thedespatchbox

[thedespatchbox]

Voting above the line in the Senate is not just “saying the parties you like”. It is indicating that you are allocating your preferences as if you numbered top to bottom the candidates on that party’s ticket as they appear on the ballot paper. So if you numbered 1 in the ALP box, 2 in the Greens box and 3 in the Liberal box, it’s exactly the same as numbering:

ALP1: 1             Greens1: 7                Liberal1:13

ALP2: 2             Greens2: 8                Liberal2: 14

ALP3: 3             Greens3: 9                Liberal3: 15

ALP4: 4             Greens4:10               Liberal4: 16

ALP5: 5            Greens5: 11                Liberal5: 17

ALP6: 6            Greens6: 12               Liberal6:18

So there is literally no reason to vote above the line. Also as this year’s election will be a half-Senate election, not a full-Senate election, you will only need to number 6 boxes below the line. However, I would encourage you to do some research once the election is called and all the candidates are announced, and number ALL the boxes (or as many as you can), in order to have the biggest impact on the very fancy vote counting which is used in the Senate. 

heyyy so I was wondering if you'd mind breaking down how the ballot form works? this year is gonna be my first election and I wanna make sure I do it right

OK. More information on voting can be found at www.aec.gov.au (like what if you’re away from your electorate/state/Australia on election day etc).

So there are two papers: The Senate paper and the House of Representatives paper. Whenever you vote in a federal election you’re likely to have to fill out both with the exception of by-elections when a candidate in your electorate has resigned/died/been run out for crimes against humanity/found ineligible by Section 44 of the constitution.

Senate paper:

This one is real big.

The Senate is comprised of 12 people from each state, and 2 from each territory (sorry NT/ACT). So this makes it easier for parties outside of Liberal/Labor to get in because they don’t need a concentrated population to vote for them.

There’s a line you’ll notice. You fill out either above OR below. If you vote above it’s AT LEAST 6 people you fill out at least 1-6 in order of most to least liked. Above the line is simply stating the parties you like. You can fill out all of them or just some of them as long as it is at least 6. Below the line is the individual candidates (in columns for the parties). This means if you like a particular party but like one of their candidates more (or HATE one of those candidates in particular) you can rank them differently. Voting below the line you number at least 1-12

House of Representatives Paper:

You fill out ALL THE BOXES from 1 to whatever number. These are candidates in your electorate. There should be 1 person per party on this paper. It’s pretty straightforward.

INFORMATION FOR BOTH OF THEM:

They are PREFERENTIAL VOTING! Which means you put who you like first. It doesn’t matter if the person you put 1st doesn’t win. Candidates that get more than 4% first preference votes get election funding and it can aid them in future campaigns. This means voting for a party you know that won’t win still has benefit. Also, if your first preference doesn’t win then your second vote will be counted, and so forth until a winner is elected. People far down the list have no chance of having your preference count towards them, hence why people say things like “put Liberals/One Nation last.” It prevents them from benefiting from your vote.

They are ANONYMOUS votes. DO NOT put any identifying information on them anywhere. No names, no signatures, no iconography that links it to you or it will be cast as invalid and not count. Make sure the numbers and the names remain legible.

If you make a mistake return to the desk where you marked off your name (marking off your name prevents you from getting fined) and simply ask for a new paper. Someone will dispose of your old one and you can return to a booth to write in a new one. 

Tada!

[thedespatchbox]

I’d just like to quibble the use of State-wide statistics - I think that they’re the only stats that are less relevant than use of any primary vote statistics for analysing the outcomes - which are absolutely useless. So, we know that parties campaign on different issues in different regions. An extreme example of this would be Hudson 4 NV, who bizarrely put up candidates in each region. While they didn’t do well in the Northern Victoria Region, their primary vote was significantly better than in the other seven regions and (therefore) what the state-wide average would suggest. 

Ok, back to why I think Primary vote stats (particularly by party) are useless. The system we used is called the Single Transferable Vote (STV) and literally the whole thing is that we mark our preferences to and then elect FIVE people all at once.... I hear you that it seems kinda dodgy that people with less than a tenth of a quota in the primary vote can ultimately get elected. BUT... does anyone get upset about the second or third candidates from the major parties being elected when they personally only received a handful of votes. 

Take the Eastern Metro Region for example:

Elected Candidates: Shaun Leane ALP: 151315

Mary Wooldrige Liberal: 149448

Sonja Terpstra ALP: 1462

Bruce Atkinson Liberal: 749

Rodney Barton Transport Matters: 2508

All we’re going to hear about is Rodney Barton and his 0.60% of the primary vote or 0.03 of a quota. Not about President Bruce Atkinson and his 0.18% of the primary vote. I mean ultimately, if all the people who voted 1 above the line, had filled out the ballot below-the line with the party how-to-vote card correctly, we would have the exact same result. This is literally why the GVT came in - so that people would’nt have to copy 30+ numbers of the party how-to-vote and then end up voting informally because they mess up the numbering. I will admit that it’s led to some shit things because the major parties didn’t think it through, but like, you could have exactly the same outcome without the GVT....

