For the first time in history, the Australian outcome means that every key ‘Westminster model’ country in the world now has a hung Parliament. These are the former British empire countries that according to decades of political science orthodoxy are supposed to produce strong, single party government. Following Duverger’s Law their allegedly ‘majoritarian’ electoral systems (first past the post and AV) will typically produce reinforced majorities for one of the top two parties.

Leaving aside New Zealand, which has not had a single member constituency system since 1996, Britain now has a Coalition government, as does India, and Canada has had minority governments since 2004, with three general elections failing to give any party a majority. These four polities all use first past the post voting, which in theory is supposed to produce inflated seat majorities for the party with a plurality of votes, and thus ensure that a government can rely on a parliamentary majority.

In all cases, the party system has been fracturing – both regionally and in terms of the percentage of votes won by the two major parties – for some time.

So, we’ve joined the rest of the “Anglosphere” and the largest democratic nation in the world, India, whose parliamentary institutions are based on the Westminster model.

In a withering column, Peter Hartcher asks:

Tony Abbott is trying to restrain Barnaby Joyce from blurting nonsense, but who will restrain Tony Abbott?

Is Abbott deliberately mendacious, or just ill-informed and sloppy with the truth?

That’s so beautifully kiwi. The Brits may be obsessed with hierarchy and deference and publicly displaying their loyalty to the unelected scion of an undemocratic institution – but we have better things to do. Like enjoying ourselves in the sun. The British royal-watchers call this “a distinct pro-republican feeling”, but its more that we just don’t give a damn – the monarchy is simply utterly irrelevant to our lives. Though from a republican view, that irrelevance is a two-edged sword; not giving a damn also tends to mean not giving a damn about getting rid of them. Hence the slow drift to republicanism; no-one cares about them, but no-one cares enough to finally sign the paperwork to get them out of our lives either…

I think that holds true in this Antipodean Colony too.

Our pollies only seem to revive the spectre of Republicanism when there’s a bit of political advantage to be gained.

Kevin Rudd, though, does want to have a beer with Prince William.

The Daily Terror comments:

The hype surrounding his arrival is similar to that of his parents’ visit to Australia in 1983 when hordes of royal fans lined the streets to see Prince Charles and Diana.

Not so far as I can see. It seems, rather, that it’s just a photo op for Kristina Keneally. And maybe KRudd, if he can get himself, uninivited, onto the Prince’s dance card.

This is not an unusual experience for me. What makes it possible is New Zealand’s freedom of information law: the Official Information Act 1982.

The OIA was passed around the same time as Australia’s Freedom of Information Act. But as the above story shows, it produces quite different results. Journalists, academics, lobby groups, opposition politicians and ordinary troublemakers like me are routinely given sensitive documents they would never be allowed to see in Australia. This allows us not only to build a better picture of what our government is doing – it also allows us to hold it to account.

There are two reasons for this difference. The first is a fundamental difference in philosophy. The OIA starts with a principle of availability:

information shall be made available unless there is good reason for withholding it.

This broad statement shapes the entire Act, and gives it an entirely different structure from its Australian equivalent. The FOIA is class-based, defining types of documents that are exempt: cabinet documents, internal working documents, documents affecting enforcement of law and protection of public safety. The OIA, OTOH, is interest-based, identifying the interests which provide reason for secrecy: national security or foreign relations, privacy, legal privilege, “free and frank” advice, commercial sensitivity (and any of these latter reasons can be overridden by the public interest). One result is that the exemptions are harder to game – the government can’t run everything through Cabinet to make it secret, and we’ve nailed down exactly what those interests are and when they apply (see for example the Ombudsmen’s guideline on “free and frank advice” [PDF]). Another is that everything is potentially OIAable; its just a question of which interests apply at the time.

The second reason is that the government has generally got with the program and accepted the Act in the spirit is was intended. A public service that was suspicious and defensive in 1982 has transformed itself into one that is open and accessible. From being a threat, the possibility of advice being subject to an OIA request is now seen as a discipline by public servants: it makes them perform better. For example, here’s Marie Shroff, former Secretary to the Cabinet and Clerk of the Executive Council, on the issue [DOC]:

If I, as a civil servant, write a Cabinet paper which I expect to be sought for public release I am going to be extraordinarily careful to get my facts right, to avoid trespassing into politics, to give comprehensive reasons for and against a proposal, and to think very carefully about my recommendations. My advice will therefore be balanced, accurate and comprehensive.

Ministers have been less accepting, but over the years the OIA has become embedded, and they understand they can’t get away with hiding things. Its telling that while the Act includes a Cabinet veto on release, it hasn’t been used for over twenty years; the government accepts that it is bound by the Act and the decisions of the Ombudsmen – even unto releasing highly sensitive costings of an election policy mere days before an election.

Some other differences:

• The OIA covers “information” rather than “documents”. So it applies to stuff even if it is not written down;
• charging is the exception rather than the rule, and no charge can be made for deciding whether or not information can be made available. I’ve made almost a hundred requests, and I’ve been charged on only two of them (local government, under its equivalent legislation, is much worse at this).
• The OIA has a shorter time limit – 20 days rather than 30, which is generally adhered to (Ministers get stick if their departments are slack on processing OIAs).
• NZ’s complaints mechanism is mana-based rather than legal. In Australia, you complain to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, and if you win, the government appeals to the High Court until you run out of money. In New Zealand, you go to the Ombudsmen, who cost nothing, and have both expertise in the Act and the mana to make the decision stick.

The NZ law isn’t perfect – it doesn’t apply to Parliament, or the courts, the time limits are still too long, and there’s no real penalty for non-compliance. But it is highly effective, and has led to tremendous cultural change in government (here’s SMH FOI blogger Rick Snell on the issue). While the changes promoted by Faulkner will undoubtedly be an improvement, Australia’s legislation will remain lightyears behind the NZ model.

We’re very excited to have these fine folks on board, and hope everyone will welcome them heartily to LP!

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.