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Australia enters a brave new world

crossbench-history-green — Australia’s crossbench in history. Chart courtesy of Ben Raue

The reactions to Labor’s somewhat unexpected election win on Saturday night have reflected the about-turns that occur when the political climate changes. As always, there were positive opportunities for some. Sydney University wasted no time congratulating incoming PM Anthony Albanese, an alumni member. It should also be noted that former Prime Ministers who attended Sydney University included Gough Whitlam, John Howard and Malcolm Turnbull. So much for universities being the breeding ground of Marxists.

Former Liberal PM Malcolm Turnbull took to social media to wish Albo (as he is known in Aussie shorthand), all success in his new job ‘from one good bloke to another’.

Another former PM, John Howard, was drafted late into the Liberal campaign to mix it up in marginal Sydney seats in an election Howard said was ‘too tight to call’. As far as I can tell, Mr Howard has not had anything to say in the aftermath of Saturday’s poll. Why would he?

The Guardian’s top satirist, First Dog on the Moon, gave a harsh farewell to Scott Morrison’s government: “Good riddance you jabbering ghouls.” At the same time, the cartoonist was sharpening his quill ready to skewer the incoming PM. One dog says “I love Albo, I really do” while the other says Albo is a “gazillionaire landlord with a bunch of properties”. (His register of interests doesn’t indicate this. Ed) It won’t take long for the honeymoon to end.

Fair to say the Labor Party did not win this election – rather, the Liberal Party lost it, giving up seats not only to Labor but the Greens and Independents. The Greens improved their national vote, up 1.9% to 12.3%. This might give you some clue to the voting tendencies of young voters. As polls had shown, the 18-34 cohort was most worried about climate change. Given that neither of the major parties had bold things to say in the campaign about the climate crisis, it’s not surprising that young people would vote Green.

My favourite pundit accurately predicted the partial disintegration of the major parties vote in favour of independents. Veteran blogger Everald Compton wrote an unequivocal essay detailing why the Liberals would lose seats (and where) and who would gain. He was mostly right.

Top of Everald’s wish list was that we would end up with a Prime Minister who is neither Albo or ScoMo. Well that didn’t quite happen, but as the 90-year-old blogger rightly asked:

“Why have we reached this point where politics is at its lowest ebb of my lifetime. Indeed, a huge percentage of voters rank it as the lowest of the low?

“The cause is that political parties on both right and left are tightly controlled by small groups of power brokers who produce privileges for elite people, while arrogantly insisting that it is all really ultra democratic.”

The mainstream media, represented for the most by Rupert Murdoch’s News Ltd., is still to fully mount a persuasive argument as to how and why their editorials got it so wrong.

Retired News executive Chris Mitchell came out swinging, blaming journalists, particularly the ABC, for inaccurately portraying Scott Morrison as someone who had a problem with women.

Peta Credlin and others on the conservative channel Sky News had some predictably caustic things to say which lost their sting as a result of the undeniable swing to Labor, Greens and Independents.

Former PM Kevin Rudd, who is leading a campaign for an inquiry into News Corp and the power it wields, posted a telling graph on social media. It showed that in the lead up to the election, News Corp front pages ran 188 pro-Liberal stories, compared with just 38 for Labor and 99 ‘neutral’. Our State newspaper, the Courier-Mail, carried more than a few anti-Labor stories, going hard with an ‘Albo’s S****show’, story based on the Labor leader’s first campaign gaffes, including not knowing the current official interest rate. (By the bye, I didn’t know what it was either).

The media in general will have some dungeon-searching to do, given the extent to which their political writers failed to see the rout coming, particularly Western Australia’s swing against the Liberals.

American broadcaster CNN reported the election result as a clear win for climate action. CNN said the election showed a strong swing towards Greens candidates and Independents who demanded emissions cuts far above the commitments made by the ruling conservative coalition.

CNN said the climate crisis was one of the defining issues of the election, as one of the few points of difference between the Coalition and Labor, and a key concern of voters, according to polls.

Marija Taflaga, lecturer in politics and international relations at the Australian National University, said the swing towards the Greens was remarkable. “I think everyone has been taken by surprise by these results…I think it will mean there will be greater and faster action on climate change more broadly.”

Labor has promised to cut emissions by 43% by 2030 and to reach net zero by 2050, partly by strengthening the mechanism used to pressure companies to make cuts.

As the Prime Minister-elect headed to Tokyo for talks with the leaders of the US, India and Japan, China made its first official comment on the election win.

As the ABC reported, Beijing showed it is willing to patch things up with the newly elected Albanese government after more than two years of a cool relationship with the former government.

Premier Li Keqiang’s congratulatory message used ‘warm language’ referencing the Whitlam Labor government’s establishment of diplomatic ties with the People’s Republic 50 years ago.

