tag:theconversation.com,2011:/au/topics/federal-election-2013-4679/articlesFederal election 2013 – The Conversation2015-04-08T20:06:40Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/396892015-04-08T20:06:40Z2015-04-08T20:06:40ZEarly voting hits new highs in NSW and Australia, but is it a good idea?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/77287/original/image-20150408-26515-ujbvqs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">About one in four Australians are skipping the polling day queues and voting early.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sunanda Creagh</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The ultimate result of the New South Wales election is still waiting on the resolution of the upper house where <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/nsw-election-2015/results/lc/">counting continues</a>. A <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/mike-baird-better-off-sacrificing-seat-than-face-re-run/story-e6frg6n6-1227294795925">possible court challenge</a> could lead to a fresh upper house poll being called. That leaves the re-elected Baird government’s plans hanging in the balance.</p>
<p>Unlike the narrow Labor wins at the recent <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-02-01/queensland-election-2015-kap-ready-to-cut-deal-with-labor/6060296">Queensland</a> and <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/bushtelegraph/vic-election/5931224">Victorian</a> elections, which caught many pollsters off-guard, the comfortable NSW Liberal National victory on <a href="https://theconversation.com/nsw-voters-set-to-back-baird-but-upper-house-is-too-close-to-call-38034">March 28</a> was widely predicted. </p>
<p>But the elections did all have one thing in common: they showed that the old notion of “polling day” is increasingly outdated. Early voting is rising rapidly across Australia, including in the latest NSW election.</p>
<p>In 1995, only <a href="http://www.elections.nsw.gov.au/about_elections/electoral_statistics">4% of NSW electors</a> voted early. By the 2011 election, it was <a href="http://www.elections.nsw.gov.au/about_elections/electoral_statistics">15%</a>. The early figures indicate that could climb to <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/nsw-state-election-2015/prepoll-results-for-nsw-election-2015-electoral-commission-says-increasing-numbers-voting-before-election-day-20150331-1mb8ii.html">about 25%</a> in 2015. (That includes about 640,000 prepoll votes and 284,000 online votes via the iVote system, while the final number of postal votes is still to be confirmed.)</p>
<p>According to the company operating iVote at this election, <a href="http://www.scytl.com/en/">Scytl</a>, NSW <a href="http://www.scytl.com/en/news/new-south-wales-leads-the-way-in-internet-voting-and-edemocracy-innovation/">set a record</a> for the most online votes in any government election worldwide, beating the previous record of more than 240,000 online votes set by <a href="http://www.parliament.uk/documents/speaker/digital-democracy/FR_Successcase.pdf">France</a>, as well as recent online votes in <a href="https://theconversation.com/thousands-of-nsw-election-online-votes-open-to-tampering-39164">Estonia and Norway</a>. It also represented a sixfold increase from the <a href="http://www.elections.nsw.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0006/96297/SGE_2010-2011_Amended.pdf">46,864 iVotes</a> at the 2011 NSW election. That’s entirely in line with Australians being early adopters of technology, such as <a href="http://landing.deloitte.com.au/rs/deloitteaus/images/Deloitte_Mobile_Consumer_Survey_2014.pdf">smartphones</a>.</p>
<p>Overall, the high early vote in NSW mirrors a trend seen <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-more-and-more-australians-are-voting-before-election-day-37159">in other state</a> and federal elections. For instance, at the 2013 federal election, more than 26% of voters voted early. That was more than double the rate of a decade earlier.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/76850/original/image-20150402-31287-1ko0v8z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/76850/original/image-20150402-31287-1ko0v8z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/76850/original/image-20150402-31287-1ko0v8z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=302&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/76850/original/image-20150402-31287-1ko0v8z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=302&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/76850/original/image-20150402-31287-1ko0v8z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=302&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/76850/original/image-20150402-31287-1ko0v8z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=380&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/76850/original/image-20150402-31287-1ko0v8z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=380&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/76850/original/image-20150402-31287-1ko0v8z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=380&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Early voting in Australian federal elections.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2440075">Australian Electoral Commission, 2014</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/76849/original/image-20150402-31312-ae42vl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/76849/original/image-20150402-31312-ae42vl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/76849/original/image-20150402-31312-ae42vl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=70&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/76849/original/image-20150402-31312-ae42vl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=70&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/76849/original/image-20150402-31312-ae42vl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=70&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/76849/original/image-20150402-31312-ae42vl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=89&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/76849/original/image-20150402-31312-ae42vl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=89&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/76849/original/image-20150402-31312-ae42vl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=89&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Australian Electoral Commission.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2440075">Early Voting in Australian Federal Elections: Causes and Consequences, 2014</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But is it good for democracy to have so many people voting before polling day? And how are Australia’s political parties likely to change their campaign strategies to woo early voters?</p>
<h2>Electoral commissions offering more options</h2>
<p>Australian election commissions like to be thought of as custodians of their electoral system and tend to see themselves as the most <a href="http://www.aph.gov.au/senate/%7E/%7E/link.aspx?_id=AE1A1EC4416D423A94F9BFAB52215FD2&_z=z">independent parts of the public service</a>. With a limited role in policing candidates’ political behaviour (with the exception of South Australia, where the commission <a href="http://www.eca.gov.au/systems/australia/by_area/sa.htm">regulates truth in political advertising</a>), their focus is on protecting the integrity of the electoral administrative process and expanding participation.</p>
<p>While the former is most visible in the <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/wa-senate-2014/">breach rather than the observance</a>, the latter is seen in voter awareness campaigns, personalised reminder services, electoral reminder mail, easier voter enrolment (such as <a href="http://www.elections.nsw.gov.au/enrol_to_vote/smartroll">automatic enrolment in NSW</a>) and an increased range of options for early voting.</p>
<p>In NSW, those options include pre-poll voting at physical voting locations, postal ballots and the predominantly online <a href="http://www.elections.nsw.gov.au/voting/ivote">iVote</a> electronic voting system.</p>
<p>iVote is not without its <a href="https://theconversation.com/nsws-online-gamble-why-internet-and-phone-voting-is-too-risky-37465">critics</a> – and in this election a <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/nsw-state-election-2015/nsw-election-2015-19000-electronic-votes-considered-valid-despite-error-on-ballot-paper-20150318-1m21pi.html">human error</a> meant 19,000 votes were cast online while two minor parties (the Outdoor Recreation Party and the Animal Justice Party) were not listed above the line on the upper house ballot paper. The Animal Justice Party is still in the race against the Coalition for the final upper house seat. If it narrowly misses out, there is a strong chance of a <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/mike-baird-better-off-sacrificing-seat-than-face-re-run/story-e6frg6n6-1227294795925">legal challenge</a>.</p>
<p>But even amid widespread media coverage of that error and other <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2015/s4202723.htm">potential security concerns</a>, the popularity of online voting in this election beat even the state electoral commission’s <a href="http://www.cio.com.au/article/545546/nsw_electoral_commission_cio_says_ivote_system_will_ensure_counting_accuracy/">forecasts</a> of 200,000 to 250,000 iVotes.</p>
<h2>Convenience vs cohesion: the pros and cons of early voting</h2>
<p>It is generally agreed why electors vote early: <a href="http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2440075">convenience</a>. Rather than lining up on a Saturday, what many people see as a chore can now be completed at leisure. </p>
<p>Swinburne’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-more-and-more-australians-are-voting-before-election-day-37159">Nathan Reader</a> has previously pointed out that that this matches a changing tempo of life: more Australians work on weekends, are busier than ever before and are less tolerant of what they perceive as inflexible compliance with government.</p>
<p>So the real question is whether the early voting trend in Australia is significant, or just another part of the larger change that has come with the rise of the convenience economy.</p>
<p>The most prevalent argument against early voting is that it undermines the “function” of elections: that in a representative democracy, citizens who are largely absent from the day-to-day governmental process should stop once every few years and have a good, hard think before voting.</p>
<p>This is a “republican” (as in Rome) model of citizenship that places emphasis on the individuals adherence to the civic duties to be <a href="http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/01/early-voting-the-case-against-102748.html#.VSHPZOThlC0">engaged, informed and participative</a>. In this context, then, elections should be “focusing events” filled with information-rich political discourse: from candidates to electors in the form of policy ideas; from electors to candidates in the form of questions; and between electors, debating the key issues. </p>
<p>This allows citizens to make informed decisions they can feel committed to. It also gives governments legitimacy for their programs and allows political elites to accurately gauge popular opinion.</p>
<p>The idea is that the contest of ideas runs right runs up to polling day. And the electronic media blackout just before the poll gives us all time to retire to our homes unmolested to reflect, weigh up what policies matter most to us and consider all the pros and cons, opportunity costs, risks and trade-offs.</p>
<p>There is another argument against early voting: that it undermines an important <a href="http://scholar.harvard.edu/dft/publications/electoral-simultaneity-expressing-equal-respect">social cohesion process</a>, emphasising collectivity and equality, which is the point of having elections in the first place. Some people feel that by removing the “gathering together” aspect of elections, pre-poll, postal and online voting also undermine a key civil ritual.</p>
<p>These perspectives do have merit, but they overstate the significance of elections. Indeed, these views make elections synonymous with democracy itself: a formalistic view of a complex concept. Elections can be important civic rituals, but they can also be ritualistic. Elections are often not competitive, but simply serve to re-endorse an existing government. </p>
<h2>The battle for swinging voters</h2>
<p>Concerns that early voting will significantly change exactly “when” people make a vote decision also appears unfounded. As the figure below shows – drawing from <a href="http://aes.anu.edu.au/">Australian Electoral Study</a> data – the majority of Australian voters have already made a decision on how to vote before a federal election is called.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/77079/original/image-20150406-26481-7irnu2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/77079/original/image-20150406-26481-7irnu2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/77079/original/image-20150406-26481-7irnu2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/77079/original/image-20150406-26481-7irnu2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/77079/original/image-20150406-26481-7irnu2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/77079/original/image-20150406-26481-7irnu2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/77079/original/image-20150406-26481-7irnu2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/77079/original/image-20150406-26481-7irnu2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Drawn using data from the 2013 Australian Electoral Study.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://aes.anu.edu.au">aes.anu.edu.au</a>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Swinging voters who decide how to vote late in the campaign are often disparaged as uninformed, “soft” and <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-09-11/throsby-swinging-voters/4950200">under-engaged</a>. </p>
<p>Whether that is true or not, our political parties have tended to respond as if it is. Electoral messages are simplistic and put on high rotation, following a model of audiences that assumes low levels of attention, interest, recall and cognitive processing. The rise of early voting in Australia does not appear to have significantly changed this jaundiced view of the public.</p>
<p>However, one way that increased early voting is changing elections campaigns is that parties know that electors may “defect” from the campaign and vote early. </p>
<p>Traditional election campaigns have four distinct time periods: frame (the campaign); defame (the opponent); explain (the policy); and acclaim (move to a positive commitment decision close to polling day).</p>
<p>The increased availability of early voting options will mean there is a stronger incentive for parties to “win” the political communication game in each day of the campaign.</p>
<p>Early voting options also means that campaign communications will try to be more persuasive: don’t just vote for me, but vote for me <em>right now</em>. Opposition parties will need to have higher visibility between elections, so will need to campaign rather than attempt small-target strategies. Governments, as always, will need to perform because elections are theirs to lose, not to win.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/39689/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter John Chen is a bad republican citizen and has voted early.</span></em></p>More than 280,000 votes were cast online at the NSW election, which has been claimed as a new world record. The state’s early vote also looks set to hit a new high, mirroring a trend across Australia.Peter John Chen, Senior Lecturer, Department of Government and International Relations, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/198182014-02-18T19:12:07Z2014-02-18T19:12:07ZWhat issues will a WA Senate re-vote be fought on?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/34654/original/vkss8hyn-1383801363.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">What are the key issues the parties will campaign on in the almost-certain WA Senate re-vote?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Paul Miller</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>It appears certain that Western Australians will vote in fresh Senate elections later this year. Following the initial vote last September and the recount – when 1375 votes were unable to be located – the High Court, sitting as the Court of Disputed Returns, <a href="http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/cases/cth/HCA/2014/5.html">declared</a> yesterday that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The only relief appropriate is for the election to be declared void.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>While reserving its final judgment for Thursday, a new election to elect six senators seems to be an inevitability.</p>
<p>The court’s decision isn’t going to recast the political landscape. And yet it’s back to the polls that Western Australians will likely go. That means new candidates and new campaigns. And more fun – unless you’re feeling election fatigue (Western Australians did have state and local government elections as well as the federal election last year).</p>
<p>So, what will be the key issue areas a re-vote will be fought on?</p>
<h2>The major parties</h2>
<p>The Coalition will urge Western Australian voters to allow the Abbott government to govern. After all, it won a significant majority in the House of Representatives last September.</p>
<p>Prime minister Tony Abbott will generally play better in Western Australia than opposition leader Bill Shorten. They are both from “over east”, so neither really understands WA, but Abbott can run a pro-development line more believably than Shorten.</p>
<p>The latest <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/17/bill-shortens-popularity-slides-in-poll-as-coalition-regains-pre-election-favour">Nielsen poll</a> appears to reflect Shorten’s inability to engage voters outside the party while he tries to rebuild inside the party. He is being outmanoeuvred in public, however much they lionise him inside the party.</p>
<p>Late last year, when a re-run was first mooted, some media outlets <a href="http://www.news.com.au/national/wa-poll-re-run-to-target-tax-on-carbon/story-e6frfkp9-1226752427395">suggested</a> that the fresh election will be a referendum on the carbon tax. It is unlikely to be that simple. This is especially so if there is enough evidence to show that the carbon tax is working, which the IMF <a href="http://au.ibtimes.com/articles/539134/20140217/climate-change-direct-action-carbon-tax-repeal.htm#.UwK96LRqPEk">certainly thinks is the case</a>. </p>
<p>But an election re-run is likely to play out better for the conservatives. It is hard to see the Liberals losing or gaining a seat. It is more about the fate of the Palmer United Party (PUP) and the Greens.</p>
<p>Much of the hostility to Labor has been vented in Western Australia, so Coalition strategists shouldn’t assume they can rely on strong anti-Labor sentiments to carry them through. Presenting themselves as the government that has stopped asylum seekers will work well in WA, where arrivals by boat have had a greater impact than elsewhere. </p>
<p>However, the <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/tony-abbott-compares-secrecy-over-asylum-seekers-to-war-time-20140110-30lyt.html">secrecy</a> around asylum seekers coming by boat is making the public’s reaction to this issue hard to predict.</p>
<h2>State issues</h2>
<p>One problem for the Coalition is that Western Australians know the Abbott government <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-09-20/federal-government-ignores-calls-from-states-for-increase-to-gst/4970916">won’t do anything</a> to increase the amount of Goods and Services Tax (GST) the state receives. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/34649/original/47smxpkh-1383800834.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/34649/original/47smxpkh-1383800834.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34649/original/47smxpkh-1383800834.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34649/original/47smxpkh-1383800834.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34649/original/47smxpkh-1383800834.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34649/original/47smxpkh-1383800834.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34649/original/47smxpkh-1383800834.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">WA premier Colin Barnett suffered an annus horribilis in 2013. Will state issues play a role in a WA Senate re-vote?</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Alan Porritt</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>While it was never directly stated, the view that Labor had something to do with WA’s share of GST revenue was left conveniently – for the Coalition – in the air for much of last September’s federal election. Now it is clear that the Coalition will do nothing for a state government struggling, and failing, to balance its budget.</p>
<p>This is why Labor will want the election to be about the effectiveness of Coalition governments. The ALP campaign will attempt to shift the focus from federal Labor and use WA premier Colin Barnett’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/gst-rebuff-and-credit-downgrade-add-to-barnetts-annus-horribilis-18478">woeful recent performance</a> as evidence that Coalition governments across Australia aren’t up to the challenges of governing.</p>
<p>Abbott will struggle to persuade people to support him because of his record. The federal government has done little so far that will have particularly impressed West Australians. The carbon and mining taxes are not such “hot” topics, so they do not carry the same weight. </p>
<h2>The Greens, PUP and microparties</h2>
<p>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/election-2013-brings-a-mixed-result-for-the-greens-17524">Greens</a> can regain ground if they can establish themselves as being necessary to moderate the excesses of the Abbott government, and to generally ensure that the government does not lose sight of the environment in pursuing jobs growth. </p>
<p>It would help, in Western Australia, for the Greens to articulate a conservative environmental position. This is not the state to be anything but conservative.</p>
<p>Incumbent senator Scott Ludlam, who was elected for the Greens in the recount, <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-01-21/greens-senate-petition-rejected/5211302">argued to keep the recount</a> instead of publicly welcoming the challenge to respond to those who have turned away from the Greens. That would have sent the right message to voters.</p>
<p>The Greens are likely to join the Coalition and Labor in trying to make a re-run election about <a href="https://theconversation.com/micro-parties-win-on-the-big-boys-rules-18027">microparties</a> manipulating the voters to get candidates elected who gained very few first preference votes. Expect to see Glenn Druery - the so-called <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-11-04/preference-whisperer-in-demand-as-fresh-wa-senate-poll-likely/5068428">“preference whisperer”</a> - copping a lot of criticism. </p>
<p>The Greens ought to be careful with the microparties. Support for them expresses discontent with the system, which is also manifested in votes for the Greens. Dismissing other people’s discontent in favour of your discontent won’t win you friends. Besides, the Greens need to think about possibilities for working with any microparty candidates who are elected.</p>
<p>A re-vote solely in Western Australia provides the PUP with a great opportunity. The new party’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-palmer-united-party-came-out-barking-17979">success</a> in September’s election means that the PUP now represents a credible option for those attracted by a conservative approach. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/34635/original/k5fkss6d-1383797319.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/34635/original/k5fkss6d-1383797319.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34635/original/k5fkss6d-1383797319.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34635/original/k5fkss6d-1383797319.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34635/original/k5fkss6d-1383797319.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34635/original/k5fkss6d-1383797319.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34635/original/k5fkss6d-1383797319.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Clive Palmer’s Palmer United Party may have its electoral success in the WA Senate repeated in a re-vote.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Paul Miller</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Palmer’s very deep pockets will help the PUP to generate a significant profile in traditional and social media. So, the PUP can expect to repeat its (albeit voided) success of winning a Senate seat in WA. There’s always the chance that Palmer will say something to offend Western Australians, but he speaks fluent mining magnate, which is a language that people in the state understand well.</p>
<p>The mainstream media is helping the major parties’ attempts to make microparties appear sinister and manipulative, so we are likely to see people not trusting them with their “above the line” preferences.</p>
<p>The Sports Party, which <a href="http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/queensland/greens-win-senate-seat-in-wa-recount--taking-it-from-palmers-party-20131102-2wth4.html">won a seat</a> in the disputed recount despite gaining <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/federal-election-2013/results/senate/wa/">just 0.23%</a> of the first preference vote, will also struggle.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/19818/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ian Cook does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>It appears certain that Western Australians will vote in fresh Senate elections later this year. Following the initial vote last September and the recount – when 1375 votes were unable to be located…Ian Cook, Senior Lecturer of Australian Politics , Murdoch UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/216482013-12-26T22:13:10Z2013-12-26T22:13:10Z2013, the year that was: Politics + Society<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/38269/original/kvngs8md-1387428082.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">2013 saw a decisive change of government in Australia. What else happened?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Lisa Maree Williams</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Three prime ministers, four Labor Party leaders, two popes. 2013 was nothing if not a hectic year for the Politics + Society desk at The Conversation. And while it’s repeated so often as to go beyond being a cliché, the 2013 election – the date of which we thought we knew <a href="https://theconversation.com/election-2013-julia-gillards-september-gamble-11860">all the way back in January</a> – had all the hallmarks of being the most significant for a generation.</p>
<p>After all, it <em>was</em> our first election at The Conversation.</p>
<p>But for the first six months of 2013, the looming election almost became an afterthought as the gaze of Canberra watchers fixated on the leadership tensions in the government between prime minister Julia Gillard and the man she ousted in 2010, Kevin Rudd.</p>
<p>After one <a href="https://theconversation.com/live-blog-michelle-grattan-12976">tilt-that-wasn’t</a> by Rudd’s backers in March to reinstate the former prime minister to the leadership – Rudd refused to run – the Labor Party was left “looking a shambles” following an “extraordinary orgy of self-destruction”, in the <a href="https://theconversation.com/grattan-on-friday-demoralised-labor-faces-bleak-future-12985">words</a> of our chief political correspondent, <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/michelle-grattan-20316/profile_bio">Michelle Grattan</a>.</p>
<p>But the spectre of Rudd continued to haunt the government. Tensions finally came to a head in late June when Rudd defeated Gillard in a leadership spill, <a href="https://theconversation.com/kevin-rudd-defeats-julia-gillard-expert-reaction-15567">57 votes to 45</a>. As <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-political-tragedy-of-julia-gillard-15588">Shaun Carney wrote</a>:</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/38070/original/ds6k6cgd-1387324804.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/38070/original/ds6k6cgd-1387324804.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/38070/original/ds6k6cgd-1387324804.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=835&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/38070/original/ds6k6cgd-1387324804.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=835&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/38070/original/ds6k6cgd-1387324804.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=835&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/38070/original/ds6k6cgd-1387324804.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1050&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/38070/original/ds6k6cgd-1387324804.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1050&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/38070/original/ds6k6cgd-1387324804.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1050&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Rudd-Gillard battle finally came to an end in 2013.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Julian Smith</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<blockquote>
<p>Julia Gillard’s downfall as prime minister is one of the greatest personal tragedies in Australian politics … Gillard’s ambition ultimately exceeded her political talent, and to the very end she would not see it.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>From there, the countdown to the election was on.</p>
<p>Our dedicated <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/election-2013">Election 2013</a> section went live the moment Rudd named the (new) election date for September 7. We covered the happenings on the campaign trail, including a <a href="https://theconversation.com/columns/view-from-the-hill-34">daily diary</a> by Michelle Grattan, <a href="https://theconversation.com/columns/adrian-beaumont-98965">polls analysis</a> from Adrian Beaumont, a <a href="https://theconversation.com/columns/election-2013-media-panel-114">panel of media experts</a> to keep a close watch on the fourth estate and weekly podcasts.</p>