Victoria votes—the upper house results

No doubt a lot of you have already moved on from the Victorian election—it was, after all, over two weeks ago. But there is big news today: the Victorian Electoral Commission finally finished counting votes for the Legislative Council, the upper house of parliament (the house of review, the state equivalent of the federal Senate). This afternoon, the VEC pushed “the button” to compute the complex preference flows and we now have our new upper house. Suffice it to say that the result, as expected, is ridic.

There are forty members of the upper house, with all eight seats electing five representatives. Victoria’s upper house comprises:

ALP: 18, from 39.2% of the vote statewide

Coalition: 11, from 29.4% (Liberal 10, National 1)

Crossbench: 11, from 31.4% (Derryn Hinch Justice Party 3, Liberal Democrats 2, Greens 1, Shooters Fishers Farmers 1, Animal Justice 1, Reason 1, Sustainable Australia 1, Transport Matters 1)

That’s right, the crossbench is as large as the official opposition and received more of the vote. As well as the ALP receiving 39.2% and the L/NP 29.4%, the Greens won 9.3% statewide. No other party cracked 4%, which might start to put into context for you the wild crossbench result.

Every party that got at least 1% of the vote statewide scored a seat, with two exceptions: Democratic Labour (2.1%), and Voluntary Euthanasia (1.2%) both missed out. Two parties scored a seat with less than 1% of the vote statewide: Sustainable Australia (0.8%) and Transport Matters (0.6%).

So, how exactly did Transport Matters, with 0.6% of the vote, get the same amount of seats as the Greens, with 9.3%? How did the Liberal Democrats, with 2.5% of the vote, get double the amount of seats of the Greens? How the actual hell did Hinch’s party, with 3.7%, get triple the seats of the Greens? The menace that is group voting tickets.

I do not write this post to defend the Greens, and I’m thinking of writing another post with some critical words about their campaign. I write this to slam the group voting ticket system as undemocratic stupidity.

Victoria’s above-the-line system still uses the outdated and discredited method of election that the federal Senate abandoned before the 2016 double dissolution. Only Victoria and Western Australia still cling to it. It allows preference harvesters to redirect above-the-line votes in opaque ways—ways that might seem almost mystical if you’re not a psephology nerd—and collect them in a minor party nobody has ever heard of.

Let’s take Southern Metropolitan as an example. There, the Greens won 13.46% of the vote, very close to the 16.7% quota required to win a seat. Sustainable Australia, by comparison, won 1.32%. But Sustainable Australia did a fine job harvesting preferences (no doubt money well spent on Glenn “the preference whisperer” Druery’s consultancy fees). In the end the Greens could only improve their vote to 13.93% after preferences.

I am ready to believe that there is a scenario (an outlandish one, but possible) where 15.38% of voters might choose a party on 1.32% of the first-preference vote as their second choice and that party legitimately beats one on 13.46% for a quota. That’s what our preferential system is for. Or, put another way with the simpler terms of single-member electorates: of course a candidate with 49.9% of the vote might be so distasteful to the other 50.1% of voters that their votes converge on a compromise candidate.

That is not what has happened here. Just check the count if you really want the nitty-gritty. Almost every minor party directed preferences to Sustainable Australia, whether they were animal rights activists from Animal Justice, rural conservatives from Australian Country Party, taxi industry lobbyists from Transport Matters, anti-vaxxers from Health Australia, or Islamophobes from the Australian Liberty Alliance. The way the system is designed, it is in their interest to preference other minor parties, no matter their ideological stance, over large parties—and the Greens are now large enough to be one of those large parties. Indeed, the Greens are in the unenviable position of being large enough that the minors won’t direct preferences to them, but not large enough to reach a quota in most seats or to seriously challenge the ALP and L/NP duopoly.

On a personal note, as somebody who finds libertarian ideology contemptible, especially right-libertarianism, I am disgusted the Liberal Democrats have won two seats. They are a blight on our politics, as proven by Leyonhjelm’s behaviour at federal level. I am, however, relieved that the Shooters and Fishers were reduced to one seat, and that serial candidate and party-hopper Vern Hughes blew it for the Aussie Battlers in Eastern Victoria. One of Hinch’s candidates, Catherine Cumming in Western Metro, had a legitimate enough personal vote that I do not begrudge her victory. It’s also amusing that Fiona Patten (Reason Party, formerly known as Sex Party) won in Northern Metro after under-informed journalists using the ABC’s vote calculators proclaimed that she had lost.

[thedespatchbox]

The last three candidates left in the Northern Metro Region count were Fiona Patten, the third ALP candidate and a Derryn Hinch candidate. By this point, two ALP candidates had been elected - with the remainder of the massive ALP ticket votes, and presumably a large number of BTL ALP votes (just over half a quota) with the remaining ALP candidate. The Greens and the Liberal party both had a single candidate elected, as Samantha Ratnam (Green) and Craig Ondarchie (Libs) both had just under a quota of primary votes. The remaining Greens votes (of which there were not terribly many) were distributed to the DHJP candidate who was ahead of Patten on the Greens ticket. Similarly, the remaining Liberal votes (again there weren’t many) were distributed to the DHJP candidate. These surpluses kept the DHJP candidate in the count along with ticket votes from all the right-wing-fringe-loony minor parties (ALA, Battler Party, SFF, DLP etc). 

