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Democracy Sausage – A Rare Treat

democracy-sausage-elections — Parliament House in Canberra, image Simon Yeo, https://www.flickr.com/photos/smjb/9223049760/

When you go to vote tomorrow, be thankful we live in a democracy where we have freedom (up to a point) to choose who leads us.

Think about the 52 nations which are not a democracy. They are run either by a dictator or an autocratic regime. Within the borders of these countries, the general population has no say at all. In almost all those nations there is no free and independent press. Troublesome journalists are murdered or, more commonly, jailed. The 2021 World Press Freedom Index compiled by Reporters Without Borders (RSF) shows that journalism is completely or partly blocked in 73% of the 180 countries ranked by the organisation. RSF keeps a running tally of journalists killed since January this year: (26 journalists and two media workers) and 461 journalists and 18 media workers who are in prison for doing their job.

Safe to say these scribes were just trying to get the word out from one of the 52 nations that don’t have a democracy. They include China, North Korea, Myanmar, Afghanistan, many Middle East Kingdoms and a host of African countries. The 2021 survey by The Economist’s Intelligence Unit says that only 6.6% of the world’s population lives in one of 21 “full democracies”.

Australia operates under the Westminster system of democracy, that is, we’re not a monarchy, but the British monarchy plays a role. Just how much of a role was demonstrated in 1975 when the Governor-General John Kerr sacked the sitting Prime Minister, Gough Whitlam.

Every Australian citizen aged 18 and over (with the exception of prisoners serving over 3 years and those of ‘unsound mind’) gets a vote (voting is compulsory in this democracy), and a rigid system of checks and balances aims to stamp out cheating.

The electoral roll closed last month, so these figures are current: 17.793 million eligible voters (96.8%) will go to the polls. If you were wondering, the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) estimates there are 564,240 Australian who are eligible to vote but are not on the roll.

Think about that for a moment.

The main advantage of compulsory voting is it allows certainty about the voter turnout and ensures there’s enough of everything to go around. It also means the Democracy Sausage* providers can estimate stock with minimum wastage.

Our election results are muddied by a confusing system of preferential voting. Rather than the first past the post system preferred by the US, UK, New Zealand, Canada and others, voters must number their choices by preference. If you don’t, or otherwise muck up the ballot paper, your vote will not be counted.

This farcical system forces rabid voters of the right and left to apportion part of their vote to a party they wouldn’t point the garden hose at if it were on fire. So rather than choosing the party/politician of your choice, voters must number other candidates in order of preference. When votes are counted, the distribution of preferences can be crucial in a tight contest.

The preferential voting system was introduced in the 1920s by Billy Hughes during the formation of the Country Party. Hughes saw it as a means of avoiding the two conservative parties splitting the vote (to the benefit of Labor).

This example collated by the ABC demonstrates how the preferential system can deliver unexpected outcomes:

“The Corangamite by-election on December 14, 1918 was the first Federal poll conducted under the new system. Previously, voting had been on a first past the post basis.

In a field of five, Labor led on primary votes. Future Labor Prime Minister James Scullin polled 42.5% of the vote. But a tight exchange of preferences between four competing conservative candidates saw Scullin’s vote rise to only 43.7% after preferences. The Victorian Farmers Union candidate came from 26.4% on primaries to win with 56.3% after preferences.”

(Ed and Scribe disagree on this point. Under the ‘first past the post’ system, a person can be elected even though the majority of voters didn’t vote for them Eg say there are five candidates in an electorate. Candidate A gets the most ‘first past the post’ votes with 37% Candidate B gets 35%, C, D and E the remainder. So ‘A’ wins, even though 63% of voters didn’t want that candidate and nearly as many preferred ‘B’. Under the preferential system, the winning candidate will be the one who gains the most first preference votes, combined with the second preferences of the unsuccessful candidates, meaning most people end up with their first or second preference as their representative. If this is clear as mud, you weren’t paying attention in Citizenship Education classes…)

If that seems wrong to you, that is the system we have inherited.

Consider the vote counts for the 2019 election. On a two-party preferred basis (after preferences are distributed), the Liberal National Coalition (LNP) received 7.34 million votes, a 51.33% majority against Labor’s 6.90 million votes (48.7%). It’s not often emphasised, but Australia’s Green party took just over 10% of the popular vote in 2019, amassing some 1.47 million votes. While the Greens still have only one Federal member, the party has nine seats in the Senate.

Australia’s best-known election analyst, Antony Green, said this about preferential voting, apropos the 2019 surprise result (polls had consistently said the LNP would lose):

“For all the talk of preferences deciding elections, in the end who wins depends more on whether Labor or the Coalition have the higher primary vote,” Green said.

