had been smart enough, and wanted to get rid of (the annointed Premier) Anna Bligh seriously enough, to vote Green, she would have had to go to preferences, and it would have been the Libs, not the Greens, preferences counted.
If the Lib voters had been overwhelmingly convinced in the campaign to preference greens, and did, well Gary Kane would be the first elected Green in any jurisdiction in Qld and who knows who would be Premier.
Yeh right, as if.
As a counterargument, isn’t the multi-member electorate system in Japan blamed as a major reason for the corruption in the Liberal Democratic Party (which is, of course, neither particularly liberal nor democratic)?
Mark – it is not just the 12% of Greens voters who’s first preference is not represented in preferential voting – it is generally more than 50% of voters who’s first preference isn’t represented. Very few win on first preferences alone. Why should Greens be the focus here? Preferrential voting means the highest preferred person gets in and conversely the least preferred candidates get the chop. Proportional is lovely if you want a horse designed by a committee. Check out the NZ Foriegn Minister as an example.
“isn’t the multi-member electorate system in Japan blamed as a major reason for the corruption in the Liberal Democratic Party”?
It may be blamed for it, but it’s hard to see why on the numbers.
Until the 1980s Japan’s House of Representatives was elected from single member districts, whose boundaries were established during the US occupation. There were some minor adjustments made during the 80s but the gross malapportionment remained where rural districts had only one-third the voters as urban districts. It wasn’t until the fall of the LDP in 1993 that the short-lived coalition government redrew all the boundaries and introduced some proportional seats.
Currently the Reps is comprised of 180 members elected from 11 multi-member districts and 300 members from single member districts. Voters get two votes, one for their local member and one for the Party, but it’s Parallel Voting, not MMP.
The number of ‘Party’ seats is determined entirely by the Party vote and without regard for the number of individual seats won. Party list seats are not used to ‘top-up’ numbers the way they are in NZ or Gernmany
The top two results in the 2005 election were:
LDP vote: 38% Local seats: 291 Party seats: 77
DPJ vote: 31% Local seats: 52 Party seats: 61
d
thanks Darryl, good info.
I had East Timor in mind when I made the first comment: the nation is one electorate, which does make the division of seats more or less exactly proportional, but has a “representation” weakness, In the sense that no one really has an MP from their district or local area. Party list only.
They did in the first parliament 2002-7: 75 PR and 13 District reps, but in 2007 PR was reduced to 65 seats and district reps abolished.
Again, thats why I like the MMP system a la NZ- especially the party list top-up approach. Good balance of PR and local representation. Bring it on here!
Robert M beat me to it. MMP does have its attractions but equally it can be have a distortionary effect. Koizumi in particular played it very clever by placing his “assassins” (ie. very popular candidates) in key ‘marginal’ spots.
Organised numbers people used to dealing with MMP know that you always place your least popular candidates at the top of the ticket – so that they will get elected anyway. The key is to put your really popular candidates in the “swinging” spots on the ballot so that their personal vote helps you to claw enough votes to reach quota.
In terms of NZ, my vague memory was that NZ National was keen on MMP as a way of preserving a broad Right coalition majority (Nats, Act, NZ First etc). I remember this tactical factor being the predominant reason for the change rather than grassroots pressure per se.
Going back to Mark’s original statement:
“If, as has been reported, Rudd also has some sort of dream of a grand and enduring re-alignment which would consign the right of politics to a permanently embattled position, the best way to achieve this would be through electoral reform which would enable the ALP and the Greens to work together in a much less adversarial fashion.”
There are quite a number of people on the Left that seem to share this view that Australia has a natural Left majority which is stymied by an electoral system which favours the Right. I’m not so convinced by this and I wonder where the evidence for this lies. As it stands, the current electoral systems seems to encourage both major parties to move somewhat to the centre in order to secure preferences and an ever-increasing share of the non-tribalised vote. This suits those on the Right of the ALP and the Left of the Libs. Under an MMP system, I would expect (pace Germany, Austria & the Scandinavian countries) that there would be a fracturing of the major parties over time. Left wing ALP members would eventually drift organisationally towards the Greens or a new Left party. Similarly, it is not inconceivable that social liberals would move out of the Libs towards an avowedly liberal party (cf. the German FDP). At the same time, I think there would be an increased opportunity for the radical Right. How this all plays out is anyone’s guess. In Holland and Germany there are grand coalitions across the political spectrum in order to lock out the radical Right & Left respectively. In Denmark the Right government seeks the support of the Radical Right party on certain budgetary bills and the broader support of the Left parties on more centrist legislation.
Certainly none of this adds up to a permanent Left majority to me. Simply adding up the polling numbers in elections, placing the Greens & ALP in one column & the Coalition & FF in another and seeing that the Left seems to have more support does is not necessarily reflective of how the cards will fall in an MMP election where minor party preferencing has less power and quota is paramount.
As far as the Greens performance, we have now had four “close calls” for the Greens in the lower house, in addition to the victory in Cunningham. Melbourne 2006, Marrickville 2007 and now Mayo and Fremantle in 2008. It’s only a matter of time before we break through again.