<p>During the course of the election, our experts factchecked the truthfulness of political statements on our dedicated <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/factcheck">Election FactCheck</a> page. In a unique process, academic experts assessed the evidence and provided a verdict, before a second academic undertook a “blind” review of the check. Popular “checks” included whether or not Australia’s refugee acceptance rates are <a href="https://theconversation.com/factcheck-are-australias-refugee-acceptance-rates-high-compared-with-other-nations-17151">comparatively high</a>; how strong Australia’s economy <a href="https://theconversation.com/factcheck-how-strong-is-australias-economy-16716">actually is</a>; and whether Rupert Murdoch <a href="https://theconversation.com/factcheck-does-murdoch-own-70-of-newspapers-in-australia-16812">owns 70%</a> of Australia’s newspapers.</p>
<p>Our coverage also included a focus on election <a href="https://theconversation.com/topics/election-2013-issues">Issues</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/topics/election-2013-essays">Essays</a>, an <a href="https://theconversation.com/murdoch-and-his-influence-on-australian-political-life-16752">analysis</a> of the influence of the election’s biggest outside player – the Murdoch press – from Murdoch watcher David McKnight. Our most-read piece of the campaign was a <a href="https://theconversation.com/barry-jones-the-2013-election-and-the-death-of-rationality-17637">reflection</a> by former ALP minister Barry Jones on the debasement of political discourse and campaigning.</p>
<p>Selected contributions were also compiled and published in a book, The Story of the 2013 Election, which was launched at Parliament House at an event attended by many MPs in early December.</p>
<p>Ultimately Tony Abbott and the Coalition recorded a landslide victory. So we reflected on <a href="https://theconversation.com/labors-legacy-six-years-of-what-exactly-17526">Labor’s legacy</a> and looked at the Coalition’s agenda, in areas ranging from the <a href="https://theconversation.com/tony-abbott-the-situational-keynesian-17918">economy</a> to <a href="https://theconversation.com/anglosphere-or-regional-friend-abbotts-foreign-policy-future-17984">foreign affairs</a>. ACU vice-chancellor Greg Craven also gave a rare <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-tony-abbott-i-know-17783">insight</a> into the Tony Abbott he knows.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Kevin Rudd made his <a href="https://theconversation.com/rudd-makes-his-final-zip-20269">final “zip”</a> and retired from parliament. The Coalition didn’t make a perfect start to life on the government benches. A <a href="https://theconversation.com/abbott-flies-female-lite-with-his-frontbench-18266">female-lite Cabinet</a>, a <a href="https://theconversation.com/topics/spy-standoff">standoff with Indonesia</a> over Australia’s spying activities and a <a href="https://theconversation.com/from-gonski-to-gone-to-gonski-again-school-funding-future-remains-uncertain-21025">backflip on a backflip</a> over commitment to schools funding led Shaun Carney to <a href="https://theconversation.com/whats-going-on-with-the-abbott-government-21057">ponder</a>, what is going on with the Abbott government?</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/38100/original/32tn4jgd-1387329164.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/38100/original/32tn4jgd-1387329164.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/38100/original/32tn4jgd-1387329164.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/38100/original/32tn4jgd-1387329164.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/38100/original/32tn4jgd-1387329164.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/38100/original/32tn4jgd-1387329164.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/38100/original/32tn4jgd-1387329164.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/38100/original/32tn4jgd-1387329164.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Asylum seekers continued to dominate the Australian political landscape in 2013.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Made Mahardika</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>On a policy front, no one issue dominated the Australian political landscape quite like the question of <a href="https://theconversation.com/topics/asylum-seekers">asylum seekers</a>. The Gillard government struggled to gain any traction amidst the “Stop the boats” sloganeering, but Rudd’s return to office brought with it the “PNG solution”. Asylum seekers who arrive in Australian waters by boat will <a href="https://theconversation.com/no-more-asylum-in-australia-for-those-arriving-by-boat-rudd-16238">no longer have the chance</a> to be settled in Australia, and instead be resettled in Papua New Guinea if genuine refugees.</p>
<p>Despite the announcement being made well after beer o'clock on a Friday, our experts leapt into action and analysed the policy from every angle – from <a href="https://theconversation.com/rudds-png-plan-unlikely-to-comply-with-international-law-16250">international law</a> to <a href="https://theconversation.com/rudds-png-plan-could-worsen-asylum-seekers-mental-health-16319">mental health</a> implications. We also decided to take a blue-sky thinking approach to the problem, with a <a href="https://theconversation.com/topics/asylum-solutions">series</a> of “Asylum Solutions”.</p>
<p>But it wasn’t all federal politics for us in 2013. On a global stage, we provided analysis on the crisis in <a href="https://theconversation.com/topics/syria">Syria</a>. We also saw the first resignation of a pope since the 15th century when Pope Benedict XVI <a href="https://theconversation.com/out-with-gods-rottweiler-the-resignation-of-pope-benedict-xvi-12159">stepped aside</a>. His successor, <a href="https://theconversation.com/pope-francis-is-murky-past-in-argentina-12827">Francis I</a>, has certainly made waves since his election in March, <a href="https://theconversation.com/pope-francis-prioritises-the-poor-channels-marx-in-new-manifesto-20826">critiquing</a> contemporary capitalism on his way to being named Time Magazine’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/person-of-the-year-pope-francis-reminds-us-of-our-nobler-side-21395">Person of the Year</a>.</p>
<p>We watched on as the US government shut down in October (and then <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-culture-of-dysfunction-is-washington-headed-for-groundhog-day-19417">kicked its budgetary problems</a> down the road) and marked the deaths of three giants of modern politics: Venezuelan president <a href="https://theconversation.com/in-death-chavez-is-more-alive-than-ever-in-latin-america-12681">Hugo Chavez</a> in March, former British prime minister <a href="https://theconversation.com/baroness-margaret-thatcher-passes-away-13323">Margaret Thatcher</a> in April, and South African icon <a href="https://theconversation.com/nelson-mandela-dies-man-who-reinvented-south-africa-as-a-rainbow-nation-15594">Nelson Mandela</a> in December.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/38165/original/jgnspqyk-1387346282.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/38165/original/jgnspqyk-1387346282.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/38165/original/jgnspqyk-1387346282.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=884&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/38165/original/jgnspqyk-1387346282.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=884&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/38165/original/jgnspqyk-1387346282.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=884&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/38165/original/jgnspqyk-1387346282.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1111&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/38165/original/jgnspqyk-1387346282.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1111&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/38165/original/jgnspqyk-1387346282.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1111&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Essendon drugs saga dominated the local news agenda.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/David Crosling</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Locally, our society coverage focused largely on sport: the thing that unites, divides and defines us as Australians. Sport in Australia has suffered a tumultuous year, on and off the field. In February, on what was dubbed the “blackest day in Australian sport”, the Australian Crime Commission released a report showing <a href="https://theconversation.com/drugs-crime-and-ball-games-how-aussie-sport-got-crooked-12084">links</a> between organised crime, performance-enhancing drug use and Australia’s premier sporting codes.</p>
<p>Whether or not it was actually our “blackest” day remains the subject of debate, but the subsequent investigations at NRL club <a href="https://theconversation.com/nrl-more-than-sharks-in-the-water-at-cronulla-12677">Cronulla</a> and AFL club <a href="https://theconversation.com/essendon-scandal-a-symptom-of-australias-sporting-woes-12085">Essendon</a> rocked Australia’s leading football codes in 2013. But we cut through the usual spin of sports journalists with considered takes on angles ranging from <a href="https://theconversation.com/drugs-in-sport-what-constitutes-unfair-advantage-12728">what actually constitutes “unfair advantage”</a> to whether or not workplace regulators should <a href="https://theconversation.com/time-for-ohs-regulators-to-get-off-the-bench-and-into-the-game-17039">take action</a>.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Australia did battle with England in two consecutive Ashes cricket series. Australia’s tour in the English summer was marked with “Australian despondency” and “English triumphalism” (in the <a href="https://theconversation.com/triumph-despond-and-the-sporting-nation-the-ashes-continues-16270">words</a> of our Ashes correspondent, <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/david-rowe-16403/profile_bio">David Rowe</a>) as our cricketers slumped to a 3-0 loss. But in an unexpected change of fortune, the (ongoing) home series has seen Australian cricket <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-ashes-australian-masculinity-reborn-amid-english-tumult-21265">“reborn”</a>.</p>
<p>We also continued our popular <a href="https://theconversation.com/topics/in-conversation">In Conversation</a> series with leading figures in public life. Our academics joined Greens MP <a href="https://theconversation.com/in-conversation-douglas-hilton-and-adam-bandt-mp-12571">Adam Bandt</a>, former Victorian premier <a href="https://theconversation.com/in-conversation-steve-bracks-and-stephanie-brookes-12716">Steve Bracks</a>, DLP senator <a href="https://theconversation.com/i-dont-want-to-see-the-alp-decimated-in-conversation-with-senator-john-madigan-15843">John Madigan</a> and British Labour MP <a href="https://theconversation.com/in-conversation-with-tom-watson-mp-if-i-was-lord-leveson-id-be-asking-which-rupert-murdoch-was-telling-me-the-truth-17519">Tom Watson</a> in wide-ranging, thoughtful longform interviews. In addition, John Keane spent a lively <a href="https://theconversation.com/lunch-and-dinner-with-julian-assange-in-prison-12234">lunch and dinner</a> with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in his London “prison”, where the two riffed on issues including Assange’s political aspirations.</p>
<p>We hope you’ve enjoyed the year as much as we have. To our readers and authors, have a safe and festive break and we’ll see you in 2014.</p>
<hr>
<p><strong>Top five stories of 2013</strong></p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/no-youre-not-entitled-to-your-opinion-9978">No, you’re not entitled to your opinion</a></p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/julian-burnside-alienation-to-alien-nation-18290">Julian Burnside: Alienation to alien nation</a></p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/like-no-offence-but-jamies-private-school-stereotypes-will-make-you-laugh-and-cry-19324">Like, no offence but Ja'mie’s private school stereotypes will make you laugh… and cry</a></p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/open-plan-offices-attract-highest-levels-of-worker-dissatisfaction-study-18246">Open plan offices attract highest levels of worker dissatisfaction: study</a></p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/lunch-and-dinner-with-julian-assange-in-prison-12234">Lunch and dinner with Julian Assange, in prison</a></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/21648/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
Three prime ministers, four Labor Party leaders, two popes. 2013 was nothing if not a hectic year for the Politics + Society desk at The Conversation. And while it’s repeated so often as to go beyond being…Michael Courts, Deputy Section Editor: Politics + SocietyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/200242013-11-10T20:13:57Z2013-11-10T20:13:57ZA values deficit, toxic politics, and the climate change debacle<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/34779/original/xbq2txs4-1383889495.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">There is no better example of the debasement of Australian political discourse and process than that which has surrounded action on climate change.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Alan Porritt</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>We live in an age of unprecedented prosperity, in which the major influences have been secularism, materialism, utilitarianism, urbanisation, remoteness from nature, institutional failure (especially in churches) and an emphasis on immediate economic self-interest.</p>
<p>The rise and rise of managerialism has displaced community engagement in ideas and values. The impact of mass media has been profound, with its emphasis on immediacy, the cult of personality, promoting sensation, entertainment and an often vicious and destructive political agenda, in which the truth of a proposition (interest rates are always lower under the Coalition, for instance) is irrelevant. Greed, drugs, problem gambling, domestic violence, child sexual abuse, covert and overt racism all distort our moral compass.</p>
<p>Churches, like political parties, are <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-place-for-the-catholic-church-in-21st-century-australia-15242">losing numbers</a>. Commitment and moral authority have been shaken by the apparent <a href="https://theconversation.com/rogue-priests-or-a-culture-of-abuse-investigating-paedophilia-in-the-catholic-church-10700">institutionalisation of child abuse</a>, where the reaction has been to protect the institution and disregard the victim.</p>
<p>Some political leaders act as if all values have a dollar equivalent; that forests are essentially woodchips on stumps; and that the value of a tree is as lumber, disregarding aesthetic factors or the contribution to clean air. The current obsession is that if a project will make money for somebody – for example, <a href="http://www.theland.com.au/news/agriculture/agribusiness/general-news/marshall-calls-for-grazing-in-national-parks/2677524.aspx">grazing in national parks</a>, <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/get-out-of-our-way-on-huge-mines-abbott-told-20130911-2tks7.html">oil drilling near the Great Barrier Reef</a>, or the <a href="http://www.news.com.au/national/live-export-push-on-animal-welfare/story-e6frfkp9-1226755297794">export of live animals</a> (often under unspeakable conditions) – it should go ahead. </p>
<p>The appeal of money and growth in the gross domestic product is irresistible, with a refusal to contemplate the downside. In the case of duck shooting, state power is entirely <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-10-15/duck-shooting-opponents-urge-more-focus-on-tourism/5022940">behind the shooters</a>, and against the ducks. The need for more cars on more freeways <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/eastwest-link-to-take-6-of-royal-park-report-20130826-2slgi.html">outweighs the values</a> associated with Melbourne’s Royal Park.</p>
<p>We seem to have a new <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02371a.htm">Beatitude</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Blessed are the aspirationals, for they shall be rewarded, whatever the cost.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Much of the mainstream media (especially the Murdoch empire), emphasises advocacy, entertainment, shock factors and reinforcing prejudice, rather than providing information or carrying out investigative reporting.</p>
<h2>Toxicity in Canberra</h2>
<p>Political life in Canberra has become toxic. With a breakdown in personal relationships, recourse to personal attacks, wild exaggeration and the endless repeating of slogans, the practice of debating with ideas and sentences with verbs having been abandoned. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/34774/original/xjtc9n72-1383888874.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/34774/original/xjtc9n72-1383888874.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=384&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34774/original/xjtc9n72-1383888874.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=384&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34774/original/xjtc9n72-1383888874.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=384&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34774/original/xjtc9n72-1383888874.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=483&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34774/original/xjtc9n72-1383888874.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=483&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34774/original/xjtc9n72-1383888874.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=483&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Politics and political life in Australia may be currently broken - but how can we fix it?</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Labor powerbroker Graham Richardson’s mantra <a href="http://www.news.com.au/national/sticking-with-a-slime-goes-beyond-whatever-it-takes/story-e6frfkp9-1226493940655">“whatever it takes”</a> has become standard operating practice for both the ALP and the Coalition. The truth of a proposition no longer matters – in the era of retail politics, the only question is: “will it sell?”</p>
<p>Electability is central for the major parties (not, of course, for the Greens, which is part of their appeal for many former Labor voters). The role of the media - and the impact of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/dumbing-down-the-media-or-shooting-the-messenger-lindsay-tanners-sideshow-1010">24-hour news cycle</a> - means that policies which need to be carefully thought-out are prepared as “announceables”, presented at a news conference by party leaders, often wearing hard hats and fluorescent vests, invariably with nodders standing behind. </p>
<p>Politically, elections are now won or lost by appealing to the bourgeoisie, not by marshaling the proletariat. There is more emphasis on higher levels of consumption – and, in education or health care, invoking the mantra of “choice”, rather than a bottom-up approach.</p>
<p>This phenomenon was even more marked in Australia than the United Kingdom. Labor was very uneasy (the <a href="https://theconversation.com/topics/gonski-review">Gonski schools funding reforms</a> notwithstanding) about restricting access to private schools or private health programs, and certainly unwilling to raise income tax levels to, say, Scandinavian – or even British – levels. </p>
<p>In the 2013 federal election, despite widespread unhappiness with both Labor and the Coalition, <a href="http://vtr.aec.gov.au/HouseStateFirstPrefsByParty-17496-NAT.htm">around 79%</a> cast their votes for the two major parties, sometimes with pegs on their noses. But while people retain loyalty to the major parties (for whatever reason), they have no enthusiasm about joining them.</p>
<p>More people are <a href="http://www.crikey.com.au/2013/07/18/the-partys-over-which-clubs-have-the-most-members/">in the waiting list</a> for the Melbourne Cricket Club than are members of all Australia’s political parties. A recent survey indicated that members of AFL clubs currently total 800,000. The Geelong Football Club has 43,000 members, exactly the same as the number <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-10-10/shorten-tipped-to-win-first-caucus-vote-on-labor-leadership/5019156">claimed for the ALP</a>. </p>
<p>The ALP’s primary vote in the 2013 election was 4.3 million, so its notional membership, by a neat coincidence, is exactly 1%. Because party memberships are so small – often remote from the community-at-large – power almost inevitably is seized by factional warlords. The ALP has become a transactional party, primarily concerned with dividing up the spoils of office. Even in opposition, these are significant.</p>
<p>Factionalisation essentially represents the privatisation of the party. Factions, no longer primarily ideological, are essentially executive placement agencies. Loyalty to the faction is primary, and it is rewarded, in the end, by delivery. Faction members will maintain allegiance so long as rewards are delivered.</p>
<h2>What issues draw people to join political parties now?</h2>
<p>In the Whitlam and post-Whitlam era, people were drawn to political activism because of specific policies that they were desperate to change. These included abolishing the death penalty, getting out of Vietnam, ending conscription, establishing Australia’s national identity (including constitutional reform and the republic), ending the white Australia policy, entrenching rights for Aborigines and promoting affirmative action, preserving the environment, universal secondary education – and more universities.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/34778/original/nwkb5s8t-1383889312.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/34778/original/nwkb5s8t-1383889312.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=814&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34778/original/nwkb5s8t-1383889312.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=814&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34778/original/nwkb5s8t-1383889312.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=814&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34778/original/nwkb5s8t-1383889312.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1023&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34778/original/nwkb5s8t-1383889312.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1023&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34778/original/nwkb5s8t-1383889312.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1023&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">It was in the Whitlam era that many in Australia were first drawn to politics.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>So, do people get involved in politics because of refugees and asylum seekers? I don’t think so. Both major parties are locked into a cycle of dehumanisation and repression. </p>
<p>Climate change? The Coalition is beyond belief and Labor’s actions, while crazy brave in a way, have never been fully understood and were woefully explained. </p>
<p>Same-sex marriage? Both parties are divided. </p>
<p>The republic? The 1999 referendum was defeated by an odd combination of monarchists, people who were indifferent and direct-election republicans. After that, the issue died of anaemia. Our new prime minister is a passionate monarchist. Patriarchy is back in force.</p>
<h2>Climate change and collateral damage</h2>
<p>Climate change is a powerful demonstration of how Australia’s political process has gone wrong.</p>
<p>The debate about the impact of human activity on climate change has been conducted at an abysmal level. The Rudd-Gillard-Rudd government comprehensively lost it by getting the politics wrong, failing to understand the fatal conjunction of inertia, self interest, corporate power and media saturation. </p>
<p>The relentless negativity (and simplicity) of the Coalition assertions – strongly supported by the Murdoch newspapers and shockjocks on talkback radio – attacking the pricing of carbon ignores or derides the science and appeals to immediate economic self-interest. In the News Corp’s Herald Sun tabloid, <a href="http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2013/11/01/comment-big-australian-media-reject-climate-science">97% of comment articles</a> were hostile to – or sceptical of – climate science.</p>
<p>The climate change debate destroyed both Rudd and Gillard. New environment minister Greg Hunt has also become a tragic figure after only barely two months in office.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/34776/original/r24yb44f-1383889144.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/34776/original/r24yb44f-1383889144.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34776/original/r24yb44f-1383889144.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34776/original/r24yb44f-1383889144.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34776/original/r24yb44f-1383889144.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34776/original/r24yb44f-1383889144.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34776/original/r24yb44f-1383889144.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Dithering over action on climate change helped to end Kevin Rudd’s first stint as prime minister.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Lukas Coch</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>With climate change, it proved to be easier to sell the message during a period of prolonged drought. Breaking the drought in 2008 proved to be a political disaster for Kevin Rudd in his first incarnation as prime minister.</p>
<p>Rudd promised too much. Then, depressed by <a href="http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/rudd-standing-by-copenhagen-outcome-20091222-lbkc.html">failure at the Copenhagen climate change summit</a> and strong opposition in the “Gang of Four” from Julia Gillard and Wayne Swan about doing anything, failed to call a double dissolution on the issue, which he would probably have won. Turnbull’s loss of the Liberal leadership then destroyed the (vain) hope of a bipartisan political solution on climate change.</p>
<p>The science of climate change was not in Gillard’s repertoire (or, as we say these days, “in her DNA”), and her explanations were awkward. This contributed to the impression that she had only reluctantly supported putting a price on carbon use because of pressure from the Greens and independent MPs Andrew Wilkie, Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott: that it was the price she had to pay to remain as prime minister. </p>
<p>To make it worse, it was asserted that pricing carbon meant adopting a policy which she had <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMVc0IbtyAQ">specifically rejected</a> during the campaign. This was a policy position she would have maintained, I suspect, if she had won the election narrowly in her own right.</p>
<p>Gillard could have justified her policy change by saying:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Further close examination of the evidence has persuaded me that it would be against both the national and the global interest to maintain my earlier position and I am convinced that Australia should set an example.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Sadly, she failed to do this. Her policy shift was central to what was denounced as a policy “u-turn” and became a war of attrition, marked by a long sequence of appalling personal attacks.</p>
<p>During the 2013 election, climate change was essentially a <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-power-of-the-fragment-why-politicians-have-turned-their-backs-on-climate-17640">background noise</a>, never specifically addressed by name, let alone analysed. The discourse, such as it was, had been appalling - mendacious on the Coalition side; feeble on Labor’s side. Sustainability was also a word that dropped from the political lexicon.</p>
<h2>Redefining politics</h2>
<p>We must redefine politics and grasp its importance, not just at election times. Here is my attempt, rather long-winded but I think it captures the essence:</p>
<p>Politics is the fault line between tectonic plates in society. The electoral struggle is an expression of – or a metaphor for – unresolved, often unspoken, divisions within society, including race, class, gender, religion, region, language, education, sexuality, consumption patterns and time use, self-definition and the expression of individual differences or aspirations (both positive and negative), offering a choice between different moral universes.</p>
<p>This is the underside of politics. We see only the tip of the iceberg. Journalist Mungo MacCallum <a href="http://theincblot.blogspot.com.au/2012/01/q-with-mungo-maccallum.html">commented</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Politics is the most important invention of the human race, because it is the only way we can resolve our disputes without killing each other. How well we make it work is, in the end, down to us.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-09-18/mcgowan-claims-victory-in-the-seat-of-indi/4966180">victory of Cathy McGowan</a> in the federal seat of Indi was an encouraging indication of how intense political involvement at a local level can beat a major party. It’s fair to point out that the retirement of Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott led to overwhelming victories for Coalition nominees, and that in Indi the community forces targeted a dream opponent.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/34775/original/ggxmbwsp-1383888968.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/34775/original/ggxmbwsp-1383888968.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34775/original/ggxmbwsp-1383888968.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34775/original/ggxmbwsp-1383888968.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34775/original/ggxmbwsp-1383888968.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34775/original/ggxmbwsp-1383888968.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34775/original/ggxmbwsp-1383888968.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The victory of independent Cathy McGowan in the rural Victorian seat of Indi could offer hope for a ‘new politics’ to emerge.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Alan Porritt</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Given the level of professional expertise in Australia, it is a matter for concern - bewilderment even - that the range of issues in the 2013 election was so limited, and discussed at such a banal level. Australia has <a href="http://www.universitiesaustralia.edu.au/page/australia-s-universities/">39 universities</a> and more than four million graduates. What impact did they have in shaping the campaign? None, that I could observe. The words “universities” and “research” were never uttered in the campaign.</p>
