Unleash the Sanctimony! Practically everyone on all sides of mainstream politics is not pleased. For goodness sake, the car loving land of Australia has elected a car-loving Senator, and the sport-crazy nation will have a sports-mad Senator too. Is that so bad?
Wayne Dropulich, possible new Senator
You’d think so. The not-quite-elected-yet souls have barely uttered a word in public, but apparently this is such a disaster we need to remake the Senate voting system. I was amazed at how media commentators were using the term “representative democracy” as if these new members were somehow not representative, and as if only first preferences count in a preferential voting system where some of us had to write in 110 preferences. How arrogant. Blame the voter.
A guy that rebuilds cars for a hobby is probably better connected to reality than a Monash graduate in Marx and Pashukanis.
Those with God-like insight say ignorant voters “accidentally” voted them in, assuming those people are too stupid to know how preferences work, and that those voters are not happy with the result. Commentators raved about the mere 0.22% of the vote that one new Senator got in first preferences, but they ignored the fact that as many as 12% of Australians voted for a minor or micro party in the House of Reps, and 23% did so in the Senate). Is it not possible that nearly a quarter of voters don’t feel the major parties are representing them that well? Do they not deserve Senate representation? And seven seats out of 40 is a very reasonable result given 23% of the vote. A lot of voters are not happy with what the major parties offer. (By the way, the Australian Sports Party outpolled the Democrats in WA, 966 to 872.)
UPDATE: Truthseeker has done Monte-Carlo modelling of senate results to date. Sports Party 68% chance. Motoring Party 100%. Palmer (Tas) 80%. Family First 88%.
I personally didn’t warm to the title: Motoring Enthusiasts Party, but I read their site last week, and it didn’t look so bad. I guess if you are a Liberal-Party fan, then this sort of talk below looks … well – like competition really.
“With the realisation that the rights and civil liberties of every-day Australians are being eroded at an ever increasing rate, the Party aims to bring focus back to the notion that the Government is there for the people; not, as it increasingly appears, the other way around.”
Minimal Government Interference
“We support the notion that society will be more respectful and dynamic if individuals and businesses assume personal responsibility of their lives and role in society; removing the need for government to waste time on the introduction of nanny-rules to protect ourselves from ourselves.”
A guy that rebuilds cars for a hobby is probably better connected to reality than a Monash graduate in Marx and Pashukanis. Honestly, once upon a time Parliament was full of people without doctorates in international politics, and somehow it worked.
The title of the Sports Party didn’t grab me either. But we could do a lot worse:
“.. we’re all about healthy living through sport, so we’re trying to promote grassroots and junior sorta sports to try to get as many people and young people as we can into sport. With obesity being a big issue in Australia, we feel that sport’s a good avenue to try and get people active and get a healthier society. ” 7:30 report
Scott Ludlum (Greens Senator) was a film-maker and graphic designer, and that was considered quite ok with the commentariat. Wayne Dropulich (Sports Party, likely Senator) is a civil engineer. Does that make him too dumb? (Who are we kidding?) Yet on the news tonight the engineer is being painted as a lucky ring-in that voters would not have chosen if they’d thought about it. Not trendy enough with his political views? (Watch Dropulich answer questions in this video.)
As for Family First, lets not forget that there was only one Senator who tried to investigate man-made climate change in office, calling on experts both for and against the theory to do his duty to serve the public, and that was Steve Fielding (an engineer, like Dropulich).
Another likely Senator is David Leyonhjelm, a former vet who runs an agribusiness, and a true libertarian. He’s been in politics for years, and has very defined position on policies (see many articles here too). He drew the lucky first position on the ballot, and it’s sour grapes and bad form to assume most Liberal voters don’t know the difference between a Liberal Democrat and a Liberal. Why shouldn’t he have legitimate appeal to voters? I looked before I voted. I liked what I saw.
How about some respect for citizens who wanted someone in Parliament that is more like them than a suited up lifelong-career political apparatchik?
Blame the media, not the voter
The hatchet job has begun. Ad homs are flying. Old YouTubes of non-election material have been dug out and placed on high rotation. Did you know Senators are not allowed to have been a larrakin in a camp-ground in their former life? A video of Ricky Muir throwing kangaroo droppings was everywhere tonight (which, despite what the ABC thinks, might be earning him more support — who knows, being an ABC target can be a badge of honor for voters who are sick of the Nanny State).
“…the truth is that micro parties and start ups don’t have a chance of getting mainstream attention or funds to run an election campaign, unless they happen to be a billionaire”
The mainstream media wouldn’t give the aspiring Senators five seconds of attention last week when voters were looking for information, but tonight, they get five minutes of prime time and are fast becoming household names. Meanwhile the media complain that the voters couldn’t know who they were voting for. Really? And whose fault is that?
In comparison, the ABC took longer than a day (more like a decade) to find some old taped antics of one Ms Julia Gillard (antics now being investigated by police).
Who else suspects that if the new micro-party senators had views more in line with the commentariat, the commentariat would be chortling and purring about the genius of our democracy and its preferential system?
While wealthy inner city journalists wail that the micro parties are gaming the system, the truth is that micro parties and start ups don’t have a chance of getting mainstream attention or funds to run an election campaign, unless they happen to be a billionaire. Is it so bad they cluster into groups of parties that preference each other? If the media paid micro parties more attention before an election and gave them half a chance, the best ones would rise to the top quickly. Instead the media blackout creates a system where disaffected citizens are willing to take a calculated punt.
It remains to be seen how these Senators perform (if they get elected, and that is not certain*), but let’s judge them by their performance and their popularity. People who call it a “lottery” ignore that voters may well have expected an outcome like this, and they may be quite happy about the result (unlike the voters of Lyne and New England in 2010).
The outrage is totally out of proportion. None of these micro parties will hold the balance of power by themselves, all of them will have to compete, and those two factors will limit the wheeling and dealing.
Shame on you all the Liberal commentators who want to keep out the competition. How unliberal.
—————————————————
More posts about Senator Steve Fielding:
- Finally, a politician doing what politicians should do
- The Wong-Fielding meeting on global warming
- Funded arrogance
- Scientists call for Royal Commission* into climate change science
*These current Senate results are not final and may change see Mattb #3 for example.
It’s a funny old world senate preferences though. If you follow the count on the ABC website you’ll see at one stage the WA Sports party guy was 2nd bottom with only about 200 votes more than I think it may have been the sceptics party, and could easily have dropped out then. But I totally agree with teh gist of this article Jo – the whole basis of our preferential system is that every vote matters and no vote is wasted and it should be celebrated that candidates like these get up.
For sure there are some small parties that are set up specifically to have a nice sounding name and funnel preferences to someone else, but it is up to voters to do their homework.
I must say that the Motoring Enthusiasts guy sounds totally unprepared to be in parliament and I dare say he was meant to be slyly funneling votes to someone else but it is great the tactic has bitten that someone else on the bum. He has some warped views on sustainability though… i.e. having a car that can go in extreme conditions is good for the environment… but I doubht they expected anyone to read that far.
Anyway good on them I have a healthy respect for anyone prepared to give politics at any level a go.
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The real villains here are the two major parties, who designed the senate voting paper with the idea that this format would make it difficult for outsiders and minor parties to break through the barricades.
The key point here is that so many people chose to not vote for the major parties.
Somebody has done some calculations to ensure that these votes are not randomly wasted.
Well done.
There should be some changes to the method of voting.
1. Allow voting for at least one, up to six above the line.
2. Require a minimum of 12, more optional below the line
3. Allow voting for one or up to five below the line, to be completed with at least one above the line, for a maximum total of six.
20
I agree that there are a lot of loose words and poor winners and losers, but there are also a lot of voters whose votes went to people they didn’t want them to go to.
That is not the media’s fault. It could be argued that it is the voters’ fault for not voting below the line but I think that is letting the voting system off the hook. The above the line system can be tweaked to keep everyone happy. I wonder if it will?
06
Gee Aye, how do know the voters aren’t happy, and how do you know who voted above and below the line?
170
Good question and it is true that I am making the assumption of happiness.
The AEC runs post election analysis of exactly these questions and a parliamentary (convened after each election)committee will examine the election process as a whole. There are data from exit polling from different interest groups and a number of academic exercises that have been undertaken over the years published and unpublished and tabled to committees.
They all point to some simple facts. A high proportion of people don’t know where their vote is likely to go. Of these some don’t care anyway and some do care and of these some find that the preference flow does not align with their personal choice. “Some” and “high” are not numbers, I am hoping that some harder data will come out from this election than has come out previously.
30
But a choice of anyone-but-a-major party is still a choice, and most of the likely Senators are conservative-right leaning. Hardly looks like a random accident.
These minor parties were more likely to preference other parties with similar inclinations. People choosing a “sports” or “motoring” or “liberal dem” party would guess that their votes were more likely to end up with a non-major and non-politically-correct candidate in which case, they made a bet, and it appears to have come off.
170
Jo
Plus there’s the links you put on this site about a week ago telling people where the parties were directing their preferences if anyone gave them the “above the line” vote. It was all in the open – hence I voted below the line.
My only gripe was having to decide whether to give last vote to palmer or the greens. (The greens “won”.)