So... what kept Fiona Patten in the count??

Firstly, she got a sensible primary vote within the Northern Metro region- .20 of a quota, which kept her in the count long enough to receive preferences from the left-wing-fringe-loony parties (Voluntary Euthanasia, Vic Socialists, Animal Justice, Sustainable Aust, Transport Matters). We know Patten didn’t use the Preference Whisperer this time around, but secured the top spot on these tickets presumably because she had been in the Parliament for 4 years, shared a number of policy platforms, and actually knew what she was doing.

Patten also received a large number of preferences from the V1LJ ticket (who fortuitously drew the top spot on the ticket). This one is a bit of a head scratcher - but actually makes the entire V1LJ campaign strategy make sense. James Purcell, MLC for Western Victoria, decided to contest the seat of South-Barwon, rather than recontest a spot in the Upper House. A strange decision, but ok. The real strange part was V1LJ only putting up Upper House candidates in Northern Metro?? When they’re based??? out of??? Western??? Victoria?????

However, if Jimmy did it with the sole purpose of getting his crossbench buddy of four years, who’s super competent and knows what she’s doing, Fi Patten get re-elected suddenly it makes heaps of sense. 

So after those great preferences, Patten finds herself in second place, and the third ALP candidate is excluded for the count. Thanks to Fiona Patten being gr8, and basically being responsible for the Andrews Government’s super-great progressive legislation which got them re-elected, she received ALL the ticket votes from the ALP (as the Socialists were no longer in the count). While a small number of the BTL votes went to DHJP, most of these votes were at this point exhausted because of voters who had only numbered the 5 ALP candidates. 

SO- Fiona Patten is re-elected with a full quota. 

What saved Fiona Patten was a combination of:

a) an absurdly large proportion of BTL votes in the Northern Metro Region (this is really what made Antony’s shitty LC calculator break)

b) second/third place on the ALP ticket (half (but all) the preferences yum)

c) the ALP doing well but not too well- if the ALP had done better there was a risk of them getting three quotas, and there being very few votes to redistribute to here)

d) the Greens being shit but not too shit (if the Greens had had more votes, they would have gone to DHJP, but if there had been less, the ALP would probably have got that third quota)

(also I personally believe this is a great result because I have met Fiona Patten and she is 12/10 quality, competent, and just all-round great chick. I’m so glad she’s got a job for the next 4 years)

Victoria votes—the upper house results

No doubt a lot of you have already moved on from the Victorian election—it was, after all, over two weeks ago. But there is big news today: the Victorian Electoral Commission finally finished counting votes for the Legislative Council, the upper house of parliament (the house of review, the state equivalent of the federal Senate). This afternoon, the VEC pushed “the button” to compute the complex preference flows and we now have our new upper house. Suffice it to say that the result, as expected, is ridic.

There are forty members of the upper house, with all eight seats electing five representatives. Victoria’s upper house comprises:

ALP: 18, from 39.2% of the vote statewide

Coalition: 11, from 29.4% (Liberal 10, National 1)

Crossbench: 11, from 31.4% (Derryn Hinch Justice Party 3, Liberal Democrats 2, Greens 1, Shooters Fishers Farmers 1, Animal Justice 1, Reason 1, Sustainable Australia 1, Transport Matters 1)

That’s right, the crossbench is as large as the official opposition and received more of the vote. As well as the ALP receiving 39.2% and the L/NP 29.4%, the Greens won 9.3% statewide. No other party cracked 4%, which might start to put into context for you the wild crossbench result.

Every party that got at least 1% of the vote statewide scored a seat, with two exceptions: Democratic Labour (2.1%), and Voluntary Euthanasia (1.2%) both missed out. Two parties scored a seat with less than 1% of the vote statewide: Sustainable Australia (0.8%) and Transport Matters (0.6%).

So, how exactly did Transport Matters, with 0.6% of the vote, get the same amount of seats as the Greens, with 9.3%? How did the Liberal Democrats, with 2.5% of the vote, get double the amount of seats of the Greens? How the actual hell did Hinch’s party, with 3.7%, get triple the seats of the Greens? The menace that is group voting tickets.

I do not write this post to defend the Greens, and I’m thinking of writing another post with some critical words about their campaign. I write this to slam the group voting ticket system as undemocratic stupidity.

Victoria’s above-the-line system still uses the outdated and discredited method of election that the federal Senate abandoned before the 2016 double dissolution. Only Victoria and Western Australia still cling to it. It allows preference harvesters to redirect above-the-line votes in opaque ways—ways that might seem almost mystical if you’re not a psephology nerd—and collect them in a minor party nobody has ever heard of.

Let’s take Southern Metropolitan as an example. There, the Greens won 13.46% of the vote, very close to the 16.7% quota required to win a seat. Sustainable Australia, by comparison, won 1.32%. But Sustainable Australia did a fine job harvesting preferences (no doubt money well spent on Glenn “the preference whisperer” Druery’s consultancy fees). In the end the Greens could only improve their vote to 13.93% after preferences.

I am ready to believe that there is a scenario (an outlandish one, but possible) where 15.38% of voters might choose a party on 1.32% of the first-preference vote as their second choice and that party legitimately beats one on 13.46% for a quota. That’s what our preferential system is for. Or, put another way with the simpler terms of single-member electorates: of course a candidate with 49.9% of the vote might be so distasteful to the other 50.1% of voters that their votes converge on a compromise candidate.