<p>Oddly, there was some discussion about apprenticeships, which <a href="https://www.google.com.au/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CCkQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.australianapprenticeships.gov.au%2Fsites%2Fdefault%2Ffiles%2Fpublication-documents%2FAustralianChamberAlliancePtyLtdApprenticeshipsCentres.docx&ei=f4N8Uvv5AcyXiQfKrICIAg&usg=AFQjCNGyi4hGwe0nxz-n1xuKZ4knjCMg5w&bvm=bv.56146854,d.aGc">total about 450,000</a>. This may reflect the preoccupation by focus groups with the western suburbs of Sydney.</p>
<p>It is amazing that the climate change debate has been so badly informed because large numbers of Australians are skilled observers in relevant areas. There is still <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-chaotic-beast-probably-wacky-weather-and-climate-forecasting-5182">some confusion</a> between “climate” and “weather”, but farmers are acute observers of changes in the seasons. Gardeners – millions of them – can report that flowers are blooming earlier in the season. Birdwatchers keep detailed records. So do bush walkers. There was no attempt to enlist them in an information campaign, nor did they volunteer.</p>
<p>Tackling complex problems demands complex solutions (notably refugees and climate change), which cannot be reduced to parroting a few simple slogans (“turn back the boats”, “stop this toxic tax”). <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-is-retail-politics-16997">“Retail politics”</a>“, sometimes called "transactional politics” - where policies are adopted not because they are right but because they can be sold - is a dangerous development and should be rejected. </p>
<p>We must maintain confidence that major problems can be addressed – and act accordingly. This involves reviving the process of dialogue: “explain!, explain!, explain!”, rejecting mere sloganeering and populism. Whitlam often drove his colleagues mad because he could not stop explaining. We need evidence-based policies but often evidence lacks the psychological carrying power generated by appeals to prejudice or fear of disadvantage.</p>
<p>Most of all, we need a higher level of citizen involvement in the whole process of public debate, not leaving it all to the professionals.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>This piece is based on the speech “A values deficit, toxic politics, and the climate change debacle”, delivered by Barry Jones at the Geelong Interchurch Social Justice Network on October 30.</em></p>
<p><em>NOTE: This piece was amended on November 11 to read that “97% of comment articles were hostile to – or sceptical of – climate science” to more accurately reflect the author’s intentions.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/20024/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Barry Jones is a member of the Australian Labor Party, was Minister for Science in the Hawke Labor government (1983-1990), and was a former National President of the ALP (1992-2000; 2005-06).</span></em></p>We live in an age of unprecedented prosperity, in which the major influences have been secularism, materialism, utilitarianism, urbanisation, remoteness from nature, institutional failure (especially in…Barry Jones, Honorary (Professorial Fellow), Melbourne Graduate School of Education, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/197572013-11-04T00:08:31Z2013-11-04T00:08:31ZA new Senate election looms large for WA voters<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/34299/original/ry6hdb6b-1383519912.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Greens senator Scott Ludlam has been successful in the full recount of the WA Senate vote. But the fight over who goes to Canberra looks like continuing for some time yet.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Alan Porritt</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) will officially declare the result of the full recount of the Western Australian Senate vote today. Scott Ludlam from the Australian Greens and Wayne Dropulich from the Australian Sports Party have <a href="http://www.aec.gov.au/media/media-releases/2013/e11-02.htm">been triumphant</a> in the recount, while the ALP’s Louise Pratt and Zhenya Wang from the Palmer United Party (PUP) had their election voided.</p>
<p>The AEC’s declaration of the result from the recount is by no means the end of this saga. Over 1300 votes <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/wa-senate-recount-in-turmoil-as-1375-votes-go-missing-20131031-2wjub.html">went missing</a> during the recount and could not be located, so it now seems inevitable that the recount will be the subject of an appeal to the High Court, which is empowered to hear any such petition in its capacity as the Court of Disputed Returns.</p>
<p>While the victors were gratified by the outcome, the vanquished were understandably frustrated. Pratt said that she was <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/clive-palmer-to-launch-challenge-to-western-australia-senate-recount-20131102-2wtjj.html#ixzz2jTjW1wxJPratt">“deeply disappointed”</a> by developments, while PUP founder Clive Palmer <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-11-02/aec-announces-wa-senate-results-amid-missing-ballots/5065974">openly rejected</a> the result, arguing that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The original count should stand, as it is the only count where we’ve had a full count of all votes.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The procedure for appealing an election result is located in the <a href="http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/cea1918233/">Commonwealth Electoral Act</a>. An appeal can be lodged if there are concerns of an illegal act or practice having interfered with the election, questions about the eligibility of a candidate, or a belief that there has been a failure of compliance in relation to the act. An appeal can be brought by any of the candidates, any elector qualified to vote at that election or the AEC.</p>
<p>In this case, the basis of the appeal will likely centre on concerns about the integrity and reliability of the recount. The fact that over 1300 ballot papers were omitted from the recount will make this a fairly easy case for litigants to prosecute.</p>
<p>It is difficult to predict how the Court of Disputed Returns might find in this matter because we do not have a similar case against which to compare this situation. Appeals are not especially frequent, most are brought against divisional results in the House of Representatives and many of the petitions are ultimately dismissed. But the particular circumstances of this case increase the prospects of the Court ordering a new half senate election.</p>
<p>If it a fresh election is held, it will not be without challenges. </p>
<p>It will be important that a new election is held in a timely manner. There will be a myriad of legal and practical matters that will have to be attended to before the Senate by-election can proceed, all of which will take some time to work through. ABC electoral expert Antony Green <a href="http://blogs.abc.net.au/antonygreen/2013/11/whats-going-on-with-the-wa-senate-counct.html#more">believes</a> that in order for incoming WA senators to take their seats by July 1, 2014 (when the new Senate will be sworn in), the latest possible date for a new election is late May 2014.</p>
<p>There is, of course, a fairly hefty price tag attached with holding a new election. According to <a href="http://www.news.com.au/national/taxpayers-would-foot-11m-cost-of-new-senate-election-in-western-australia/story-e6frfkp9-1226751584623">one estimate</a>, a fresh election has the potential to cost upwards of $A11 million.</p>
<p>A new Senate election is also very likely to produce a much lower turnout. Most voters resent being recalled to the ballot box for a by-election and many respond by staying away on polling day.</p>
<p>The problem of electoral fatigue is likely to be particularly heightened because WA voters have faced <a href="http://www.elections.wa.gov.au/elections/state/sg2013">state</a> and <a href="http://www.elections.wa.gov.au/elections/local/e885f29a-80e4-43e0-9135-5478b128abb5">local</a> government elections this year, in addition to the federal poll.</p>
<p>To the extent that turnout at House of Representatives by-elections is any kind of reliable gauge, then expect the level of participation to plummet to around 78-80% of eligible voters on the roll, well short of the 90-95% for standard elections. A lower-than-usual turnout can provide ready ammunition for disaffected candidates to cast aspersions on the legitimacy of the outcome.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/34300/original/8bqnyyfr-1383521765.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/34300/original/8bqnyyfr-1383521765.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34300/original/8bqnyyfr-1383521765.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34300/original/8bqnyyfr-1383521765.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34300/original/8bqnyyfr-1383521765.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34300/original/8bqnyyfr-1383521765.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34300/original/8bqnyyfr-1383521765.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Voters in Western Australia could be forced back to the polls if a challenge to the High Court over the disputed Senate recount is successful.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Lukas Coch</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There is no guarantee that a fresh Senate election will not produce a similarly tight election outcome. It is possible that the publicity garnered by <a href="https://theconversation.com/micro-parties-win-on-the-big-boys-rules-18027">microparties at the 2013 election</a> might embolden even more candidates and groups to nominate for the Senate. If this were to occur, and similarly convoluted preference agreements were negotiated between parties, then Western Australia may very well find itself in much the same position as it did at the conclusion of the first count.</p>
<p>There is no doubt that the revelation of the missing ballot papers has brought unfavourable attention to the AEC. Some have suggested that the AEC is guilty of gross incompetence. Clive Palmer, in a fit of pique, went much further and accused the AEC of <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/31/wa-senate-recount-investigation-launched-after-1375-ballots-lost">“trying to rig the election”</a> to prevent PUP from having the balance of power in the Senate.</p>
<p>The idea that the AEC is somehow corrupt or profoundly incompetent is a stretch. If the AEC was really afflicted by endemic corruption than it would have been most unlikely that this matter would have been exposed publicly. The AEC was, after all, very quick to admit to its mistake in losing the votes, and <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/31/wa-senate-recount-investigation-launched-after-1375-ballots-lost">called in</a> former federal police chief commission Mick Keelty to investigate.</p>
<p>While Keelty’s investigation will most likely fail to uncover the whereabouts of the missing ballot papers, it will serve as a reminder that Australian elections are subject to high levels of scrutiny and rigour.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/19757/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Narelle Miragliotta does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) will officially declare the result of the full recount of the Western Australian Senate vote today. Scott Ludlam from the Australian Greens and Wayne Dropulich…Narelle Miragliotta, Senior Lecturer in Australian Politics, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/191332013-10-14T19:16:41Z2013-10-14T19:16:41ZPunching, prodding and blocking: the opposition’s changing role in politics<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/32975/original/9tpbjg4p-1381724470.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The new opposition leader, Bill Shorten, has very little leverage over the government.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP Image/Lukas Coch</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Australian parliamentary politics has always had a reputation for a certain rough and tumble. In the 1850s, British economist <a href="http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/jevons-william-stanley-3857">William Stanley Jevons</a> commented on the rowdiness of the proceedings of the New South Wales Legislative Assembly. </p>
<p>Some decades later parliamentarian John Haynes <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Haynes_(journalist)">rained blows down on Paddy Crick</a> in the parliament, affectionately known as the “bear pit”.</p>
<p>In comparison, today’s parliamentary politics are a somewhat tame affair, with any aggression playing out verbally. </p>
<p>The role of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Official_Opposition_(Australia)">Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition</a> in Australia’s Westminster system government is to hold the government of the day to account. The system is designed to be adversarial with even the layout of parliamentary chambers reflecting the great divide between the “ins” and the “outs”.</p>
<p>Such an arrangement is not conducive to consensus but to conflict; the opposition attacks and the government of the day defends. The two sides – and it is assumed that there will be only two primary players – are not meant to be friends but adversaries. That is how those schooled in the Westminster system conduct politics.</p>
<p>There will always be some frisson in the Australian parliamentary system but its degree depends on the circumstances of the time. Oppositions are meant to hold governments to account but the degree of enthusiasm with which they approach this task is linked to how close, or far away, they are from the possibility of attaining government.</p>
<p>An opposition that controls the Senate will play politics much harder than one which is in the minority in both Houses. A government which controls both Houses can pretty well do as it pleases as the opposition has no leverage over it.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/32979/original/s46kwsfm-1381725691.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/32979/original/s46kwsfm-1381725691.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=598&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/32979/original/s46kwsfm-1381725691.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=598&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/32979/original/s46kwsfm-1381725691.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=598&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/32979/original/s46kwsfm-1381725691.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=752&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/32979/original/s46kwsfm-1381725691.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=752&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/32979/original/s46kwsfm-1381725691.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=752&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">As opposition leader, Malcolm Fraser took advantage of the Whitlam government’s deep unpopularity.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This explains why then-opposition leader Malcolm Fraser was able to play politics so hard in 1975. The Labor government did not control the Senate and had become deeply unpopular through its scandals and incompetence. Fraser could smell power and behaved accordingly. The temperature of politics rose as a result.</p>
<p>The situation after the 2010 election was somewhat similar. Neither side of politics could command a majority in the House of Representatives. As is well known, Julia Gillard successfully negotiated agreements with Greens MP Adam Bandt and with three of the independent members to give her the slimmest of majorities.</p>
<p>The opposition saw the possibility of power slip through their fingers. Two independent members from conservative electorates decided to align themselves with Labor. In essence the Coalition had been denied government by a few hundred votes; had they won <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/elections/federal/2010/guide/cora.htm">Corangamite</a>, the dynamic would have changed in their favour.</p>
<p>These circumstances explain the intensity with which Tony Abbott as opposition leader invested his role and the extent to which he pursued the government. On the one hand there was the reality that he had gone very, very close to winning government only to be denied by Julia Gillard’s negotiating skills. </p>
<p>On the other hand, there was the very real possibility that he could be governing before the next election. Power, perhaps, lay only a heart attack or a car accident away.</p>
<p>The particular intensity of politics between 2010 and 2013 was largely the consequence of these circumstances. Intense disappointment combined with the constant presence of government so tantalisingly close meant that the opposition was forever in election mode, just waiting for an opportunity to present itself.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/32978/original/rxddg72c-1381725507.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/32978/original/rxddg72c-1381725507.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/32978/original/rxddg72c-1381725507.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/32978/original/rxddg72c-1381725507.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/32978/original/rxddg72c-1381725507.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/32978/original/rxddg72c-1381725507.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/32978/original/rxddg72c-1381725507.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Parliament: also known as the ‘bear pit’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP Image/Lukas Coch</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This explains why the opposition pursued Labor MP Craig Thomson so vigorously. They only needed one domino to fall. Their cause was assisted by the fact, as in 1975, that the government became increasingly unpopular, in part caused by the compromises it had to make, especially with the Greens, to maintain itself in power.</p>
<p>It is now a matter of history that no domino fell, that the Labor government hung on for its full term. It was a very intense full term in which the opposition was constantly on the attack.</p>
<p>The 2013 elections have changed the dynamic of Australian politics completely. The new government has a commanding majority in the House of Representatives. </p>
<p>The new Senate, which will commence sitting on July 1, 2014, will have a large number of minority players. But it will be possible for the Coalition government to negotiate with a gaggle of largely centre-right senators to achieve the numbers to pass at least some of its legislation. The Labor-Green bloc has lost its control of the Senate.</p>
<p>Under these circumstances, one would expect the temperature of politics to drop considerably. Now in power, Tony Abbott has no need to pursue the tactics which served him well in opposition. His role is to run the country.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/32980/original/84y2jt4k-1381726014.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/32980/original/84y2jt4k-1381726014.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/32980/original/84y2jt4k-1381726014.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/32980/original/84y2jt4k-1381726014.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/32980/original/84y2jt4k-1381726014.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/32980/original/84y2jt4k-1381726014.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/32980/original/84y2jt4k-1381726014.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Clive Palmer’s Palmer United Party will hold the balance of power in the Senate.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP Image/Paul Miller</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The new opposition leader, Bill Shorten, has very little leverage over the government. After June next year, Labor and the Greens will no longer control the Senate.</p>
<p>If this government does not run its full term it will not be because of anything Labor does. It will be because the government finds itself unable to manage Clive Palmer and his Palmer United Party and they decide to block legislation in the Senate, precipitating a double dissolution. </p>
<p>In a way, Palmer has become the key opposition figure, as his party will possess the balance of power in the Senate and there is a history between the colourful Palmer and the Coalition.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/19133/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gregory Melleuish does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Australian parliamentary politics has always had a reputation for a certain rough and tumble. In the 1850s, British economist William Stanley Jevons commented on the rowdiness of the proceedings of the…Gregory Melleuish, Associate Professor, School of History and Politics, University of WollongongLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/180782013-10-10T03:35:45Z2013-10-10T03:35:45ZFederal Greens vote will be bad news for Tasmania’s environment<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/32679/original/wm77pdqk-1381279067.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Tasmania is likely headed back to the bad old days of loggers versus greenies.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP Image/Scott Gelston</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Now that all Senate seats apart from Western Australia have been <a href="http://www.aec.gov.au/About_AEC/Media_releases/2013/e10-10.htm">finalised</a>, it’s clear the Greens have had a <a href="http://theconversation.com/election-2013-brings-a-mixed-result-for-the-greens-17524">mixed result</a>. But the worst of the bad news for the party is likely yet to come, when Tasmania goes to the polls next year.</p>
<h2>Federal results: win some, lose some</h2>
<p>While the Greens look likely to have lost their West Australian Senator Scott Ludlum, their candidate Janet Rice has picked up an <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/federal-election-2013/results/senate/vic/">extra Senate seat</a> in Victoria. So the total of nine Green Senators is unchanged. But the Greens will lose the balance of power after July next year when the new Senate convenes because <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/federal-election-2013/results/senate/">seven independents</a> have been elected.</p>
<p>This will leave the Greens unable to thwart environmental policy rollbacks such as the repeal of Labor’s <a href="http://www.cleanenergyfuture.gov.au/">carbon pricing package</a>. For leader, Senator Christine Milne, the election results are therefore bitter sweet. The Greens have maintained their numbers but <a href="http://greensmps.org.au/content/media-releases/vote-green-abbott-proof-senate">lost influence</a> in the Senate, and despite their successes their vote has actually imploded in the both houses.</p>
<p>There was a 3.3% nationwide swing against the party, whose support has trended downwards (from 11.76% in 2010 to 8.4% in 2013) for the first time since 1996, with the party clearly punished for its association with both the Labor government and its carbon tax.</p>
<h2>Green vote implodes in Tasmania</h2>
<p>Nowhere was the implosion of the Green vote more significant than in Tasmania. This bodes ill for the prospects of the Australian Greens who have been greatly influenced by green political developments in Tasmania. </p>
<p>The Tasmanian Greens are hugely experienced. They have supported three minority governments (Labor and Liberal) and currently two Greens sit as Labor Ministers in a quasi-coalition arrangement.</p>
<p>Both Christine Milne and Bob Brown have led the Tasmanian Greens into supporting minority state government. Brown was leader when the Greens supported the Labor minority government (1989-91) and Milne was when they supported the conservative Liberal minority government (1996-98). Both sought tangible environmental benefits, and both <a href="http://eprints.utas.edu.au/1578/">walked away</a> from minority government when these were no longer assured.</p>
<p>In both cases the Greens vote declined at the next state election, in 1992, from 17.1% to 13.2% without the loss of any seats, and in 1998, only marginally, from 11.1% to 10.2%. But the Greens lost three of their four seats in 1998 after a change in the electoral quota from 12.5% to 17.6%, which was intended by the major parties to <a href="http://www.parliament.tas.gov.au/tpl/InfoSheets/reform_1998.htm">get the Greens out of the house</a>.</p>
<p>Despite these setbacks, the Tasmanian Green state vote has grown steadily from 5.4% in 1982 to 21.6% in 2010. It is now set for a <a href="http://www.emrs.com.au/pdfs/State%20Voting%20Intentions%20May%202013.pdf">sharp downturn</a> in 2014, as voters flee both the Labor minority government and its supporters for the conservatives, much as happened at the federal level. The Greens 2013 national result in Tasmania is telling, with a drop from its 2010 result of 16.82% to a primary vote of just 8.32% in 2013.</p>
<h2>What will happen to the environment?</h2>
<p>Conservative governments have been <a href="http://www.businessspectator.com.au/article/2013/5/23/science-environment/newman-lets-land-clearing-cowboys-loose">dismantling environmental policy</a> around the country, with the incoming national government aiming to repeal carbon pricing as its first order of business. And so it will be in Tasmania, where the Green vote will decline from 21.6% to around 14% in 2014, with the possible loss of seats. A conservative Liberal majority government will be elected, and environmental policies will be reversed.</p>
<p>Despite the success of Tasmania’s transition to a new economy defined by its natural and cultural heritage and its clean, green branding, the Tasmanian Liberals have promised to support the old industries. They plan to <a href="https://theconversation.com/new-danger-for-australian-world-heritage-wilderness-18077">log World Heritage forests</a> and oppose the remarkable Tasmanian Forest Agreement between forest stakeholders, which was set to achieve reduced forest conflict and to move the forest industry onto a sustainable environmental and economic footing.</p>
<p>The Liberals will encourage mining ventures in the Tarkine, the largest Gondwanan cool temperate rainforest in Australia and possibly in the southern hemisphere, and a refuge for the <a href="https://theconversation.com/tarkine-mines-could-be-last-straw-for-tasmanian-devils-11483">endangered Tasmanian Devil</a>. They have talked about <a href="http://www.theadvocate.com.au/story/1603810/opinion-whats-in-a-name/">revoking</a> the name “Tarkine”. They <a href="http://www.changeforabrighterfuture.com.au/PFBFuture.pdf">plan</a> to undo environmental regulations, cut “green tape”, reduce third party planning appeals, not “lock up” any mining regions or forests, and axe the Tasmanian Climate Action Council.</p>
<p>The Liberals will have the support of the national government led by arch-conservative Tony Abbott, and, in opposing the environmental policy reversals across the country, the Greens may well find that support for their beleaguered state and national parties rallies again. </p>
<p>In this the Tasmanian and Australian Greens will certainly find common cause and, with a clear distance now established from unpopular Labor governments, they will remind voters of the reasons why their parties were founded in the first place</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/18078/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kate Crowley does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Now that all Senate seats apart from Western Australia have been finalised, it’s clear the Greens have had a mixed result. But the worst of the bad news for the party is likely yet to come, when Tasmania…Kate Crowley, Associate Professor Public and Environmental Policy, University of TasmaniaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/175352013-10-03T05:55:50Z2013-10-03T05:55:50ZThe 2013 Senate contest: Australia lurches to the right<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/32376/original/dwd74znr-1380775829.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The new Senate will be dominated by an expanding crossbench of minor and microparty members.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Alan Porritt</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>With the official count of the Senate now completed, the implications of the contest and what it says about the mindset of the Australian body politic may now proceed.</p>
<p>The key consequences of the half-Senate election are as follows. First, the collective left-of-centre majority (that is, Labor and the Greens) that had been in place since July 1, 2011, will not apply after the new Senate is sworn-in on July 1, 2014. While both Labor and the Greens suffered swings against them in this election, the Greens were able to offset the loss of sitting senator Scott Ludlam in <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/federal-election-2013/results/senate/wa/">Western Australia</a> (pending a <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-10-02/palmer-united-candidate-to-represent-wa-in-senate/4993888">request for a recount</a> at the time of writing) with a gain of a seat in <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/federal-election-2013/results/senate/vic/">Victoria</a>.</p>
<p>The real loser in the 2013 Senate contest has been the Australian Labor Party. In three states Labor failed to win a sufficient vote to secure two quotas (that is, two seats), and in South Australia Labor managed to win only one seat. Compared with its 2007 result, Labor also lost seats in Victoria, Tasmania and New South Wales. Labor’s national vote in the Senate was <a href="http://vtr.aec.gov.au/SenateStateFirstPrefsByGroup-17496-NAT.htm">30.1%</a> - a swing against its 2010 result of over 5%.</p>