Cheers,
Speedy
60
Me too Speedy,
Libs
Shooting and Fishing Party
No Carbon Tax Skeptics Party
….
….
Labor
Greens Last
I think I did my bit.
I hated Labor the day they announced the Carbon Tax and their subsequent vicious insults when decent Aussie citizens wanted to demonstrate the Tax, but only marginal less than the Greens.
90
I would have preferred a ballot that allowed me to direct my preferences by numbering ALL party groups above the line. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the time to exhaustively number Senate candidates below the line (I had to keep an eye on the elderly handicapped couple who were in my care for the trip to the pre- poll centre).
Nor would I be concerned if there was an optional preferential ballot paper for the Senate, and my preferences were exhausted on candidates who did not attain the quota.
40
Bingo! You got it. Not Bob Brown in disguise are you?
01
Hi Jo – quick question. The ABC website is listing for example WA’s senate count but with only 61.5% counted… am I correct in assuming they will actually count all 100% and in fact because of the tiny starting votes of some of these parties the final result could be quite different.
If you look here: http://www.abc.net.au/news/federal-election-2013/results/senate/wa/
you’ll see that the key counts for the sports party guys are:
COunt 9 – where he only lead the climate sceptics by 250 votes (or 0.021%).
Again after count 12 he is 2nd last only 200 votes ahead of Rise Up Australia.
TO me it appears touch and go whether he will get in or whether it will be some other small player who benefits from his preferences (which I assume was what those other players were hoping for).
My assumption is that with 100% counted the sports party guy could easily drop out?
22
Yes. Fair point. I note that Wayne is repeating that he hasn’t been elected yet.
40
Think about this for a minute, or even more than a minute.
Wayne Dropulich stumped up and made the commitment to actually run for the Senate, had his name put forward, and was actually on the ballot paper.
So did Ricky Muir.
Now, even though they got so little votes, and by careful, if not bewildering, distribution of preferences, both of them have been elected.
People actually did vote for these two men.
Now, move across to NSW.
Bob Carr is expected to announce his retirement, actually stating on the record that he never did want to sit in Opposition, and will undoubtedly resign as soon as he arrives back in Australia.
People voted Labor, and Bob Carr was on top of the Labor ticket.
He was elected on Saturday.
Now he wants to chuck it in.
Paul Howes has been put up as his replacement.
He was on no ticket anywhere.
So now, if Howes does fill Carr’s position, then he gets to be Senator for the rest of Carr’s current term, and the full 6 years for a term as Senator.
So, Dropulich and Muir might actually win a Senate position and serve for 6 years after having their names actually on a ballot, and Howes gets to serve almost 7 years without ever having been on any ballot paper.
I do not ever want to hear complaints from the left side of politics about how we may have been dudded in having these two Senators elected with so little of the vote, when Howes got not even one solitary vote from anyone.
So much for Labor reforming its election processes.
Tony.
450
The person to go in should be the next person on the Labor senate list.
120
agreed
60
double
20
That would be Ursula Stephens.
She has been a Senator since 2002, so, when her term ends, she will have been in the Senate for 12 years. She was Number 3 on the Ticket, and with such a swing against Labor, even predicted, there was little chance she would be elected.
So then, a long serving Senator gets dumped, another unwilling to actually serve the people of NSW resigns, and a Union Official gets parachuted in without ever facing the people.
Ah Labor. The Party of reform!
Tony.
180
shall we just ignore that darling of the sceptics Senator Matthias Cormann was undemocratically installed in the senate in 2007 for a 4 year term?
112
Or Bob Carr for Mark Arbib, or Whish Wilson for Bob Brown.
Don’t get too precious Matt.
Your lot have done the same thing.
Tony.
111
Tony: That bad lot have done this
Matt: So have yours
Tony: don’t be so precious, so have yours…
09
Oh Matt, I gave you more credit than this. Maybe it is true then. The only time you open your mouth is to change feet.
It’s been 112 years since Federation. Find me another situation like Bob Carr’s.
A Senator, Mark Arbib, is tapped on the shoulder and asked to make way for a high profile new person, Bob Carr, to try and raise the Party’s profile. So he finds a relevant excuse, and resigns.
Carr will only come back to fill the Foreign Minister position, so the Foreign Minister is shelved in a reshuffle, virtually ending the career of a now second person, not Kevin Rudd, who he replaced but Smith who was next in line for that slot.
Carr now gets the Number One position on the Senate ticket, virtually ending the career of Ursula Stephens, because head kicker Cameron was not going to go down easily either, proving that Labor is not immune to misogyny.
Then, before vote counting has even finished, Carr pulls the pin, before counting has even finished. He obviously couldn’t give two hoots about serving the people of his State, the reason a Senator is there in the first place. He hasn’t even got the ticker to serve out the remainder of his short term, let alone the next six year block the NSW party faithful voted him in for, a big name at the top of the ticket.
That is who cares taken to extremes.
And if you’re really honest, the same applies to Bob Brown, who also couldn’t give a stuff about the people of Tasmania who supported him. Did he stay away? No, during the campaign, wherever The Greens were, there was Bob. At least he might have withdrawn and stayed out of it, but he loves the limelight, not the service to the people of his State.
There is no comparison here.
Carr is, as Tamie Fraser once said, lower than a snake’s duodenum.
You can deflect all you like with your outright vindictiveness here, but if you support Bob Carr in this and compare that to ANYONE else, then that shows us more about you than it does about them.
Tony.
191
Isn’t the Love and the Care these lefties practice on each just wonderful. Really makes you wonder why the it is called the left.
I just love the politics and they call us Deniers !!
70
A good old fashioned double dissolution will fix all that. Howes that?
And the Carbon Dioxide tax, and mining tax, and all the other greenie inspired frauds.
But Abbott needs to wait until it is clear to all just howe unethical, fraudulent and immoral the left really is. Did I use the word corrupt?
10
No where a Senator quits they should have a by-election so all the voters who voted for the elected senator, can be p..sed off because they are back at the booths and if they are annoyed enough then that ungrateful senator who really does not want to represent the people but just wants power can be punished with votes.
Such a system becomes completely apolitical, it just punishes the ungrateful scumbags or are poor losers and who don’t give a rats about those that elected them.
180
Maverick,
The excuse used against holding an election to replace someone who resigned or died here in the states is always, “It’s too expensive to hold a special election.” My reply is, “Bad government is even more expensive.”
I don’t know what excuse they use in Australia but I’m guessing it would be the same. In any case, it’s just an excuse to get away with the political equivalent of an outright scam.
Appointing anyone to an elective office ought to be unconstitutional. But it’s not.
30
Well well well!
Who would have thought.
Some more Labor infighting on the way as the
two facedfaceless men come to grief.It seems that there will be some, err, trouble with Paul Howes taking the vacancy
whenif Bob Carr pulls up stumps.Senate bid for union boss Paul Howes kiboshed
Speaking of that, just where is Bob Carr anyway? Has he come back to Oz, or is he still at the G20?
Also, I have a question here.
A casual vacancy occurs when a Senator resigns and the State Premier of that Senator’s State appoints a replacement for the remainder of that Senator’s term.
Bob Carr’s term does not end until mid next year, so any appointee, then serves out that term and cannot serve another term unless they face the people at a vote.
So, either Bob serves out the remainder of this term, and then the first sitting of his next term before he can resign, or if he resigns now, then his replacement can only serve until this current term expires. Then What?
The vote cannot carry over to another person not on the ballot.
I wonder if anybody will ask the pertinent questions.
Tony.
Postscript: Yeah, I know, I know! G2o finished ages ago. I guess Bob needs a holiday!!!!!
10
Bob Carr made it clear that he only previously agreed to his nomination to fill the vacant Senate place if it came with a Cabinet Ministry. His Senate candidature in the recent election was clearly in bad faith and should be properly investigated.
120
“sport-crazy nation will have a sports-mad Senator too. Is that so bad?”
Depends.
“try to get as many people and young people as we can into sport. With obesity being a big issue in Australia, we feel that sport’s a good avenue to try and get people active and get a healthier society”
sounds good, as long as the key point is fun and activity for people.
But bad if they start wanting money to go into elite sports stars, professional teams, etc. That lot just provide entertainment for the dim bulbs, and make people unhealthy. The more elite and professional sport we get thrown at us, the more people sit in front of the TV and get fat.
50
yeah.. help out grass roots sports.. that what should happen.
And can the motor sports guy lend me a decent car for a while please 🙂
41
Elete sports have enough money already, and what Joe quoted sounded very much like “promote grassroots and junior sorta sports”.
20
The trick is to balance funding between “high performance” and “grass roots” where the high performance sportsmen get just enough to inspire the grass roots. The problem is measurability. High performance tends to get a greater share of funding because its easier to measure outcomes.
By the by, most elite sportsmen work fulltime and train for their sport before their kids have woken in the morning or after kids have gone to bed. Most elite sportsmen do not get sponsorship or govt support.
10
I don’t believe this “high performance sportsmen inspire the grass roots” line. Quite the opposite.
Over the past sixty years or so, I have seen elite and professional sport get more and more publicity and exposure. In the same time period I have seen the Australians change from slim, bronzed Anzacs* into blobs of fat.