That is not what has happened here. Just check the count if you really want the nitty-gritty. Almost every minor party directed preferences to Sustainable Australia, whether they were animal rights activists from Animal Justice, rural conservatives from Australian Country Party, taxi industry lobbyists from Transport Matters, anti-vaxxers from Health Australia, or Islamophobes from the Australian Liberty Alliance. The way the system is designed, it is in their interest to preference other minor parties, no matter their ideological stance, over large parties—and the Greens are now large enough to be one of those large parties. Indeed, the Greens are in the unenviable position of being large enough that the minors won’t direct preferences to them, but not large enough to reach a quota in most seats or to seriously challenge the ALP and L/NP duopoly.

On a personal note, as somebody who finds libertarian ideology contemptible, especially right-libertarianism, I am disgusted the Liberal Democrats have won two seats. They are a blight on our politics, as proven by Leyonhjelm’s behaviour at federal level. I am, however, relieved that the Shooters and Fishers were reduced to one seat, and that serial candidate and party-hopper Vern Hughes blew it for the Aussie Battlers in Eastern Victoria. One of Hinch’s candidates, Catherine Cumming in Western Metro, had a legitimate enough personal vote that I do not begrudge her victory. It’s also amusing that Fiona Patten (Reason Party, formerly known as Sex Party) won in Northern Metro after under-informed journalists using the ABC’s vote calculators proclaimed that she had lost.

[thedespatchbox]

Just on the LC results, particularly in the Northern Metro Region - there’s a good chance that Fiona Patten will lose her seat BUT of the ballots counted so far (about half), the region had 14.5% of votes cast below the line. This is enormous and messes up all the calculations. 

What messes this up even more is that more than half of Patten’s votes, and about a third of votes for the Victorian Socialists were cast below the line.

This is significant because Labor submitted 2 GVTs for NMR - one placed the Patten candidates second and the Socialist candidates third, while the other ticket placed the Socialist candidates second and the Patten candidates third. When distributing the preferences of Labor above-the-line votes, the VEC will allocate half according to each ticket. At the moment, Labor have polled a massive 45.13% of the primary vote in NMR (almost three quotas) and so that is a lot of votes which will be distributed to the Patten/Socialist candidates. But when those candidates are elected/eliminated from the count, the strong below-the-line initial preferences for those two minor parties means that the preferences won’t flow as strongly with any of the GVTs as is being modelled 

Add into this that almost 9% of the first preferences for Labor were actually cast below-the-line and so might not even go the Socialists/Patten and you can see how things start to get very complicated very quickly. 

Victoria votes, the day after

Well, wow. Anybody who would have predicted this outcome at 5:55pm yesterday would have been called a lunatic. Less than an hour and a half later, and Antony Green was already calling it for the ALP.

There have been some amazing hot takes in the aftermath. I have to wonder if the Liberal Party will learn much from this. Obviously the instability in Canberra was not the only cause of this rout, but it clearly played a role. Also, in campaigning on state-based issues such as law and order, Matthew Guy was using a playbook common to the party nationally. Its failure should suggest a need for new ideas and approaches. I expect, however, many in the federal party to say that ���oh Victoria is the ~*progressive state*~ so we don’t need to worry about that elsewhere”. Never mind that a generation ago Victoria was the jewel in the Liberal Party’s crown.

Was this election also a disaster for the Greens? I think that this even needs to be asked suggests the answer is yes. They might come out of this with the same number of lower house seats, three, or they might be reduced to one. Their vetting of candidates has been deficient, and their internal squabbles have spilled into the public domain rather dramatically. In an election when the Greens should have ridden an anti-Liberal tide into office, picking up a seat or two alongside the ALP, they might not even win the one seat they should have cruised into: Brunswick. As somebody who has been an elector in Brunswick since 2007, I was sure the state seat would go Green sooner or later—and, after the massive South Ward result in the last local council elections (which covers much of the territory of the state seat), it seemed all but certain to go Green this election. We will have to wait and see if Tim Read sneaks in.

The problems facing the Greens also pertain to the upper house, and of course that’s my main interest as someone who has been blogging fervently about the microparties running for the Legislative Council and about the need to vote below the line. The Greens’ vote for the upper house is poor—their worst in over a decade—but the fact they might be reduced to just one seat while unknown microparties with a third or even a tenth of their vote could score two or more seats is an utter indictment of the Group Voting Ticket system of election.

The outcome in the lower house is clear: the Andrews government will have an easy majority. The outcome in the upper house will not be known for some time. The AEC has to tally all the votes and then push “the button” to calculate the complex preference flows and get the results. Anything before that point is pure guesswork. You will see people making claims based on election calculators but these assume 100% of voters went above the line. Across the state we’ve had about 10% of voters go below the line, which honestly is a bit disappointing even though it’s much better than the 4% below the line in 2010.