<p>However, Labor has not been the only major party to lose ground in this election. The Coalition has also suffered a net loss of a Senate position as a consequence of the failure of Helen Kroger to defend her seat in Victoria. These losses of both Labor and Coalition seats reflects the fact that with a combined primary vote of 67.7%, this is the worst performance the three major parties – Labor, Liberal and National – have had in Senate contests since the introduction of proportional representation in 1949.</p>
<p>The big winners in the 2013 contest have been the so-called “microparties”. The roll call of party representation in the Senate after July 1, 2014, will include the Palmer United Party (PUP) with three senators, the Liberal Democratic Party (one senator), the Family First Party (one senator), the Democratic Labor Party (one senator elected in 2010), as well as a senator from the Australian Motoring Enthusiasts Party (AMEP) from Victoria. This is the outcome that has caused the most gnashing of teeth across the land.</p>
<p>Also in this crossbench formation will be <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/federal-election-2013/results/senate/sa/">South Australian</a> independent Nick Xenophon, whose ticket polled so strongly (24.8%) that it nearly won a second position. As it turned out, Green preferences sent Sarah Hanson-Young’s surplus to Family First, thus enabling that party to beat the Xenophon ticket’s Stirling Griff to the last available seat.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/32374/original/fjxqb8yd-1380775003.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/32374/original/fjxqb8yd-1380775003.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/32374/original/fjxqb8yd-1380775003.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=164&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/32374/original/fjxqb8yd-1380775003.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=164&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/32374/original/fjxqb8yd-1380775003.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=164&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/32374/original/fjxqb8yd-1380775003.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=207&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/32374/original/fjxqb8yd-1380775003.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=207&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/32374/original/fjxqb8yd-1380775003.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=207&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Table 1: 2013 Senate result on primary vote % by state and party.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This table includes 5% of the vote going to the Nationals, running on a separate ticket in Western Australia.</p>
<p>At one level these results appear to be deviant outcomes and suggest a problem with the Senate voting system. This is especially so when the election of Ricky Muir from the AMEP could occur even though he polled a mere 0.5% of the primary vote. </p>
<p>An account of the election of this group of candidates is possible, however, and is founded on three important facts that can be gleaned from data contained in the table above. First, the primary vote for the main parties (Labor, Coalition and Greens) was so weak in this election that they could not share the available seats between themselves in each state. Second, the total vote for all parties and candidates other than Labor, Coalition, and the Greens in every state was strong enough to achieve a full quota (or near enough to a full quota) and thus be entitled to a seat. </p>
<p>Finally, the parties outside the of the Labor-Coalition-Greens group ensured that one of their number would win a seat by directing preferences to each other, as is allowed under the Group Ticket Vote (that is, the “above the line”) voting system.</p>
<p>Accordingly, certain microparties figured as important influences on the outcome over which of their number would secure a seat. The success of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in NSW and the PUP in Queensland was based on the respective parties securing a very strong primary vote (9.5% and 9.9% respectively), but the process was completed by the flow of preferences - especially from the Sex Party. </p>
<p>The Sex Party also played important roles in channelling preferences to the PUP (in Tasmania) and to Muir and the AMEP in Victoria. The Sex Party may not have won any seats with a national vote of 1.4%, but its preferences have been crucial in a host of outcomes.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/32381/original/s6jhm8v7-1380777283.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/32381/original/s6jhm8v7-1380777283.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/32381/original/s6jhm8v7-1380777283.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/32381/original/s6jhm8v7-1380777283.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/32381/original/s6jhm8v7-1380777283.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/32381/original/s6jhm8v7-1380777283.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/32381/original/s6jhm8v7-1380777283.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Greens senator Scott Ludlam has lost his WA seat after an extremely tight count, but is seeking a recount.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Alan Porritt</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Those alarmed and appalled by this result are already lining up to target the <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-do-we-solve-a-problem-like-the-senate-18042">voting system for blame</a>, but the proportional system used for the Senate does give a good insight into the political inclinations of the community that usually get obscured in the single member, majority voting system used in the House of Representatives where the major parties still win seats despite falling primary support. </p>
<p>The 2013 Senate result indicates that nearly 10% of the Australian electorate was unhappy with Labor and the Greens, and re-aligned their support accordingly. By the same token, the negligible movement in the swing for the Coalition indicated the extent to which voters were also ambivalent about the major party alternative to Labor and the Greens. The biggest swings were to the so-called microparties, with the PUP (4.9% nationally) and the LDP (3.0% nationally) leading the way. What’s more, these parties sit to the right of the debate, either as a consequence of their social conservatism, their small government ethos and/or their populism.</p>
<p>All in all, it is the Liberal Party that probably has the strongest grounds for concern at the outcome. At issue here is the performance of the LDP. The LDP’s strongest state was NSW, where the party <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/federal-election-2013/detours-ahead-as-minor-parties-claim-senate-balance-20130908-2te36.html">drew the first position</a> on the massive Senate ballot paper and may have been advantaged by a “donkey” vote. </p>
<p>Of greater concern to the Liberal Party, however, was the classification of the LDP and anecdotal evidence that voters may have mistaken the LDP for the LNP. If this is the case, the LDP may have won a seat at the expense of the LNP.</p>
<p>It would seem that one consequence of the LDP result will be an attempt at strengthening the rules governing the formation and registration of political parties to discourage the proliferation of microparties. This is an outcome that would probably please the AEC as well, given the difficulty it had in fitting everyone on the Senate ballot paper. </p>
<p>To do this, the Abbott government will have to convince Labor and the Greens to vote with the Coalition to get the necessary bills through what looks like being a difficult Senate.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/17535/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nick Economou does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>With the official count of the Senate now completed, the implications of the contest and what it says about the mindset of the Australian body politic may now proceed. The key consequences of the half-Senate…Nick Economou, Senior Lecturer, School of Political and Social Inquiry, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/183132013-09-30T04:24:35Z2013-09-30T04:24:35ZYoung people, employment and the Coalition’s regional challenge<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/31621/original/skvp346g-1379559204.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">What does the future hold for young adults under a Coalition government?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Julian Smith</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Coalition government has begun its term in office with some controversial policy proposals related to Australia’s international engagement. These include <a href="http://www.news.com.au/national-news/federal-election/coalition-promises-cuts-to-foreign-aid-public-service-and-murray-darling-scheme/story-fnho52ip-1226711731026">cuts to international aid</a>, hardline responses to asylum seekers and, less controversially, revisiting the <a href="http://www.liberal.org.au/latest-news/2013/08/30/coalitions-policy-new-colombo-plan">Colombo Plan</a>. They reflect a series of tensions arising in Australia’s engagement with the region. Education is seen to play a significant role in “soft diplomacy”.</p>
<p>The 2013 edition of <a href="http://www.fya.org.au">How Young People are Faring</a>, published by the Foundation for Young Australians (FYA), highlights some key trends in young people’s transition from school to work, study and training related to their cultural backgrounds, as well as Australia’s economic relationship to the region. It pulls into focus certain cultural and economic challenges for the Coalition government that require a nuanced understanding of some key dynamics of Australia’s engagement with Asia. </p>
<p>These dynamics suggest that any strategy to engage the region should recognise this engagement as a two-way street; one that flows inwards and outwards and which should draw from a nexus between local and international education. </p>
<h2>Looking inwards</h2>
<p>Modern Australia is defined by its cultural diversity. As demographer <a href="http://theconversation.com/the-cornerstone-of-democracy-why-and-how-the-census-counts-7607">Graeme Hugo</a> points out, there are 62 birthplace groups with more than 10,000 members in Australia, making it “one of the most ethnically diverse in the world”.</p>
<p>Asia looms large in Australia’s cultural makeup. <a href="http://foi.deewr.gov.au/system/files/doc/other/state_of_australias_young_people_a_report_on_the_social_economic_health_and_family_lives_of_young_people.pdf">One in five</a> young Australians speaks a language other than English at home (mostly an Asian language). Five of the <a href="http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Previousproducts/1301.0Feature%20Article7012009%E2%80%9310?opendocument&tabname=Summary&prodno=1301.0&issue=2009%9610&num=&view=">top ten languages</a> spoken at home include Mandarin, Cantonese, Vietnamese, Hindi and Tagalog. </p>
<p>The authors of the <a href="http://www.fya.org.au">FYA report</a> from the National Centre for Vocational Education Research (NCVER) note that the rate of achievement of Year 12 and higher education qualifications for 20-24 year olds from non-English speaking backgrounds is far higher than for Australia as a whole. A challenge to the Coalition government is to understand what is going on in these households and if/how this understanding can be applied across the population in general.</p>
<h2>Speaking the language of the region</h2>
<p>Looking outwards, the Coalition has <a href="http://www.liberal.org.au/latest-news/2013/08/30/coalitions-policy-new-colombo-plan">promised A$100 million</a> to fund a new Colombo Plan in the form of a five-year pilot scheme and trial next year. This will seek to encourage Australian undergraduates to study and work in the region as part of their degree. </p>
<p>In a speech in June last year, then-opposition leader Tony Abbott <a href="http://www.liberal.org.au/latest-news/2012/06/30/leader-oppositions-address-56th-federal-council-liberal-party-australia">announced</a> that the new plan:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>…doesn’t just bring the best and the brightest from our region to Australia but that takes Australia’s best and brightest to our region.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Abbott recognises that our engagement with regional economies is vital to future prosperity. Citing research by Asialink, the FYA report highlights that Australia conducts more trade with Asia than the <a href="http://asialink.unimelb.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0008/619793/Developing_an_Asia_Capable_Workforce.pdf">rest of the world combined</a> and that Asia’s real GDP will more than double from US$26 trillion in 2011 to US$67 trillion in 2030. This amounts to more than the projected GDP of the <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/editorial/asia-offers-us-more-than-coal-and-iron-ore-sales--if-we-know-how-20120906-25hcl.html">Americas and Europe combined</a>.</p>
<p>In the same 2012 speech, Abbott added: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>We should better appreciate not just how much Australia can give our neighbours but how much they can give us, in cultural insights as well as in trade benefits. But that’s hard when there are, for instance, 17,000 Indonesians studying here but only some 200 Australians studying there. </p>
<p>So a modern version of the Colombo Plan, operating as a two way rather than as a one way street… should reinforce our own and overseas future leaders’ understanding of all the things we have in common.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Recent evidence is unequivocal that Australian education is failing to meet the most basic requirement of regional engagement: language. University of Sydney vice-chancellor <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/higher-education/opinion/reverse-colombo-needs-cash-to-match-asia-ambitions/story-e6frgcko-1226721058509">Michael Spence</a> reminds us that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>…so few of our students are Asia-ready…[S]tudents are unlikely to fully embrace Asia - or to be of any use to Asia-based businesses - if they can’t communicate in a local language.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>As Asialink’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/learning-to-live-in-the-asian-century-3586">Kathe Kirby</a> points out, most students in other developed countries exit schooling with two or more languages. Thus allowing greater work opportunities in an interconnected world.</p>
<p>But in 2010, only 18% of Australian school students studied an Asian language, decreasing to only 5.4% by Year 12. Indonesian was losing <a href="https://theconversation.com/learning-to-live-in-the-asian-century-3586">10,000 students a year</a>. If the pattern continues, Kirby argues, there may be no students studying Indonesian at Year 12 by 2020.</p>
<p>This deficit flows on to Australian business - less than half of 380 businesses surveyed by <a href="http://asialink.unimelb.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0008/619793/Developing_an_Asia_Capable_Workforce.pdf">Asialink and the Australian Industry Group</a> reported having any board members or senior executives with Asian experience or language ability. Taking Australia’s “best and brightest to our region” requires policy and business engagement to develop the necessary cultural and linguistic capacity of Australians to properly engage the region. </p>
<p>The role of business and NGOs is seen to be an important base of support for the revitalised Colombo Plan, for example, through internships. This is a good idea which needs to fully acknowledge that relations with Asia must be a two-way street based on a strong, long-term commitment to language education, the development of cultural competencies, in-country study and other hands-on experience.</p>
<h2>A two-way street</h2>
<p>Other <a href="http://artsonline.monash.edu.au/cpur/files/2013/08/Scarce-Jobs.final_.pdf">recent research from Monash University</a> highlights another challenge to the government: temporary migrant workers who may be taking away jobs from young Australians. The authors, Bob Birrell and Ernest Healy, <a href="http://artsonline.monash.edu.au/cpur/files/2013/08/Scarce-Jobs.final_.pdf">point out</a> that in the year to May 2013, there was a rise of 168,000 recently-arrived overseas born migrants aged over 15 in Australia - 108,200 of whom were employed. This is almost as large as the increase in employment during that period (126,000).</p>
<p>In 2012-13, the number of Working Holiday Maker (WHM) visas issued was roughly equivalent to the number of school leavers who enter the workforce each year (around 250,000). These WHMs are aged 30 or less and seeking work in Australia, rather than a holiday supplemented by work. As a consequence, many young Australians “are seeking refuge in low-level training courses because of lack of employment opportunities”.</p>
<p>Even so, migration will play a major role in sustaining the Australian labour force. Given the ageing of the population, young adults make up a smaller proportion overall than previously. The workforce arguably has to come from somewhere, unless either fertility rates change significantly or sustainable alternatives can be proactively developed.</p>
<p><a href="http://theconversation.com/colombo-ii-send-students-to-asia-but-dont-ignore-the-asian-students-at-home-18156">Other considerations</a>, such as better meeting the needs of the international students already in Australia, have also been raised. </p>
<h2>Big picture policy</h2>
<p>With the Coalition government’s focus on Asia through education, a fresh opportunity arises to engage the region beyond the “business as usual” and pilot project-based funding to approaches that have too often been the case in the past. Responses need to be adequately resourced and deeply embedded in our education curricula and workplace practices. </p>
<p>They should join the dots between Australia’s existing cultural fabric and challenges to cement our pathways to and from the region, and demonstrate that Australia means business. </p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/18313/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lucas Walsh is Senior Research Fellow at the Foundation for Young Australians.</span></em></p>The Coalition government has begun its term in office with some controversial policy proposals related to Australia’s international engagement. These include cuts to international aid, hardline responses…Lucas Walsh, Associate Professor and Associate Dean (Berwick), Faculty of Education, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/185042013-09-26T20:42:01Z2013-09-26T20:42:01ZPolicy outlook: radical departure on defence or more of the same?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/31902/original/wf55qd2c-1380076769.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">What will defence policy under Tony Abbott and new defence minister David Johnston look like?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Dean Lewins</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Abbott government talks a good game on defence. While in opposition, new defence minister David Johnston slammed Labor for <a href="http://www.liberal.org.au/latest-news/2012/10/17/defence-white-paper-black-hole">failing to fund</a> the grand promises of the <a href="http://www.defence.gov.au/whitepaper2009/docs/defence_white_paper_2009.pdf">2009 Defence White Paper</a>. Now in office, the Coalition promises to <a href="http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/coalition-pledges-to-rebuild-defence-force-vowing-to-restore-defence-spending/story-e6frfkp9-1226708841652">raise defence spending to 2% of GDP</a> as soon as budgetary circumstances allow, trying to reassure the armed forces, regional allies and voters that “the adults are back in charge” of national security.</p>
<p>The Coalition’s promises to stop short-changing the Australian Defence Force (ADF), given that defence spending is now at its <a href="https://theconversation.com/factcheck-is-defence-spending-down-to-1938-levels-17427">lowest level as a percentage of GDP</a> since 1938, are heartening. So too is the Coalition’s resolve to invest in the military assets needed to protect the resource-rich but relatively unpopulated <a href="http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/minister-moots-consistent-increase-in-navy-funding/story-e6frfkp9-1226723116984">northwest region</a> of Australia. </p>
<p>However, in trying to look tough on defence, the Coalition reinforces three key distortions in Australia’s national security debate.</p>
<h2>Differences between Coalition and Labor policy</h2>
<p>First, the new government overdraws the contrast between their defence policy and that of the previous government. Partisanship aside, the thrust of the Coalition’s defence policy is consistent with its Labor predecessors. It can hardly be otherwise, for there is a bipartisan consensus on the key security challenges confronting Australia. These challenges range from the strategic instability accompanying China’s rise, through to terrorism and nuclear proliferation.</p>
<p>There is also a common commitment to the US alliance as the foundation of Australia’s security, and general agreement on the preferred mix of military means - high-end air and naval assets, combined with around three land combat brigades and special forces - needed to protect Australia.</p>
<p>Where the Coalition does distinguish itself (for now) from Labor is in the greater urgency it has signalled in restoring the ADF’s funding on a more sustainable footing.</p>
<h2>Defence spending - a deficit of will as much as money</h2>
<p>However, this leads to the second distortion in the national security debate. There is a broad unwillingness among policymakers to recognise the constraints governments now face in mobilising the political will needed to properly fund Australia’s national security needs.</p>
<p>Australia currently confronts an increasingly contested regional security environment. Rapidly escalating tensions between our first (China) and second (Japan) largest trading partners, increasing Chinese assertiveness in the South China Sea, and the perpetual wildcard of a nuclear-armed North Korea all mark growing strategic volatility.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, America’s slow economic recovery is stoking demands in Washington that America’s Asia-Pacific allies – including Australia - pick up more of the slack in upholding a stable regional security order.</p>
<p>A more volatile neighbourhood and a more demanding senior ally are therefore pressuring Australia to lift its defence spending. But at the same time, Australia faces massive demands on the public purse, ranging from the healthcare demands of an ageing population to badly-needed infrastructure investment. Coupled with public hostility to tax increases, this prevents governments of all stripes from investing in the military capabilities needed to bolster our diplomacy.</p>
<h2>Military power and diplomacy - complements, not alternatives</h2>
<p>The third - and gravest - distortion in the current national security debate is the widespread tendency to reduce national security to questions regarding the levels and composition of defence expenditure alone. This is problematic, because military power works best as an instrument of political influence when harnessed in conjunction with effective diplomacy.</p>
<p>Successive governments from both sides of politics have loudly proclaimed (in words, if not in deeds) their determination to invest in Australia’s military capacities. But they have also consistently under-funded Australia’s diplomatic capacities, such that Australia now has the <a href="http://lowyinstitute.org/publications/diplomatic-disrepair-rebuilding-australias-international-policy-infrastructure">smallest diplomatic footprint</a> of any G20 country.</p>
<h2>Defence policy in the Asian century</h2>
<p>Reducing national security to questions of defence policy - and defence to a question of dollars and weapons platforms - is especially problematic in the <a href="http://asiancentury.dpmc.gov.au/">Asian century</a>.</p>
<p>As our Asian neighbours develop economically, we will no longer be able to base our security on buying more and better weaponry than potential regional adversaries, as we have done in the past.</p>
<p>As Asia grows richer, Australia’s established technological lead will diminish, as will the ability to militarily outspend our neighbours. Possessing a potent military will remain essential in our emerging regional environment, both to protect Australia’s vital interests and also to promote our values through activities such as humanitarian assistance and disaster relief - in which the ADF has outstanding capacity and experience.</p>
<p>But beyond these considerations, a strong military will be most crucial in supporting the creative diplomacy Australia needs to proactively shape for a peaceful regional environment. One key continuity the Coalition carries over from the Rudd and Gillard governments lies in its “supersizing” of Australia’s strategic geography from an Asia-Pacific to an Indo-Pacific frame. If the Abbott government is to persist with this, Australia will need to consolidate its security partnerships with key regional countries – particularly India and Indonesia. </p>
<p>Having credible military reserves is of course key to developing such partnerships. But these efforts will surely falter, unless future governments match their grand promises to the ADF with an equally solemn commitment to resourcing the diplomatic capacities needed to effectively advance Australia’s interests in a more complex and turbulent age.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/18504/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andrew Phillips receives funding from the Australian Research Council as an ARC Discovery Early Career Research Award (DECRA) Fellow for the project 'Understanding Asia's Fragile Giants: Empire, Sovereignty and Chinese and Indian Security Perceptions and Strategies in the Asian Century.'</span></em></p>The Abbott government talks a good game on defence. While in opposition, new defence minister David Johnston slammed Labor for failing to fund the grand promises of the 2009 Defence White Paper. Now in…Andrew Phillips, Senior Lecturer in International Relations and Strategic Studies, The University of QueenslandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/185892013-09-25T20:58:22Z2013-09-25T20:58:22ZElection 2013 and defining political success<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/31901/original/ck3k7j92-1380076671.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Tony Abbott is seeking to define the terms in which his government will be understood by the public.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Lukas Coch</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Just when you thought it was safe to forget an otherwise forgettable election, there is one person who won’t let you. Tony Abbott wants to remind you in order to continue defining both the election and Labor. He wants to shape the political battlefield in the months ahead. And Labor don’t know what to do about this rhetorical technique called definition.</p>
<p>Bill Shorten and Anthony Albanese are currently touring the country, <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-09-24/albanese-shorten-debate-over-labor-leadership/4978860">wooing Labor members</a> with their policy ideas of science, a diverse economy, infrastructure and the like in order to win party leadership.</p>
<p>Of course, Labor is in opposition and will need to oppose Abbott. However, Labor don’t know how to convincingly do this. In government, it relied too much on painting him as a nasty man without connecting that to larger political themes through the power of definition.</p>
<p>To explain, definition is vitally important in argument and we do it all the time in general and in politics.</p>
<p>For example, we are in the middle of a debate about same sex marriage and each side chooses a definition to advance their cause. And notice how the definitions are “loaded”, so to speak, to reflect how they value their choice. People cannot help injecting their approvals or disapprovals into definitions. This is inevitable in politics in particular and in arguments in general.</p>
<p>Those against the proposal define it as between a man and a woman, thus hoping to cut off any further development. Those in favour of the proposal attempt to open it up by defining marriage as between two people who love each other. These opposing stands are not simply based on facts which are somehow reconcilable but on values which are incommensurable.</p>
<p>Definitions are the launch-pads for making our persuasive cases to others. A popular definition is “Labor is the party of big government”, which is meant to skew things to why we should consider Labor bad for the economy.</p>
<p>To advance a definition is to plead a cause, to advance a claim, and this is where leadership comes in.</p>
<p>One of the prime skills of a political leader is the capacity to define people and situations and so shape the context in which opponents, events and proposals are viewed by the public. A successful leader thus shapes perceptions of opponents and of the political landscape they contest.</p>
<p>So, in place of detailed policies, Abbott deployed the old narrative of populism over three years. I’m of the view that populism is an indelible part of democracy, not its dangerous aberration.</p>
<p>Since the 19th century there has been a view amongst many in the Anglosphere that paints politicians as lying scumbags who are part of an establishment, screwing “the people”. With this anti-politics politics goes the tendency of people generally to attack government, especially when it helps constituencies they don’t like, but also want government for their own causes, to get more services while paying less tax.</p>
<p>Abbott played this old rhetoric and, for example, successfully redefined as <a href="https://theconversation.com/redefining-the-lie-politics-and-porkies-14685">“lies”</a> Gillard’s stand on a carbon price in 2010 and redefined that carbon price as a “tax”. These redefinitions played into the Gillard’s government’s eventually fatal credibility problem.</p>
<p>It is by this measure of definition that Rudd proved deficient in the campaign, which is surprising given his success in defining Howard in 2007. Then, he asserted the election was a referendum on <a href="http://www.findlaw.com.au/faqs/1916/what-was-workchoices-and-why-was-it-so-unpopular.aspx">WorkChoices</a>, which proved persuasive with many. Similarly, Howard asserted in 2004 that the election was about trust, which proved successful in light of then-opposition leader Mark Latham’s credibility problem.</p>