Mr Li said China was “ready to work with the Australian side to review the past, face the future, uphold principles of mutual respect, mutual benefit.”

While vote counting continues (it could take a week or more to decide the close seats), one thing is certain, this government will have the largest cross-bench in our history.

The cross-bench refers to independent politicians who usually vote with the government but can and will cross the floor to vote with the opposition if so moved. Australia has only ever had between three and five cross-benchers.

This time around, there will be 15 and maybe more Green and Independent politicians helping to inform the government of the day.

As Everald Compton said last Friday, this will create a long overdue and stable government that achieves progress and prosperity with justice and compassion.

“The Coalition will be decimated and divided and in need of total reform as they have self-destructed.

“The remnants of the Liberal Party will break up, with the Pentecostals separating from the Moderates. The National Party, having lost seats, will have a bitter leadership turmoil. Their extreme right will join with the Pentecostals.” (Everald was wrong about the National Party losing seats- they were re-elected in all of the seats they held before the election. Otherwise, his predictions are pretty accurate. Ed)

The one big loser from Saturday’s election is the United Australia Party, which reportedly spent $100 million trying to make an impact. UAP won no seats and only improved its vote by 1.7% to 4.1%. By contrast, the Legalise Cannabis Party attracted more than 75,000 Senate votes on a shoe-string budget and may gain a Senate seat, at the expense of perennial campaigner Pauline Hanson.

The shape of things to come may be that Albanese’s Labor government will need support from the cross-bench to introduce new policy. The numbers so far suggest Labor should be able to govern in its own right. Failing that, welcome to a European-style government where Greens and Independents have the final say. It’s not a bad thing.

Covid Election Wins Could Be Catching

Walking the covid election tightrope: Marc Hatot, www.pixabay.com

Election days in New Zealand and the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) were carried out last weekend in the Pacific region’s usual civilised fashion. Voters had to run the gauntlet of volunteers handing out how to vote cards, but safe to say no-one carried assault rifles or acted in a menacing way.

Both elections resulted in clear Labor victories, which ought to be a portent for Australia’s Government. Not that Scott Morrison’s Liberal Coalition will be panicking, as the next Federal election will not be held until 2022 – barring ‘incidents and accidents’ as Paul Simon observed in Call Me Al.

Speaking of, did you know that impossible bass riff in the aforesaid song was achieved by playing a conventional bass run backwards? A digression, sure, but pretty important news for bass players, yes?

As I was saying, the next Australian Federal election is at least 18 months away and probably more. That is one of the problems of four-year terms. If you inherit poor, indecisive leadership (Aus), or worse, leadership that seems quite nutty and dangerous (the US), you will have to live with it for what amounts to 17.5% of your conventional life span.

We may not be able to vote in the US election, but many of us are making our feelings known via social media – in short, we’re worried about the future of the world.

We are worried what the higher echelons of the Republican Party might do if Trump loses, calls foul and refuses to leave the White House.

Despite being deemed ‘vigilante groups with no standing in law’, self-styled militia groups have warned they will turn up at polling booths on November 3. I tried to imagine what would happen if two or three armed people wearing para-military gear turned up at a polling booth in, say, Sunnybank (a Brisbane suburb). Safe to say someone would call triple-zero and armed police would arrive in numbers, arresting said people on suspicion. The charge would most like be ‘going armed in public so to cause fear’.

There’s no doubt this will be the most watched election in history, so in view of the complexity of the US system, here’s an interactive guide produced by the BBC.

Next weekend, Queenslanders will go to the polls, to decide whether to support the Labor Government for another four years, or choose the Liberal National Coalition. We are sending in a postal vote as we will be away from home on the day. Incumbent leader, Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk of the Labor Party, has some hurdles to overcome. Three good ministers have, for one reason or another, decided to resign. Then there are those who opposed the government’s decision to allow the Adani coal mine to go ahead. Opposition leader Deb Frecklington has promised a massive four-lane upgrade of the State’s major highway from Cairns to Gympie (1,513 kms). Colourful independent politician Clive Palmer, who may or may not help the Coalition get elected, mounted an attack campaign just two weeks out, claiming that Labor was planning a ‘death tax’. Labor refuted the claim, made in TV ads and social media posts by Palmer’s United Australia Party.

It might be an over-simplification, but I see 2020 elections being decided almost solely on how well or poorly the incumbent political party managed COVID-19. There can be no doubt that Premiers, Presidents and Prime Ministers are being marked on their response to COVID-19. We could (and should) speculate about what percentage of the close relatives of America’s 216,000 COVID-19 victims, for example, would vote for Donald Trump. Not to mention the close relatives of the 7.89 million Americans who caught the virus.