Every vote below the line makes a difference. It complicates the preference flows further, so at crucial points of exclusion in the count it might suppress some of the wacky flows. Kevin Bonham has a post on his blog that details some of the possible outcomes. I will reserve commentary for now, except to say two things. First, it is no small relief that, at the moment, the Aussie Battlers (they of the ever-changing bait-and-switch policy platform) do not look like getting in. Second, I think the upper house will be poorer for the presumed replacement of Fiona Patten and some capable Greens with a rabble of opportunists from parties that almost nobody supports and whose platforms are either incomplete or unsavoury.

I find voting in Australia to be personally enjoyable, as a politics nerd who likes handing out intricate preferences. I do, however, think there is a case that our parliaments ought to be more proportional. Historic factors mean that the Nationals have a statewide vote well below the Greens, yet the Nats comfortably hold a number of seats in both houses of parliament while the Greens could come away with just two seats, one in each house—that means about 10% of the statewide vote will translate into just 1.7% of the seats in parliament. I do not think this is a good outcome, especially not when the method of election for one house of parliament is so easily gamed by those who would do dodgy deals. So if some of the poor result for the Greens is of their own making, other components of it are institutional.

[thedespatchbox]

Filling in your ballot papers

On election day you will receive TWO ballot papers, and you need to fill both of them in.

The SMALL ballot paper is for the Legislative Assembly (lower house). With this ballot, you elect a single member to represent your electoral district. There are 88 districts in the state. To complete this ballot so that your vote counts, you must number EVERY box, beginning with 1 in the order of your preference. If you repeat numbers, include zero or skip numbers or your vote will be informal and will not be counted. The following is an example of a correctly filled in ballot paper:

The LARGE ballot paper is for the Legislative Council (upper house). With this ballot paper, you will elect five members to represent your region. There are 8 regions in the state. There are two ways you can complete this ballot paper: either above or below the line. 

If you choose to vote above the line, you need only write the number 1 in a single box above the line for your vote to be formal. Marking a 1 in the box above the line indicates that you would like to allocate your preferences the way in which the party you have voted for has indicated they should allocated. Each party in each region submits a list of preferences (called the Group Vote Ticket). You can access the GVTs for each region here.

If you choose to vote below the line, you must number AT LEAST FIVE boxes from 1 to 5 in order of your preference for your vote to be formal. You can number as many boxes below the line as you would like, and your preferences will be counted until you either skip a number, repeat a number or stop numbering the boxes. 

If you cast a formal vote both above and below the line, only your below the line preferences will be considered.

Below is an example of a ballot paper which has been filled in correctly both above and below the line. 

[thedespatchbox]

How do I know who to vote for?

If this is your first time voting in an a election (or even your second or third time) or if you don’t really follow politics (especially state politics) it can be quite scary. My advice would be to get informed, do a little bit of research and decide which candidate best matches your values.

The first step is to work out what electorate you’re in so you know which candidates you have to choose between. You can do this by searching for your address here. This will tell you what electorate you’re in, as well as where the nearest voting centres are to you. 

The next step is to look at what candidates are running in your electorate. You can do that by selecting your electorate off the list here and scrolling down to the section called ‘2018 Ballot Paper’. This shows the candidates in the order they will appear on your ballot paper. The next section gives you a short bio of each of the candidates.  

Handy Dandy election tools 

So, now you know what your choices are,  you need to do a little bit of research to find out what the parties/candidates stand for and how that lines up with what you believe. The Age, has got a great tool for that here. 

How-to-vote Cards

On election day, there will be people supporting the candidates handing out how-to-vote cards. These flyers will show how the candidate who they belong to would like for you to vote. If you know who your first choice candidate is, but aren’t sure about what to do with the rest of your preferences, how-to-vote cards can be really great. BUT always remember, that you are in no way obliged to follow the how-to-vote card, or even to take any from the volunteers, although you probably can’t avoid being offered them 

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Victorian State Election 24 November

The next Victorian state election will be held on Saturday 24 November 2018. The last day to enrol to vote, or change your enrolment details in next Tuesday 6 November (Melbourne Cup Day). 

To enrol to vote: https://forms.aec.gov.au/Enrolment/Form/Apply/83056040-0525-4745-bc91-a04d00a11c5d?mode=Wizard

To update your enrolment: https://forms.aec.gov.au/Enrolment/Form/Apply/83056040-0525-4745-bc91-a04d00a11c5d?mode=Wizard

To check your enrolment: https://enrolment.vec.vic.gov.au/

To apply to work at for VEC on election day:  https://www.vec.vic.gov.au/workatelections/

I will be doing a series of election information posts over the next month under the tag #vicvotes2018. If there’s any specific information that you want, or any questions you have, drop me an ask. 

[thedespatchbox]

For a period of time, the Greens essentially were in charge of our government. This was because they held what was called the “balance of power”. This meant that if the government wanted to pass anything, they needed the support of either the opposition (unlikely) OR the Greens (more likely). This meant the Greens had a significant amount of bargaining power. 

In the current setup, the Green have less power because there are now a whole heap of other minor parties in the Senate, and so the votes of the Greens along with the government aren’t enough for Bills to pass. This means that their bargaining power is reduced because there are other options for the government to pass their legislation rather than just the opposition or the Greens. 

can you please explain to me (in simple terms) why the greens cant be in charge of our government. why cant someone from the greens be PM?like i know richard is a senator... what does that mean? and adam is mp.. which means what? is the future PM always going to be between labour and liberal? I appreciate your blog so much. I dont know much about the political world but i'm learning heaps from your blog; especially over the last few days x

OK so there are two houses: House of Representatives (HoR) and The Senate. HoR is filled with 150 MPs elected in electorates (which are areas of comparable population size - which means that inner city ones are really small and country ones are very large in area). The Senator has 12 senators per state and 2 per territory.