<p>Labor tried for months - if not years - to force the Coalition to release costings and other facts. Obviously they weren’t going to do it. The opportunity was there to insert into the rhetorical vacuum left by Abbott Labor’s own definitions, its own loaded terms, but they failed to do so.</p>
<p>When Joe Hockey complained about Labor <a href="http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/national/hockey-ready-to-tackle-labors-debt/story-e6frfku9-1226713419618">“maxing out”</a> the government credit card, Labor should have said “the international credit agencies said we have a platinum credit card with their triple-A ratings”.</p>
<p>When Hockey said the government should live within its means like any household, Labor should have said: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>People have mortgages. People go into debt for the good of their families; this government has gone into debt for the good of the nation.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>When Abbott promised reduced taxes and more services, Labor should have redefined this promise as smaller government AND more services and followed that up with: “can you have your cake and eat it as well?”</p>
<p>Also, they should have injected “outsourcing” and “privatisation” into the void as options for Abbott to square the circle.</p>
<p>Labor talks technical economic language without connecting it to politics and to what people understand and value. It needs to better define not only itself but also its opponent. And to do so it needs to consider other elements of the populist heritage which once informed Labor history, if it is to last longer in government next time around.</p>
<p>Whenever that may be.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/18589/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mark Rolfe does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Just when you thought it was safe to forget an otherwise forgettable election, there is one person who won’t let you. Tony Abbott wants to remind you in order to continue defining both the election and…Mark Rolfe, Lecturer, School of Social Sciences, UNSW SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/184952013-09-24T20:42:12Z2013-09-24T20:42:12ZHeeding the lessons of history: how can Labor recover?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/31809/original/4k9pv8z4-1379979597.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The twin defeats of the Whitlam government in the 1970s was the last time the ALP truly looked forward in regrouping and reforming to win back government.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Mick Tsikas</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>How can Labor regroup after the trauma of its defeat at the federal election? The best example the past offers is how the party rebuilt after the tumultuous prime ministership of Gough Whitlam in the mid-1970s. </p>
<p>At that time, Labor sought broad advice - not just from “party elders” - and adopted a radically new policy idea: <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/30-years-on-accord-deal-a-bitter-time-says-kelty-20130531-2nfes.html">the Accord</a>. Since the 1970s, however, Labor’s response to defeats and disappointments has become increasingly inward looking.</p>
<p>After the 1975 election whitewash, the need to confront Labor’s defeat was delayed by rage at the Dismissal and by emotional loyalty to Whitlam. It was Labor’s disappointing performance at the 1977 election that forced the party to confront its future. </p>
<p>Labor supporters came to terms with the prospect that the Whitlam government had just been an interregnum in a conservative ascendancy. Conservative political scientist <a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/275680/1522931">David Kemp</a> argued that Labor’s values were fundamentally at odds with an increasingly conservative and suburban working class.</p>
<p>Labor’s response to 1977 was to commission the first of many modern reviews into its performance and prospects. Unlike later reviews, this was not undertaken by party “elders” alone. It included sympathetic academics such as <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/comment/obituaries/fighter-for-the-poor-and-oppressed-20100818-12f2m.html">sociologist Sol Encel</a>, and a rank-and-file branch member. </p>
<p>It was only after a protest that women were included on the committee, but the report had a lasting legacy, with its conclusion that Labor reach out to more diverse constituencies, in particular female voters.</p>
<p>In the post-Whitlam years, Labor also drew on the advice of sympathetic economists who encouraged the party to support an “incomes policy” to enable non-inflationary economic growth. The Accord underlay the success of the Hawke government, even if it may have had <a href="http://left-flank.org/2013/09/18/the-modern-crisis-of-australian-laborism-part-1">dangerous long-term consequences</a> for Labor support. The Accord did not emerge from within the narrow confines of the parliamentary Labor Party or the musings of “party elders”.</p>
<p>Labor was unsure about how to respond to its 1996 defeat. The defeats of 1975 and 1977 could be interpreted as the result of a desertion of middle ground swinging voters, but in 1996 there was a particular erosion of support for the party among core supporters: workers without university qualifications and non-Anglo ethnic communities. Labor was divided as to why this had occurred: some blamed <a href="http://trove.nla.gov.au/version/44602928">“economic rationalism”</a>; others Keating’s <a href="http://trove.nla.gov.au/version/46665895">“big picture”</a> agenda and his appeal to the intelligentsia. </p>
<p>Labor’s self-absorption after 1996 was limited by two factors. Firstly, the Howard government drifted for its first term and then tied its fortunes to the risky prospect of the GST. Also, Kim Beazley as Labor leader demonstrated an avuncular charm that endeared him to party members and voters rather like Anthony Albanese today. In early 2001, a Labor victory seemed certain.</p>
<p>The 2001 election result was more traumatic for Labor than the defeat of 1996. Labor insiders saw their hopes of a return to government dashed and party activists were deeply estranged by the party’s acquiescence in much of the Howard government’s policy against asylum seekers. </p>
<p>In the aftermath of defeat, new leader Simon Crean - a policy-focused party insider rather like Bill Shorten or Julia Gillard - placed great hope in a <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2002/08/11/1028158045775.html">review of party structures</a> undertaken by Hawke and former NSW premier Neville Wran.</p>
<p>The conclusions of the report, however, had little impact. Crean was diverted into a symbolic battle to reduce trade union representation and the report’s advocacy of direct representation for party members in decision-making led only to the creation of a powerless office of national president. </p>
<p>A separate <a href="http://www.australianpolitics.com/news/2002/02-02-25a.shtml">policy review</a> chaired by Jenny Macklin was overshadowed by Labor’s leadership struggles, and at the 2004 election it was Mark Latham who set the policy agenda.</p>
<p>The traumas of 2010, and in particular the rise of the Greens, led to another <a href="http://resources.news.com.au/files/2011/02/18/1226008/222073-labor-review-report.pdf">inward-looking review conducted by party elders</a>: former state premiers Bob Carr and Steve Bracks, and senator John Faulkner. </p>
<p>This retrod some of the same ground as the Hawke-Wran review. It gave slightly more attention to policy and instanced the Hawke government as a model combination of economic reform, environmental awareness, and fidelity to concerns of traditional Labor voters. </p>
<p>It was Kevin Rudd on his return to the prime ministership in 2013 who was far bolder than the report in advocating the <a href="https://theconversation.com/is-this-kevin-rudds-new-labor-party-15888">direct election of the party leader</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/31810/original/x38m6xdv-1379980307.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/31810/original/x38m6xdv-1379980307.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/31810/original/x38m6xdv-1379980307.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/31810/original/x38m6xdv-1379980307.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/31810/original/x38m6xdv-1379980307.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/31810/original/x38m6xdv-1379980307.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/31810/original/x38m6xdv-1379980307.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Labor’s ‘three wise men’ of Steve Bracks, Bob Carr and John Faulkner undertook a review of the party following its near-disaster in the 2010 election.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Dean Lewins</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There will always be a centre-left party in Australia, and the current <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-09-21/greens-want-another-state-minority-government/4972978">Tasmanian example</a> suggests that the Greens will not do a better job of this role than Labor. Conservative overreach and self-absorption will eventually return Labor to national government. </p>
<p>Yet, for Labor, the question is not about survival. If the party is to be worth taking seriously by those concerned for Australia’s future, it must become a policy-focused force, which it has not been for decades. There is little more to be argued about party reform. </p>
<p>Labor would be well-advised to consider some fundamental questions. Was voter angst about living standards illogical? Is the paternalist trend in social policy - manifested in initiatives such as the <a href="http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2012/06/20/factbox-stronger-futures-legislation">Northern Territory intervention</a> and income management - justifiable? </p>
<p>Is it sustainable to have a minimum wage that has not increased in <a href="http://clubtroppo.com.au/2013/06/10/national-minimum-wage-role-and-rationales">real terms</a> in about 25 years? Have the deregulatory certainties of the 1990s been shattered by the global financial crisis, so much so that bankers - as <a href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/19bd18d0-1c62-11e3-8894-00144feab7de.html">Martin Wolff</a> argues - are highly-paid public servants?</p>
<p>Labor’s recovery from the electoral abyss may not be swift; it may not be painless. But if the party’s history is anything to go by, getting the recovery right will be fundamental to its long-term future.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/18495/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Geoffrey Robinson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>How can Labor regroup after the trauma of its defeat at the federal election? The best example the past offers is how the party rebuilt after the tumultuous prime ministership of Gough Whitlam in the mid-1970s…Geoffrey Robinson, Senior Lecturer, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Deakin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/184592013-09-24T03:27:02Z2013-09-24T03:27:02ZMarketing political brands: passionate punters need consistent messaging<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/31814/original/bpxfqmyw-1379982240.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Many commentators criticised Tony Abbott's 'female-lite' frontbench last week. How might it affect his carefully managed and marketed 'brand' from the campaign trail?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Lukas Coch</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In the last week, a number of political commentators <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/comment/tony-abbott-minister-for-women-no-thanks-20130919-2u179.html">have argued</a> that newly-minted prime minister Tony Abbott’s frontbench is decidedly low on women. There is only one woman in Cabinet and an additional few on the frontbench.</p>
<p>Commentators have called the low female representation <a href="http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/business-outcry-on-women-shows-pms-lost-his-way/story-e6frfkp9-1226721307715">“appalling”</a>, worse than <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/afghanistans-cabinet-has-more-women-20130916-2tv5b.html">“Afganistan’s cabinet”</a> and <a href="http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/a-few-good-women-to-correct-gender-skew/story-e6frfkp9-1226721276830">“anomalous”</a>. It is certainly lower than the number of women on corporate boards, which has crept up to <a href="http://www.companydirectors.com.au/Director-Resource-Centre/Governance-and-Director-Issues/Board-Diversity/Statistics">over 16%</a> (of ASX200 companies). The federal government frontbench looks nothing like the electorate it represents, where there are 51% of women in the community that the government seeks to serve.</p>
<p>Worse than that, the controversy muddies the brand that Abbott has carefully sought to build throughout the election campaign.</p>
<p>From a branding standpoint, Abbott carefully demolished the Labor argument that he is a misogynist throughout the campaign. I received numerous emails from his daughters, telling me what a good Dad Abbott is and how he would be good for the country and good for me, if elected prime minister. </p>
<p>Indeed, the passion of politics played out around the nation during the election campaign, with passionate brands being created by emotional advertising messages. Although emotion is standard practice in marketing and politics, the casualties of brand passion are rarely discussed in the media in these terms.</p>
<p>Consumers use brand passion as a means of filling their lives with meaning, making them some of the most successful means of branding in the world. Consumers love to love or love to hate brands which tug on their heart strings. After all, the word passion is derived from the Latin verb “passio”, meaning suffering. </p>
<p>In the Christian religion, the <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11527b.htm">Passion</a> refers to the final, short period of the life of Jesus Christ: his betrayal, crucifixion, death and resurrection. The story is central to the Christian faith, full of lamentations, violence, healings, betrayal, regret and forgiveness. While not everyone believes in the story of the passion of Christ, the meanings have pervaded art, society and culture over the centuries, offering up a wider meaning of the word “passion”. This could have particular resonance with Abbott, who is devoutly Catholic.</p>
<p>In contemporary times, passion is a term that conjures up notions of love, romance and strong feelings for someone or something else: religious observance, spirituality, or suffering. There is a continuing and natural link between passion and politics, which moves beyond the Christian story.</p>
<p>So how does passion work for branding? Staying close to the punter, being consistent in your message and building a relationship with each particular punter is essential. Keep their trust. When consumers feel emotional about a brand, they feel strongly about it, using words like “love”, “joy” or “being close to my heart”.</p>
<p>The strong feelings of passion for politics encourages a person to develop a long term relationship with a political party. But passionate support needs consistent messaging to ensure loyalty and a humanising touch. So, here is the rub: in order for passion to be pertinent to politics, the consumer (in this case, the voter) needs to be reassured that the message is consistent so that they are not “turned off”.</p>
<p>Abbott showed punters one thing in his election campaign. His actions in selecting his ministry tell another story altogether, and now the punter feels disappointed. People who have negative emotions about someone or something they use words like “betrayal”, having “their heart broken” or emotion “boiling over” or creating “hostility” or “tension”. This is where Abbott seems to have lost the plot.</p>
<p>Abbott acted with his head in selecting his frontbench, but told emotional election stories that were supposedly from his heart. His actions further support the research that men will take a risk in selecting other men for leadership positions, when they haven‘t been tried out before, but resist doing so for women.</p>
<p>Josh Frydenberg is a case in point. Frydenberg has been in the parliament for a somewhat shorter period of time than Kelly O’Dwyer, yet Frydenberg was considered worth the “risk” of a position of parliamentary secretary while O’Dwyer was not. Apparently O’Dwyer is considered to have been a <a href="http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/a-few-gaps-in-abbotts-team/story-e6frfkp9-1226720457139">“bit lippy”</a>. Are such decisions gendered? Are the voices of female parliamentarians being muted? People will make up their own minds, but once the brand is damaged, the punters are less forgiving.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/31813/original/f5ym2kp7-1379981969.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/31813/original/f5ym2kp7-1379981969.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/31813/original/f5ym2kp7-1379981969.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/31813/original/f5ym2kp7-1379981969.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/31813/original/f5ym2kp7-1379981969.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/31813/original/f5ym2kp7-1379981969.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/31813/original/f5ym2kp7-1379981969.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Was the use of Tony Abbott’s wife and daughters throughout the campaign an attempt to ‘soften’ his image?</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Alan Porritt</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Now the punter is asking: who is the real Tony Abbott? His brand has been sullied by sending out inconsistent messages to a key voting constituency on an issue of importance. However, the message that Abbott has sent to the punters is that these matters are not important to him.</p>
<p>Message consistency is easy for punters to digest. The visual images of three daughters and a wife supporting Abbott are like eye candy. Now the lack of visual images of the Cabinet (one woman; 15 men) cause us to ask questions that make settling in for the new government more difficult. It will be a long road to come back from this faux pas.</p>
<p>While the politics of equity and female representation on the frontbench has had wide media exposure, little has been said about with the passionate component of consistent political branding that sometimes becomes evident through controversies. </p>
<p>It’s a bit like a fairy tale of goodies and baddies. People can relate to simple stories and that is what branding seeks to do. Send out simple, consistent messages, but seek to dig deep into the punter’s psyche. When it goes wrong, it is equally hard to fix as people see through it and consider the branding a fiction. Human emotions are central to branding, so when there is inconsistent messaging, social media goes berserk. </p>
<p>Senator Michaelia Cash, as Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for Women, is going to have her work cut out to fix the mess that has been created. She may need a brand manager to help her with refining the message over time. In the meantime, others may take advantage of the dilemma of the passionate punter receiving inconsistent brand messages, making the settling-in period more difficult for the new government.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/18459/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ruth Rentschler has in the past received funding from the ARC, AIATSIS, Arts Victoria, The Australia Council and various business, non-profit and state government departments.</span></em></p>In the last week, a number of political commentators have argued that newly-minted prime minister Tony Abbott’s frontbench is decidedly low on women. There is only one woman in Cabinet and an additional…Ruth Rentschler, Chair in Arts Management, School of Management and Marketing, Deakin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/182342013-09-22T20:10:51Z2013-09-22T20:10:51ZNow Abbott’s in, what will The Australian do?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/31715/original/xq6ckgdj-1379654604.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=7%2C736%2C4864%2C2465&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Where will Rupert Murdoch's influential broadsheet The Australian focus its agenda now that there has been a change of government?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Dean Lewins</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>How does a newspaper of strong ideological preferences - such as News Corp broadsheet The Australian - respond when there is a government in office that more closely shares its ideology than did the previous government?</p>
<p>Given the parlous state of Australia’s newspaper industry, this is not an idle question.</p>
<p>The Australian is now the only newspaper of general interest to provide a comprehensive coverage of federal politics. Fairfax’s Australian Financial Review also provides a comprehensive coverage but it has a narrower audience and tailors its coverage accordingly. The coverage of federal politics by The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald has shrunk considerably by comparison.</p>
<p>Quantity is of course no guarantor of quality, but quantity matters. It has impact: it means a larger presence on the front page, a more insistent and recurring presence inside the paper. It draws attention to itself.</p>
<p>In this way, it sends a signal to all who are interested in federal politics that this is where you are more likely to find such stories – and where you are more likely to find audiences who are interested in them.</p>
<p>This tends to have a self-reinforcing effect: if that is where the stories are likely to be, that is where the audience for them is likely to go, so those with stories for that audience will go there too. In economics this is called the “thick markets” effect: most new activity takes place where most activity already takes place.</p>
<p>It has been a clear and consistent strategy of The Australian over many years to create this effect, and the corresponding reduction in breadth of federal political coverage by its serious rivals - The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald - has magnified it.</p>
<p>So, what kind of coverage can we expect from The Australian now that its Labor bogeyman has gone and a government more in tune with its ideological preferences is in office?</p>
<p>The paper’s coverage of prime minister Tony Abbott’s first days in office has been characterised by a propensity to give advice: on foreign policy, trade policy, climate change, the ABC, free speech, the English curriculum, gender balance, debt and credit ratings, gay marriage.</p>
<p>It enjoined Abbott – <a href="http://www.news.com.au/opinion/columnists/abbott-team-goes-back-to-basics/story-e6frg74x-1226721246569">“a modest man”</a>, in the words of the paper’s editor-at-large Paul Kelly – to not deliver modest government. It instructed him not to let others <a href="http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/victorious-abbott-must-not-let-labor-and-the-greens-set-his-agenda/story-e6frfkp9-1226723091232">“set his agenda”</a> on matters such as gay marriage and climate change.</p>
<p>The tone has been honeymoon-ish but scarcely rapturous. Its ardour is really for the ideas rather than for the party or the man (yes).</p>
<p>And this is the thing about newspapers: they have interests, not friends. The interests might be economic or ideological or, most often, a bit of both.</p>
<p>So The Australian will continue to advance its ideological interests both in its news coverage and its commentary. It lost no time on climate change, making the most of the reported findings of the latest review by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which are said to show that the rate of global warming is slower than was predicted by the computer modelling used for the IPCC’s 2007 report. The semantically sly heading: <a href="http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/we-got-it-wrong-on-warming-says-ipcc/story-e6frfkp9-12267196723188">“We got it wrong on warming, says IPCC”</a>.</p>
<p>On the commentary page was a <a href="http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/uns-mild-climate-change-message-will-be-lost-in-alarmist-translation/story-e6frfkp9-1226719580947">quite measured piece</a> about the difference between the science and what was described as the apocalyptic visions of some media. Then on two successive days there were editorials on the subject, <a href="http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/climate-science-far-from-settled/story-e6frfkp9-1226719590302">drawing attention</a> to the distinction between faith and science, and <a href="http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/the-warm-hard-facts/story-e6frfkp9-1226720454591">giving a whack</a> to its enemy Fairfax Media for pro-warming bias.</p>
<p>It is probably a good microcosm of how the paper will continue to perform. It will pay attention to the issues that matter to it, giving them a slant that fits with its worldview, backing up its news coverage with commentary that also is consonant with its worldview, and giving its enemies a whack on the way through.</p>
<p>It is not a model of pluralism and it tends to see issues through an ideological lens, but at least it is paying attention to major issues in a way that reinforces the position it has carved out for itself. It knows what it’s doing, in other words.</p>
<p>And we should not forget that it has the capability and willingness to hold government to account. For instance, The Australian joined energetically in the media pursuit of the Howard government over the reprehensible treatment of <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2010-12-21/haneef-wins-substantial-compensation-settlement/2382174">Dr Mohamed Haneef</a>, a Indian national held in custody for 12 days in 2007 on a baseless suspicion that he had a connection with a failed London bomb plot.</p>
<p>There is a big ideological agenda – industrial relations, the ABC, conservatism in social policy, freedom of speech, to name a few - and we can expect The Australian to be getting on with prosecuting it. If there’s any backsliding by the government, it can expect a whack too. </p>
<p>And Labor will get a kicking just for being Labor.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/18234/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Denis Muller does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>How does a newspaper of strong ideological preferences - such as News Corp broadsheet The Australian - respond when there is a government in office that more closely shares its ideology than did the previous…Denis Muller, Senior Research Fellow in the Centre for Advancing Journalism, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/184652013-09-20T05:10:42Z2013-09-20T05:10:42ZAbbott and the public service: where now on department heads?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/31711/original/zfvd29py-1379652737.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">In one of his first acts in office, prime minister Tony Abbott axed three department heads, while treasury secretary Martin Parkinson (pictured) will depart next year.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Saeed Khan</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Prime minister Tony Abbott’s decision to <a href="https://theconversation.com/public-servants-victims-of-long-coalition-memories-18372">sack three departmental secretaries</a> within hours of his swearing-in earlier this week has not attracted the same shock John Howard’s decision to sack six secretaries caused in 1996.</p>
<p>At that time, Paul Keating’s removal of secretaries’ tenure in 1994 was yet to be exercised. However, 17 years later, secretaries are painfully aware that tenure has gone and, while dismissals are not common, failure to re-appoint is certainly a frequent occurrence.</p>
<p>Perhaps Abbott’s move was not a “night of the long knives”, then, but sadly it was a failure to respond positively to Kevin Rudd’s attempt in 2007 to restore the concept of a public service with a significant degree of independence from political pressures. It has also (again, sadly) clarified that the <a href="http://www.comlaw.gov.au/Details/C2013A00002">Public Service Amendment Act (2013)</a> does not provide any serious constraint on prime ministerial discretion over secretary appointments and terminations, despite the rhetoric of the Second Reading Speech and the unanimous support in parliament for the legislation.</p>
<p>Rudd’s decision to retain all the secretaries he inherited - including several with histories of close association with the conservative side of politics or records that gave reason for Labor to query their non-partisanship - gave hope to the Australian Public Service (APS) leadership that a corner had been turned which future governments of either persuasion would follow. That is, that new governments would not act unexpectedly on suspicion of partisanship or lack of professional integrity, but would allow a period to test the loyalty and competence of the secretaries they inherit.</p>
<p>Rudd followed up his approach by other measures pressed by Senator John Faulkner to strengthen the professional non-partisanship of the APS. These included: involving the Public Service Commissioner in appointments and terminations, removing performance pay, setting five years as the standard contract period (rather than the increasing use of three year contracts) and the introduction of a code of conduct for ministerial staff. </p>
<p>Several of these are now reflected in the Public Service Act after amendments agreed unanimously earlier this year. The amended act also now requires appointments and terminations by the governor-general, a presentational change but one I and others had hoped conveyed an important principle about the status of the APS as an institution.</p>
<p>It is true nonetheless that Rudd and Julia Gillard and their ministers did not always demonstrate Faulkner’s appreciation of the proper role of the public service. The manner in which Rudd and Wayne Swan used Treasury to shield their own accountability for economic and budgetary policy was hardly consistent with the distinctions between politics and administration, or with the lines of accountability that Faulkner had been trying to clarify. </p>