I reckon the most likely breakthrough will be Balmain and maybe Marrickville too in the 2011 NSW election. But when you look at the New Dems in Canada (29 seats out of 308) and the Lib Dems in the UK you can see that third parties can break through in single-member electorates, but it’s hard.
In reality I think electoral reform will follow the Greens breaking through and getting a handful of seats in inner city Sydney, Melbourne, Perth, and maybe Brisbane and (Federal) Hobart, enough strength that the Greens have to be taken seriously but not as much as our vote warrants.
The most impressive thing in WA is we have broken through the 9-10% barrier decisively. It’s easy to think that the Greens have hit a ceiling at around 7, 8, 9, 10% depending on what state you are in (excluding Tasmania and the ACT), but truth be told the demographic that makes up much of the Greens vote makes up about 20% of the population, meaning that the Greens have more room to grow. And the Greens polling 15-20% will probably hold a handful of lower house seats, and likely a Senator in every state.
How do we reform an electoral system in a meaningful way without it being seen as a partisan move?
Hold a public inquiry (a royal commission, or a Canadian-style citizen’s jury) to examine the options, then hold a referendum on it.
In NZ, the former came about because of the patent unfairness of single-plurality member districts (FPP): we had two elections in a row where Labour won a plurality of the popular vote, but National won a majority of seats (something which can happen easily under Australian-style preferential voting as well). The tricky bit was getting from there to a referendum. Our Royal Commission on the Electoral System presented its report in 1986. It took until the 1990 election campaign to beat the politicians (who could see that PR would disrupt their cosy oligarchy) into committing to a referendum, and then we almost lost in the end because big business spent millions to try and retain the undemocratic system which gave its minions a stranglehold on power.
IMHO, the WA result provides a perfect reason for starting this process. A party getting 12% of the vote but no reprsentation (while another party with 5% gets 7% of the seats) is so patently unfair that it is obvious to everyone.
Left E: Again, thats why I like the MMP system a la NZ- especially the party list top-up approach. Good balance of PR and local representation. Bring it on here!
It does have a problem of creating overhangs with parties with concentrated electorate support (which in Australia could be the Nationals?). But it has certainly been a massive step forward for fairness, and it has preserved easy access to representatives, which was one of the things NZ has done well historically (as a small society).
Antonio: In terms of NZ, my vague memory was that NZ National was keen on MMP as a way of preserving a broad Right coalition majority (Nats, Act, NZ First etc). I remember this tactical factor being the predominant reason for the change rather than grassroots pressure per se.
Your memory fails you. Both major parties in NZ hated the idea of MMP, seeing it as the end of their cosy oligopoly and hating the idea of having to negotiate with coalition parties for legislation. They fought tooth and nail against it, but in the end, we forced it on them. But the right in particular was not keen on the idea, because they correctly saw it as the death-knell for their neo-liberal policies. While it meant they got ACT into Parliament openly (as opposed to through the Labour party), as we’re seeing in our current election, the right struggles to get a majority under a fair election system, and as a result has been forced to moderate its policies significantly. And they really, really don’t like that.
One way to avoid this is to create multiple ballot sheets randomising the order of the candidates for each party – they do this for the ACT elections – Robinson rotation I think its called. It does to some extent take away some power from the party system as they cannot as easily push candidates into the system by placing them on the top of the ticket. I think its something that should be considered for the Senate votes.
This is the bit I don’t quite understand – they do get taken seriously – they hold part of the balance of power in the Senate. I question whether its worth having two houses of parliament if they’re both going to elect people under similar systems.
I don’t think we should underestimate the value of having a single person represent a given area, even if its value has been increasingly reduced by party discipline meaning they tend to represent the party rather than the people who voted for them. If we dilute responsibility too much then no one ends up being responsible for the electorate they (jointly) represent.
Different Chris @ 6, and myriad @ 8, Hockey was telling the truth. I was handing out Greens how-to-vote cards on Saturday, and we had the Libs at 11. I can’t remember where One Nation was, probably 9 or 10 though.
One of the problems with MMP is setting the number of candidates per electorate. Set it too high and the “locality” of the candidates is lost. Set it too low and the result will still be a two party system.
If, for example, we were to do it without changing the Constitution (or adding to the number of MPs) then the upper limit of members per seat would be 5 – the number set as the lower limit of members per Original State. If I remember my Hare-Clark correctly, this means the threshold per member is nearly 17% – too high for the Greens on their lonesome at 12% (see above). Some constituencies would return a non-major party member, but most would be likely to split 3 – 2. You may end up with a balance of power party occasionally but, in a 150 member parliament (30 electorates) this would be a fairly rare event.
Additionally, and again without changing the Constitution (remember how hard that is) how would you change the number of members between States? It would have to be by constituency – i.e. 5 members – rather than one at a time. Big lumpy moves between States such as this would be tricky.