In New Zealand, PM Jacinda Ardern took a hard line and went straight to a strict lock-down that lasted months. By doing so, the country limited the incidence of the virus to 1,883 cases and 25 deaths.

The ACT also continued to hold the line. On October 16 it said there were no new cases of COVID-19 in the Territory. Official figures show that of the 113 cases since the pandemic began in March, 110 have recovered. There are no COVID-19 patients in Canberra hospitals. The ACT has recorded three deaths.

What is astonishing is that the Territory has tested what amounts to 24% of its 2020 population of 418,800. The number of negative tests recorded in the ACT is now 100,630.

And, despite motions of no confidence and a seemingly relentless campaign of disparagement and criticism of Victorian Premier Dan Andrews, that election too is not until November 26, 2022. Andrews has most recently taken to comparing COVID-19 case results in Victoria with the UK, in March and now. The contrast implies that Victoria dodged a bullet, with additional daily cases mainly reduced to single figures.

By contrast, a Pew Centre research report in August found that 39% of Americans know someone who had been hospitalized or died of the virus.

No-one can under-estimate the scale of work involved in testing people in the US (population 331 million). The Centre for Disease Control (CDC) reported that since March 1, 61.12 million specimens have been tested for SARS-CoV-2 by public health laboratories and clinical and commercial laboratories in the US. As of October 16, the weekly result was: 2.61 million specimens tested for diagnostic purposes and 141,317 (5.4%) were positive. In short, 18.5% of the population has been tested.

Compare this data with Queensland’s Covid results (1,184 cases and 6 deaths since March). Sure, it makes the mitigation measures look like over-kill, but look where we are today – 4 cases between October 4 and 19.

As for next week’s Queensland election, Premier Palaszczuk has refused to be swayed to open the border between Queensland and New South Wales prematurely. It’s been an unpopular decision in some quarters and will cost her votes. But the statistics support the border closure (on March 17): 1.19 million tests have been carried out in Queensland since January 2020, with 0.1% returning a positive result.

That’s equivalent to 36% of Queensland’s population being tested. This figure may be unreliable insofar as some of the tests may have been done on people from outside the state. But even so.

So be thankful we do not live in the US or the UK, where the virus has run amok, as it apparently does in densely populated countries. In an understatement, Prime Minister Boris Johnson recently conceded the UK’s Covid figures are worse than when the country went into lockdown in March. The cumulative tally is 789,000 cases and 44,198 deaths. But the second wave (or is it a third?), took daily new cases from 7,143 on September 29 to 26,687 on October 21. Ironically, given criticism of Johnson’s handling of the crisis, he will not have to face an election until May 3, 2024.

As Paul Simon (or is it Chevy Chase?) sings in this video: “I don’t find this stuff amusing anymore.”

Call me Al: https://youtu.be/uq-gYOrU8bA

FOMM back pages

Global Insights On Neglected Political Issues

There have been issues aplenty for people to mull over ahead of tomorrow’s Federal election, not all of them as obvious as climate change, refugees or the Murray Darling.

Chair of Australia21, Paul Barratt, named those issues as his top three in a contribution to John Menadue’s Pearls and Irritations newsletter. But he also added 10 neglected political issues. They include inequality, reversing the cuts to research and development, early childhood education and a world-class NBN. Barrett, a former Departmental secretary of Defence and Primary Industries and Energy, would be aware of the global statistics on internet speed. Increasing the latter is, after all, the main aim of a world-class NBN.

A report in the Canberra Times last month showed that Australia dropped three places to 62nd for fixed broadband. The latest Ookla Speedtest Global Index showed that Australia is far behind many comparable economies and a few developing nations. The download speed of 35.11 Mbps recorded for March is only 60% of the global average of 57.91 Mbps.

However, a spokesman for Communications Minister Mitch Fifield told the Canberra Times Ookla didn’t measure the speeds of which the NBN is capable.

“It measures the speed packages that households purchase – which is the main determinant of speeds received.” The spokesman said around half of the 5.1 million people connected to the NBN had chosen 25 Mbps or lower, eschewing the faster options.

Australians not yet connected to the NBN network are limited to an average speed of 8 Mbps with an ADSL connection (by way of explanation if I have not replied to your emails).

Barrett points out that faster internet is not just about downloading films or online gaming; it is about the needs of industry in the city and the bush as well as social benefits like remote delivery of medical services.

Coal and climate change

Whether you believe that climate change is the only real issue in this election or not, Australia is demonstrably dragging the chain in terms of mitigation. This is without a doubt the No 1 neglected political issue.

Australia is performing worse than most other advanced countries in achieving Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The global SDG Index ranked Australia 37^th in the world (down from 26^th last year and behind most other wealthy countries including New Zealand, Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom.