“In the last two decades, Labor’s first preference support has trended down largely because of the growth in Green (party) support.”

Earlier this year Mr Green published a graph which illustrates the influence of preferences on election results.

The other factor which sways election results in this geographically vast and relatively under-populated land is electoral boundaries.

Our electorate, Maranoa, is impossibly large – almost 730,000 square kilometres – encompassing 17 Local Government Areas. The electorate is so large we have seen little of the Labor candidate, given that he lives in Barcaldine, about 1,000 kms North-West. The result is academic, apparently, with the seat being held by conservatives since 1943. Federal MP David Littleproud looks set for another term in Parliament, despite having to wrangle an electorate three times the size of Victoria.

Contrary to popular myth, political parties don’t redraw electoral boundaries. This task is carried out by the Australian Electoral Commission to maintain the concept of ‘one vote, one value’. Boundaries are frequently re-drawn in physically large states (Western Australia, New South Wales and Queensland) as their populations shift and grow. On a Federal level, the same thing is done to ensure each State and Territory has seats in the House of Representatives in proportion to their population.

The one issue that has had little or no coverage in the election campaign is the apparent desire on both sides of politics for Australia to become a Republic.

Yes, I know we had a referendum in 1999 and the motion was defeated, but successive polls have shown political support for Australia to become a Republic (but not in Queen Elizabeth II’s lifetime).

I’m not suggesting that Bill Shorten’s stance on this topic contributed to his defeat in 2019, but he was on record as saying he would have held a plebiscite if elected in 2019. While Labor and the Greens support Republicanism, there is also support within conservative parties. We should not forget that the 1999 referendum was driven by one Malcolm Turnbull, who 16 years later served one term as Australia’s (Liberal) Prime Minister.

While your imagination is reeling at the thought of President Albanese, President Morrison or President Wong, you could donate a couple of dollars for your Democracy Sausage on the way out of the polling booth.

I’m not sure what happens in other democracies, but down here local community groups like Lions, Rotary, school P&Cs and such run barbeques at polling booths and offer voters a sausage on a bun or a piece of (white) bread.

I’d make two observations about this: 1/ the aim is to donate money to a good cause; 2/ you don’t have to eat it.

But it’s an Aussie tradition, eh, like two-up on Anzac Day and wrapping yourself in a flag on Australia Day. Who am I to put a dampener on that?

#bobforpresident

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Surfing the gender vote

So we’re walking along the beach, me feeling over-dressed in board shorts, t-shirt, socks and joggers (to protect a bruised toe). We passed a group of more appropriately beach-clad women and girls (though one wore a wet suit), taking surfing lessons from a sun-worn guy in his 30s. Not that I ever surfed, but it seems to me that in the 1960s, surfing was something boys did while the girls sat on the beach, admiring their boyfriends and guarding personal items.

Later, She Who Always Wears Sunscreen came out of the change rooms wearing shorts and a bra.

“Seems I left my t-shirt on the beach,” she mused. “And I don’t feel like going back to get it.”

It says a bit about feminism in 2016 that a woman can feel OK about going around in public in a bra, however temporarily.

“It covers considerably more of me than some of the women I’ve seen on the beach,” she rightly observed.

Despite statistics that suggest women make up only 15% of the surfing cohort, the sport is rising in popularity among the under-20s. There’s lots of research about this, though you need to get behind click bait articles like “Top 20 Hottest Girl Surfers” to find there has always been a determined posse of women who wanted to surf waves – since the 1920s even.

Yet Cori Schumacher, writing in The Guardian, contends that despite female pro surfers pushing the standards ever higher, they still have to compete with a double standard that demands they define their femininity within ‘a male sexual economy’.

Schumacher explained this double standard goes further than female surfers feeling pressure to surf in a bathing suit. Body image issues aside, prize money for professional surfers is skewed heavily in favour of men.

In 1976, the first year pro women surfers were paid, 20% of prize money was allocated to women. In 2011, when Schumacher wrote this, 22% of the total prize purse went to female surfers.

The ‘babes in bikinis’ gender caricature aside, there are plenty of strong female role models listed in Surfer Today.

In politics, as in surfing, one not ought to confuse a woman’s right to compete with an assumption that being female equals feminist ideals and/or leftie politics.

There have been more than enough female world leaders to suggest that they are just as likely to lean to the right as the left of politics.

It is now known that 42% of women voted for Donald Trump in last week’s shock election result. The New York Times noted that 70% of those participating in an exit poll said they thought Trump’s behaviour toward women was ‘a problem’, yet 30% of people who said that voted for him anyway.

One can hardly rely upon US election statistics to define social trends when 46% of Americans did not vote at all.