So I have correlation. In my previous post I modelled a causal connection. By the scientific principles we know and love, this proves that elite and professional sport does not inspire people to take up sport, but just makes them fat. The science is settled.
(*When I was a boy all Australians looked like a mix of Chips Rafferty and Paul Hogan. Rather unfortunate for the women to look like that.)
00
Spot on, RoHa.
As a kid I was a state champion swimmer, and state record holder.
If a kid came from another state and swam in our state championships, and beat me, and won, he would have been the winner of the race. But I would have remained recorded as my state’s champion, and my time would have remained as the state record, for other local kids to aspire to.
Today, The Australian Institute of Sport has its talent scouts out at meets everywhere. Promising kids are offered scholarships, and whisked off to Canberra. Come state championships time, these kids are bundled onto a plane and carted around the nation, basically winning everything, everywhere. Then they are flow back to Canberra, where they remain until the state championships the following year.
As a result a handful of kids hold all the titles and and all the records, and the locals are left with no hope of of even local glory, and unattainable records to aim for. And no chance of a rematch for the rest of the swimming season. Consequently many drop out long before they reach anything like their full potential.
The end result is that the overall pool of talent shrinks, and eventually we start losing internationally, while the bulk of kids watch on the TV while eating Maccas and getting fat.
20
If you look more closely at the WA count you can see so many similar parties preferenced the sports party above other small parties they were clearly better ligned with. COmpetitive spite or foolishness.. either way the most moderate of the small guys got up in the form of the sports party.
Look at Count 16… nearly 5000 votes went from the motoring enthusiasts to the sports party, when surely Shooters and fishers was a more natural mob to preference (almost identical platforms).
And then Count 17 there is another 5000 from family 1st when surely a party like Australian Christians fit the bill… or even just the LNP!
Count 18 6000 from wikileaks… even though the lib dems were still in there.
Count 13 7,000 from Shooters and Fishers…
it is amazing all these small single issue parties giving a token preference to a nice guy they assume is going nowhere.
He did a bloody good job convincing each and every one of these minors to give him a good preference flow. Cracking effort to be frank.
42
“A video of Ricky Muir throwing kangaroo droppings”
Gees any Aussie country lad that HASN’T been in a roo poo or cow pat completion is a total nobody !!
110
“competition”.. darn my typing !!!!
00
Intelligence contest: civil engineer vs s-h-y….. any guesses 😉
70
Did S-H-Y refuse to do a photo bikini shoot in ZOO magazine?
[Can’t post the link. There’s a law suit happening. Mod oggi]
00
The problem is the back-room deals done about preferences and giving an easy voting option that has consequences that the voter may not be aware of. How many Greens voters knew that their preferences were going to a coal baron like Clive Palmer (hypocrisy anyone?) and vice versa.
The solution is optional preferential voting and that includes above the line where the voter can put there own above the line preferences in the senate. You still only choose above or below the line voting. If you put just one number, then only that group is voted for. That would reflect the real voter intention.
30
“How many Greens voters knew that their preferences were going to a coal baron like Clive Palmer (hypocrisy anyone?) and vice versa”
It was quite often in the news that there was a preference deal between Clive and the Greens.
If green voters didn’t get the message, that’s their problem. 🙂
60
ps.. I must admit I’m still chuckling heartily about that outcome. 🙂
40
indeed preferential numbering above the line (as one of three options) would be a good idea.
41
Andrew Bolt is quite optimistic about the outcome …
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/sceptics_get_the_senate_of_their_dreams/
However, if they do get rid of the carbon tax, the Labour senators may support the Liberal trading scheme, which would be bad.
30
???? The Libs don’t have a trading scheme, do they..???
I thought it was a spending scheme.
Does a spending scheme even need senate support ?
20
Isn’t there already $10b set aside for green crap by the Lab/greens?
Just move $7b back to consolidated and the rest is the direct action fund……
…. IF they choose to use it.
30
I agree with Bolt that from next July the Coalition should be very happy if the Senate contains Liberal Democratic Party, Family First, the Democratic Labour Party, two from the Palmer United Party and either the Australian Motoring Enthusiast Party or the Australian Sports Party.
If this is the make-up I certainly will be writing to each of them lengthy letters of congratulations on their democratic wins and how I like their platform and letting them know my views about 1) the real science of AGW, 2) that consensus is not science 3) that even if AGW was real how does a tax on the inelastic demand of electricity and waste disposal reduce CO2 and methane?, 4) the cost of such a tax to Australia in both tax and competitiveness, 5) the fact that Australia as a 1.5% emitter can not influence it anyway, or put another way we could change the temperature by one twenty thousandth of one degree at massive cost 6) controlling temperature by 1 degree requires the world to be 100% involved and if it was at Australia’s cost pro rata it would cost 3.2 quadrillion dollars and represent 80% of GDP, so billions of already people in poverty, already without electricity and clean running water and basic hygiene and not enough food would die.
150
Good point
20
The Liberals might drop their trading scheme. There has been a lot of non supportive data come in since their policy was formulated.
The Nats should be happy to dump it. Then again they have over the last 25 years been an awfully dopey lot.
10
I’ve crunched the numbers on the first preferences in the Senate. If I rule out all forms of mainstream Lib/Lab Nat and Green – fully 23% of first prefs went to non-major parties so I’ve updated the post.
How can anyone call the result undemocratic when nearly a quarter of all voters chose to vote for a minor or micro party?
100
why not include the greens… no more major than PUP it seems. so almost 30%.
31
I wonder if the ABC wil give PUP almost as much free air time as they do the Greens, given similar primary votes.
I’m getting better at this, I almost typed that with a straight face.
40
Did anyone get as much air time as PUP this last election?
00
Hmmm…
Mattb says …
Given that the Greens appear to have lost approximately 25% of their support nationally in this election, I’m not sure whether they are a minor party – or should they now be classed as a Micro party.
00
Thanks, reflect my sentiments exactly. I voted below the line, 96 – or was it 97 – in Vic. A bloke that throws Kangaroo shit around for a lark has more in common with the ordinary citizen than mainstream professional politicians.
Some minor parties even mention the I word, OMG, yes, a policy stance on IMMIGRATION. Oh dear, how wacist they must be!
70
We also voted below the line and numbered 110 preferences individually….
40
Yup below the line for me in Tassie, 54 choices and Greens got 54, 53 and 52. Shame it wasn’t out of a thousand, I would have joyfully taken the time to ensure they still got put last.
60
Yep. . . Me too.
I think more people did that than ‘those who know what’s best’ are prepared to concede.
I just wish they would all stop whining and let ‘those who got elected’ get on with the job 🙂
20
I wondered how I could give Labor a negative vote.
I was in a bit of a dilemma at the end. Greens last or Labor last? Decisions decisions. I eventually put greens ahead of Labor. I wanted to kick Labor as much as possible.
10
The Channel 9 poll is currently running at 87% of people saying they want reform to the Senate voting system. I’m one of them. I’m also for the minor parties getting into the Senate. If 23% of the voters are for them, then they have a full quota in each state and there should be one from each state. How that is decided is another matter!
However there has to be a better system of both casting a vote and the subsequent counting. I’d do away with the choice of above or below the line. I’d also do away with the requirement of having to fill in 73 numbers, as was the case in SA. To be a formal vote I’d recommend voters being required to number their preferences from 1 to 6, at least, and then continue on for as far as they like. From a tallying viewpoint any party receiving more than one vote would only be given the highest number.
That way there would be no wheeling and dealing beforehand, although parties would still issue intelligence-insulting “how to vote cards”.
10
Hmm, by “highest” number I meant “highest position”, which is the lowest number.
20
Maybe the ones wanting “reform” are the LOSERS like the watermelon communist “greens” & the alp (Australian LIARS PARTY)…
Sour grapes perhaps?
20
I’m waiting for the count of all votes. There may have been a great many voting below the line. On Sunday, only the “ticket” votes for WA appear to have been counted; with about half a million votes still to be put into the system.
It was pretty clear that Sports would gather up the ticket preferences from most minors after I drew up my chart of “BFF” preference flows. When looking further at the preferences for just the first 6, Sports received 10 preference flows from the minors. That’s an impressive achievement.
I’ve previously made it clear what I believe Senators should be doing in Parliament; that they should be looking after the interests of the States, respectively and collectively; ahead of Party interests.
While Sports‘ enthusiasm for engagement is laudable, the Commonwealth has no direct Constitutional powers to legislate in the matter. Wayne Drupovich already recognizes that sport and community are fundamentally synergistic. Those communities are organized by individuals for the enjoyment of a common purpose; not by some level of government trying to get the public off their @rses.
If government gets as far as possible out of the way of communities organizing and running sports and indeed, in other community activities, then the activities initiated by communities will receive more participation. Anybody who’s ever participated in the running of a community group and felt the regulatory burden of government when organizing an event, should be well aware that it’s mostly local and State governments creating the work that is a disincentive to do it again.
40
he’d be better off being a local councillor.
33
Just like Scott Ludlum would be better off drawing pretty graphics on his Apple Mac.
70
well no not at all. SCott Ludlam can achieve his stated goals via federal parliament. The sports party could best achieve them at local government.