Efforts to sway the country away from its love-affair with fossil fuels have struggled against the incumbent government’s determination that ‘coal is good for humanity’. There’s no doubt about the growing demand for coal to generate electricity in China and India and there’s no shortage of players, including Gina Rinehart and Clive Palmer, poised to open up new mines in the Galilee Basin. It’s not hard to figure out why. Australia exported $US47 billion worth of coal – 36.9% of global trade in 2018. Demand for thermal coal to fuel power stations is highest in China, the US and India. New coal-fired power stations planned by those three nations total 334,773MW of capacity – an increase of about 23%. Research portal carbonbrief.org exposes the folly of this, saying that CO2 emissions from existing plants alone are enough to ‘breach the carbon budget’ limiting global warming to1.5 or 2C.

The good news, if you are a climate change believer, is that 14 countries (including the UK and Canada), have signed up to phase out coal power generation by 2030.The Stop Adani campaign had its genesis in 2007 when environmental campaigner Tim Flannery alerted people to the likelihood of the Galilee Basin in central west Queensland being exploited. The arguments against development of the 27 billion-tonne thermal coal resource include the low quality of Galilee Basin coal, a required expansion of an export port too close to the Great Barrier Reef for comfort and the environmental record of the applicant (Adani).

As the above infographic explains in detail, there are concerns about the amount of water required to operate (a) the mine and (b) the port. The Indian coal and power company has posted a rebuttal of claims that it will take 12 gigalitres of water from the Great Artesian Basin.

Refugees and border paranoia

The United Nations Association of Australia set out its position on refugees and asylum seekers in April last year, saying that current policies and measures need to be reviewed.

“Australia’s current policy only shifts the problem to other countries.”

“Australia’s reputation as a welcoming host country and as a responsible global citizen is diminished by our current treatment of asylum seekers and refugees arriving spontaneously, as evidenced by arguments from within the Australian community and from the UNHCR. There are alternatives.”

The UNAA states the obvious – processing arrivals offshore is not cost-effective. Between 2012 and 2016, the cost to Australia was an estimated $9.6 billion. Though costs have reduced as arrivals have decreased, the estimated cost of offshore processing for 2017-18 was $714 million.

(Offshore processing costs blew out by 52% during 2018-19. The latest Budget records that estimated actual spending in 2018-19 on offshore processing will be $1.158 billion – Ed)

Despite the weight of international criticism, Australia has persisted with the practice of detaining refugees offshore and turning boats around.

It is important to know that the Labor Party has largely promised to maintain the status quo, although it would look at New Zealand’s offer to resettle refugees from Manus and Nauru,

Australian expat musician James Fagan, who has been living in the UK for 20 years, has often had to wear criticism of Australia’s refugee policies.

But he is being asked less often, since the Brexit campaign revealed what he called the “dark underbelly of xenophobia and racism in the UK”.

“Five or 10 years ago, when Tampa and all that stuff was in the news, I used to get a lot of questions in the UK. The one that sticks in my mind was the Armenian delicatessen owner who asked me about how I felt about my homeland’s treatment of refugees. He had Armenian friends and relatives in Australia and had been following the Tampa situation closely. He asked me if I was embarrassed. I said yes!

“But I’ve stopped being asked the question and the sad truth of it is that the longer a country persists in a particular course of action, the less it becomes newsworthy.”

Which brings us to No 10 in Paul Barratt’s list of neglected political issues – the need for empathy and compassion in government.

“It should be a matter of conscious public policy that empathy and compassion underpin everything we do in the public sphere,” he writes.

“Recent Royal Commissions have demonstrated how strongly human motivations drive behaviour. Humans have a powerful competitive and acquiring motivation, which tends to turn off other motivational systems that link to caring and supporting others.

“So developing a compassionate mindset is important because it has shown that this mind-set organises our motives, emotions and actions in ways that are conducive for our own and other people’s wellbeing.”

“Recognising the needs and aspirations of every human being necessarily implies refraining from demonising any social group – refugees, the unemployed, the poor, the homeless, etc.”

Mr Speaker, I commend the Mindful Futures Network to the House (and the Senate).

(The above quote could well have come from the late ex-Prime Minister Bob Hawke. Valé to a great Australian politician who was respected by both sides of politics. SWETB) (SheWhoEditsThisBlog)

More reading – what Labor and the Greens were saying about a coalition before the 2016 election. https://bobwords.com.au/greens-coalition-bridge-far/

Three (Political) Billboards Outside Caboolture, Queensland

political-billboards-Queensland — Billboards outside Caboolture, Queensland and all the way to Canberra

A week before Easter, I was driving back from Bribie Island when my travelling companion pointed out the first of three political billboards. The first read: “Don’t Vote Labor”. A little further down the road: “If Shorten wins, you lose.”