<p>This was also true in other policy areas, including immigration and climate change, exposing and using public service advice – selectively of course – for political ends. Perhaps some officials allowed themselves to be used too much, but most fault surely lies with ministers and the then-government. To the extent that fault lies with officials, I personally had hoped Abbott would show the same magnanimity Rudd demonstrated in 2007 and allow the relevant secretaries to prove (or otherwise) their ability to serve his government before acting to terminate appointments.</p>
<p>Most commentators have not been critical of the decision to terminate the contract of <a href="http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2013/09/18/ausaid-be-absorbed-department-foreign-affairs-and-trade">industry department head Don Russell</a>. Certainly, he demonstrated partisanship when on prime minister Keating’s staff and Abbott has good reason to be uncertain of his capacity to serve the conservative government loyally. But Rudd might equally have had doubts about some secretaries he inherited, such as <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/archive/news/chaos-reigns-in-rudds-office/story-e6frg6no-1111116694941">Michael l’Estrange</a>, who had played a prominent role on John Howard’s staff as Cabinet secretary. </p>
<p>In my view, l’Estrange was a highly competent and professional secretary who never - in that role - showed partisanship, serving Rudd and Gillard well. Could Russell have done so for Abbott? My guess is that he could have had he wished to stay on, given his long APS experience and his sharp intelligence.</p>
<p>The other two (agriculture department head Andrew Metcalfe and Resources, Energy and Tourism’s Blair Comley) should definitely have been kept on. Both are proven career public servants who were asked to take on jobs in amongst the most politically sensitive fields imaginable. </p>
<p>Perhaps they allowed themselves to be used to promote the then-government’s policies. But arguably that was true of some secretaries Rudd inherited, such as Peter Boxall and Jane Halton. Halton, for example, attracted concern on the Labor side because of the manner of her <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/06/28/1023864657707.html">defence of the Children Overboard case</a>. </p>
<p>The issue is whether these apparent, excessively responsive behaviours justify dismissals by a new government despite the overall competence of the individuals concerned. In Metcalfe’s case, the new government had first-hand knowledge, after he <a href="http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/immigration-department-secretary-andrew-metcalfe/story-e6frfkp9-1226169050176">criticised</a> their asylum seeker policies while in his former role as head of the immigration department in 2011.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/31712/original/tq6qg6k9-1379653204.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/31712/original/tq6qg6k9-1379653204.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/31712/original/tq6qg6k9-1379653204.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/31712/original/tq6qg6k9-1379653204.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/31712/original/tq6qg6k9-1379653204.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=535&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/31712/original/tq6qg6k9-1379653204.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=535&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/31712/original/tq6qg6k9-1379653204.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=535&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Recent legislative changes did not spare the axe falling on three department heads earlier this week.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Alan Porritt</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The case of treasury secretary Martin Parkinson is not yet clear after it was announced that he would <a href="http://bigpondnews.com/articles/Politics/2013/09/18/Parkinson_around_for_one_last_budget_907251.html">leave his post</a> midway through next year. I do not know the extent to which he is being pushed out rather than willingly contemplating another role, but if he too is being pressured to go without Abbott having yet tested his competence and loyalty, that is most unfortunate. </p>
<p>The one good element of the Abbott announcement was the appointment of <a href="http://www.news.com.au/national-news/federal-election/prime-minister-tony-abbott-sworn-in-and-then-a-public-service-shakeup/story-fnho52ip-1226721972029">two career public servants</a> to fill the vacancies. That at least does show some respect for the APS.</p>
<p>What messages is Abbott giving secretaries and the APS? It is just possible there is one positive message: to be very careful about the fine line between explaining and marketing government policies. As the late Canadian academic Peter Aucoin <a href="http://www.canberratimes.com.au/national/public-service/promiscuously-partisan-bureaucracies-20120430-1xu31.html">opined</a>, we have seen too much “promiscuous non-partisanship” in recent years: public servants willing to serve whichever side of politics is in power, but to do so with excessive responsiveness giving the public reason to doubt the impartial professionalism of their advice and administration. </p>
<p>In my view, this was becoming a major problem under the Howard government, and did not diminish appreciably under the Rudd and Gillard governments.</p>
<p>My fear, however, is that that is not the main message intended, nor the main one received. More likely is the message that public servants must indeed be even more careful in their advice - whether in public or private - and not do anything that might provoke retribution. They should also be wary of taking on politically sensitive tasks.</p>
<p>If the message was for a genuine return to professionalism, impartiality and non-partisanship, then that would have best been imparted by retaining the secretaries Abbott inherited and advising them all clearly what the Government expects in terms of loyalty. The APS leadership - particularly the APS Commissioner and the Secretary of Prime Minister and Cabinet (both of whom are thankfully strong traditionalists) - would then have responsibility to clarify that this does not permit “promiscuous non-partisanship” and that it does require “frank and fearless” advice. </p>
<p>Given the decisions taken, however, the APS Commissioner and PM&C secretary just have to do their best to encourage the APS not to be even more risk averse and to meet their responsibilities for frank and fearless advice.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/18465/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andrew Podger was Public Service Commissioner from 2002-2004 and has held other senior positions in the public service.</span></em></p>Prime minister Tony Abbott’s decision to sack three departmental secretaries within hours of his swearing-in earlier this week has not attracted the same shock John Howard’s decision to sack six secretaries…Andrew Podger, Professor of Public Policy, Australian National UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/182492013-09-19T20:43:03Z2013-09-19T20:43:03ZBeef, boats and elections: what’s in store for the Australia-Indonesia relationship<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/31452/original/wcng5dyv-1379393967.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The ban on live cattle exports to Indonesia caused a major rift in relations. Can new governments in both nations repair the damage?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Animals Australia</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Somehow, the debate on Indonesia-Australia relations has got stuck on Bali, beef and boats.</p>
<p>While there is no point pretending that either beef or boats are about to disappear as issues any time soon, we need to broaden the discussion both to understand what is at stake in the obvious differences between the two nations and to move towards the possibility of resolving them.</p>
<p>On the positive side the current Indonesian Cabinet is highly educated and very familiar with Australia: six of the 24 Cabinet ministers have PhDs as does Vice President <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boediono">Boediono</a>.</p>
<p>The Vice President studied at three Australian universities, UWA, Monash and ANU. Foreign minister <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marty_Natalegawa">Marty Natalegawa</a> and Tourism minister Mari Pangestu both have ANU PhDs. Other ministers in Cabinet have spent long formative periods in USA and Europe. This is a highly educated, internationalised, Australia-literate Cabinet.</p>
<p>By contrast, there is no one in the Abbott Cabinet who can claim substantial knowledge of or experience in any part of Asia, let alone Indonesia. Not only is the Cabinet shamefully devoid of women, it is notably unrepresentative of Asian Australians.</p>
<p>Indonesia too is about to enter a presidential campaign period. Many observers have suggested that President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, in the last year of his second and final term of office is already a lame duck. The shape of Indonesia’s next government is hard to predict.</p>
<p>But as Australia saw in its own recent election campaign good sense often disappears quickly. In the Indonesian campaign, too, one should anticipate that nationalist fervour will rise – it is never far from the surface of Indonesian politics anyway.</p>
<p>Three Presidential candidates, most discussed in the Indonesian national media are: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aburizal_Bakrie">Abu Rizal Bakrie</a> (super rich and mired in New Order and post New Order controversies), <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prabowo_Subianto">Prabowo</a> (Suharto’s son-in-law, who is banned from entering the US because of accusations of human rights violations), and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joko_Widodo">Jokowi</a> (Joko Widodo, the immensely popular governor of Jakarta).</p>
<p>Jokowi is a self-made millionaire who started as a small businessman in the furniture industry. As Mayor of Solo (2005–2012), Jokowi revitalised local businesses and the arts community. As Jakarta governor he has begun the work of fixing up the city’s decrepit transport system. Though less discussed, in both cities Jokowi has also worked to support and regulate the small traders. In Solo, he ran heavily on a brand of local cultural identity. How any of this will translate into his presidential campaign is hard to predict.</p>
<p>Bakrie, everyone suspects, will do more or less what suits his own business and political interests, and it would be easy for him to play the economic nationalist card from time to time. No-one expects him to have a consistent hand on the economic till.</p>
<p>Prabowo’s appeal is a lot like that of Thailand’s <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thaksin_Shinawatra">Thaksin Shinawatra</a>. He has a huge rural popularity but no support amongst the educated elites. Notably, Prabowo’s hero is Kemal Ataturk of Turkey. We would expect him to jump on the nationalist bandwagon whenever it suits him – and it is quite likely to suit him a lot of the time.</p>
<p>In this context, Australia’s new agriculture minister Barnaby Joyce and his brand of economic nationalism is a perfect foil. One can see escalating nationalism in economic debate on both sides to the detriment of the kind of integration needed for long-term prosperity and stability in the region.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/31453/original/ty4sskv9-1379394798.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/31453/original/ty4sskv9-1379394798.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=419&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/31453/original/ty4sskv9-1379394798.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=419&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/31453/original/ty4sskv9-1379394798.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=419&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/31453/original/ty4sskv9-1379394798.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/31453/original/ty4sskv9-1379394798.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/31453/original/ty4sskv9-1379394798.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Australia’s new agriculture minister Barnaby Joyce’s views on foreign ownership may create conflict with a new Indonesia government.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Alan Porritt</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Prabowo is worth looking at a little more closely. He is the son of one of Indonesia’s leading intellectuals and connected both through his own family and that of his ex-wife (Siti Hariyadi, Suharto’s daughter) to a massively influential business and political network. Prabowo is named after an uncle who was a hero of the anti-Dutch nationalist revolution.</p>
<p>Prabowo’s grandfather and father hold a legendary status in Indonesia’s intellectual history and the latter served in senior economic portfolios under Suharto. Despite his impeccable economic and political pedigree, there is enough credible evidence of human rights violations against Prabowo both in Timor and on anti-Suharto activists in Jakarta on the eve of regime change that he is banned from entering the US.</p>
<p>Since being discharged from the army under a cloud, Prabowo has worked closely with his brother Hashim in a variety of businesses. Hashim is a highly successful businessman with links into the US political and business community. Hashim has recently made substantial donations to Republican thinktanks (the best known is the <a href="http://csis.org/program/southeast-asia-program">Sumitro Chair</a> at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, named after their father), which could in part see some whitewash of Prabowo’s image in the US. There is little doubt that if he were to be elected, the travel ban to the US would be immediately lifted.</p>
<p>In considering Indonesia-Australia relations, we need to take into account the likely election of one of these three men and how the Coalition policy of turning back or buying back asylum seeker boats might provide a fertile ground for an ultra-nationalist discourse in an election campaign in Indonesia.</p>
<p>Pitted against the Indonesian need to provide food for its burgeoning population, the whipping up of a mass protest by Australian Cabinet minister Barnaby Joyce to protect Australian agricultural land provides fertile ground for nationalist electioneering in Indonesia.</p>
<p>During the Australian election campaign, Indonesia’s Australia-literate Cabinet was able to distinguish between election rhetoric for domestic consumption and what the real policies of a new government might shape up to be.</p>
<p>But is it likely or even possible that the Abbott Cabinet will have similar depth of knowledge of Indonesia to navigate its way through the complexities of Indonesian domestic politics to distinguish between rhetoric and reality? It certainly does not have on its frontbench the kind of knowledge of Indonesia that the Indonesian government has of Australia.</p>
<p>However, it is to the great credit of the Abbott government that in broad terms it has recognised the deficit in Australia’s knowledge of and embedding in the Asia-Pacific region. Its <a href="http://www.liberal.org.au/latest-news/2013/08/30/coalitions-policy-new-colombo-plan">New Colombo Plan</a> aims to devise a long-term solution to this problem by supporting a generation of undergraduate students to experience Asia as a rite of passage.</p>
<p>But the immediate challenge of contradictions between the rhetoric of our recent election and the imminent Indonesian election campaign remains an impediment to improvement in the relationship in the short-term.</p>
<p>Watch this space.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/18249/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Krishna Sen was a member of the new Colombo Plan steering group.</span></em></p>Somehow, the debate on Indonesia-Australia relations has got stuck on Bali, beef and boats. While there is no point pretending that either beef or boats are about to disappear as issues any time soon…Krishna Sen, Winthrop Professor & Dean of Faculty of Arts, The University of Western AustraliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/182682013-09-19T05:13:49Z2013-09-19T05:13:49ZThe nation decides – and sport is the winner<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/31573/original/y4wcbsz5-1379506817.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A country that is more interested in sport than in politics is a 'happy' one, remarked prime minister Tony Abbott after his election success.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Paul Miller</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>After the gladiatorial combat of the federal election campaign, prime minister-elect Tony Abbott <a href="https://www.liberal.org.au/latest-news/2013/09/10/tony-abbott-interview-david-koch-and-samantha-armytage-sunrise">appeared on Sunrise</a> to call an Olympic-style truce.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Happy is the country which is more interested in sport than in politics, because it shows that there is a fundamental unity, it shows that the business of the nation is normally under reasonably good management if we can be as excited as we usually are about sport.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>After the people had decided the fate of competing teams, sport could once again displace politics in Australia’s media.</p>
<p>A less familiar political force was also pleased to have sport back in the limelight. The <a href="http://www.australiansportsparty.com/">Australian Sports Party</a> (motto “Supporting Australia’s sporting culture”) had come from nowhere to take a screamer - in football parlance - and win a seat in the Senate. Very little is known about the Sports Party, except that it favours greater participation in sport and recreation in the interests of health, and more expansively believes that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Sport has long played an important social and cultural role in Australia, providing a form of social glue which binds communities and creates broader communities.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Once again, sport’s place in Australian national life has been affirmed in the political sphere. Although subjected to the forces of globalisation and transnationalism like other social institutions, sport remains resolutely wedded to the very idea of an Australian nation. Throughout the distraction of the messily unheroic processes of parliamentary democracy, Australian bureaucracy has held its end up in the sporting stakes.</p>
<p>For example, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s glossy pamphlet <a href="http://www.dfat.gov.au/aib/downloads/australia-in-brief.pdf">Australia in Brief</a>, designed for people wanting a quick summation of Australia, unequivocally pronounces that “Australians love sport” and that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The nation unites when Australians succeed on the international stage. Sport is a powerful force in creating social harmony in a nation made up of people from so many different countries.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Those who want to become Australians rather than just know about them will find that in <a href="http://www.citizenship.gov.au/learn/cit_test/test_resource/_pdf/our-common-bond-2013.pdf">Australian Citizenship: Our Common Bond</a>, the official information booklet for the citizenship test, “Australia’s identity” begins with “Sport and recreation”. This section precedes “The Arts” and “Scientific invention and achievement”. Aspiring citizens will learn that: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>We are proud of our reputation as a nation of ‘good sports’. Australian sportsmen and women are admired as ambassadors for the values of hard work, fair play and teamwork. Throughout our history, sport has both characterised the Australian people and united us. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>They will also get to know a little about Sir Donald Bradman.</p>
<p>Australia is not alone in promoting sport as an important part of its national culture and in explicitly relating it to citizenship, but it is unusual in giving so much emphasis to it. For example, sport features in <a href="http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/pdf/pub/discover.pdf">Discover Canada: The Rights and Responsibilities of Citizenship</a>. But it is notable that under “Arts and Culture in Canada” it follows literature, visual arts, performing arts, film, and television. And under “Canadian Symbols” it is preceded by “Parliament Buildings”. Discover Canada makes no comparable claim definitively connecting sport to Canadian national identity as occurs in its Australian equivalent.</p>
<p>Life in the United Kingdom: A Guide for New Residents does contain information on sport. Indeed, it has been <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2013/jun/14/citizenship-test-pub-quiz">described by one critic</a>, Thom Brooks, as like a “bad pub quiz” and “impractical, inconsistent, trivial, gender imbalanced, outdated and ineffective”. But it comes well behind Australia in championing love of sport as an essential element of the national character.</p>
<p>The problem with projecting so much onto sport as a marker of the Australian nation is that it is not all about gold medals and glorious moments. What happens when things go seriously wrong on and off the sports field? If sport is integral to national identity, does it then follow that a crisis of sport is also a crisis of Australian national identity?</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/31574/original/n9x5kkqz-1379508208.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/31574/original/n9x5kkqz-1379508208.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/31574/original/n9x5kkqz-1379508208.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/31574/original/n9x5kkqz-1379508208.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/31574/original/n9x5kkqz-1379508208.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/31574/original/n9x5kkqz-1379508208.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/31574/original/n9x5kkqz-1379508208.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">From doping scandals to racism rows, Australian sport hasn’t had its finest year in 2013.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Lukas Coch</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>What is curious about Tony Abbott’s pleasure in sport returning to the front page is that, in 2013, it has rarely been off it - but for all the wrong reasons. Sport has been beset by repeated scandals that have tarnished the reputation of this “nation of good sports”. <a href="https://theconversation.com/lance-armstrong-begins-his-confession-but-why-oprah-11688">Lance Armstrong</a> might have done his bit for the Americans, but this has been a vintage year for sport scandals in Australia.</p>
<p>In February, the release of the Australian Crime Commission report, Organised Crime and Drugs in Sport, heralded the so-called <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/national/this-is-the-blackest-day-in-australian-sport-20130207-2e1i3.html">“blackest day”</a> in Australian sport, and signalled a series of inquiries by the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority (ASADA) that engulfed <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-essendon-supplements-saga-what-you-dont-know-can-hurt-you-17324">Essendon</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/nrl-more-than-sharks-in-the-water-at-cronulla-12677">Cronulla</a> football clubs. <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-02-19/review-slams-toxic-culture-in-olympic-swim-team/4526754">Performance reviews</a> of Australian swimming uncovered “culturally toxic incidents”, “poor behaviour” and an apologetic conference by the male swimmers dubbed the <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-08-23/australian-olympic-committee-will-not-punish-swimmers-further/4908278">“Stilnox Six”</a>.</p>
<p>There followed many unedifying sporting moments, including the racial abuse of Indigenous footballer Adam Goodes <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-afls-indigenous-round-and-the-innocent-face-of-racism-14659">by a young female spectator</a> and his <a href="https://theconversation.com/eddie-mcguire-adam-goodes-and-apes-a-landmark-moment-in-australian-race-relations-14840">subsequent likening</a> by Collingwood AFL club president Eddie McGuire to King Kong; a series of assault claims by women against sportsmen, including <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/rugby-league/league-news/ben-teo-cleared-of-assaulting-katie-lewis-20130718-2q6up.html">Ben Te'o</a>, <a href="http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/sport/nrl/ben-barbas-partner-ainslie-currie-mulls-over-nrl-probe-into-domestic-violence-claims/story-fni3g67w-1226713301031">Ben Barba</a>, <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-06-19/stephen-milne-st-kilda-expected-to-make-statement-today/4764014">Stephen Milne</a>, and <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-09-06/raiders-sack-ferguson/4940732">Blake Ferguson</a>; and “Mad Monday” incidents ranging from setting fire to a so-called <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-09-03/dwarf-entertainer-allegedly-set-on-fire-in-st-kilda-27mad-mond/4930858">“dwarf entertainer”</a> to allegations of <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-09-06/brisbane-lions-investigating-allegation-a-player-assaulted-a-ma/4940448">assaulting a man in a wheelchair</a>.</p>
<p>On the day that the prime minister-in-waiting announced his new ministry, the front pages were devoted not to ministers and parliamentary secretaries, but to a <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/sport/soccer/victorian-detectives-bust-alleged-soccer-matchfixing-syndicate-20130915-2tsh5.html">soccer match-fixing scandal</a> in Victoria that has since extended to Queensland. Sport had again overshadowed government in the nation’s conversations with itself. For those who concur with <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2005/09/08/1125772645916.html">Donald Horne’s</a> famous dictum in The Lucky Country that “sport to many Australians is life and the rest a shadow”, order in the country has been restored. </p>
<p>But the match-fixing affair is one form of sporting excitement that the nation can surely do without.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>This article is based on David Rowe’s 2013 Australian Sociological Association (TASA) 50th Anniversary Public Lecture, Sport: Scandal, Gender and the Nation, delivered at Parramatta Town Hall on Thursday September 12</em>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/18268/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Rowe is currently receiving ARC funding for A Nation of ‘Good Sports’? Cultural Citizenship and Sport in Contemporary Australia (DP130104502).</span></em></p>After the gladiatorial combat of the federal election campaign, prime minister-elect Tony Abbott appeared on Sunrise to call an Olympic-style truce. Happy is the country which is more interested in sport…David Rowe, Professor of Cultural Research, Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/183172013-09-18T20:43:59Z2013-09-18T20:43:59ZWhat’s wrong with merit? Why ‘equal’ treatment does not reward the most deserving<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/31549/original/b4b7spv2-1379476345.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">If we weren't all created equally with equal upbringings, should we scrap the concept of 'merit' in decision-making?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Just one woman has been appointed to new prime minister Tony Abbott’s first Cabinet of 19. As a result, <a href="http://junkee.com/things-that-have-more-women-in-them-than-tony-abbotts-cabinet/19819">online forums</a> have been abuzz with debate about gender representation in federal politics. </p>
<p>A number of explanations have been proposed as to why female Liberal MPs remain <a href="http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/people-will-be-hurt-says-julie-bishop-ahead-of-unveiling-of-abbott-ministry/story-e6frfkp9-1226719979877">“knocking on the door”</a> of Cabinet positions. Yet some have also <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-09-17/ita-buttrose-criticises-lack-of-women-in-cabinet/4961704">denied</a> there is any problem with new foreign minister Julie Bishop being the only woman on the frontbench.</p>
<p>One of the most frequent excuses drawn on to explain Australia’s overwhelmingly male parliament is the concept of <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-opinion/merit-pushed-aside-as-host-of-factors-set-seats-at-table-20130916-2tv57.html">“merit”</a>. According to the logic of merit, a person who demonstrates the highest aptitude for a job, a spot at university, or even a place in the federal Cabinet should be selected regardless of any other factors. </p>
<p>It seems fair on the surface. A person who has worked hard and shown qualities superior to all other candidates should be successful. </p>
<p>What is problematic about the idea of merit is that it presumes all people have the same opportunity to succeed. The movement to formal equality through anti-discrimination legislation has created the impression that there are no barriers to the participation of women, Indigenous people, GLBTIQ people, people with a disability, and people of colour in the workplace and public life. </p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/sda1984209/">Commonwealth Sex Discrimination Act</a> (1984), for example, outlawed the advertising of jobs for “men”, “boys”, “women” or “girls”. It stipulated that women could no longer be paid a lesser wage for performing the same duties as men and also sought to protect women from dismissal during pregnancy.</p>
<p>The metaphor of a running race is often used when comparing models of equality. The formal model, which people invoke when they discuss merit and “the best person for the job”, sees all competitors take their place on the same starting line. </p>