24
I get the point about local government can influence local sport, but you appear to be forgetting the empirical data in yet another sphere of Australian society. Have you forgot about the Federal Government funding Olympic bids, the Sydney Olympic games, the Commonwealth Game bid, the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games, the World Cup bid and the ongoing and very expensive Australian Institute of Sport, yet alone the myriad of Fed Gov grants for local sports.
How many graphic artist programs have the Feds funded? Answer: None, nil and nada. So does the empirical evidence suggest that one’s qualifications for a Senate position are higher if one is a sports nut or a graphic artist?
50
I find Olympic sports to be a disincentive. Perhaps the young and hopeful can still have hopes of achieving the performance of a Wunderkind, but it’s just so discouraging to have to measure one’s own marathon time on a calendar; because it’s at least two days’ walk as long as the ground’s not too tough. 🙂
Elite sports dominate the media. They show the best. Except when the Australian cricket team is playing a test match. I can empathise with their failure. I’ve practiced failure in sports since I was a young lad.
How often do the mainstream media, other than the local newspapers, do the round of matches in community sports over a weekend? It shouldn’t take an Act of Parliament to get some community sports into the public eye. If those media don’t think that people won’t want to watch other people just like them, messing about trying to enjoy playing a game, then they’re ignorant of YouTube and other “new media” outlets.
10
So what BOlT is saying is that it is likely that BOTH the Carbon Tax and that stupid replacement Direct action will be abolished exactly what is needed to totally finish demolish etc the whole AGW scam best outcome ever. I think Abbott will willingly ditch ALL climate change crap finally its over yaeee!
60
We pray that BOTH stupid wasteful policies are abandoned…
50
BOLT
10
Having read all above, I’m not so certain that FPTP is such a bad system after all. There are so many possible combinations of voting that your senate system is practically a free market dealing in electorate votes. To this outsider, the opportunities for corrupt practises in vote-dealing seem many and varied and it will be interesting to see how many challenges are made. It is worth mentioning that the percentage of votes for the micro-parties is similar to the percentage of non-voters in the UK.
The independent senators would have the most to lose if Mr Abbott is forced into a double dissolution. Is it possible that Labor would force Mr. Abbott into such a position in the hope that they might gain at the expense of the little men and women before next June?
Jo’s election coverage ,together with all the contributions, has been an education and I look forward with baited breath to the next instalment.
50
In WA that would have delivered:
3xLNP
2xALP
1XGreens
1xPUP
1xWA Nationals
COmpared to 3xLNP
1xALP
1xSports Party
1xGreens
But of course that assumes people would vote the same if they were aware that votes would not be distributed based on preferences.
13
I think your calculation needs a bit of fine-tuning, Matt.
There is no way known WA could elect eight senators in a half-senate election.
50
hmm you’re absolutely correct!
21
I wonder if you could distribute preferences in a block. So 1st thing is that anyone with less than 1% of the votes are eliminated and votes distributed.
That would have left 9 parties in WA.
01
It’d be much more useful to ONLY look at the voting that’s “below the line” in order to “predict” what would happen if voters had the option of e.g. simply placing a mark against any 6 candidates. Of course there are confounding factors such as the self-selection of voters who attempt the vote below the line. Are they more likely to vote “Green”, “Purple”, “Orange” or “Lavender”; and would that ratio be similar to those who voted with just one mark above the line; had they been able to just mark 6 boxes?
Tallying up the marks in the ticket votes simply reveals that WA would have elected 6 Liberal candidates to the Senate.
Blokes’ intuition tells me that most people aren’t happy with having just the one song being sung on their behalf in the Senate; so they’re more likely to spread the vote amongst the parties.
Senate voting is different to voting for the House of Representatives. There is only one candidate to be elected in the latter, but always several in the former.
10
All happy chez Thermopolis. Spoilt for choice.
Dog put paw on Animal Justice Party. Cat went for Nocturnal Hunters & Lifestyle Party.
In Pandemonium, Senate is full of micro-parties, the number restricted only by tiresome practical details such as font size and length of ballot paper.
Preference-vote brokers, having learnt tricks of the trade from low-cap stockbrokers, game the system with such panache, they become the envy of their financial and gaming sector colleagues, some of whom join the fun.
Can’t wait for 2016.
20
If the proportional representative system of voting we have is not “broken”, then why try to “fix” it? Isn’t the MSM the key problem that’s broken, epitomised by the leader of the pack, their ABC? That’s where reform is required, not the ballot box.
What we are seriously lacking in a supposedly free, democratic society is objective, unbiased, non-partisan, apolitical reporting of what goes on around us. Transparency of behaviour of those in public office (all employees in the public circus included) is the means to holding everyone in receipt of public reward, accountable. Not least at the ballot box for politicians who are appointed and rewarded handsomely for being ultimately responsible for public sector employees and the public purse they are employed to administer. This was totally lacking in the worst government ever in this country, which was (finally) turfed out last Saturday.
With some of the private rags that make claim they are news-papers but are more a medium for disseminating propaganda than news, then let the market decide; that should be a principle of a healthy democracy. The Age fills a niche by
pandering tocatering for the inner urban so-called “progressive”, utopian lefties. Let it succeed or fail on market economics, as it should.However, as for all taxpayer funded public broadcasters in radio, digital or print media, they should be required to provide apolitical, factual, unbiased, accurate reporting of reliable information, and employess should be personally accountable for upholding the charter and the law. Now that we could call serious reform. But will the new government be up to it?
Then let everyone choose to select, reject and generally make what they want from the information available according to their own personal bias, political leaning and interpretation. But at least everyone should know the publicly funded media can be relied on for accurate reporting of information and present a high standard for pronunciation and grammar,which everyone used to respect and applaud. Laudable standards should not be relegated to “the good old days”.
This would better serve to help “keep the bastards honest” than any political party as the voters could then be more able to hold them accountable for their behaviour. Which is perhaps why the ABC has been allowed to slip from the once high standards and reputation it once held to the sheltered workshop for lefties it has been degraded into. If the new government has actually heard the people on Saturday, with the added resurgence of minor and micro parties as a reminder, then they will get the house back in order and earn the respect and support based on their performance, which is ultimately what we are paying and voting for.
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This is simply not possible. Eliminate the ABC. Problem fixed and the country will save a few bucks
50
The abc (Australian BULLSHIT COMMISSION) must be sold asap.
Let them provide their own funding for their BS instead of ALL Australian taxpayers.
Then they can be free to be as biased as they want.
30
The ABC IS the opposition. They’ve started already. All at the Taxpayer’s expense. Of course.
40
As far as the liberal party goes I have low expectations which I’m pretty sure they’ll fail to meet.
The minor party senators elect have won the lottery. What is the salary again? Would any be able to make that outside parliament? I have some axes to grind. We’ll see how they deal with the issues I raise with them.
00
Your imputation about Marx shows you’re just out of touch, Jo. 😉 The philosophy of Karl Marx gets plenty of support in California, especially if you tell people that Obama endorsed him.
That stunt is a real tragicomedy. I believe it shows most people are politically and economically ignorant even of landmark philosophies and will vote for anything dangled in their face.
How curious that the only people we were shown in the video who actually knew Karl Marx’ name and figured it was all a joke were the old couple.
Generally speaking, we are exactly where they want us – in the dark.
~ ~
Not sure if this qualifies as being a “motoring enthusiast”, but Norway’s Prime Minister was a taxi driver for a day in June. He said it was to hear the honest opinions of the people, but of course it was a stunt for his re-election campaign. But the car charade backfired as this self-styled “man of the people” was brought to a screeching halt by the people at the polls.
The Norwegians went to vote in national parliament elections yesterday and by no small margin opted mainly for a bloc of 4 separate parties who describe themselves as “centre-right” politically. Together they won 12% more seats in parliament than necessary to form government. Erna Solberg is described as “its first Conservative prime minister since 1990.”
As one example to put their win in perspective, all strong alcohol sales are through government owned shops and some Norwegians believe “Alcohol (and stronger alcohols in particular) should be rather expensive and not too easy to get hold of.” For a very “democratic socialist” leaning country such as Norway this centre-right win seems noteworthy.
That’s just 2 days after Saint Abbott ascended to greatness closer to home.
It’s early days yet and it’s too much to hope that there is some world-wide revolution happening very politely at the grassroots level, but perhaps people are sick of the Statist status quo even if they disagree on what precisely to replace it with.
Which brings us back to the present topic.
~ ~
I’m as surprised as anybody about the sudden ascendency of Mr Muir to the Senate, as I expected Julian Assange to win one of the seats in that electorate (clearly I’m out of touch there). There’s just a touch of sour grapes too. Mr Assange has voiced suspicions about the validity of that result by claiming how it seems unfair that a party who got half the primary votes that he did should end up winning a seat. Perhaps Julian should take another look at the scoreboard. Surely Mr Assange is happy that Palmer United, who got three times the primary votes that Wikileaks got, did NOT end up winning a seat. Undoubtedly Mr Assange should be jubilant that the Sex Party – who got DOUBLE the votes of Wikileaks – did not end up with a seat either.