So that’s how the government is formed. Now the government as we know it as the party in charge is determined by who has the majority in the House of Reps. The party in charge picks a leader to be PM. The Liberals form a Coalition with the Nationals to form government. They currently have 76 out of the minimum 76 required for a majority. The government doesn’t need a majority in the Senate to govern. But to pass legislation bills need to pass through both houses. This means that people representational of a wide spread of the population get to have a voice on legislation.

Now The Greens only have one person in the House of Reps and Adam Bandt. They do a lot better in the Senate (currently 9 out of 76 seats) which is how they influence power and why voting for them isn’t a waste of time. (They make up a good chunk of what is called the crossbench - members of parties not in the major two political bodies of Liberals/Nationals and Labor).

Basically it’s just how we form government is the issue here. Greens need to win 76 seats - or win more seats than Labor and form a coalition government with them. Given their current popularity this is highly unlikely. A political shift like that isn’t likely for years - decades even. Of course Labor would see their votes going to Greens and would likely create a few left wing policies to entice voters back and Labor would continue to vie for majority against Liberals (who would work to either entice voters away from Labor or voters away from far right parties like One Nation and Australian conservatives). The two major parties will continue to evolve to reflect what they feel is going to impress enough people to put them in power.

So Greens just don’t have the numbers and it’s not foreseeable for them to get those numbers. Doesn’t mean that voting for them has no influence on the political sphere. It just means for the time being our elections will flip back and forth between Liberals and Labor being the majority governments.

[thedespatchbox]

Additionally, the reason that it is VERY unlikely that the Greens would ever get anything looking remotely like a majority in the HoR (even though they currently have 9 Senators) is because the way we elect members to the HoR means you need at least 34-35% of the primary vote to be in with a chance of winning the seat, and you need to get 50%+1 on preferences. To get a seat in the Senate, you only need 14.4% of the vote including preferences. Because our electoral landscape is dominated by Labor and Liberal/Nationals, which are bigger parties, with more money and better party machines to organise good campaigns and candidates across all the seats it is very tough for the Greens (or any minor party) to get enough vote to win a HoR seat. So while Adam Bandt has held the seat of Melbourne for 3 electoral cycles now and the Greens came close in a number of other inner Melbourne seats - they did this by targeting their campaign specifically in those seats. They just don’t have the capacity at the moment to run a comprehensive enough campaign. 

On another note - we could technically have a Green as PM if they entered into a coalition agreement with one of the big parties and demanded that as their price for their support on the floor of the parliament (much like the Nationals are given the position of Deputy PM). But this scenario is extremely unlikely. 

can you please explain to me (in simple terms) why the greens cant be in charge of our government. why cant someone from the greens be PM?like i know richard is a senator... what does that mean? and adam is mp.. which means what? is the future PM always going to be between labour and liberal? I appreciate your blog so much. I dont know much about the political world but i'm learning heaps from your blog; especially over the last few days x

OK so there are two houses: House of Representatives (HoR) and The Senate. HoR is filled with 150 MPs elected in electorates (which are areas of comparable population size - which means that inner city ones are really small and country ones are very large in area). The Senator has 12 senators per state and 2 per territory.

So that’s how the government is formed. Now the government as we know it as the party in charge is determined by who has the majority in the House of Reps. The party in charge picks a leader to be PM. The Liberals form a Coalition with the Nationals to form government. They currently have 76 out of the minimum 76 required for a majority. The government doesn’t need a majority in the Senate to govern. But to pass legislation bills need to pass through both houses. This means that people representational of a wide spread of the population get to have a voice on legislation.

Now The Greens only have one person in the House of Reps and Adam Bandt. They do a lot better in the Senate (currently 9 out of 76 seats) which is how they influence power and why voting for them isn’t a waste of time. (They make up a good chunk of what is called the crossbench - members of parties not in the major two political bodies of Liberals/Nationals and Labor).

Basically it’s just how we form government is the issue here. Greens need to win 76 seats - or win more seats than Labor and form a coalition government with them. Given their current popularity this is highly unlikely. A political shift like that isn’t likely for years - decades even. Of course Labor would see their votes going to Greens and would likely create a few left wing policies to entice voters back and Labor would continue to vie for majority against Liberals (who would work to either entice voters away from Labor or voters away from far right parties like One Nation and Australian conservatives). The two major parties will continue to evolve to reflect what they feel is going to impress enough people to put them in power.

So Greens just don’t have the numbers and it’s not foreseeable for them to get those numbers. Doesn’t mean that voting for them has no influence on the political sphere. It just means for the time being our elections will flip back and forth between Liberals and Labor being the majority governments.

[thedespatchbox]

Confused about why the July 28 by-elections are a big deal?

