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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.

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.

Many issues in unwinnable Queensland election

election-special-maleny-police — Election special: Photo of old Maleny police station by Bob Wilson

In the interests of better community policing and the fact she had just called an election, Queensland Premier Anastasia Palaszczuk made an unequivocal promise.

The Premier, who somewhere in the Courier-Mail’s Monday election coverage recalls winning a Grade Nine competition to ‘help police fight crime’, made a commitment to hire an extra 400 police officers over the next four years. Based on a First Year Constable’s salary (including shift allowances) of $70,820, that’s a $28.32 million promise

“We back our police with the resources they want, the powers they need and the pay they deserve,” she told the ABC last Sunday.

Crikey, they ought to send a couple up the hill here to Maleny, where the new $2 million police station in Macadamia Drive (staffed by four police officers), has a roaming brief to cover an area from Maleny out to Palmwoods, Beerwah, Conondale and Kenilworth.

Ms Palaszczuk’s election promise to hire more police comes a week before the 1950s-style police station in Maleny’s main street is sold at auction. The 2,344sqm property, which is zoned Community Facilities, includes an office/police station and a residence but excludes a separate lock-up.

On my calculations, this sale alone should provide the Queensland Police Service with enough money to pay the salaries of an extra 21 police officers (over four years).

Against my better judgement, I bought the election special edition of The Courier-Mail on Monday after a three-year hiatus, prompted by a series of inflammatory, misleading and discriminatory front pages. Monday’s page one was no less lurid, presenting unflattering caricatures of the three main party leaders.

I worked there in the broadsheet days, pre-tabloid, pre-redundancies, pre-online editions, four editors ago. No regrets, Coyote, as Joni would say. I entered my 70^th year on Monday, BP 120/80, feeling OK and supremely relieved I had no part to play in the CM’s graphics-laden presentation of an unwinnable election.

The first two pages of the CM’s October 30 election special purport to sell us the idea they have the State’s media covered. In what amounts to a two-page ‘house ad’, the CM confirms what we already knew – Rupert Murdoch’s Queensland media empire owns almost all of the print media titles. So yes, they have it covered, but you’d expect the coverage to be suitably mainstream; about 9% of the eleven-page election coverage was set aside for stories about the Greens and how they hope to win three seats, including Deputy Premier Jackie’s Trad’s seat of South Brisbane. It appears (from vox pops interviews), that some people in West End will be voting Green because of over-development (apartments) in the inner city suburb.

The rest of the coverage focuses on the resurgence of One Nation, how Labor will suffer from its seemingly intractable position on the Adani coal mine (no mention that the LNP are all for it too), a token story about the Katter Party and proportional space for (most of) the party leaders to have their say.

So to the unwinnable election

There’s a fair chance no single party will emerge from the November 25 poll with a workable majority, so in this sense it is unwinnable.

Crikey’s Perth-based election analyst, Poll Bludger, quoted ReachTEL polling figures from September showing the LNP with a 52-48 lead on primary votes. One Nation was polling at 19.5% and Greens at 8.1%.

An earlier Newspoll had Labor on 37% and the LNP on 34%. Some of you might take this to mean that the two parties will take 71% of the primary vote. This is roughly in line with election trends around the world where one in three people did not vote for one of the major parties. This leaves the unallocated 29% to be divided up between the Greens, One Nation, Independents, minor parties and the 2% of the electorate who cast informal votes.

The poll numbers, which focus only on primary votes, are not worth much in light of the return to compulsory preferential voting (CPV). To the uninitiated, this means numbering your preferred candidate 1 and then others in order of preference (meaning the party you like the least goes last). So if no single candidate has a clear majority, second preferences of the party that polled the least number of votes are counted until a winner emerges.

Many people do not understand preferential voting, so when handed a how-to-vote-card at the polling booth, they simply fill in the numbers as suggested (or number all candidates 1 to 6 consecutively, which is known as the “Donkey Vote.”)

An Australian Institute poll last year found that only 29% of respondents knew how to correctly fill in the (preferential) Senate ballot paper. So that is not a good sign for the re-introduction of compulsory preferential voting at this election. As Griffith University’s Paul Williams pointed out (in the CM), the Australian Electoral Commission is yet to conduct an information campaign to ensure CPV is clearly understood.