Quite possibly the Wikileaks profile was not nearly as popular in the minds of voters as the freshly-minted party’s digerati believed. Quite possibly our complex voting scheme of choosing the least worst option works okay for a House of Review.
Does the emergence of minor parties holding the balance of power in the Senate mean that we might actually see some more diverse opinons, some genuine debate, and a growing necessity to put forward substantial arguments in Parliament as to why legislation should go ahead? Heaven forbid.
40
Interesting points Andrew.
Im not sure if the Senate situation will actually encourage more divers or topical debate because unless the ideas and positions of the independents aligns reasonably closely with one of the major parties, its difficult to see how the topic or issue will get much air, let alone a vote. At the most I think it will result in the usual “horse trading” of a sports park in a small town paying for a deciding vote on a more mainstream topic of the large voting blocks.
But time will tell.
30
The preferential system is not designed to elect the most popular person/parties, but rather to ensure that the least popular parties do NOT get elected.. It means that most voters would prefer the motoring enthusiast rather than yet another green senator..
It is pretty easy to spend a night or two before the election visiting the websites and investigating the preferential distributions of each party (eg. for victoria senate http://www.aec.gov.au/election/vic/files/vic-gvt.pdf) and create your own ‘how-to-vote’ card. If people dont care, then they can hardly blame anyone but themselves.
40
We prepared our own voting preferences prior to the election for all 110 senators and then just took it to the polling booth and copied from it.
10
It didn’t take long! The bankster’s
“inside man”mate, Turncoat, has been on the ABC radio (where else?) advocating “electoral reform”. I assume, as “Communications Minister”, (shades of Conroy) he’s ready to “fix the “problem”, advocating electronic voting. Perhaps it’s his first thought bubble (Oh no, not a Rudd disciple!) to help fix the “pesky” micro parties from getting a future spot in parliament. Nice try! He’d be good at running false flags up the pole. Don’t know if he has in mind the US system where the numbers can beriggedcollated instantaneously, and then deleted when no longer required. How convenient!We have a transparent system that has served us well, and it’s certainly not “broken”. The democratic system we have of proportional representation worked well (perhaps to the dismay of the major parties), where every vote is literally counted, scrutinised for accuracy and just as, if not more important, can and is sometimes re-counted. Hard to fiddle with. It might have “ghost” voters, but this can get picked up off the rolls that are crossed out. And if you don’t vote, you get fined, so that’s another check and balance against fraud. Not 100% perfect, but it works and unlike electronic voting methods, it can’t be rigged.
No records there, just a slab of untraceable numbers. But shouldn’t we trust an ex-Goldman Sachs banker? “I’m from the government, here to
manipulate and controlhelp you in any way I can”! Yeah, sure, all for our benefit, just like he was prepared to cross the floor and vote with Rudd to get his hands into a pile of money from “carbon” trading? Is he picking up where Conroy left off? If so, perhaps Sportsbet can run a book on the colour of undies he will wear on his head? If the hat fits, wear it.60
Im actually a fan of electronic voting.
My contention has been for some time now that if people are able to identify themselves online in order to pay tax, then why not voting?
21
Because sunshine is a powerful antiseptic, but with electronic voting the count is done in the dark.
How has Internet voting worked out for France in July 2013?
How did Dubya win Florida in 2000? Just remind me. Oh that’s right, he didn’t [PDF]:
But surely electronic voting software in the USA was certified by a reputable auditor? Yes, and it seems that for the right price Accenture will certify anything.
Just read the “Top 10 List” and a few other recent articles on blackboxvoting.org for a taste of why electronic voting is a really bad idea. The “potential” for fraud and untraceable error is routinely manifesting as actual fraud and untraceable error in allegedly civilised and technically sophisticated societies. There is no other argument against electronic voting that is needed.
Electronic voting sounds appealing on the surface – until you hear what actually happens in practice.
I’ve heard the public key crypto arguments in favour of it. But signed votes and signed binaries still cannot verify that the ballots were counted correctly prior to being signed while also maintaining voter confidentiality and preventing vote duplication (refer: Schneier, Applied Cryptography, 1996. Section 6.1). It’s not that electronic elections are impossible. The only uncorruptible electronic voting algorithm I know of was devised in 1982 by Michael Merritt of Georgia Tech, but… it requires all N voters to perform part of the computation in a specific pre-agreed order, all N voters then receive messages with length proportional to N from all other voters, and then transmit a new message to all other voters. If any voter’s computer is uncontactable it will prevent the whole election from finishing. It has maximum confidentiality and integrity, but it is still not entirely secure because the availability of the voting service relies on 100% uptime of computers and data networks during the election. Plus it assumes every voter has already obtained the genuine public key of every other voter participating. Now remember N>11,000,000 for Australia and you start to see (simply from a communication perspective) the infeasibility of the scheme.
I’ve also heard the open source argument in favour of electronic voting, but that isn’t enough because you cannot see that the process being executed in the computer is the same as the source code that has been published.
I’ll leave the last word (again) to BlackBoxVoting.org:
20
Wrong, Wrong and Wrong.
All it takes is to assign each voter a token, and then allow each individual elector to examine the vote recorded against their token, or extract lists of tokens with votes. This means that electors can confirm their vote recorded on the list and from the list confirm the election result. Even one elector discovering their vote on the day does not match the recorded vote can trigger an audit. In theory anyone could conduct an audit by inpecting a sample of electors votes from electors willing to share their token and vote with the auditor.
11
Wow, bobl, you have outsmarted ALL the cryptographers of the world with your solution, how on earth did they ALL overlook such a simple scheme?
Except… as written that scheme is too vague to pass the criteria. For one thing the exact method of assigning tokens is important. You broke the anonymity three times. First, before voting, you gave a unique token to a specific person, which you have to do to ensure only registered people can vote, meaning it could be recorded as to who got that token.
Secondly after election day you can’t check that everyone registered has voted without breaking the anonymity of the vote, because if a token has not been used then you in theory don’t know who to fine.
Thirdly in the audit step you actually require anonymity to be broken (even though it already is). If the reliable audit method is to manually count printed tokens, then just do it that way with paper ballots the first time so there is never a difference between what people are told on TV and the final true result.
Again you were vague about the vote report, but my interpretation is that it still allow frauds because unless the retrieved token report consists of all votes in the whole election, there is no way for anyone to check that the final count was produced from the real votes, the same public transparency problem that all electronic implementations will suffer from regardless of the protocol used.
Just to add injury to insult, you’ve even introduced two new flaws into the election that current paper voting does not have.
The first is an inherent problem with any voter-verifiable-vote scheme. If the voter can use their token (printed or electronic) to check the official system matches their token-vote pair and therefore prove how they voted, this means they can use that same token-vote pair to prove to someone else that they voted in a particular way. This allows votes to be bought, with payment on proof they voted in the required way.
Secondly the organisation issuing the tokens can generate extra identical votes with valid unique tokens, perhaps up to 10% of the registered voters, and add these fake votes to the ballot box itself and probably nobody would notice (because the counted votes would equal total issued tokens).
How does it go again… Wrong, Wrong, and Wrong?
Twelve years after Schneier’s cryptography book was written there were still plenty of Computer Science experts who agreed that bare minimum requirements for electronic elections still have not been met.
Paperless votes cannot be audited, trust depends on audits, therefore paperless voting systems cannot be trusted. You can’t rely on counting the paper votes electro-optically because reprogramming the scanner to report a false count is exactly what happened in one of the USA’s voting districts (refer blackboxvoting.org). Whoever can access the scanner config can rig the result, and someone must change the config for each new election by definition. If the machines run slow enough to allow a human to check each one as it counts, you may as well be doing a manual count.
Electronic voting could not go ahead until the experts are prepared to sign off on it – and very few of them are yet. That’s quite aside from the fact that paper, pencils, manual counting, and progressive phoned-in counts seem to be working just fine. For a two-month election process which happens once every 3 years there is no problem here to solve.
00
malcolm TURNCOAT turnBULL – the minister for Goldman Sachs.
The bloke couldn’t lie straight in a coffin !
00
Well, British and New Zealanders all love sheep; Australians as well. It’s not surprising the left of the Aussie prefers votes to behave as sheep.
00
We need more engineers in parliament – they (generally) have the training to crunch numbers, think critically and not be desperately seeking popularity…
40
I would like to see Limited Optional Preferential (LOP) voting introduced. In both HR and Senate voting preferences up to the number of candidates to be finally elected plus one would be counted, further preferences, if any, would not be counted. In senate voting voting above the line would be allowed, but in this case preferences would only be allowed to flow to candidates within the group nominated. Of course, as is the current practice, voting above the line would preclude voting below the line (a possible variation would be to allow a first preference below the line within the same group, giving the possibility of voting out an unpopular senator, against the wishes of the group hierarchy)
Thus in HR seats a voter could have a second preference if the voter wished, in Senate voting the elector could use up preferences up to the number of senators to be elected plus one ( normally 7 but in a DD 13)
In either case once a voter’s final preference has been used the vote would be exhausted and become informal unless the last preferenced candidate remains in the race.
It seems to me that the above system (or something similar) would be simple, reasonably equitable, less prone to unsavoury back room deals,likely to ensure that the average voter makes a considered personal choice, allows the possibility of making protest votes without wasting votes, and above all easily understandable.