So July 28 was announced as the date for the latest batch of section 44-induced by-elections today. This is really irregular- by-elections are usually held on the soonest possible date after the sacking/resignation/death of the member that needs to be replaced. July 28 is pretty much 3 months after the MPs in question resigned. July 28 is also the day of the ALP national conference. 

The ALP national conference is a big fucking deal. It’s a biennial event where the official Labor Party policy is determined for the next two years. The ALP are not allowed to run any policy that isn’t okayed by the conference. If they try to, they won’t be in the party/party leader for very long. This is what happened to Kevin Rudd. 

 There are big competitions within the membership of the ALP about who gets to be selected as a delegate for the conference. All the big-wigs from the parliamentary wing of the party (read Bill, Tanya, Albo etc) are pretty much required to be there. All the really top campaigners and activists within the party will also be attending the conference. This means that they won’t be out campaigning and leaflet-distributing for the by-elections, because they’ll all be locked up at a convention centre in Adelaide where there are NO by-elections. 

The ALP are understandably pissed off and are frantically trying to change the date of their conference

[thedespatchbox]

You get a by-election, and you get a by-election, and YOU get a by-election. By-elections for everybody! 

[thedespatchbox]

Barnaby Joyce pictured with all the people who still care about him

[thedespatchbox]

This isn’t quite right. If you look at the data, it shows quite clearly that the majority of the SA-Best vote actually came at the expense of the Liberal party. There was actually a 2PP swing against the Liberal party. So compared to the 2014 election, more people preferenced Labor ahead of the Liberals. 

The reason that the Liberals have managed to win government is because there was a substantial redistribution of the electorate after the 2014 election, where the boundaries of all the electorates changed massively. This was done partly on account of a strange South Australian electoral law called the fairness provision, because in 2014, the Liberal party actually won 53% of the primary vote, but still failed to win government. So, post-re-distribution, the Labor party actually needed a 3% swing towards them in order to maintain government. The result (as it stands) is actually status quo, and not the South Australian people changing things up just for shits and giggles. 

(also just be aware that there was a masssive (30ish%) number of votes cast  in pre-poll and they won’t be counted until Monday so there’s still a lot of election to come.)

I never understood the whole 'wanting to switch things up' mentality. If something isn't broken, don't fix it ya know?

Neither did I. But also I don’t live in South Australia so to some people I think they felt something was broken. Maybe they had misconceptions about renewable energy and were convinced by the Liberals anti-science climate denial rhetoric and thought “investing in a giant battery farm that will decrease our power bills and make our power more reliable? That doesn’t sound smart cos something something coal.” There are many reasons for people voting for different parties and “let’s see if this one can bring something new” is only part of it.

[thedespatchbox]

Voting in the South Australian Election

The South Australian election will be held on Saturday 17th March. This is an election for both the Legislative Assembly (lower house) and Legislative Council (upper house) and so you will need to fill in two different ballot papers which have two different sets of rules. 

The ballot paper for the Legislative Assembly will look like this. 

Elections for the Legislative Assembly use a full preferential system. So, in order to cast a valid vote (a vote that will count), you will need to place a number in EVERY box. So you would put a 1 next to your most preferred candidate, a 2 next to your second most preferred candidate, and so on until there are NO CANDIDATES LEFT. 

The ballot paper for the Legislative Council will look like this

Elections for the Legislative Council now utilise an optional preferential system. There are TWO ways that you can cast a formal vote in the Legislative Council.

ABOVE-THE-LINE you can mark ONE (1) (or more) boxes in order of preference above the red line. When your vote is counted, your preferences will be allocated to all the candidates in the party whose box you have marked with a one (1), followed by all the candidates in the box you have marked with a two (2), and so on. You need only mark ONE (1) box above-the-line in order for your vote to count. 

BELOW-THE-LINE you must mark TWELVE (12) boxes in order of preference for your vote to be counted. Again, this means putting a one (1) next to the candidate you most prefer, a two (2) next to your second most preferred candidate and so on until you get to twelve (12). This means that you can mark any candidate in any order, rather than being restricted by the orders that each party has set. 

Regardless of whether you are voting above or below the line, you can mark as many boxes as you like, as long as you meet the minimum requirements. My advice would be to mark as many boxes as you can until you run out of candidates/parties who you would be willing to see elected. If you do not want a candidate to represent you, then do not place a number in their box. 

If you plan to spoil your ballot paper, please don’t donkey vote or include any numbers on your “spoiled” paper - because there is a chance that scrutineers will decide that your vote is valid and counts somewhere you don’t want it to.     

If you’re still concerned, the SA Electoral Commission have a great resource here, and this page even lets you have a practice at filling in the ballot paper online. And remember, on election day, if you are in any doubt, follow the instructions on your ballot paper.

[thedespatchbox]

Sneaky ALP minister uses *gasp* BLUE campaign materials in his marginal electorate, which is now, post-redistribution, notionally Liberal. 

To make matters worse, he pulled a similar stunt in 2010, which resulted in the electoral laws being changed.

This is it folks. This is the election week drama that I am here for. I was born for this moment. 

[thedespatchbox]

Voting in the South Australian Election

The South Australian election will be held on Saturday 17th March. This is an election for both the Legislative Assembly (lower house) and Legislative Council (upper house) and so you will need to fill in two different ballot papers which have two different sets of rules. 