The third billboard featured the face of a minor party leader known for her dubious skill in empathising with those in the community who have a morbid fear of ethnic minorities.

“I’ve got the guts to say what you’re thinking,” the political billboard states.

As much-quoted advertising guru Todd Sampson said on Twitter: How do you say racism without being racist? It’s surprisingly clever…

That’s not an endorsement, I’m sure, just an adman’s view of what works.

My passenger said: “Don’t they have to say who authorised those billboards?” I didn’t see anything.”

That’s the problem with advertising on billboards – the message has to be extremely pithy and in letters big enough to be read from a car passing by. The driver has only a few seconds to take in the message; no chance to read and absorb the small print which, as required, must state the name, affiliation and domicile of the person authorising the advertising.

These political billboards were sighted in the seat of Longman, which was wrested from the LNP with a 4.73% swing by Labor member Susan Lamb in 2016. After the dual-citizen fracas, Lamb resigned from the seat but won it back again at a by-election in July 2018.

Longman includes the satellite suburbs of Caboolture and Morayfield and the retirement communities of Bribie Island. High pre-poll support for One Nation had highlighted Longman as the electorate to watch, but on the day, Labor held the seat against the LNP with a two-party preferred swing of 3.7%.

One Nation was third on the ballot with some 14,000 votes. Perhaps it was the inclusion of six minor parties and an independent alongside the four main contenders that did the damage, but the LNP lost support.

As The Conversation observed at the time, the Coalition’s by-election primary vote plunged 9.4% in Longman, compared with the 2016 election. The 3.7% swing against the LNP’s Trevor Ruthenberg vindicated election analysts’ warnings about the reliability of single-seat polling.

“While senior Coalition MPs have since put this down to an ‘average’ anti-government swing at by-elections, few in the party would have expected such a kicking in a historically conservative seat,” wrote Chris Salisbury, Research Associate at the University of Queensland.

As Salisbury warned, by-election results should not be extrapolated to likely voting patterns at a general election. But those three billboards outside Caboolture, might, I suggest, be a warning to the local sheriff to watch her back (cultural reference to a 2017 movie by Martin McDonagh, starring Frances McDormand).

As we set off the following week on a circuitous back roads journey to Canberra, I inevitably began noticing billboards, As a rule, billboards positioned outside rural towns advertise food, accommodation, fuel and agricultural products. Sometimes you will see a religious message and on occasions a hand-made billboard damning fracking or coal mining. But a month out from a Federal election, it was no surprise to see political billboards as parties ramping up their profiles.

One of the most common billboards we spotted on the road proclaimed “Unsee This”, which turned out to be a house ad for a billboard company with space to rent.

As you’d imagine, advertising your wares on the side of the highway is an expensive business. Most billboard companies offer a 28-day minimum ‘lease’.

A campaign source told me it cost about $10,000 a month for a billboard and $16,000 for a mail-out to the electorate. So all up a major candidate is up for $60k to $100k for a Federal campaign

United Australia Party leader Clive Palmer estimated he has spent $50 million on various forms of election advertising, including ubiquitous billboards featuring the man himself with upstretched arms. The original pitch was “Make Australia great”, but UAP has swung away from that slogan to wordy headlines about fast trains and zonal taxing.

One of my musician friends who drove through New England on her way home from Canberra spotted a Barnaby Joyce billboard in a field. She seemed surprised, maybe assuming that after the former deputy leader’s fall from grace in 2018, he might have quit politics for good.

But no, Barnaby Joyce is once against contesting the seat of New England for the National Party, seemingly unbeatable in an electorate where he holds a 16% majority. As one of the best-known politicians for the wrong reasons, Barnaby doesn’t really need to pay to have his face recognised in the electorate.

Inverell farmer Glenn Morris, while not running for New England or putting his face on a billboard, nonetheless attracted a lot of media attention. He put climate change firmly on the agenda with a five-day horseback ride over the Anzac Day weekend. Morris and his horse Hombre rode from Glenn Innes to Uralla, wearing a drizabone raincoat with the words “Climate Action” on the back, urging voters to consider the environment in the upcoming election.

“This is an urgent message. We need climate action, we need our leaders to step up and we also need our community to demand more from our leaders,” Morris told the Northern Daily Leader

“I’ve watched too many elections come and go while I’ve been researching climate change, with no emphasis at all on the environment.”

That much is certainly true, with The Guardian saying that the partisan climate debate, characterised by hyperbole and misinformation, had paralysed Australian politics for a decade.

Labor is promising stronger policy which the Coalition has merrily dubbed “Carbon Tax 2.0”, claiming it will impose a massive regulatory burden on Australia.