10
This is a very very good post Jo. Your best yet, thank you.
40
Some of you may have noticed my invitation to Jaquie Lambie to come and see Jo’s site for herself and read some information and perhaps join in the debates.
This was my email to her…
Hi Jaquie
Congratulations on your victory, I trust you are enjoying the last few days of “normal life” before the job ahead of you begins in earnest.
I am writing to you simply to offer an invitation to join a group of concerned citizens online, who regularly debate the issues around the theory of Anthropogenic Climate Change and related matters such as the Carbon Tax/ETS.
As someone who may have a critical deciding role in this matter, we encourage you strongly to join us and examine the large amount of collected data and research that exists Jo Nova’s web site.
http://joannenova.com.au/
We would love to hear your views and I know some of the members would love to share their wealth of knowledge and experience with you, to assist your deliberations.
You have stated recently that you like to be in possession of all the facts when making a decision, well many of the facts that are not presented in the mainstream media, or the carefully controlled Governmental information releases can be found within the body of knowledge collected by Jo. and her forum members and associates.
Please join us, we look forward to seeing you.
Sincerely
Peter J Martin
—————–
UPDATE
—————–
Jaquie was kind enough to reply (same day mind you, pretty impressive)
“Hi Peter, Have flagged this in will swing back around on this as soon as I can, and thank you Jacqui Lambie..”
——————-
Excellent!
90
Oh, my stars, I laughed.
Not so much at the people who have been elected, but the incandescent Greenie rage when something proves to be beyond their control, and despised ordinary citizens somehow get a say in how the country is governed.
That, above all, they hate.
100
When you know what’s best for everyone, why should you have to suffer the inconvenience of people deciding things for themselves?
I swear Australian voters are so ungrateful!
30
Reading all of this electoral angst, I’m reminded of the famous quote of Commander Montgomery Scott, when referring to how easy it was to sabotage the USS Excelsior: “Aye, sir. The more they overthink the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain. ”
ALL electoral systems get “gamed”. The more complicated the system, the more likely you will get a whimsical result. Having said that, it seems clear that the electorate was not all that happy with either major party/coalition, so a little bit of whimsy appears to what the electorate intended.
You got the government you wanted.
40
Aye we did laddie. 🙂
00
Who games the system? The big parties get big dollars and stop small ones from getting money. The media won’t talk about the micro parties. The little guys effectively use the only advertising they can afford, they put each policy they feel strongly about as the label of their party, that gets printed on the ballot sheet, and voters can pick that choice if they want.
Most of these little parties did pick senate prefs with other parties that were similar in general politics. As Matt pointed out, it wasn’t perfect. But then each Senator doesn’t have to be perfect.
I’d argue every candidate is gaming the system by that definition.
00
It’s hardly gaming the system when all nominees are required to submit their preference flows for a 1 above the line. I honestly can’t see what all the whinging is about! Xenaphon should leave this one alone.
00
The Senate was originally designed to give the States the power to review legislation from the lower house (like the House of Lords). The Senate was never intended to be democratic or give power to minor parties.
30
It wasn’t intended to hold parties. 😉
And, until around WW2, it didn’t.
10
The MSM is just one trash story after another, it mostly sickens me to watch or hear it but I have to as you must know what your enemy is doing, I can empathize with people who have to investigate murderers or sex offenders and be constantly exposed to such insidious material.
The day these glorified, paid stenographers confess and publically apologize for aiding and abetting anti democratic usurpers, I may show the slightest bit of acknowledgement, until then screw you.
20
When it comes to the media. I have often found it hard to distinguish between the screwer and the screwee.
They seem to be trying to outdo each other with the intensity of their bile. It is a hell of a way to earn a living, but what else can they do, with a liberal arts degree?
10
I don’t think we can assume the majority of voters have the time or inclination to study the person/party/platform in any detail – if at all.
My hypothetical presumption is that most Aussies would rather get back to their shopping, sports, or barbecues than waste their time fighting with the traffic, winning a parking space and coping with a ridiculously complex IQ test – intentionally designed to confuse uninformed people in a hurry.
00
Most of the parties have websites where their policies are elucidated.
It doesn’t require much of an effort to check them out….
10
Hi Jo this is off topic but I just picked it up from http://principia-scientific.org.
I hadn’t heard anything about these 2 courageous women but we might need to talk to them regarding this http://principia-scientific.org/latest-news/299-independent-experts-demand-junk-climate-science-inquiry.html
Very Interesting
20
Fodder for the Royal Commission at #35
10
Sorry, #36. In the meantime, enthusiasm is developing.
00
Jo. You remind us above that in July 2009 Bob Carter, David Evans, Stewart Franks and William Kininmonth called for a Royal Commission into the AGW push, by whatever name.
Now should be the time for that Royal Commission. Provided it was done properly it would do the world a mighty service.
The government should at the very least have an internal discussion to ensure that every government parliamentarian has been apprised of what is fact and what is fiction with regard to this problem.
30
This absolutely should happen in a perfect world … but would the globalist powerbrokers allow a country with delusions of national sovereignty to undermine their plans?
Unfortunately, this is not just about scientific integrity anymore, but good luck.
10
From the outside looking in, this AU election system was invented by an insane schizophrenic and designed to start fights in the pubs.
20
Mark and everyone,
Just the idea of compulsory voting has bothered me ever since I learned about it. If someone doesn’t have the interest it takes to find out what’s going on, make an informed decision and then get to the polls on Election Day, then they aren’t worthy of that right to vote and I certainly don’t want them voting because from a position of ignorance they make very bad decisions.
I’m not trying to tell Australians how to run their country. I have a similar objection to what’s happening here with partisan voter registration drives and even going so far as to haul those voters to the polls. What’s happening in many cases is that those voters are voting as they were told to by the bunch that hauled them to the polling place.
It amounts to the same person voting more than once when you don’t have voters reaching their own conclusions about the candidates and the issues. Knowing human nature, I must suspect that you have a similar situation in Australia where, because they must vote, the lazy ones simply find or are given a party line and vote it right down the ballot.
I guess this will be received as a criticism and I admit that it is. But I believe it’s the truth. I can tell you from direct observation than far too many Americans are more attentive to their next romp in the hay, their next bottle of beer and their next football/basketball/baseball/(you name it) game on TV, than they are to politics. Many in the 18 – 30 year old range are absolutely pathetic.
Ignorance of what your government is doing leads to a noose around your neck.
40
compulsory voting is a-ok. people are still free to just submit a blank form if they want to not vote. Or pay the fine. It means that parties cant just ignore swathes of society they feel will not vote, but they actually have to carry a message for everyone as everyone votes. I know it is not like that in the USA and I guess that’s ok… but I can;t see Australia changing any time soon.
30
Matt,
I guess you can’t read and understand plain English — maybe some difference between American and Australian usage!?
In any case, parties will always pay attention to those they think will vote their way. Compulsory voting does nothing to change that as far as I can see.
Like I said, I’m not trying to tell Australians how to run their country. I see a similar problem here. Though the mechanism is a little different, the result has got to be the same. The uninformed voter is a very real problem.
21
Sorry Roy I wasn’t trying to disagree with you… just saying how it is here and then just making a quick comparison between the two – but not suggesting one way or the other.
00
Matt,
I could put a blank ballot in the box too and I would have voted. But doesn’t that seem a pathetic waste of my time and effort? My whole point was and still is that you don’t want the uninformed voter anywhere near a polling place on election day. Ignorance may be bliss for them but it’s trouble for everyone else.
10
I don’t see how people who turn up to vote are any more likely to be informed than people who stay home.
AS I said – compulsory voting forces pollies to reach out and communicate (ie inform) everyone. I think it works well here.
01
One might wonder about that given the recent upset after voters realized they’d been had by a bunch who had their own secret agenda as it were. And then there were the totally incompetent assumptions that went into all the grand plans to “green” Australia (and more than a few pockets it seems).
But then nothing works well if those who govern are dishonest or have conflicts of interest that work against good government.
00
Roy said:
I really can’t find fault with having these priorities Roy 🙂
On the other hand, OZ apparently found a way to solve the problem, they have a party for each:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Sex_Party
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lower_Excise_Fuel_and_Beer_Party
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Sports_Party
and a list of many more http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_political_parties_in_Australia
It seems that the powers in OZ keep mainstream politicians in place by providing too many choices and diluting opposition votes.
00
Mark,
I’m sure you understand what I mean. Otherwise I might jump all over you. 🙂
Might I suggest that making politics a “party” (as seems evident from your list of names) rather than organizing around 2 or 3 actually useful political points of view (parties without quotes) is quite possibly not good for Australia. That would be my take on too many parties. And before anyone dings me please consider that I got to that position honestly through being a watcher of American politics for a long time.
And for the record, I don’t see anything wrong with those priorities either except that for so many, specially the younger generations, it seems to exclude paying attention to even more important things. And that hurts all of us.
Now, since you’re the apparent expert, where can I find the American Sex Party? 😉
10
I have to add a postscript here: our “mainstream parties are out of control too. 🙁
00
Try Bill Clinton’s house.
30
Always someone around with the consummate sense of humor! You get a green one for that and several more if I could.