University of Melbourne honorary associate Adrian Beaumont has more to say about polling and CPV in The Conversation.

The Sydney Morning Herald suggested on Monday that the return of full preferential voting and new electoral boundaries could hand One Nation a balance of power role.

Enter stage right, former Senator Malcolm Roberts, booted out after a High Court decision found he had not renounced his British citizenship.

By challenging the seat of Ipswich for One Nation, Mr Roberts, best known for his climate change conspiracy theories, could attract enough LNP second preferences to win the seat, the article suggests. (I would go ‘aarrgghh’ at this stage but that would be editorialising).

ABC election analyst Antony Green told the SMH Roberts faced an uphill battle.

“It would be highly surprising if One Nation won there on first preferences, which would mean they would have to come from behind on LNP preferences,” he said.

Ipswich West was more likely to fall to One Nation, he said, adding that One Nation also had a good chance of winning the neighbouring seat of Lockyer.

Ipswich was where Pauline Hanson originally built her One Nation party in the 1990s. Should Roberts prevail, he is being tipped to lead One Nation in Queensland. What was that about the Lord Mayor’s show and the dust cart?

On latest polling, One Nation at 19.5% would seem to be in a strong position to win seats in Queensland and maybe also control the balance of power. A scary notion for some, but you have to give credit where it is due: Pauline Hanson has found the ear of disgruntled voters, much as Donald Trump wooed that endangered species US filmmaker Michael Moore called ‘angry white men’.

In Queensland, the angry, the poor and those who feel forgotten are listening and Hanson tells them what they want to hear.

There is only one certainty about the Queensland election, whoever cobbles together a coalition from this mess will have a mandated four years in which to rule – that’s 208 ‘Fridays on our minds’…#aarrgghh

Racism hurts everyone

Scottish comedian Billy Connolly at one time waxed indignant about how political correctness was intruding into comedy.

“How dare they,” he fumed, on somebody’s talk-show. “Funny is funny.”

No Billy, not really. Not if you’re the butt of somebody’s bad taste joke, be it about religion, gays, people with disabilities, migrants from non-Christian countries or our indigenous people, who had the misfortune to be colonised in 1788 and not officially recognised in the Census until 1967.

What, you don’t think people make jokes about Aborigines? Try Kevin Bloody Wilson’s “Living next door to Alan”. I’m told this spoof song about a family of Aborigines moving in next door to Alan Bond, which in totality may be more about mocking big business than anything else, is a favourite amongst indigenous peoples in WA. But you can’t generalise like that, and herein lies the central problem with racism and xenophobia.

One cannot know the private thoughts of the racist who never verbalises or the indigenous person who feels persecuted but is too afraid/shy/humble to speak out.

In New Zealand, the Race Relations Commissioner, Dame Susan Devoy, launched the nation’s first anti-racism campaign. Her open letter asked Kiwis to tell their stories about ‘casual racism’ – to go beyond the 400 written complaints received last year.

‘That’s Us’ is the first campaign that asks people to start sharing their own stories about racism, intolerance and hatred.

In her letter Dame Devoy says the overwhelming majority of people never complain or go public when a car drives past and the people in it scream a racist obscenity.

She cites other casual or ‘quiet’ racist encounters “that never feel casual or quiet when you and your family are the ones being humiliated.”

Dame Devoy told The Guardian that overt racism is not as widespread as it is in, say, Australia, but she felt that New Zealanders need to reassert their position as a world leader in race relations.

“We just need to look around the world right now to see what happens when racial intolerance and racism is normalised. We think New Zealanders are better than that and we hope you do too.”

But returning to Billy Connolly’s assertion that ‘funny is funny’.

When I was growing up in New Zealand the most popular entertainment group was a Māori group, the Howard Morrison Quartet, closely rivalled by a Māori/Pakeha comedy duo, Lou and Simon.

The latter were known for parodying popular songs, e.g. West Side Story “I like to be in a Maori car” using gentle, self-deprecating humour.