As you may have read, among a long list of measures, Labor wants to set a higher emissions reduction target (45% by 2030, compared with the LNP’s 26%), reintroduce the Coalition’s abandoned National Energy Guarantee, launch a carbon credit scheme for heavy polluters, and implement strict vehicle emission standards.

As The Guardian rightly points, out, this is policy which may not even happen, despite Labor’s best intentions. “The Coalition is not showing any sign of having a substantial conversion on climate change. Labor will likely need the Greens to get various changes legislated and the Greens will want a higher level of ambition than is evident in this policy.”

As is apparent from its strong advocacy against new coal mines, The Greens will want Labor to exit coal sooner than later.

So even though many lobby groups are wont to call this the ‘climate change election’ it is entirely possible the long-running ideological deadlock will continue, with little or no change.

Sweden’s teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg says she wants adults to behave as if their house is on fire.

Unfortunately, the ‘adults’ in Canberra appear to have taken the batteries out of their smoke alarms so they can char their T-bone steaks with impunity.

For those who just joined us here at Friday on My Mind, yesterday was our fifth birthday! Give me a week to cogitate about that and next week we will have a completely subjective review of five years’ of FOMM. For now, enjoy the first episode, and, if you got up early on Wednesday to Dance up the Sun, good for you.

Hobson’s Choice – guide to preferential voting

By Laurel Wilson

I wasn’t born in Australia, but I got here as quick as I could, and have been here a long time, having been educated in Brisbane (or at least I went to school and University there.) But I don’t recall being taught anything about our voting system. Perhaps it was considered to be not all that relevant, as the minimum voting age was 21 at the time.

After finishing a Dip.Ed. at the University of Queensland, I eventually landed a teaching job in Stanthorpe – regarded in those days as a ‘hardship’ post, perhaps because it was considered to be a long way from Brisbane and it was rumoured to snow there at times in winter.

As most teachers would have experienced, the newer teachers were generally assigned to what was considered to be the ‘less desirable’ classes – in my case, this included the 9B2E2- Industrial Boys class. I really liked those kids and found them to be intelligent and respectful. We all struggled through sessions of ‘Citizenship Education’, known, it must be confessed, by teachers and students alike, as ‘Shit Ed’, such was the turgid quality of the textbook.

Having to teach the subject did, however, result in my having first to grasp and then explain the concept of ‘preferential voting’ to my class of young boys.

So, dear readers, it has come to this – there’s an election on in Queensland tomorrow to decide whether we’re to have three years of a Labor Government (we will have four year terms from 2020 onwards), or whether the Liberal-National Coalition will resume where they left off nearly three years ago. There is, of course, the possibility that Pauline Hanson’s One Nation may get the nod.

In a system which I understand is particular (some would say peculiar) to Australia, voting is compulsory and elections are decided by a system of ‘preferential voting’, rather than the more common ‘first past the post’ system used in most other countries. To add to the complications, Queensland has reverted to ‘full preferential voting’, rather than the ‘optional preferential’ system used last election. This means that we must now place a number next to every candidate on the ballot paper in order of preference. Until recently, I was unaware that this change had occurred. I suspect this move was done rather quietly in some midnight Parliamentary sitting, but it may have just been the fact that I have, for some time, eschewed reading newspapers and watching TV news.

Those who already have a grasp on our voting system may choose to stop reading now, or continue if you’re curious to see whether someone who wasn’t born here can actually understand and explain the intricacies of ‘preferential voting’….

[For those not living in Queensland, the main parties contesting the election are Labor (incumbents- centre-left oriented, the original ‘workers’ party’); LNP- a coalition of Liberal (not the North American version of Liberal) and National parties (centre-right); Pauline Hanson’s One Nation (further to the right on many issues, populist); The Greens (emphasising environmental and social issues) and Katter’s Australia Party (rural conservatives). Some electorates will also have ‘Independents’- not officially aligned with any party.]

The ‘first past the post’ system of electing representatives has never been the case in Queensland. Preferential voting was introduced here in 1892 – 26 years before Prime Minister Billy Hughes introduced it for Federal elections, including the Senate. The rationale apparently was to allow competition between the conservative parties without risking seats. That worked out just fine, then.

The drawback of the preferential system is that a person can win a seat with as little as 35% or even less of the popular vote, providing there are more than 2 candidates vying for election in that seat. Of course when there are only 2 candidates, ‘preferential voting’ is not really relevant, as one candidate is bound to secure more than 50% of the valid votes on the first count. (I did ask Mr FOMM what would happen if there was a draw – we came to the conclusion that there would have to be a by-election. Any better ideas?)

To give an example of the ‘first past the post system’: – in this imaginary electorate, there are 1000 valid votes cast.