10
Compulsory voting should be abolished.
Then the idiots who don’t give a toss about their future would not bother to vote.
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Hey Jo! When I saw that I immediately said, “Sure! After all, the media was in the government’s pocket for so long and is the perfect scapegoat.” They obviously didn’t do their job well enough.
Knowing how things political keep on going on bad ideas and self interest I have to suspect they’ll keep blaming the media a lot. After all is said and done, what politician will have the nerve to take a good look in his mirror and ask the right question, “Did I really do something the people had every right to and good interest in getting mad about?”
I think there won’t be very many.
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I loved that the Age spent 3 pages telling us about the poo fight, and then the last 3 lines happened to mention that he’s aTruther who said publicly that GWB ordered 9-11! Bit embarrassing next time a US dignatory arrives!
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Don’t tell me that rag “the age” is still being produced.
Not even good for toilet paper!
Haven’t they gone bankrupt yet?
Shame!
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And when I read this I wished I’d see it on the Republican web site. But they seem afraid to actually stand for what they know they should.
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And now, after rereading some of this thread and a couple of previous ones I’m going to ask for some help. So forgive my ignorance…
What is voting above or below the line?
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in the australian senate there are parties and independent candidates. Parties can have a number of candidates as there are 6 seats up for grabs in each state.
Above the line is a box for each party.
below the line is a box for each candidate.
You can either vote above the line, or below the line.
If you vote above the line you just put a 1 in the box for your party, and you automatically adopt that party’s nominated preference flows.
If you vote below the line you make up your own preference flows by numbering from 1 to # where # is the number of candidates.
Voting below the line means you choose every single preference. Voting above the line it is out of your hands (although you should do your research).
Voting below the line is considered the more sophisticated vote… but I vote above the line after checking that my preferred party has sensible preferences (to me).
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as an example in western australia this last election there were about 14 parties and something like 100+ candidates, just for 6 vacancies.
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Thanks, Matt. And ouch! But I would first do as you do and decide which party I think will govern best but then examine the individual candidates and decide on each one I’m entitled to vote for. Sometimes the party choice isn’t very good.
It’s much less complex here because first of all, minor parties have never had anything but a very narrow agenda usually based on some complaint, almost a grudge. Then each state gets only 2 senators and each district in a state has only one representative in the House of Representatives. Since senate terms are staggered I have at most only 2 choices to make, 3 if it’s also a presidential election year.
State elections get more complicated in California with the people able to propose both laws and changes to the Constitution that the legislature cannot overturn if passed. It’s been used both well and poorly — strictly caveat emptor, buyer beware. We have done some really foolish things that are now biting us hard.
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For the rest of us, there were 27 labelled groups: A through AA and one ungrouped.THere was a total of 62 candidates. Parties are placed in the one group, or several may (IIRC) choose to be grouped together.
Did you put a 1 in the box above Group D, Matt?
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I did indeed vote Greens and Scott Ludlam is a good sort, and above the line is safe as Greens if they didn’t make it would only distribute to a remaining major anyway. If they were likely to get above quota then below the line would be a batter choice I guess, but I got screaming kids waiting outside the polling booth!
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I put mine in the queue for sausages. It gives you time and puts something in their mouths so they don’t scream.
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Sick. Just sick.
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not sure if you are making a joke by changing my meaning or thought I actually meant something sick. Most polling booths, at least around here, host a barbeque on which sausages are cooked for profit by inserting them into bread. Children eating a sausage are calmed and happily wait.
What did you think I meant?
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p.s. I was just making up numbers to illustrate how it works.
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Because the real numbers would have been too much effort to use?
This isn’t “climate science”: One doesn’t have to imagine the results. One counts them.
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I was busy. write a letter to the editor about it if you care.
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No, only the voter can be blamed, for not understanding the “subtleties” that go into the “science” of “climate change.”
“Voters” are just too “stupid” to understand what is “good” for them
That is the problem with “democracy”
(For a deeper explanation of this shit read Paul Ehrlich)
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Ive argued for some time that there should be a questionnaire at the ballot box to pre-qualify you to vote. So say 20 questions, you have to get at least 15 right. Nothing too taxing just the basics of current political affairs.
-Name the Deputy PM?
-How many houses of Fed. parliament are there? (choice of 1-4)
etc etc… if you cant get 15… then pi.. off your not voting and condemning the rest of us with your stupidity.
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Some of them would probably fail the question “what is my name?”….
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I voted below the line in the senate, as I always do. It is not so hard to do but does require a little bit of preparation, particularly when there are so many candidates.
My first step is to identify which single issues I wish to support, in order to send a message to the major parties. In this case it was the carbon tax, followed by civil liberties.
Consequently my order of voting was:
1. Climate skeptics
2. Stop the Greens
3. Liberal democrats
4 liberal party
39. Greens
40. Stop,coal seam gas.
The numbers in the middle do not matter much since the vote effectively stops when I preference a major party, although I suppose it could be conceivable that some Minot party candidate eventually gets their nose in front of one of the majors and gets elected on my vote.
I was quite happy that a Liberal Democrat might get elected from WA, and would be happy if any of my first 3 choces made it through.
My main regret is that I did not see any one at the polling booth doing the same. That likely means that my vote will not be counted at all. It is likely to be set aside until other votes have been counted first, then discarded. According th Anthony Green a proration of votes are never counted, because they don’t have to after the last senator achieves 14.5%, and gets elected.
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“According th Anthony Green a proration of votes are never counted, because they don’t have to after the last senator achieves 14.5%, and gets elected”
Are you sure… if that was the case the result of elections would depend on the order votes were counted in… you have to know who has the least votes to know who gets dropped and redistributed. There is often only very few votes separating smaller parties… and it is a big assumption to assume the last votes all used the same preferences.
To me there is no way other than to count all the votes and then redistribute according to preferences.
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I think the difference is that all votes get “counted”, but the redistribution stops when all vacanies are filled with a candidate who has achieved quota. So some votes are not allocated to a successful candidate.
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As I understand it, only those who fill their quota with the primary votes are “sure” of their seat until all (significant) preferences have been distributed.
In WA, the distribution by ticket prefs has gone past the 40th preference on some tickets to identifiy likely senators from the minor parties. If the ALP had filled their “dance card” with their own 6 candidates, the Greens may well have been left out in the rain.
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Thanks Mattb,
No I am not sure how the senate votes are counted.
I hope you are right and my vote takes its proper place in the end.
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Two simple, direct points:
1) as noted in an earlier thread, the Sun King will remain in Parliament and the ALP is tearing itself to pieces trying to figure some way of managing the little prxxxck. Such a deserving group of people to have this management problem 🙂
2) The intelligentsia is slowly realising that all these micro-party votes in the Senate have one single common attribute – they are ALL non-left 🙂
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Not in WA. (Above-the line, votes as at Sunday night)
HEMP with 8513; Socialist Equality 695; Sex 11,928; Stable Population 845; Australian Democrats 2413; Animal Justice 5842.
Their “leftness” being determined by their “best friend” ticket preferences.
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Sex party left wing? their preferences went to sports party when excluded. HEMP too. Lib dems were pro pot smoking so HEMP may well have gone there next. same for animal justice. The Australian Democrats ended up with the lib dems, then sports party. Socialist equality had a three way share ALP, Greens, LNP.
What is true is that pretty much every single minor party preferenced Sports Party above any of the majors, and they (he) are pretty centrist I think.
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As you don’t seem to have been watching, Sports was/is single-issue. That wasn’t enough to consider them to be a leftist party.
Sex were the only minor party to send the “best friend” preferences to HEMP (numbers 3 and 4 on the Sex ticket; so it wasn’t just subject to exclusion). Read the tickets.
Almost everything you’ve written isn’t even wrong, it’s fiction.
If you’re too busy to check stuff before you write, why bother writing at all? Why “fill the gap” with fiction?
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I’m telling you where the preferences went. exactly where they went. as per the actual count.
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e.g. 33rd and 42nd out of 62.
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I mean Sex party preference HEMP as pot I guess is almost as fun as sex… but they preference Carbon skeptics, Shooters and Fishers and all the other rabble righty parties before the Greens or ALP. eve bloody australian Voice. And you call them a left oriented party because their 1st preferences went to HEMP.
HEMP I note had all of the other nutjob parties well above the Greens or ALP.
So what’s your point Bernd… you don’t actually have one here do you other than you can count to 4 and not much further.
I bet you felt so intellectually smug voting below the line… but wasted on you unfortunately.
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Umm, happening now.
You know how, even though there has been speculation that the minnows and micros will be winning Senate seats, the count is still lower than 70% in some States.
Well, the young lady from the PUP in Tasmania has now dropped off the list of elected Senators as more votes get counted. Tasmania now has the highest percentage counted at just under 85%
While this is one less for the PUP, what that has led to now is that a Liberal Senator is now indicated as taking that sixth spot in Tasmania.
So now The Coalition will have 34 Senators, 3 each in NSW, (63% counted) QLD, (67%) Tas, and WA, (63%) 2 each in SA (75%) and Vic, (68%) and 1 each in the 2 Territories. (18 Senators in all for this election)
The two now in doubt are Ricky Muir in Victoria and Scott Ludlam in WA
Ricky Muir might lose out to the Coalition and Ludlam might lose out to the ALP.