<p>It does not make allowances for whether some of these metaphorical athletes might have been coached at the Australian Institute of Sport with access to elite trainers and equipment, while other competitors might arrive at the line after being self-coached and with no running spikes to wear. Clearly, the second competitor is at a disadvantage in this “fair” race. Yet what if he or she actually had the potential to be the fastest if given access to the same resources? </p>
<p>A real example of how the formal model of equality fails is in the instance of Indigenous participation in higher education. All Australian high school students have the opportunity to sit for their Year 12 exams and apply for university entry. Indigenous students in remote locations in particular, however, do not have the same financial resources, school facilities and community situations to support them to excel. </p>
<p>A strict application of the concept of merit would make no allowance for the disadvantages Indigenous students face in comparison with inner-city children in private schools.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/31551/original/3vrvn7w9-1379477048.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/31551/original/3vrvn7w9-1379477048.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/31551/original/3vrvn7w9-1379477048.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/31551/original/3vrvn7w9-1379477048.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/31551/original/3vrvn7w9-1379477048.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/31551/original/3vrvn7w9-1379477048.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/31551/original/3vrvn7w9-1379477048.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">New prime minister Tony Abbott has come in for criticism over naming just one woman in his first Cabinet.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Alan Porritt</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>To achieve equality of result - or substantive equality - we must abandon ideas of merit that ignore social disadvantages and barriers that might keep equally good or better candidates from entry into the race. Some find the concept of unequal treatment through quotas or special entry schemes distasteful and unfair, but it is crucial to recognise the unfairness of the presumption of an equal starting line inherent in the concept of merit.</p>
<p>When universities encourage the enrolment of Indigenous students, even if the marks the students have attained at school do not meet the usual requirement, they are not simply penalising students who have already shown “merit”. Instead, they are working to correct systematic disadvantage that leads to an unequal outcome (poor Indigenous representation in higher education). </p>
<p>When political parties take action to counter the under-representation of women, as in the example of Labor-affiliated group <a href="http://www.emilyslist.org.au/">EMILY’s List</a>, which has sought to increase the number of women candidates since 1996, or the proposed <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/liberal-senator-attacks-partys-promotion-of-women-20130916-2tu2r.html">Foundation 51</a> initiative to develop and recruit Liberal Party candidates, it is not to force “meritorious” men from positions. Rather, it is about acknowledging the social and cultural reasons why it is more difficult for many women to enter politics.</p>
<p>It means acknowledging that the running race already sees most women start on a tremendous handicap, and that some of our “best” candidates might actually be confined to the spectator’s box unless we take action to work toward equality of outcome. </p>
<p>Australia is a country with affection for the notion of a “fair go”. We therefore ought to realise that getting somewhere on “merit” does not mean that there were not better candidates out there who lacked the same privilege and opportunity.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/18317/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michelle Smith receives funding from the Australian Research Council.</span></em></p>Just one woman has been appointed to new prime minister Tony Abbott’s first Cabinet of 19. As a result, online forums have been abuzz with debate about gender representation in federal politics. A number…Michelle Smith, ARC Postdoctoral Fellow, Deakin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/182192013-09-18T04:35:16Z2013-09-18T04:35:16ZAll politics is domestic: the Indonesian response to the federal election<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/31515/original/yd4sfq3j-1379471994.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Tony Abbott has said he wants to focus his foreign policy objectives in 'Jakarta, not Geneva'. But how successful will he be?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Adi Weda</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Australia’s recent federal election was – as usual – won and lost primarily on domestic policy issues. Unlike his predecessor, new prime minister Tony Abbott made no claims to great expertise in foreign affairs. Abbott <a href="http://www.tonyabbott.com.au/News/tabid/94/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/8948/Press-Conference-Parliament-House-Canberra.aspx">talked about</a> devising a Jakarta-focused foreign policy, rather than a Geneva-based one: a catchy phrase, but one with little meat on its bones. </p>
<p>The closest Abbott came to talking about relations with Indonesia was in connection with the asylum seeker issue, where he repeatedly assured the electorate he would “stop the boats”. He also told us he would <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-08-23/coalition-to-announce-scheme-to-buy-unsafe-asylum-boats/4907546">buy Indonesian fishing vessels</a> to stop them being used to transport asylum seekers to Australia, and pay Indonesian community leaders for information on people smugglers. Abbott is <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/indonesia-trip-on-the-list-for-tony-abbott-before-the-end-of-the-month-20130916-2ttif.html">likely to visit</a> Indonesia to meet with president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono before the end of the month.</p>
<p>But just one week after his election victory, Jakarta is already raining on Abbott’s parade. Indonesian foreign minister Marty Natalegawa told the Indonesian parliament clearly – and utterably predictably – that Jakarta <a href="http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2013/09/12/indonesia-reject-abbott-s-boat-people-plan.html">did not accept</a> the basic thrust of Abbott’s policies: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>We will reject his policy on asylum seekers and any other policy that harms the spirit of partnership.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Both Abbott and Australia’s new foreign minister Julie Bishop must have known that such a response would be forthcoming once the election campaign was over. This makes Julie Bishop’s response all the more puzzling. She <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-09-16/coalition-to-ask-indonesia-for-understanding-not-permission/4959976">asserted</a> of the Coalition’s policies that they:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>…will not breach Indonesia’s sovereignty. We’re not asking for Indonesia’s permission, we’re asking for their understanding.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It’s hard to see which part of the Coalition’s plan Bishop believed would not be seen in Jakarta as threatening Indonesian sovereignty. Turning the boats back might not, provided the boats were not directed into Indonesian waters - which would seem to defeat the whole purpose of the exercise. But it’s difficult to argue that setting up an intelligence-gathering network in Indonesia - and operating a boat-buying business in that country - could be done without Indonesian permission. Certainly no Indonesian politician is going to make that case.</p>
<p>As an aside, if Australian intelligence officers in Indonesia are not currently buying information about people smugglers, we could justifiably ask why not.</p>
<p>The Coalition’s position is made the more complicated by new agriculture minister Barnaby Joyce’s <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/12/indonesian-beef-plan">spirited rejection</a> of the idea of Indonesian purchases of Australian pastoral land to produce cattle for export back to Indonesia. </p>
<p>From the Indonesian end, the <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-09-12/indonesia-plans-to-buy-1m-hectares-of-grazing-land/4952578">public face</a> of this idea has been state enterprises minister Dahlan Iskan. Iskan is one of 11 candidates vying for the presidential nomination of SBY’s Partai Demokrat. His cause will not be harmed at all by taking on the Australian government on this issue, or at least taking on one vocal part of that government. The details of exactly how the Coalition works are not widely appreciated in Indonesia. </p>
<p>One wonders if Iskan might be tempted to take a leaf out of Bishop’s book and declare: we are not asking for Australia’s permission, we’re asking for their understanding. If he did, there’s no prizes for guessing how Australia would react.</p>
<p>The danger for the Coalition is that their whole approach to Indonesia becomes dominated by chest-beating on the asylum seeker issue, and (less significantly) the cattle trade. These are important issues. But there many others in the relationship that need to be addressed.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/31517/original/sm2crbjv-1379472317.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/31517/original/sm2crbjv-1379472317.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=902&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/31517/original/sm2crbjv-1379472317.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=902&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/31517/original/sm2crbjv-1379472317.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=902&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/31517/original/sm2crbjv-1379472317.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1133&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/31517/original/sm2crbjv-1379472317.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1133&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/31517/original/sm2crbjv-1379472317.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1133&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Australia’s new agriculture minister Barnaby Joyce says he will oppose greater Indonesian ownership of Australian land.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Lukas Coch</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Perhaps the basic challenge Tony Abbott faces is how to build domestic political support for his stated foreign policy aim of prioritising Jakarta over Geneva in Australian foreign policy. This won’t be easy. It is a challenge many of his predecessors have tried to address but failed to meet.</p>
<p>As any number of observers have <a href="https://theconversation.com/same-old-stereotypes-of-indonesia-and-our-politicians-arent-helping-17159">pointed out</a> recently, the current level of understanding about Indonesia in Australia is abysmal. It is matched perhaps only by our level of interest in the country. It is ironic that Australian public and commercial interest in Indonesia was much greater when the country was under authoritarian, military-backed rule than it is today, when it is an electoral democracy. </p>
<p>So, how does the Coalition plan to address this issue?</p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.news.com.au/national-affairs/election-2013/indonesia-first-port-of-study-for-students-in-reverse-colombo-plan/story-fn9qr68y-1226707894291#">New Colombo Plan</a> is an excellent idea which, if successful, could begin to wear down outdated stereotypes. Indonesia has been identified as a priority target country. However, making the plan work will clearly require Indonesian cooperation. Indonesia will need to simplify its cumbersome visa system for a start. </p>
<p>But any pressure from Australia for Indonesia to loosen visa requirements for Australian students is likely to fall on politically deaf ears if the Coalition pushes back hard on asylum seekers. You can hear voices in Jakarta channelling <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2001/s422692.htm">former Australian prime minister John Howard</a> already: we determine who comes to this country, and the conditions under which they come.</p>
<p>We need to stop treating issues in the Indonesia relationship as discrete entities, able to be picked off and addressed in isolation, and recognise that they are connected.</p>
<p>And recognise too that, just as in Australia, foreign policy positions in Indonesia are usually grounded in domestic concerns. Can the Coalition’s approach to Indonesia on asylum seekers be understood outside the domestic Australian context? Of course not. The situation is no different with respect to Indonesian reactions to that policy.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/18219/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Colin Brown does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Australia’s recent federal election was – as usual – won and lost primarily on domestic policy issues. Unlike his predecessor, new prime minister Tony Abbott made no claims to great expertise in foreign…Colin Brown, Adjunct Professor, Griffith Asia Institute, Griffith UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/182732013-09-17T05:16:12Z2013-09-17T05:16:12ZMirabella and gender: vicious attacks show nothing’s changed<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/31447/original/3vpsdyjt-1379391473.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Liberal politician Sophie Mirabella, who is likely to lose her Victorian seat of Indi, has been subjected to the misogyny that continues to pervade Australian politics.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Alan Porritt</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Hard-faced.</p>
<p>I’m looking at that phrase and wondering exactly what it means.</p>
<p>Of course, I know what it means when it’s applied to men. They are heroic, they’ve seen things that those of us who are more sheltered should never see. They are game for life. Indeed, they have to hide their feelings to protect us from the enemy.</p>
<p>It is, as a young student of mine said, a compliment when it’s applied to men. But what does it mean when it’s applied to women? Susan Butler, the editor of the Macquarie Dictionary, replies instantly when I ask her.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Hard-faced bitch comes to my mind as a standard derogatory insulting remark.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>There is, she says, no implication that a “hard-faced bitch” may have a soft heart. “She’s born that way,” says Butler.</p>
<p>And it’s standard political commentary when it comes to describing women who are ambitious and who display their ambition. <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/transcripts/s3850006.htm">This week</a>, Sophie Mirabella was <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/ciao-bella-sophie-prepares-to-exit-stage-right-20130912-2tnkj.html">described as “hard-faced”</a>. In short, Mirabella copped the Julia Gillard treatment, although there was no mention of the size of any of her <a href="https://theconversation.com/dining-out-on-the-prime-minister-time-to-change-the-menugate-15161">body parts</a>.</p>
<p>There is no question. Mirabella, who looks like she will <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-09-17/vote-count-in-victorian-seat-of-indi-almost-complete/4961890">lose her Victorian seat of Indi</a> to independent Cathy McGowan, is an unpopular figure. That’s not my opinion speaking – that’s the voice of her electorate which did not emulate the nation’s swing to the Coalition.</p>
<p>This has zero to do with her public persona – it’s a judgment made by the people who voted her into their seat. It’s not because she watched GetUp’s Simon Sheikh <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/tv-and-radio/mirabella-in-shock-when-qa-panellist-fainted-20120702-21dks.html">keel over</a> on the ABC’s Q&A. It’s not because of her <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/national/mirabella-in-hot-seat-over-qc-lovers-dying-days-20110922-1knct.html">relationship</a> with her former partner and mentor Colin Howard, although those things shape the public consciousness.</p>
<p>But the wholesale and loathsome enthusiasm for her demise is not about how she represented Indi. It’s the response of a national electorate which has an appetite for talking about women as if they were dogs. Or bitches.</p>
<p>Mirabella herself conspired in the formation of this discourse when she appeared beneath the now infamous <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/pinocchio-gillard-strong-antigillard-emissions-at-canberra-carbon-tax-protest-20110323-1c5w7.html">“Ditch the Witch” signs</a>. But that’s not reason enough to treat her that way.</p>
<p>We describe women in politics or in power in a way we would never describe men. Just turn to page 106 of Anne Summers’ book <a href="http://annesummers.com.au/books/the-misogyny-factor/">The Misogyny Factor</a> to look at the inventory of remarks about our former prime minister, a catalogue which begins with bitch, continues through moll, and ends with whore.</p>
<p>Of course, it’s an extension of what happens to any woman, anywhere. We now all know, thanks to a 2006 University of Maryland study, that anyone with a female username on the internet is <a href="http://phys.org/news66401288.html">25 times more likely to be trolled</a>. Don’t think that only happens on the internet. It happens to women in real life, with real names, who are real people. To Julia Gillard. To Sophie Mirabella. I wrote a <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/liberal-senator-attacks-partys-promotion-of-women-20130916-2tu2r.html">story</a> about Liberal Senator Sue Boyce this week because she thinks the lack of <a href="https://theconversation.com/abbott-flies-female-lite-with-his-frontbench-18266">representation of women in Cabinet</a> is a national disgrace. The emails I received about her were the actual disgrace.</p>
<p>Women agree that women are treated badly.</p>
<p>Don’t think it’s my imagination. As Crikey’s Cathy Alexander <a href="http://www.crikey.com.au/2012/09/03/essential-if-julian-gillard-were-pm-hed-be-riding-higher/">wrote last year</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>If Julia Gillard was Julian Gillard, she’d get an easier time of it.</p>
<p>A new Essential Research poll has found 51% of those surveyed thought Gillard “had been subject to more personal criticism than a male prime minister would be”, while just 6% thought she copped less flak than a man would.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Women feel the difference: 61% of women thought Gillard was criticised more than a man would be criticised.</p>
<p>I think that publishers need to take some responsibility for what they publish – particularly in opinion pieces. </p>
<p>Do I want censorship?</p>
<p>Here’s my answer. We’ve stopped using the word nigger.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/18273/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>I am a cofounder of the feminist action group Destroy the Joint; am an active feminist in my personal life; and am a UTS academic in journalism and social media. I also give lectures at UTS on social media activism, including the story of Destroy the Joint, applying the theories of Manuel Castells.</span></em></p>Hard-faced. I’m looking at that phrase and wondering exactly what it means. Of course, I know what it means when it’s applied to men. They are heroic, they’ve seen things that those of us who are more…Jenna Price, Senior lecturer, University of Technology SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/182302013-09-16T20:28:21Z2013-09-16T20:28:21ZWith friends like these: Labor hatred of the Greens is self-defeating<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/31376/original/zhqbjr67-1379301670.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Labor shouldn't see the Greens as the enemy if they want to regain the power and standing they lost at the ballot box.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Julian Smith</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Over the weekend, the Labor Party seemed to embark on a media tantrum around their failure to recapture the seat of <a href="http://vtr.aec.gov.au/HouseDivisionFirstPrefs-17496-228.htm">Melbourne</a> from the Greens’ Adam Bandt. The local Victorian state member for Brunswick, Jane Garrett, <a href="http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/the-green-thorn-in-our-side/story-e6frfkp9-1226718839601">vented her frustrations</a> in The Weekend Australian. The main opinion piece in the Sunday Age also <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/comment/battle-for-the-city-20130914-2trp0.html">centred on this contest</a>, making a great deal of the fact that Bandt outspent his Labor opponent “at least four to one”.</p>
<p>This figure ignores the national campaign altogether — where Labor clearly not only outspent the Greens enormously, but had the advantages of incumbency — but it also ignores the reality that Bandt was well funded because large numbers of people in Melbourne wanted him to win enough to pledge money. Yes, Labor should see this as a warning sign, but as a sign of their own failures - not, as Garrett claims, the negative attacks of the Greens.</p>
<p>This anger at the Greens is not new. In the opening paragraph of his preface to former treasurer Chris Bowen’s book <a href="https://theconversation.com/chris-bowens-plan-to-win-hearts-and-minds-and-save-labor-16028">Hearts and Minds</a>, Paul Keating asks whether “the political role of Labor can be replaced in some bifurcation between the Liberals on the right and the Greens on the left”.</p>
<p>That a former Labor prime minister can even ask the question suggests the malaise within Labor, occasioned by the apparent irreconcilable gap between the middle class supporters of the Greens and the traditional union base of the ALP. So, here’s a prediction: the Greens will not become a major party nor will Labor ever regain power without accepting their need to work closely with them.</p>
<p>The decline in the Labor Party vote is a product of both immediate and structural changes. It is more complex than the simplistic idea that the Greens represent people who can afford to vote for values, while Labor represents those who depend on economic growth, a claim repeated by Bowen in his book.</p>
<p>Many Green voters are struggling. Some of them, such as students and single mothers, because Labor governments did little to genuinely assist them. Equally, Labor has retained a large share of the despised “latte-sipping” professional classes. Outside the seat of Melbourne, the ALP easily outpolled the Greens in seats such as <a href="http://vtr.aec.gov.au/HouseDivisionFirstPrefs-17496-149.htm">Sydney</a>, <a href="http://vtr.aec.gov.au/HouseDivisionFirstPrefs-17496-179.htm">Adelaide</a> and <a href="http://vtr.aec.gov.au/HouseDivisionFirstPrefs-17496-230.htm">Melbourne Ports</a>, which are strongholds of the people Bowen claims “don’t need economic growth to be comfortable”.</p>
<p>Indeed, Garrett and Bowen should be far more troubled by the fact that the Coalition beat them in some of the poorest and least educated areas of Australia. Much of what used to be Labor heartland is now strongly Liberal, National or Palmer United in its allegiances. The ALP should be more worried by losing most of their provincial seats — swings in Queensland and Tasmania mean that they now hold virtually no major provincial cities outside Victoria — than Adam Bandt holding Melbourne. In a seat like <a href="http://vtr.aec.gov.au/HouseDivisionFirstPrefs-17496-157.htm">Capricornia</a>, based around Rockhampton, it was the Palmer United Party, not the Greens, who siphoned off traditional Labor votes.</p>
<p>The immediate problems of the Labor government have been well rehearsed, and indeed to end up with <a href="http://vtr.aec.gov.au/Default.htm">over 46% of the two-party preferred vote</a> after four years of internal warfare is remarkable. But the structural problems would have existed even if Kevin Rudd had either not been deposed or vanished after he was. They are a consequence of a rapidly changing economy, in which more people now work for themselves than are members of unions. They also reflect the larger post-GFC conundrum: that after the obvious flaws of unfettered capitalism were revealed, the Left across the western world has struggled to find a convincing narrative to regain power.</p>
<p>The major exception is possibly Obama’s victory last year. There, Obama combined the appeals of both moderate policies of redistribution with a very targeted appeal to minorities. But among all the many obvious differences one can point to, the United States remains the only significant two party state in the world, only possible because party discipline is so much laxer than it is here.</p>
<p>Instead of attacking the Greens, Labor needs to follow the lead of their conservative rivals. The Liberal and National parties have long accepted that while they may not always agree, a de facto alliance between rural and urban conservatives is necessary to win power. With occasional lapses, the Liberals realise that the Nationals are not their primary enemy. Labor needs to learn this about the Greens.</p>
<p>The rise of an increasing number of voters who are not primarily swayed by economic issues can work for both Left and Right. Under John Howard, the Liberals understood that appealing to socially conservative values could win over voters who might otherwise not support his economic policies. </p>
<p>For a brief period, Rudd seemed to have mastered this - as in the emphasis he placed in the 2007 election on reconciliation, a more humane attitude to asylum seekers, and climate change. Those Labor people who now want to have nothing to do with the Greens forget that many people are voting Green in support of issues that Rudd made central to his election six years ago.</p>
<p>Is it not ironic that Labor is now proclaiming a price on carbon as central to their values, when they only adopted this policy because of pressure from the Greens? And despite the attacks on the Greens, the party’s leader Christine Milne consistently made clear through the campaign that they would not support an Abbott government.</p>
<p>What progressives need is a reconciliation between Labor and the Greens which acknowledges there are differences, but also without cooperation Labor will find it very difficult to ever regain power. This need not mean a formal coalition, but it does mean both sides should acknowledge they have common ground in opposing the growing Right-wing populism to which Tony Abbott so successfully appealed. </p>
<p>Labor’s real enemies are to their Right, not the Left.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/18230/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dennis Altman endorsed Adam Bandt in the federal election.</span></em></p>Over the weekend, the Labor Party seemed to embark on a media tantrum around their failure to recapture the seat of Melbourne from the Greens’ Adam Bandt. The local Victorian state member for Brunswick…Dennis Altman, Professorial Fellow in Human Security, La Trobe UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/182422013-09-16T07:29:50Z2013-09-16T07:29:50ZAbbott’s new Cabinet: steady as she goes<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/31383/original/pd4m5pks-1379309214.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Prime minister-elect Tony Abbott has opted for experienced hands in naming his first Cabinet.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Alan Porritt</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Prime minister-elect Tony Abbott has <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/tony-abbotts-cabinet-and-outer-ministry-20130916-2tuma.html">announced</a> his new Cabinet and ministerial line-up. In keeping with previous Coalition and Labor governments, there will be an inner Cabinet of senior ministers and an outer ministry of junior minsters and parliamentary secretaries.</p>
<p>The membership, structure and allocation of portfolios tells us a lot about a government’s priorities and policy focus, as well as who will be influential in the process of governing.</p>
<p>Historically, only Liberal prime ministers decided who is in, who is out and who does what in their ministry - giving them immense power. Traditionally, the Labor caucus elected the ministry and the Labor prime minster allocated the portfolios, but that has long since changed. </p>
<p>However, a Liberal prime minister is not as free to choose, appoint and allocate as it would appear. He has to take into account competencies, state location, personalities and sensitivities, seniority, internal party support and the political clout of particular MPs. Though there are not factions with the same rigidity as Labor, there are groupings in the non-Labor parties based loosely around policy views (“wet” versus “dry”), or usually personal likes and dislikes.</p>
<p>Also, all prime ministers must consider dividing the numbers and portfolios between the Senate and the House of Representatives. While there is an overwhelming preponderance of minsters and parliamentary secretaries in the House of Representatives (in the last Rudd government it was 33 compared to only ten from the Senate), care must be taken to ensure that there are also some important portfolios represented in the Senate and that the government leader in the Senate has a suitably senior portfolio. For instance, the outgoing government leader in the Senate, Penny Wong, was Minister for Finance.</p>
<p>In selecting his Cabinet, Abbott had one more complicating factor to consider. As the leader of a coalition, he has to consider not only who from each party gets what portfolio - with the Nationals historically claiming ministries like agriculture and trade - but also about what proportion of the ministry the Nationals should have. </p>
<p>Although the Nationals increased their number of seats from 12 to 15 at the recent election, they are a party in decline. In 1975 they won 23 seats out of 127 and in 1996 won 18 seats out of 148. Now it is 15 out of 150 - just 10% of the total House of Representatives seats - down from 18% in 1975.</p>
<p>So, Abbott has now announced a 42 member ministry including 19 in the Cabinet, 11 in the outer ministry and 12 parliamentary secretaries – almost the same as his predecessor’s.</p>