The ballot paper for the Legislative Assembly will look like this. 

Elections for the Legislative Assembly use a full preferential system. So, in order to cast a valid vote (a vote that will count), you will need to place a number in EVERY box. So you would put a 1 next to your most preferred candidate, a 2 next to your second most preferred candidate, and so on until there are NO CANDIDATES LEFT. 

The ballot paper for the Legislative Council will look like this

Elections for the Legislative Council now utilise an optional preferential system. There are TWO ways that you can cast a formal vote in the Legislative Council.

ABOVE-THE-LINE you can mark ONE (1) (or more) boxes in order of preference above the red line. When your vote is counted, your preferences will be allocated to all the candidates in the party whose box you have marked with a one (1), followed by all the candidates in the box you have marked with a two (2), and so on. You need only mark ONE (1) box above-the-line in order for your vote to count. 

BELOW-THE-LINE you must mark TWELVE (12) boxes in order of preference for your vote to be counted. Again, this means putting a one (1) next to the candidate you most prefer, a two (2) next to your second most preferred candidate and so on until you get to twelve (12). This means that you can mark any candidate in any order, rather than being restricted by the orders that each party has set. 

Regardless of whether you are voting above or below the line, you can mark as many boxes as you like, as long as you meet the minimum requirements. My advice would be to mark as many boxes as you can until you run out of candidates/parties who you would be willing to see elected. If you do not want a candidate to represent you, then do not place a number in their box. 

If you plan to spoil your ballot paper, please don’t donkey vote or include any numbers on your “spoiled” paper - because there is a chance that scrutineers will decide that your vote is valid and counts somewhere you don’t want it to.     

If you’re still concerned, the SA Electoral Commission have a great resource here, and this page even lets you have a practice at filling in the ballot paper online. And remember, on election day, if you are in any doubt, follow the instructions on your ballot paper.

[thedespatchbox]

The advantage that the Greens have over any of the right-of-centre/populist parties is that they are pretty much the only left-of-centre option, whereas the vote on the right will split between One Nation, Australian Conservatives, Jacqui Lambie, Katter’s Australia Party, Fred Nile, Shooters, Fishers, Farmers etc. etc. etc. the ALP have been losing ground to the Greens for over a decade, but the L/NP are really going to start bearing the brunt of populist politics in the next few years - but there isn’t going to be a real danger to them unless the right are able to consolidate into a single contender the way the Greens have on the left.

The thing you need to remember is that it is very very VERY difficult to get elected in the lower house if you are not from a major party - you normally need about 32% of the primary vote to be in with a fighting chance. That’s why in you tend to get Independents who are from rural electorates where they are community members with a high profile and are trusted to go into parliament and do a good job for their electorate (ie Cathy McGowan in Indi). Similarly NXT winning Mayo is a result of a strange South Australian obsession with Centre politics and a feeling that NXT is the best party to do the job for the semi-rural electorate. The Greens winning and subsequently holding the seat of Melbourne is a monumental achievement, made possible by the leftie, latte-drinking social cleavage of that particular seat. 

The results for One Nation in the 2017 Qld election showcase just how hard it is to win a seat in a single-member electoral district with preferential voting in place - especially compared the how we vote in the Senate. The thing that made it possible for One Nation to win 4 Senate seats in 2016 was that it was a FULL Senate election, with each state electing 12 Senators rather than 6. This meant that in order to be elected, a candidate needed only 7.7% of the vote, rather than the 14.4% required at a normal half-Senate election. That being said, the changes to the above-the-line voting before the 2016 election WILL make it more difficult for minor parties (like Ricky Muir) to sneak their way into the Senate, when a half-Senate election is held. 

I'm getting ready for the surge of Independent Parties in the next election because who the hell supports Lib/Nat/Lab at the moment, Labor is fine but suffers under Shorten the way I see it. Would be keen to see the Greens to fill the void but are there any other parties to be on the lookout for?

Malcolm Turnbull has been losing newspolls and he’s behind Labor in two party preferred polls. I feel that the problem is that a lot of Lib/Nat supporters are going to go in either two directions: Australian Conservatives, One Nation, etc, or Labor. And then Labor voters likely to stay Labor as LNP a terrible alternative. So we’ll see a split where we get a few small far-right cross benchers eating away LNP numbers but not a similar shift on the left.

This being said I’ve been wrong before. I assumed that the dual citizenship scandal would have more of an impact and yet Barnaby got re-elected with a positive swing in his favour. There’s still time for the coalition to recover. And One Nation had a lot of candidates in the WA state election and people were worried they’d be an issue and then… they got nothing. Though counter point: I never expected One Nation to succeed in any way (after 20 years of failure) and then surprise! 4 senate seats in 2016. I think we also need to wait until the results from the Batman byelection to see if Greens win that seat over Labor too to get a better idea of the future of the left as well as the right. If there’s one thing I’ve learned it’s that politics is unpredictable and things you think matter to others are complete non-concerns to large groups of people. I hope that the swings against the LNP is towards Labor (cos we know that no LNP voters are going to jump so far to the left to vote Greens) because the alternative of more Cory Bernardis/Pauline Hansons is a nightmare that will drag our country down for 3-6 years. Fingers crossed.