Interesting to keep an eye on here.
Tony.
Link to Summary Page and you can click on the individual States and Territories.
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she’s only 200 votes behind the LDP though on the last count… that one’s going down to the wire for sure.
And it’s not that simple in WA… as the sports party guy could just as easily get knocked out a lot earlier and god knows where all those collated preferences would end up.
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Looks like the Hyphen is back in SA … pity
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Its not a problem if the numbers are ok to make her IRRELEVANT
ALL fingers crossed
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Peter van Onselen has a ba;anced piece on the Senatorial voting system at The Australian – apparently he wrote a PhD on teh subject:
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/features/unrepresentative-swill/story-e6frg6z6-1226716378749
Sums up many of the main points raised here.
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balanced – freakin’ typos lately.
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Sounds like your media is exactly like the US media. When leftists win, it is the “will of the people”, when they do not, it is “a petulant fit of anger by the voters”.
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Lefty losers typically demand that the system be changed so they never face loss again.
In the US, the lefties are pretending that asking voters to produce reasonable ID is an evil racist plot to suppress democrats from voting.
Even though it has been ruled Constitutional at the US Supreme Court, our extremists in the Dept. of Justice still sue under bad faith and find judges in lower courts to rubber stamp their attempts at making voter fraud safe for democrats.
Australians would be wise to resist the faux-sincerity of lefty hacks when they talk about reform.
They are pathologically incapable of working for fairness or reasonable applications of the law. And they never really stop.
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No, he’s not a libertarian. He and the LDP use the “freedom” associated with libertarianism to advance their cause which is pro gun lobby.
A true libertarian – free market with little or no government regulation – wouldn’t call themselves libertarian. The term has effectively being hijacked by groups with sole or narrow agendas. A true libertarian would call themselves a “classical liberal”.
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Bob, good point. I have seen many leftists trying to call themselves libertarians. Based upon their position on a sole issue (usually abortion or drug decriminalization).
Classical Liberal may be confusing, but is probably closer to the truth (at least in the US).
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Bob, have you spend even a moment checking out the LDP’s website? Have you read any of David Leyonhjelm’s articles in Online Opinion? Or did you judge the man based only on ABC’s single-issue interview of him?
As for the gun issue, in theory each state in Australia is a democracy, and each state community should have had its own debate and made its own decision about gun laws after Port Arthur. John Howard wanted all the voter kudos for himself so he simply overpowered our state democracies by threatening to cut our state funds. And that’s how he ruled for the next 11 years, like ignoring two million Australians who marched against the Iraq war.
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Careful James.
To be fully accepted around here you have to be a dyed-in-the-wool Liberal lover who regards Howard as some sort of demi-god.
Howard’s dictatorial disarming of the civilian population, his introduction of the “Rule by Might” concept of retrospective legislation, and his promotion of the slave-labour laws otherwise known as “Workchoices”, are not considered subjects for polite conversation.
Mentioning any of them will inevitably lead to you developing a severe case of red thumb rash.
I know – I speak from experience.
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Shame on you all the Liberal commentators who want to keep out the competition. How unliberal.
Ummm…. Jo, we are not liberal, we are Conservatives 😛
(the irony of Conservatives pushing for senate reform is of course completely lost… 😛 )
The problem to my eye is not that the system is broken, but the fact that the vast majority of the voters have no idea how the system actually works. Even the fact that people still ask if they just put an X in the box or have to be reminded that on the green paper they have to number ALL the boxes should give a screaming clue about that.
Even in the relatively simple lower house, people have a strange idea how preferences or the 2PP system works. If you are a major party then you expect to finish top two, so in real terms provided you put ‘us’ as 1, we don’t really care that much where you put the other numbers. People also completely fail to understand that preferences are picked by YOU the VOTER on the green paper.
Senate preferences for major parties are also largely a matter of having to put all the numbers somewhere, but again, if you are a major party, the question of who you are preferencing is largely meaningly.
‘Who are you preferencing?’
‘Well we are expecting to receive 30% or more of the Primary. We hope to fill 3 senate spots but are nominating 4. So in real terms, our preferences will be going to ourselves.’
Preferences are taken from the bottom of the finishing order. If your party finishes in the top, then no one ever uses your preferences.
I also only partly agree with Jo’s premise in this post. Yes, there are a significant percentage of voters who decided they didn’t want a major party this year. However while it is true that many ‘non major party’ people have gotten up this year, you cannot honestly tell me that some 14% of the voters would have picked the people who got sellected.
What we are seeing is preference lotto. Get enough minor nothing parties, make sure they all preference major parties last (so as to maintain their street cred) and then hope that from a mixture of below the line donkey votes and semi random luck you get given more of the nothing party preference votes then the other nothings and bang, you have a shot at a 6 year paid gig in Canberra.
In fact, calling it lotto is actually incorrect. Lotto is harder to win.
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Can anyone name me a micro party voter who is unhappy about where their vote went?
Read my article in The Australian for a few more thoughts on this — I’ll put up a thread soon…
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Jo,
I did make an attempt to check the preferences of the minor parties, and was disappointed to see that the No Carbon Tax Climate Septics party preferenced ALP over the LNP. That has to be close to fraud does it not?
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I emailed the NCTCS party and asked them why, they responded thus:
“This has been a hot topic amongst many friends and foes. It’s now had a fair bit of media coverage and we’ve put out plenty explanations and reasoning on our blogspot and elsewhere but I’ll cover a few of the points here again.
1. We are opposed to the man-made global warming (AGW) fraud, so in this respect the Libs are as bad as Labor.
2. It’s a sore point with us that the Libs expect our support whilst they sit on the fence as pseudo skeptics, hijacking much of our vote. Meanwhile they recently gave bibartisan support to Kyoto 2. In some respect this is actually worse than Labor, who are honest about their support of carbon pricing. Greg Hunt has been talking about a ‘market mechanism’ and pushing for a global pollution deal in recent months, but most Lib supporters seem to think they’re the ‘No Carbon Tax’ party. The Libs adopted our ‘No Carbon Tax’ slogan and turned it into something other than its original intent.
That is the biggest deceit of this election. Enjoy the anti-AGW window dressing the Libs are currently engaged in whilst they keep AGW on life support.
3. Our preferences strategy was about getting our candidate up in SA & our preferences strategist anticipated there was no other way to achieve this without the prospect of gaining Labor preferences in that state. Parties do deals and hopefully Family First can carry the ‘No Carbon Tax’ flag in SA, although in NSW I could have used their preferences myself, but they instead went to the Green/Left leaning Bullet Train party.
4. Media has chosen to hype up the potential of our relatively small vote going Labor ahead of Libs in 3 states (which at present looks like it didn’t), because the only time they mention the climate skeptics is when they have an opportunity to attack us. A bigger news item is how a mining magnate looks like he’s assisted at least two new Greens Senators gain seats.
To understand the whole process better I suggest you review the ‘Group Voting Tickets’ for all states and perhaps follow the vote counting as it proceeds. If you go this page you can see what we potentially achieved with our minuscule vote in SA:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/federal-election-2013/results/senate/sa/
NCTCS still have a slim chance in SA. In NSW I would even had stood a better chance if some of the anti-carbon tax minor parties had favoured me ahead of Green/Left groups. Hopefully we can all do better next time, but overall it’s been a relatively good election result for the centre right.
It’s very telling that not only are the Green/Left upset with the election result but the Libs are as well. Barnaby Joyce (a champion of the No Carbon Tax movement) on Lateline on Monday night was saying the new guys ought to be more like Xenophon and less like Fielding if they wanted to succeed. I know what I read into that, but I’m curious as to what would you might read into it? Xenophon supports AGW and doesn’t sound keen on repealing the carbon tax, so why would Barnaby say such a thing? Watch out for my tweets during #QandA tonight. I’m @NoDirectAction.
Regards
Bill Koutalianos”
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Fielding was one of the best Senators we’ve ever had.
All the majors hate the idea of little parties getting into the Senate.
Yes I was disappointed the NCT party pref’ed Labor over Lib, but Bills answer was understandable. The Libs are disappointingly wishy washy — Greg Hunt is the wrong man to put in charge of climate change. I posted something on my blog the day before the election so people knew. But yes, I looked up the preference tickets and voted below the line. I fear the pref decisions of the NCT party cost them some votes. I doubt it won them any.
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Well said, Joanna. Another point: many voters went to the polls with a clearer idea of who they wanted to preference LAST than who they wanted first. Anectodally I heard many people saying all the major parties were bottom of their list.
I also think NSW and SA made excellent choices in David Leyonjhelm of the Liberal Democrats (libertarians) and Bob Day of Family First. Bob Day is one of the country’s best commentators on government barriers to home ownership, and may turn out to be the most intelligent and fair-minded person in the entire Senate. (I’m not so sure about Wayne Dropulich of the Sports Party, who sounds t me like a complete dropkick – pun intended.)
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Re my previous post I should disclose that I voted below the line for LDP first and FF second in NSW so I’m happy with the overall outcome. And sorry for misspelling your name, Joanne.
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