The Atlantic tried to set the record straight about gender voting in the US, maintaining that 54% of women voted for Hillary Clinton and 42% for Donald Trump (it also means 4% voted for someone else, but let’s not muddy the waters).

Exit-poll data indicated that 94% of black women and 68% of Hispanic women voted for Clinton, The Atlantic reported a few days ago.

The article cited Kelly Dittmar from the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University: “If only women voted in this election (and no one else), Clinton would have won.”

That kind of wishful thinking aside, the more relevant number is that roughly 100 million eligible people (approximately 48% of whom are women), did not vote. Many journalists opined that those who did not vote were lazy or apathetic.

Yet the Pew Institute’s research on non-voters said only 2% cited ‘laziness’ as an excuse, the same proportion of those who said they could not vote because they were in jail or on parole.

The five main reasons for not voting were:

No time or just haven’t done it (voted) 19%;
Recently moved 17%;
Don’t care about politics 14%;
No confidence in government 12%;
Not a US citizen 7%.

We have seen many successful women come and go in the ruthless sphere of international politics. Recent female Prime Ministers include Helen Clark and Jenny Shipley (New Zealand), Julia Gillard (Australia) and Portia Simpson-Miller (Jamaica). Incumbent government heads include Theresa May (UK), Angela Merkel (Germany) and Burma’s Aung San Suu Kyi.

Forbes Magazine recently published a list of the world’s most powerful women, currently headed by Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel and Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen. After November 8, 2016, Hillary Clinton may be off the list altogether.

One might also expect First Lady Michelle Obama to drop off this list too, although she has plenty of support to have a crack at the top job.

The list included 11 heads of state, one 90-year-old monarch, two first ladies and two top-seed diplomats.

A FOMM reader greeted me at the markets one day, suggesting as a future topic the humble bicycle’s role in gender relations, circa 1890. Simply put, the bicycle allowed Victoria-era women freedom of movement; moreover, the practicalities of riding a bike dressed in hoop skirt and girdle led to less cumbersome garments and, ahem, greater freedom of movement. David Hendrick remarked upon this in a paper for the University of Virginia, noting that the advent of the bicycle gave Victorian women autonomy and a way of leaving the house without relying on men for travel. He agreed with women’s rights advocate Susan B Anthony that the bicycle had “done more to emancipate women that anything else in the world”.

This was a good 30 years before the first Wahine took a long board out beyond the breakers, but perhaps you’ll see my point.

Cori Schumacher, an openly gay, world-ranked surfer, says she grew up surfing in California in the 1980s and 1990s, but very few women surfed in the earliest days of her youth.

Surfing was then described as a ‘male-dominated’ activity, but even with the growing population of female surfers, there has not been a corresponding increase in representation or equal pay.

Schumacher said “…rather than surfing being merely male-dominated, it is also a farm for masculinity and androcentrism.”

No doubt someone is running a book right now on the prospect of an androcentric Trump presidency appointing any women (apart from the third first lady, if you get my meaning), to a position of influence.

The odds of a prominent Muslim woman being appointed, even as a White House advisor, are longer still. Interestingly (facts gleaned from my kind of surfing), show that two of the Muslim women described in this article were appointed as White House advisors.

As if that were not enough, FOMM’s online surfing also uncovered three new words: androcentrism (placing the male human being at the centre of one’s world view), Wahine (female surfer) and Awk! (old school cry of alarm or excitement – e.g., spotted an excellent wave).

Chasing the youth vote

Melbourne climate change rally, photo by John Englart https://flic.kr/p/p3bVBw

Some of you may remember Federal Opposition leader Bill Shorten’s bid for the youth vote last year, proposing a voting age of 16. There was a hue and cry about this (in the meaning of a loud public outcry…from the French huer or loud cry). Shorten’s gambit coincided with his worst-ever polling (17%) in the preferred leader stakes.

The nation’s voting age should be lowered to 16, he said, because young Australians do not see their views reflected in Parliament. Shorten told the New South Wales Young Labor conference in Sydney that if people aged 16 and 17 could drive, work, pay taxes, join the military and make choices about medical treatment, they should be allowed to vote.

As the law stands, you can apply to be on the electoral roll at 16 or 17, but cannot vote until you turn 18.

The magic age of sweet sixteen triggers the legal right to say yes or no to some interesting things without asking one’s parents.

This notably applies to consensual sex (careful, the sex has to be with someone who is also 16 or older). If you live in South Australia or Tasmania, the age of consent is 17, and in Queensland, the law differentiates between homosexual sex (18) and carnal knowledge (16).