You could try having differing numbers of members per constituency but then you have differing thresholds for each and a differing lack of the “locality” factor that is meant to drive this.
If you attempt to get this through a Constitutional change I can see the scare campaign that would come with it.
Because it would be foolish for the ALP to assume they are always going to be on the right side of the preference distribution.
In some latte-belt electorates, the two-party contest may become ALP-Green rather than ALP-Liberal, if current trends continue.
In response to Ben Raue, I think a big factor in the WA election was that the Greens actually bothered to campaign this time. For a number of years the two elected Greens had been completely missing in action in WA, neither seen nor heard. The Victoria Park and Peel by-election results were utter disappointments for the party. The 2005 campaign was half hearted at best and you had to go and get your own “how to vote” off a pile at many booths and there was no volunteers of whom questions could be asked. However in the four months leading to the election they actually started campaigning, advertising, getting out there. Booths were very well covered from what I saw. That’s probably a big part of the difference in the vote this time, in my opinion.
I agree with the idea we should have proportional voting. I am a Labor supporter myself but I am such mainly because we’re stuck with two alternatives. The only question is where it would leave local independents like Constable and Woollard, I’m not sure quite how the New Zealand system works with regards to those.
It’s worth noting that the preference flow through to the ALP here in WA from the Greens was very low in some electorates – as little as 55% in districts where the HTV suggested the ALP at 2, and lower still when there were independents in the mix.
Past elections it’s been up at 85ish%. I don’t know if this suggests that the detractors writing off the high Green vote as a protest vote against the two majors are right, but it is certainly a new element to consider for both the Greens and the other parties.
Different Chris @29: One way to avoid this is to create multiple ballot sheets randomising the order of the candidates for each party – they do this for the ACT elections – Robinson rotation I think its called.
I think you’ve missed somethign there. The “ballot” in question isn’t the ballot presented to the voter, but the party list, whose order is drawn up by the party. Though I’d also question Antonio’s characterisation – in NZ, party lists have tended to be used to protect incumbents and promote talent and diversity. They can also be used to incentivise candidates in marginal seats, and ACT is using it to push its party vote by putting former finance minister Roger Douglas (yes, the antichrist) at position 3, so he won’t get in unless their vote improves. But they’re not usually used to put unpopular people at the top, and popular ones at the bottom (and anyway, the latter would simply get elected in their constiuencies, reducing the number of slots available to the former).
There are ways of giving people more control over he list. Several European jurisdictions use open list systems, with the voter taking a ballot for a particular party and voting for a candidate or candidates on it; those getting more than a cerain threshold of votes go to the top of the list – a system which both gives significant respect to party decisions, while allowing the voters to have their say.
My understanding of Robson rotation is that it means no candidate is consistently #1 on their party’s list. This is the system in place in Tasmania and means that it’s about the strength of the candidate, not as much the party.
Chris Pascoe: MMP isn’t STV. Under STV, you are always voting for candidates. Under MMP, you really vote for parties, and in a closed-list system such as New Zealand, you never get to vote directly “on” the party’s list. Your ballot paper simply has two columns – one where you choose between electorate candidates, and another where you choose between parties. And that’s it. The party lists are published, and they really do affect voter decisions, but voters have no direct way of affecting their order.
You may want to read the basic introduction to the system here.
Again, NZ MMP isn’t the be-all and end-all, and TIMTOWTDI. I swing towards open lists myself (hell, I swing towards abolishing the threshold, since small parties have as much right to be represented as large ones, even if I hate the Christian freaks this would see elected), and maybe that would be more to Australia’s liking.
Idiot/Savant – thanks for the explanation – I think it would be bad to have a system where people do not get the option of voting for elected members directly. Sounds like a recipe for strengthening the influence of party hacks.
I wasn’t suggesting NZ’s system was the best fit for us, they’re a small country with a much more integrated culture – I meant the idea of proportional more generally, that if you have a large region with a bunch of MPs elected by the entire region, then there are questions about local representation, and I wasn’t sure if independents can actually get in and stay in under such a system without the huge public profile of, say, someone like Nick Xenophon.
Tinkering is not enough now we have the net. The first order of business is clearly a republic and then net-based referendums on every major issue. We on the Libertarian-socialist left have long argued for recallable, rotatable and strictly mandated delegates to any constituent assembly. The administration of things; not people… and now we have the net there can be no more excuses.
First the republic then direct democracy. The government that governs least.
rat,
I think you are trusting too much in the internet. There may come a time in the future when every adult is able and willing to trust it for everything. That time is not now, nor is it in the foreseeable future.
Even if you could trust the internet for voting, there are still serious problems around people being coerced or bribed to vote a certain way. Its an important criteria for voting systems that you can not prove to anyone else how you voted.
Ie you don’t get a receipt that you can show someone else which shows how you voted and no one can watch over your shoulder to see you vote. This stops people from being bribed or coerced.
On direct democracy – it puts a huge burden on the voting public to educate themselves to a level on each issue to a point where they can make an informed decision. I though thats what we elected our representatives to do?