The Howard Morrison Quartet had a hit in 1960 with ‘My old man’s an All-Black’ based on the Lonnie Donegan tune about a dustman. The song was a protest about the decision to exclude Maori rugby players from the 1960 tour of South Africa.

It contained comic asides such as:

“Fi fi fo fum, there’s no Horis in that scrum.”

Crikey, you wouldn’t get away with that today. The urban dictionary and others define ‘Hori’ as a racial slur, but it was in common use in the 1960s. I recall Dad cuffing my ear (as that generation of Dads were prone to do), saying: “Don’t call Māoris Horis – it’s disrespectful.”

I may have asked, risking another ear-cuff ‘Why do some Māoris call themselves Horis, then?’ and he replied that if a negro (before they were known as African American) called himself a Nigger, that was OK, but it was not OK for us to use the N word, its origins steeped in racial hatred, slavery and oppression.

Wikipedia defines ‘Hori’ as a derogatory, racist slur, but the term (like Nigger in the US) has to some extent been “reclaimed” within the community it was originally intended to insult. Like those epithets used by rappers and hip-hoppers – ‘Wazzup, Nigger?’ Hori is used today as a term of endearment amongst Māori or as a signifier of ‘keeping it real’.

Whatever age I was in 1960, that discussion led me to read To Kill a Mockingbird, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Black like Me, Go tell it on the Mountain and at least five of the 15,000 books written by or about Abraham Lincoln.

Meanwhile in the UK, present day, five 15-year-old boys and one 16-year-old boy have been arrested on suspicion of murdering a Polish man in Harlow, Essex. A subsequent assault on a Polish man in Harlow is being investigated as a hate crime, as is the murder a week earlier.

There was a noticeable rise in hate crimes after the June 23 Brexit referendum, with more than 3,000 allegations of harassment and threats filed with UK police.

Nothing on this scale to report in Australia, but the seeds have been sown and Pauline Hanson’s anti-Muslim rhetoric just shovelled a whole lot of fertiliser on that particular garden.

Adding potash, if you will, is a new Essentials Media poll showing 49% of Australians support a ban on Muslim immigration. Economist George Megalogenis dug out some historical evidence that 58% of Australians were opposed to taking part in a worldwide plan in 1947 to resettle Jewish refugees from Europe. Just because a survey saying half the people apparently don’t want something to happen doesn’t necessarily mean it won’t.

The 1946 Census revealed that 35,000 Jews lived in Australia. Historian and author W.D Rubinstein said at least 17,600 Jewish survivors reached Australia between 1945 and 1954 – the largest single increase in Jewish numbers in the country’s history. In 2011 there were 112,000 Jewish people in Australia, the vast majority residing in Melbourne or Sydney,

So then to the Australian Greens who this week urged me (via a ‘personal’ email from Richard De Natale), to support the party’s walk-out during Senator Hanson’s anti-Muslim speech.

I thought the Greens could have served us better if they had stayed. Despite the parliamentary tradition that it is forbidden to heckle or interject during a Senator’s maiden speech, the Greens could have done this (one by one), until all had been ejected.

What headlines would have ensued then? Nevertheless, they walked and this is what De Natale had to say:

“After we walked out on Senator Hanson’s racist speech, my office was flooded with hundreds of calls of thanks. Then in just a few short days over 11,000 of us signed a pledge to stand united against racism. This is an opportunity to bring our communities and voices together with a message of unity that cuts through the noise of parliament. It’s hugely ambitious but I think we could reach 50,000 by the end of this year.”

That seems a small target when the Race Relations Commissioner of a nearby neighbour has pointed out that overt racism is thriving in Australia, even if the NZ Commissioner admitted:

“We’ve always had a problem with racial intolerance in New Zealand – Māori New Zealanders know it is not new.”

Dame Devoy’s Australian counterpart, Tim Soutphommasane, waded into the debate this week.

The Race Discrimination Commissioner argued in a speech at the ANU that racism at its core is about an abuse of power. He appealed to Australians not to be complacent about racial intolerance being some kind of “initiation rite” for new arrivals.

“While we may never eradicate racism and bigotry, it isn’t good enough to say its targets must grin and bear it, or that there’s nothing we can do. Doing so amounts to normalising racism, to suggesting that it should be tolerated.”