Candidate A from the ‘Let’s Not Party’ party gets 350 votes

Candidate B from the ‘Up the Workers’ party gets 300 votes

Candidate C representing the ‘Treehuggers’ gets 200

Candidate D from the ‘Please Explain’ party gets 125

And Candidate E – an Independent gets 75

If this were ‘first past the post’, candidate A from the ‘Let’s Not Party’ party would win, leaving 650 electors NOT getting their choice of candidate.

Under the full preferential system, electors must vote for all the candidates in the voter’s order of preference – e.g. candidate A was the ‘first preference’ of 350 voters, candidate B was the first preference of 300 voters and so on. A candidate must get 50%+ 1 of the votes to win. In the above example, no candidate has gained 50% +1 of the votes on ‘first preferences’, so that is when ‘second (and often third) preferences’ come into play.

Every valid vote must have a person’s preferences marked 1 to 5 in the above example, as there are 5 candidates. The next step is to count the ‘second preferences’ of the candidate with the lowest number of ‘first preference’ votes. This candidate is then eliminated from the count. In this case, the second preferences of those who voted for candidate E are counted. Say 50 of these go to candidate B and 25 to candidate C

The new count is:

A gets 350 +0 = 350

B gets 300 + 50 = 350

C gets 200 + 25 = 225

D gets 125 +0 = 125

(Candidate E eliminated)

Still no-one with 501 or more, so the 2^nd preferences of candidate D are counted and candidate D is eliminated from the ‘race’. 100 people voting for candidate D have marked candidate B as their second preference and 25 have marked candidate A as their second preference

A gets 350 +0 = 350+25= 375

B gets 300 + 50 = 350+100= 450

C gets 200 + 25 = 225+0= 225

D gets 125 +0 = 125- preferences distributed and candidate D eliminated

STILL no-one with 500+1, so the 2^nd preferences of candidate C are counted and candidate C is then eliminated from the ‘race’. 100 people voting for candidate C have marked candidate A as their next preference and 125 have marked candidate B as their next preference. (At the risk of losing the plot, but to be completely accurate, I must add that the 2^nd preferences of 200 of candidate C’s voters are counted, as candidate C was their first choice, but the 3^rd preferences of 25 people are counted, as candidate C was their 2^nd choice)

A gets 350 +0 = 350+25=375+100=475

B gets 300 + 50 =350+100=450+125=575

C gets 200 + 25 = 225+0=225 preferences distributed and candidate C eliminated

Finally, we have a winner – candidate B from the ‘Up the Workers’ party is the first, second (or third) preference of the majority of voters. I guess you could say this means ‘B’ is the least disliked of the candidates, so gets the nod.

So over to you, good Queenslanders. Be sure to vote on Saturday, and don’t forget to number all the squares on the ballot paper to be sure that your vote counts. And in the true tradition of elections, have a polling day sausage in a blanket and be nice to the people distributing ‘how to vote’ cards – they might just come in handy this time.

Greens coalition bridge too far

Greens metaphor: Oresund Bridge between Sweden and Denmark — Öresund Bridge between Copenhagen and Malmö photo by Fab-o-Paris https://flic.kr/p/oudRkh

You may have missed my Facebook link to the story from the Guardian Weekly about the alliance between New Zealand’s Labour Party and the (Kiwi) Greens. The two parties drafted a one-page agreement with one specific aim – to defeat the Nationals and Prime Minister John Keys at the 2017 election. There is no suggestion of a coalition beyond that point, just a muscling-up to push the incumbents from office.

This seems like a fond hope. On the 2014 election result, Labour/Green would still be 730,389 votes short. Still, the NZ Greens hold more sway in the New Zealand parliament, holding 14 seats and taking 10.70% of the popular vote in 2014.

My one line suggestion on Facebook (“memo Bill and Richard”) apparently fell like pearls into the Facebook pigsty. Only one person ‘liked’ it. (This aligns with research that suggests few Facebook browsers click through and read to the end of a lengthy article).

Last month, Australian Greens Treasury spokesman and the only Green MP Adam Bandt said on Q&A that the Greens were open to forming a coalition with Labor. But Labor Opposition leader Bill Shorten said Bandt was “dreaming”.

“Labor will fight this election to form its own government and to form a government in our own right. Labor will not be going into coalition with any party,” he told ABC North Queensland.

The Australian Greens remain incensed about Labor’s ads which suggested they were doing a preference deal with the Liberals. The Greens have since said they will put Labor ahead of Liberal on how to vote cards in all but 11 seats, leaving the latter ‘open’. PM Malcolm Turnbull told ABC Online last Sunday the Liberal Party will preference the Greens last, or behind Labor. “This is a call that I have made in the national interest,” the PM said.