In most states and territories, a 16-year-old can move out of home without their parents’ consent and unless they are at risk, child welfare authorities are unlikely to force the youth to return home. Teenagers with a need to know about their rights, wherever they live, are often referred to www.lawstuff.org.au

Shorten wisely stayed away from the issues that provoke family brouhaha (a state of agitation over something relatively minor) like consensual sex, the right to leave home and the rights of (a girl) to be prescribed contraceptive pills.

He hedged his bets by including 17-year-olds because, for example, the Australian Defence Force only admits people aged 17 and over, although they can apply at 16. You can get a driver’s licence at 17 in all states and territories except the NT (16 and a half) and Victoria (18). At 16 you can leave school, work full-time, join a union, join an industry super fund, pay taxes, apply for legal aid, consent to medical and dental treatment and get your own debit card without involving Mum and Dad. You can get married, but Mum and Dad have to sign off, likewise if you apply for a passport. A 16-year-old can’t buy cigarettes or alcohol, although their peer group will smoke and drink if someone else buys it for them and it is consumed in private.

Shorten talked about other jurisdictions where people get the vote at 16, naming Austria, Scotland and Brazil. There are eight other countries where people get the vote from the age of 16. But there are just as many jurisdictions which cling to a voting age of 21.

In Australia, the latter was dropped to 18 in 1973, just one more major reform by the far-sighted Whitlam government.

Shorten’s big play for approval to drop the voting age was to tell us that more than 17,000 Australians under 18 paid $41 million in taxes (2012-2013 data). But his admission that 400,000 people aged 18-24 are absent from the electoral roll was not a great selling point. And it’s a bit early to say how many of them signed up for the 2016 election by the time the roll closed on Monday, May 23.

Kids are too immature to vote, aren’t they?

Many of the online replies to the ABC’s report panned Shorten’s youth vote idea, although Treefrog said if 16-year-olds were disadvantaged by policy (education cuts in the 2014 budget), they should get a say. Some wanted the voting age raised to 30 because ‘anyone under 30 was too immature to make the right choice’. Oh, and some correspondents wanted optional voting for the over-60s because ‘they have too much influence on public policy’. The public reaction to Shorten’s suggestion seems in line with an Australian Election Study in 2010 in which 94% of respondents opposed any change.

An analysis of Newspoll data by the Whitlam Institute, updated in 2013, suggests the youth vote may have determined the outcomes of the last four Federal elections. Director Eric Sidoti says of the research he did with Dr Chris Brooker that the collapse of the youth vote for Labor between 2007 and 2010 among 18-34 year olds and their intentions to switch to the Greens went a long way to explaining the hung parliament.

Despite a relatively high level of non-enrolment, many young people (15-24) are now directly engaged in big issue politics – human rights, racism, the economy and the environment. The Sydney Morning Herald said organisations like GetUp! And the Australian Youth Climate Coalition provided a glimpse of this changing political landscape.

Those who doubt the ability of youngsters to make informed political decisions should check out this elegant piece of research forwarded by Mr Shiraz. It tests voter turnout and the quality of choice in light of Austria’s decision to lower the voting age to 16 in 2007.

This is a weighty document but worth reading to reach the authors’ conclusion that: “a key criticism of lowering the voting age to 16 does not hold: there is little evidence that these citizens are less able or less motivated to participate effectively in politics.”

Smart kids with important things to say

The Whitlam Institute’s What Matters essay competition reveals more reasons why the youth vote is important. Overall 2015 winner Amelia Browns of Sutherland Public School (Grades 5 and 6) wrote a touching essay “Ben Matters’’ about losing her baby cousin to Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA).

Runner-up Madeleine Sylvester of St Agatha’s Catholic Primary School (also in grade 5/6), urged Australians that “Watts Matter,” explaining how our households squander electricity. Other category winners wrote about refugees, climate change, endangered species and the importance of physics. So tell me again why teenagers are not ready to vote at 16 or 17? These students, aged 10-14, are already putting together lucid prose that demonstrates they have a handle on the world and ideas to make it a better place.

Sunshine Coast songwriter Karen Law brought her family band to our lounge room a couple of week ago. The repertoire included a song about Nauru, written by Karen’s 13-year-old daughter Hazel. “What will they do with the island, in five years,” the writer putting herself in the asylum seeker’s sandals.

“Why do I keep living when no-one throws a thought my way?

So is something wrong with me, or something wrong with you?

Do you feel pain, or are you just oblivious

To the world you’re standing in?

There could be a hidden message in “What will they do with the island, in five years” – ostensibly about the government’s promise to process everyone on Nauru within five years. In five years Hazel Law, who shows a capacity at 13 to think and feel deeply about social issues, will be 18. If Bill Shorten gets the keys to the Lodge, she might even be eligible to vote at the next election, circa 2020.