As tipped yesterday, Peter Beattie is now at Government House – no doubt to advise the Governor to call an early election for September 9.
Life, Culture and Politics from BrisVegas
Larvatus Prodeo was an Australian group blog which discussed politics, sociology, culture, life, religion and science from a left of centre perspective. more»
Perhaps just a cup of tea and a chat about the weather?
Really, no one does polite social visits any more – just work, work, work.
It’s on.
I predict a stunning defeat for whatshisname and the Liberals to win back both houses of parliament. Labor is on the wrong side of the cane-toads-to-ethanol conversion issue and will lose their thin majority, possibly due to a lack of votes cast in their favour.
Beattie is done for. The polls suggest he is on the wrong side of the cane-toads-to-ethanol conversion issue and he will be punished hard for it. Expect Labor’s thin majority to vanish and the Liberals to take back both houses of parliament.
Next question: can the Libs claim the approximately 10,000 seats required to win government?
If the talkback sentiments expressed on Radio Courier Mail are any guide, Beattie will suffer a great deal of pain.
Since moving to Melbourne, I’ve heard squat diddly about Queensland politics.
However, since the Nationals and Liberals presumably still have not managed to come to any arrangement and the ALP still hold so many seats I think there will be no dramatic change. Of course, since I studied politics at university I really don’t have a clue.
Good luck to my old mate, Stirling, who is running for the seat of Stafford.
An interesting question is whether Labor will continue with the tactic of advising voters to “Just Vote 1″ in this election given that the Coalition parties won’t be tripping each other up, the vote for One Nation and its fission products will be negligible, and Labor could be hurt by Greens voters exhausting their vote rather than preferencing Labor.
Some background for the benefit of our international (especially US) audience. Elections for the Lower Houses of most Australian parliaments (and for the single house of Queensland’s State parliament) are held under a system of preferential voting (a.k.a. the “alternative vote”) in which the voter writes ’1′ beside the name of the candidate they most prefer, a ’2′ beside the name of their next-preferred candidate, then ’3′, ’4′, ’5′, etc.
In Federal elections and elections in most States other than Queensland, it is compulsory for voters to indicate their preference for all candidates running for their seat. In other words if there are 12 candidates running in my Federal electorate (Griffith) I must write the numbers 1 to 12 against all candidates in order of preference, from ’1′ for my most preferred candidate (who will usually be the Green Party candidate) to ’12′ for the candidate I like least (who will usually be an authoritarian right-winger of some kind). If no candidate wins a majority of first preference votes, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated and their second preference votes distributed amongst remaining candidates. This process of elimination and distribution of preferences continues until one of the remaining candidates has a majority of votes (first preferences plus second and subsequent preferences from eliminated candidates).
However, in elections for the Queensland Legislative Assembly a system of optional preferential voting is used. This means that the voter casts a valid vote simply by placing a ’1′ against their favourite candidate, although they may indicate are many or as few second and subsequent preferences as they wish. One consequence of this is that if voters for a candidate eliminated in the count don’t indicate a second or later preference, that vote is exhausted.
This difference between compulsory and optional preferential voting can lead to significant differences in election outcomes. To take a simple example, 100 voters are voting in a seat contested by 3 candidates X, Y and Z. The first preference votes are as follows: X – 45, Y – 40, Z – 15. No candidate has a majority, so Z is eliminated and her preferences distributed. Under compulsory preferential voting, all 15 votes for Z must express a second preference, and Z has advised her supporters to indicate a second preference for Y ahead of X. Thus the count after Z is eliminated is X – 45, Y – 40 plus 15 second preference votes from Z equals 55. Y wins the seat. However, under optional preferential voting Z’s supporters can “Just Vote 1″. If 11 of them do this, and only 4 follow her advice and give a second preference to Y, the final result is X – 45, Y 40 plus 4 second preferences equals 44, 11 votes exhausted. Z wins the seat.
In recent State elections, Labor has advised voters to “Just Vote 1″ in order to maximise the exhaustion of votes cast by minor conservative parties and candidates which would otherwise flow as preferences to the leading conservative candidate in a given seat. In those elections the two Coalition parties (Liberal and National) have sometimes both run candidates in the same seats, and when Liberal and National voters have “Just Voted 1″ this has led to the final Coalition vote after preferences being less than the combined total of first preference votes for the two parties. A further factor has been the presence of candidates from the right-wing populist One Nation Party and its split-offs, and conservative independents. Under compulsory preferential voting their preferences would tend to favour the Coalition. But when their voters have heeded “Just Vote 1″ advice this has led to a further leakage of votes which would otherwise favour the Coalition.
The minor party whose voters’ preferences tend to be most favourable to Labor is the Greens. In the past two State elections Greens preferences have not been a decisive factor due to Labor polling so many more votes than the Coalition. However in this election it is probable (a) that the Labor and Coalition votes will be much closer and (b) the Greens vote will be greater than that for minor right-wing parties. This means there is a likelihood that a “Just Vote 1″ campaign by Labor will hurt Labor more (by causing an exhaustion of Green votes) than it will the Coalition (by causing an exhaustion of minor right-wing party votes).
Paul Norton you say:
While you are technically correct, I don’t believe that the average Green voter fails to understand the implications of the decision to ‘just Vote 1′.
I might be naive, but I think many (majority} of Green voters are smarter than that; certainly smarter than those who vote for the ilk of One Nation and the like.
I predict a loss for the Beattie gummint. Service delivery and the “Koala Road” stuffed up Goss, and service delivery (power/health/water) will stuff up Beattie. It doesn’t matter if it’s fair criticism or not — the electorate will turf Beattie to “give the other mob a go”.
Labor has lost how many by-elections in a row now? That’s a damning dynamic, and I doubt they can recover from it. All the Coalition needs to do is juxtapose “inept foreign-trained doctors because of lack of health funds” against “$500m football stadiums” to get enough bums on parliamentary seats.
Incredible that Labor started with a massive majority, and yet it looks (to me) like they gunna lose.
I’m pretty sure QLD only has one house of parliament.
You’re absolutely right, Cliff. Don’t quote me, but I think it happened in 1925.
Maybe Leinad was taking the piss!
You may be right, Brian
I took the bait, shame on me.
1923, if memory serves. The Governor was away visiting England, and the Speaker was appointed Lieutenant Governor by Premier Red Ted Theodore. MLCs were appointed not elected (as they were in the NSW upper house until the Wran era) and the Acting Governor appointed sufficient Labor MLCs to vote the house out of existence. Known as “the suicide sqad”, they received in return the title “Honourable” and a pension for life.
The Queensland Constitution was amended to prevent the reintroduction of a second chamber without a referendum. So there’ve been noises about restoring it, mostly from the conservatives and minor parties, but no one believes that the voters would vote in favour of say 40 new pollies.
The Canadians still have an appointment system in their Upper House. Luckily the House of Commons is four cornered (Libs, Tories, NDP and BQ).
The media tart will be back and you can take that to the bank.
Aaaarggghhh!!! I think I can’t vote in this election because I haven’t put in for an overseas postal vote!
Does anyone know if I definitely can’t vote?
Try the Embassy, mick. The rolls don’t close til Tuesday I think. Or perhaps the Qld Electoral Commission site.