Labor confirmed it will direct its preferences to the Greens in the lower house. There are reports of Labor promoting the Liberal Party over the Nationals in the South Australian seats of Murray, O’Connor and Durack. The Sydney Morning Herald also reported this week that Labor is considering a deal with Nick Xenophon that could see the independent senator pick up three Liberal seats in South Australia.

But is it, as Ben Eltham suggests, trivial to focus on preference deals (which are after all just recommendation on how-to-vote cards), instead of policies?

Conor Little, research associate at Keele University wrote in The Conversation about the difficulties facing Green parties in coalition:

“Large centre-left parties often fish from the same pool of voters and compete on similar issues as the Greens. As a result, the Green parties are very often seen as a threat to mainstream centre-left parties and vice versa.’’

On any level, Green politics is less influential in Australia that in many European countries and, as we have stated, New Zealand.

The Greens served as the junior coalition partner in Germany’s parliament in 1998 and 2005 and came fourth at the last election (beaten out of third by one seat). In the UK, the Greens polled more than 1 million votes, holding its one seat (Brighton) in the British parliament.

Nordic noir (or verte)

In Denmark, the Red-Green Alliance polled 7.8% of the vote and holds two seats in Opposition. Across the Oresund Bridge in Sweden, the Greens held 6.9% of the vote and 25 seats at the 2014 election, the fourth-largest party in the Swedish parliament.

I mention these two countries in particular as we have become armchair experts on things Nordic, watching acclaimed TV series including The Bridge, Borgen, Wallander and Unit One. So we now recognise useful Swedish words like ya (yes), nej (no), öl (beer) and kön (sex).

The word ‘Green’ can mean different things in global politics. Denmark’s Red-Green Alliance is the most socialist party in Denmark, advocating socialist democracy not just for Denmark but internationally.

Finland’s Green League has 15 seats in parliament after the 2015 election, having quit the coalition twice over approval for a Russian-backed nuclear power plant. Statistics Finland says the party won five more seats in 2015, its vote increasing by 1.3% to 8.5%. The League usually sits in the centre of the political spectrum, criticising both socialism and the free market. But it is also anti-nuclear, anti-conscription, pro same-sex marriage and takes the high moral ground that rich countries must lead others in mitigating the impact of climate change.

So it seems that as the various shades of Green in the world have gathered support and joined coalitions, some have stepped back from the more absolutist positions of their founders.

Conor Little says being in coalition is difficult for any small party. “Co-operating with (or in) a government is a balancing act and no matter how much they achieve, parties with only a few seats usually need to compromise on much of their platform.”

Sometimes the need to assert their identity leads these parties to end their coalition early, as the Australian Greens did, ending its alliance with Labor in February 2013. Likewise Finland’s Greens walked out in 2002 and 2014 over a nuclear power plant proposal. In 2002 the New Zealand Greens rebelled over the release of genetically modified organisms. As Little says, these moves tend to attract more support for Green parties.

Meanwhile, with just 16 days left until Australians vote, what is it about the Australian Greens that makes the LNP believe the party is a threat to the national interest? Perhaps this:

“The Greens are the only party that understands that the economy must work for the benefit of society and not the other way around. We have a progressive plan where tax reform starts at the top by removing unfair tax breaks and wasteful subsidies for polluting industries. Not only will this help address the structural deficit of the budget, but it will force money away from tax sheltered locations like superannuation, housing and mining and into productive areas that will set us up for the new economy and more equitable wealth distribution.”

The party polled 8.6% of the primary vote in 2013, yet because of our preferential voting system, the Greens have only one voice in Parliament, although they have 10 seats in the Senate. In New Zealand, with a first-past-the-post voting system, the Greens have 14 seats in Parliament. In Finland, the Greens hold 15 seats with just 8.5% of the vote.

The Australian media rarely portrays the Greens in a positive light. In one transparent example, a page one article in The Australian in April 2015 argued that only the “godless and rich” voted Green. An analysis of seats in the 2015 NSW election by Mark Coultan concluded that atheists and agnostics were more likely to vote Green, as were the wealthy.

Coultan said the primary Green vote averaged 17% in the top 10 electorates ranked by proportion of households with income of $3,000 a week or more (based on 2011 Census). In the top 10 electorates with the lowest proportion of rich families, the primary Green vote was 10.9%. Coultan added that this figure was inflated by outstanding Green results in the anti-CSG electorates of Tweed and Lismore.

Electorates ranked one and two for the number of atheists, agnostics, humanists, rationalists and people with no religion (Balmain and Newtown), were among the three seats picked up by the Greens in NSW.

So how relevant is this report and did it really warrant page one treatment? Judge for yourselves (i) the original yarn and (ii) a lengthy dissection by blogger Dr Kevin Bonham.

Having said that, we’re off to prune the roses before the fickle finger of climate change brings on unwanted early buds.