<p>There are no great surprises. Abbott has largely stuck with his shadow Cabinet team. Joe Hockey is the new treasurer, Malcolm Turnbull (communications) and Julie Bishop (foreign affairs) retain their positions, and so do most of the other senior shadow ministers. Bronwyn Bishop is to be Speaker of the House. </p>
<p>Only a few have been dropped. One is Sophie Mirabella, who <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-09-16/close-count-in-victorian-seat-of-indi-expected-to-be-completed-/4960646">may not get re-elected</a> in her Victorian seat of Indi. And there are <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-09-15/tony-abbott-set-to-announce-frontbench/4959184">a couple dropped</a> from junior positions: Teresa Gambaro from Brisbane and Queensland senator Ian Macdonald. The only surprise was the elevation of Western Australian senator Mathias Cormann to the finance portfolio in Cabinet over NSW senator Arthur Sinodinos. However, Sinodinos is in the outer ministry as assistant treasurer - not an insignificant position.</p>
<p>In terms of state balances, although the Queensland LNP returned 22 of the 30 lower house seats in that state and three out of the six possible Senate positions, it has not been over-rewarded. Four Queenslanders are in Cabinet – Nationals leader Warren Truss, attorney-general George Brandis, industry minister Ian Macfarlane and health minister Peter Dutton, while one is in the outer ministry (Stuart Robert) and two are parliamentary secretaries (Steven Ciobo and Brett Mason).</p>
<p>As predicted by commentators, the Nationals did not pick up the trade portfolio. That has gone to a Liberal, Andrew Robb - a key figure in the lead-up to the election in terms of policy development. However, the National Party gained three Cabinet portfolios: infrastructure and development (Truss), agriculture (Barnaby Joyce) and indigenous affairs (Nigel Scullion), which align with their political interests, but also have certain challenges. The Nationals also hold the deputy prime ministership. Elsewhere, the Nationals won two positions in the outer ministry and have two parliamentary secretaries for a total of seven ministerial positions.</p>
<p>The senator balance is interesting and is a departure from previous governments. There are 16 senators in the overall ministry – five in Cabinet, six in the outer ministry and five parliamentary secretaries. It is an unprecedented number, and may indicate just where the talent is in the Coalition these days.</p>
<p>The one <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/liberal-senator-attacks-partys-promotion-of-women-20130916-2tu2r.html">criticism</a> Abbott will receive from some quarters is the lack of women in the ministry. There is only Julie Bishop as Minster for Foreign Affairs in Cabinet, although she is number three in seniority in the government. There are four women out of 11 in the outer ministry, and only one female parliamentary secretary. </p>
<p>This is in stark contrast to the Rudd and Gillard ministries – Rudd had 11 women in his ministry in total, including six in Cabinet. This should have been attended to by Abbott in opposition where there were few women shadow ministers, and therefore not made it politically difficult to try to catch up in one step. It is a matter Abbott has to attend to in the long term.</p>
<p>Overall, this is a Cabinet reflecting Abbott’s pre-election promise to provide stable, reliable government.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/18242/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Scott Prasser does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Prime minister-elect Tony Abbott has announced his new Cabinet and ministerial line-up. In keeping with previous Coalition and Labor governments, there will be an inner Cabinet of senior ministers and…Scott Prasser, Executive Director, Public Policy Institute, Australian Catholic UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/181442013-09-15T20:42:17Z2013-09-15T20:42:17ZVirtue and vexation: the policy vacuum in the 2013 election<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/31295/original/v9rwfkh9-1379051643.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Now that it is all said and done, what did we learn about Australian politics in the 2013 federal election campaign?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Alan Porritt</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>I have been around for a long time and involved in some terrible campaigns, but the policy vacuum in 2013 was the worst I can recall. There was no serious debate on issues, whether simple or complex, and an obsessive emphasis on personalities, stunts and trivia. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/election-2013-the-role-of-the-media-17543">media coverage</a> was demoralising, relentlessly trivialised, with newspapers not merely reporting and analysing but making the running in advocacy. I thought that News Corp might nominate its own candidates (perhaps the “Murdoch United Party”?), but it had no need for that.</p>
<p>September 7 produced some extraordinary results - including the <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-palmer-united-party-came-out-barking-17979">success of the Palmer United Party</a>; the low turnout of voters (only an estimated 11.4 million out of 14.7 million entitled to vote); unusually high informal voting; and the astonishing success of <a href="https://theconversation.com/micro-parties-win-on-the-big-boys-rules-18027">microparties in the Senate</a>, where unknowns, with undetectable policies, have won in New South Wales, Victoria and Western Australia. Cathy McGowan’s likely victory in <a href="https://theconversation.com/lost-and-found-the-case-of-the-missing-votes-in-indi-18140">Indi</a> has given a great deal of pleasure, even inside the Liberal Party.</p>
<p>There were some bizarre inconsistencies in the polling. The ALP secured its highest <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/federal-election-2013/results/">state percentage of primary votes</a> (36.1%) in South Australia, but only elected a single senator. New South Wales, despite its appalling <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/elections/nsw/2011/">state election result</a> (25.6%) in March 2011, the <a href="https://theconversation.com/icac-calls-for-criminal-charges-against-nsw-alp-kingmakers-the-experts-respond-16549">Obeid-Macdonald revelations at ICAC</a> and frenzied media predictions of fundamental shifts in voting in western Sydney, came up with an aggregate percentage (34.9%), only a fraction behind Victoria. For comparison, the NSW aggregate vote for the ALP in the House of Representatives was 40% in 1966, 39.6% in 1977 and 38% in 2010.</p>
<p>Tony Abbott has good reason to be satisfied with the result as he pursues his mission to take the politics (that is, the serious debate about priorities, values, ideas, future directions and relationships with the world) out of politics and pursues the <a href="https://www.liberal.org.au/latest-news/2013/09/10/tony-abbott-interview-david-koch-and-samantha-armytage-sunrise">mantra</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Happy is the country which is more interested in sport than in politics because it shows there is a fundamental unity. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Really? Tell them that at <a href="https://theconversation.com/topics/essendon">Essendon</a>. It sounds like a modern version of “bread and circuses”.</p>
<p>So, bring on the clowns. There will be some in the Senate anyway.</p>
<h2>Toxic political culture</h2>
<p>We can never forgive those we have injured.</p>
<p>Since election day, Kevin Rudd has come under <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-09-09/craig-emerson-blasts-kevin-rudd-for-labor-downfall2c-says-he-m/4946380">sustained attack</a> from former colleagues who removed him as prime minister in the coup of June 2010. This confirms the principle that we can never forgive those we have injured. But the coup caused ongoing collateral damage. Rudd was injured, grievously, but so was Julia Gillard, the ALP and the parliament. </p>
<p>The coup was a central factor in the decay of civilised discourse on policy issues, undermining of trust in people, the unleashing of non-stop attacks in media outlets and allowing preoccupation with personalities, displacing rational, serious debate about policy. The process is cruel, distasteful and pointless, and involves the politics of revenge, payback and vendetta.</p>
<p>The same unforgiving approach applies to asylum seekers and, to a degree, Aborigines. Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison were very successful in encouraging Australian voters to see themselves as the victims of invasion, overrun by hordes of <a href="http://www.liberal.org.au/latest-news/2013/08/02/another-illegal-boat-under-guilty-party-border-protection">“illegals”</a> as they persistently - and incorrectly - described them.</p>
<h2>Asylum seekers and refugees</h2>
<p>At first, I thought that the <a href="https://theconversation.com/no-more-asylum-in-australia-for-those-arriving-by-boat-rudd-16238">PNG solution</a> might be diabolically clever, but then it just seemed diabolical.</p>
<p>During the 2013 election and throughout the 43rd parliament, neither side of politics was prepared to engage in a high level debate, examining history, geography, actual numbers, the nature of regional, ethnic and religious conflicts, and looking for global solutions, sharing the load and working for the long term. Instead, we had a Dutch auction in which both sides were competing to show how tough they could be.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/31297/original/w48zj9v7-1379052889.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/31297/original/w48zj9v7-1379052889.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/31297/original/w48zj9v7-1379052889.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/31297/original/w48zj9v7-1379052889.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/31297/original/w48zj9v7-1379052889.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/31297/original/w48zj9v7-1379052889.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/31297/original/w48zj9v7-1379052889.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Evidence was missing from the asylum seeker debate during the election.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Made Mahardika</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The ABC’s <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/votecompass/">Vote Compass</a> tool, which attracted nearly 1.4 million responses - and was then adjusted to ensure that the sample was representative of Census returns - indicated that <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-08-21/asylum-seekers-vote-compass-boats-immigration/4899914">48% of Labor supporters</a> disagreed with ALP policy that asylum seekers arriving by boat should be processed in Papua New Guinea and prohibited from settling in Australia.</p>
<p>Refugee issues can be handled humanely and proportionately only when there is bipartisan agreement – as happened with Fraser and Whitlam over Vietnamese and Cambodian refugees, and Hawke and Peacock with Chinese refugees. But bipartisan support for harsh treatment represents a race to the bottom.</p>
<p>Australia had a long history of discrimination in immigration - dominated by the <a href="http://www.immi.gov.au/media/fact-sheets/08abolition.htm">White Australia Policy</a> - until the 1970s. At the Évian Conference in 1938, Australia took a <a href="http://au.christiantoday.com/article/1938-evian-conference-still-haunts-australia/10769.htm">very tough line</a> against the boat people of the time – Jewish refugees from Hitler’s Germany. The language used then was almost identical with abusive terms used in 2013 – “they should get back in the queue”, “queue jumpers”, with particular hatred directed towards the people smugglers of the time.</p>
<p>In a rational debate, there might have been some dispassionate examination of evidence to get some sense of proportion. In terms of the numbers of refugees listed by country of destination, Australia <a href="http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2011/01/05/glance-who-takes-most-asylum-claims">ranks 47th</a>, just ahead of Belgium, but well behind Canada, Norway, the Netherlands, the UK, France, Italy, Germany, Sweden and Switzerland. In Europe, none of the mainstream parties complain of being swamped, although they do feel some strain and the problem does stimulate the rise of racist parties. In the Australian election, <a href="https://theconversation.com/stop-the-votes-the-seats-where-the-asylum-issue-resonates-most-17446">Clive Palmer and the Greens</a> were the least hostile to refugees.</p>
<p>But evidence did not feature in the election campaign – it was swamped by opinion, however misinformed.</p>
<h2>Labor’s future</h2>
<p>The warning from some senior ALP figures - “let’s stop talking about ourselves” - is also coded language for saying: “don’t even think about reforming the party structure so that it has some degree of community engagement and the application of democratic practice”.</p>
<p>Is the ALP oligarchic rather than democratic? Is it a wholly-owned subsidiary of the trade union movement? If the answer to both questions is “yes”, it condemns the party to dependence on a contracting base. To borrow the language of philosophers, the close relationship of the trade unions and the ALP is a necessary condition, but not sufficient. Labor needs six million votes to win a federal election: trade unionists (<a href="http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/latestProducts/6310.0Media%20Release1August%202012">1.8 million</a>) and their families are not enough.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/31298/original/kmzhss9y-1379053140.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/31298/original/kmzhss9y-1379053140.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/31298/original/kmzhss9y-1379053140.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/31298/original/kmzhss9y-1379053140.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/31298/original/kmzhss9y-1379053140.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/31298/original/kmzhss9y-1379053140.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/31298/original/kmzhss9y-1379053140.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">If successful in the leadership ballot, is Bill Shorten the right man to take Labor forward?</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Lukas Coch</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For nearly 60 years trade unionists have been a contracting proportion of the labour force: the high point was in 1954. Trade unionists now comprise 18% of workers – and the figure continues to fall. Factions within the party are controlled not by the workers themselves (a significant number of unionists don’t vote Labor anyway, and the number of union members who actually join ALP branches is embarrassingly small) but by trade union officials – people who often become beneficiaries of Labor’s patronage system, receiving endorsements for safe seats.</p>
<p>Senator Stephen Conroy’s <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-09-12/stephen-conroy-labels-new-labor-leadership-rules-a-farce/4952532">attack</a> on the <a href="https://theconversation.com/no-more-coups-against-labor-pms-under-new-rudd-rules-15887">introduction of democratic practice</a> in electing a party leader as a “farce” is entirely understandable. Converting the ALP from an oligarchy to a democracy would damage - if not destroy - the power of the factions. If large numbers of people vote in a ballot, the capacity of a factional powerbroker to determine a preselection outcome by bringing in two or three busloads of puzzled people from an ethnic sporting club or some other special interest group is threatened.</p>
<p>The only direct election in which all ALP branch members have been entitled to vote so far has been for the office of national president (and the senior and junior vice presidents), a system introduced in 2003. </p>
<p>Curiously, although it is taken as axiomatic that the Right faction dominates National Conference and the caucus in Canberra and most, if not all states, the Right has consistently polled very badly – they have never come first in a national president contest, confirming that it has little support among branch members, even in NSW.</p>
<p>Oddly, this has never been picked up, to my knowledge, by the political commentariat.</p>
<p>The ALP is fortunate to have <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/anthony-albanese-puts-his-hat-into-the-ring-for-labor-leadership-20130913-2tp2h.html">two strong candidates for the leadership</a>, with complementary skills, capable of mutual trust and able to work with each other. Both are committed to ending the toxic factional and sub-factional activities which have damaged the radical cause and prevented serious examination of policy.</p>
<h2>Climate change</h2>
<p>It is already clear that the process of global warming, to which human activity plays an important (but not the only) role, may well be irreversible. 2013 is on track to be the hottest year since systematic global records have been kept.</p>
<p>In 2007, Kevin Rudd <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqZvpRjGtGM">referred</a> to climate change as the “greatest moral, economic and social challenge of our time”. Morgan polls indicated that in 2008, 35% of Australians nominated the environment as a major issue: by 2013 this has fallen to 8%. After the carbon pricing legislation was carried, Labor failed to keep explaining the significance of environmental issues, especially global warming.</p>
<p>Tony Abbott’s <a href="http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/opposition-leader-will-not-be-for-turning-on-toxic-carbon-tax/story-e6frfkp9-1226478400309">relentless negativity</a> on the issue (this “toxic” tax), dismissing the science as <a href="http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/the-town-that-turned-up-the-temperature/story-e6frfkp9-1225809567009">“crap”</a>, strongly supported by the Murdoch papers and NSW shock jocks, went essentially unquestioned, and became a default position. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/31296/original/99y84rjk-1379052701.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/31296/original/99y84rjk-1379052701.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=367&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/31296/original/99y84rjk-1379052701.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=367&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/31296/original/99y84rjk-1379052701.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=367&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/31296/original/99y84rjk-1379052701.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=461&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/31296/original/99y84rjk-1379052701.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=461&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/31296/original/99y84rjk-1379052701.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=461&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Climate change was essentially absent from being an issue in the 2013 election.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Street Protest TV</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>During the campaign, climate change was dismissed in a few passing sentences - for example by Rudd on the ABC’s Q&A, essentially as if carbon pricing or the emissions trading scheme measures were all about promoting clean air and clean energy. There were no references to the role of “greenhouse gases” in trapping and retaining heat, and their impact on climate change and extreme weather events.</p>
<p>Scientific method, rational analysis and the evaluation of evidence has been a central factor in defining western society and culture since the 18th century, and these skills can be or should be applied to a variety of disciplines – politics, law, economics, social sciences, health. Scientists have come under unprecedented and damaging attack arising from the climate change controversy. </p>
<p>It is essential to distinguish between scientific scepticism (a central element in testing evidence, for example Karl Popper’s <a href="http://explorable.com/falsifiability">falsifiability test</a>) and cynicism (dismissing evidence, however compelling, to promote confusion, inaction or vested interest).</p>
<p>The outgoing government made no attempt to grapple with the science involved in the issue and to explain the long-term implications of a two or three degree increase in global temperatures. As one of the world’s <a href="http://www.carbonneutral.com.au/climate-change/australian-emissions.html">largest greenhouse gas producers per capita</a>, we need to lead by example internationally by changing our patterns of consumption. Planning for an economy which is less dependent on fossil fuels could create many new jobs and expand research capacity.</p>
<p>There was always an internal contradiction about why carbon pricing was imposed. The message was that it was intended to reduce consumption and move away from fossil fuels. Providing a compensation package seemed to repudiate the key message: “change consumption patterns”. Tony Abbott’s promise to end carbon pricing while retaining the compensation package confirms that he is no economic rationalist.</p>
<p>It was mystifying that the Gillard government appointed a Minister for Climate Change (Greg Combet) who represented a coal mining seat. Imagine if Tony Abbott appointed a health minister elected by sugar or tobacco-growing areas in Queensland. It is hardly surprising that Combet never confronted his constituents to say: “we have to start planning for a post-carbon future and coal must be phased out”.</p>
<p>It would be just as odd to have a vegetarian as Minister for Agriculture, a pacifist as Minister for Defence or a climate change sceptic as Minister for Science.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>This article is drawn in part from “Virtue and Vexation – the 2013 Election Campaign”, a conversation with Archbishop Philip Freier and former Senator Judith Troeth, held at The Deakin Edge, Melbourne, September 11, 2013.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/18144/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Barry Jones is a member of the Australian Labor Party, was Minister for Science in the Hawke Labor government (1983-1990), and was a former National President of the ALP (1992-2000; 2005-06).</span></em></p>I have been around for a long time and involved in some terrible campaigns, but the policy vacuum in 2013 was the worst I can recall. There was no serious debate on issues, whether simple or complex, and…Barry Jones, Honorary (Professorial Fellow), Melbourne Graduate School of Education, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/180102013-09-12T20:52:22Z2013-09-12T20:52:22ZWhere to now for asylum seeker policy under Tony Abbott?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/31124/original/ypkhh6mw-1378857772.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C154%2C956%2C742&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Will the vexed asylum seeker issue continue to dominate Australian politics under an Abbott government?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Mark Cairn</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Asylum seeker policy experienced a rush of activity in the lead-up to the election. Behind the Abbott government’s <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-06-06/abbott-vows-to-stop-asylum-boats-in-first-term/4736294">bold promise</a> to “stop the boats” in its first term of government is a series of specific proposals - some adopted from Labor, and some of the Coalition’s own creation. </p>
<p>The new immigration minister, Scott Morrison, inherits a portfolio that is in disarray. There are tens of thousands of asylum seekers <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/09/tony-abbott-restates-asylum-policy">already in Australia</a> who have made an application for a Protection Visa, but who have not had their claim considered at first instance by the Department of Immigration and Citizenship (DIAC). They are in various forms of detention or in the community on bridging visas with no rights to work.</p>
<h2>Processing</h2>
<p>The government has promised to fast-track the resolution of these claims by <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/federal-politics/federal-election-2013/tony-abbott-evokes-john-howard-in-slamming-doors-on-asylum-seekers-20130815-2rzzy.html">removing the opportunity</a> to have initial decisions reviewed in Refugee Review Tribunal (RRT), and removing judicial review to the Federal Court. Instead there will be a second departmental review, after which unsuccessful applicants will be removed from Australia. The government has also promised to <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-08-31/coalition-would-stop-funding-immigration-advice-for-asylum-seek/4926666">stop funding immigration advice</a> for asylum seekers, meaning fewer asylum seekers are likely to be represented when presenting their case to migration officers. </p>
<p>The removal of these legal and administrative rights has been the subject of <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/federal-politics/federal-election-2013/inefficient-coalition-asylum-policy-will-flood-the-courts-20130816-2s18e.html#ixzz2eRnLMqlW">considerable criticism</a> in legal circles. If these rights are in fact removed, more cases are likely to end up in the High Court. This is a poor policy outcome. Despite its pre-election position, we are likely to see a continuation of judicial review in the Federal Court, if not access to merits review in the RRT.</p>
<p>In the last few years, the overturn rate of initial decisions in the RRT for asylum seekers arriving by boat has been <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/20/are-australia-refugee-acceptance-rates-high-compared-with-other-nations">about 80%</a>. There is an ongoing debate about whether initial decisions are too harsh, or the tribunal is too soft. However, there can be no doubt that many, if not the majority, of the decisions overturned will have been wrongly decided at first instance. Removing the opportunity to seek review in the RRT means that the rate of acceptance of claims is likely to drop dramatically. </p>
<p>The positive side of the new application process is that the government should be able to work through the backlog of claims more quickly, and those who are granted a protection visa will get out of detention or off bridging visas more quickly. The negative side is that more genuine refugees will have their claims rejected, and will be returned to a country where their lives are in danger.</p>
<h2>Return to TPVs</h2>
<p>Those who are successful in their claims will only be eligible for a <a href="https://theconversation.com/back-to-the-future-on-temporary-protection-visas-17316">Temporary Protection Visa</a> (TPV). These visas last for three years, after which refugees have to apply for a further TPV on the basis that they continue to fear persecution in their country of origin. </p>
<p>TPVs have been heavily criticised on a range of grounds. TPVs come with work rights, but it is harder to find work when a TPV holder can only guarantee their availability to work for 3 years. TPVs do not allow refugees to sponsor their family to join them, or to leave the country to visit family without losing their visa. This encourages those family members themselves to seek to get to Australia by boat. </p>
<p>Research shows that refugees who receive a TPV demonstrate <a href="http://www.healthyvillage.org.au/#!refugee-trauma---you-wouldnt-read-about/c1wst">increased anxiety, depression and overall distress</a> as they try to cope with their isolated state of legal limbo. If TPVs are introduced we are likely to see an ongoing debate about their cruelty.</p>
<h2>Regional resettlement</h2>
<p>The Coalition inherits the <a href="https://theconversation.com/no-more-asylum-in-australia-for-those-arriving-by-boat-rudd-16238">PNG arrangement</a> from Labor. This policy is highly unstable. There is a <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-08-27/high-court-sets-date-for-png-asylum-deal-challenge/4916442">legal challenge</a> in the High Court to the validity of the arrangement. If the arrangement survives this, it is still unclear how many asylum seekers the PNG government will be willing or able to resettle in PNG should they be found to be refugees on Manus Island. It is also unclear what rights refugees will have in PNG, and what assistance (if any) the Australian government will provide to assist with the housing, education and employment of these refugees. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/31125/original/t49jzhfw-1378858049.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/31125/original/t49jzhfw-1378858049.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/31125/original/t49jzhfw-1378858049.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/31125/original/t49jzhfw-1378858049.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/31125/original/t49jzhfw-1378858049.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/31125/original/t49jzhfw-1378858049.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/31125/original/t49jzhfw-1378858049.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Scott Morrison, the likely new immigration minister, has promised a ‘harder line’ on boat arrivals under a Coalition government.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/David Crosling</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Coalition also inherits the other part of the Pacific solution - detention and processing of asylum seekers on Nauru. Prior to the election, the Coalition <a href="http://www.news.com.au/national-news/federal-election/coalition-proposes-tent-city-as-opposition-immigration-spokesman-scott-morrison-inspects-nauru-riot-damage/story-fnho52ip-1226687784488">promised</a> to build a “tent city” for up to 5000 refugees to live on Nauru on modest welfare payments until a permanent solution can be found for them.</p>
<p>The Nauru and PNG arrangements constitute an ambitious legal, social and cultural experiment that sounded decisive in the heat of an election campaign, but will prove difficult to implement in practice. As criticism from the international community mounts and stories of poor conditions in detention and psychological trauma of detainees increase, these arrangements could unravel quickly.</p>
<h2>Stopping the boats</h2>
<p>The part of asylum seeker policy in which the Coalition differs most markedly from Labor is its determination to take direct action to stop the boats. This includes <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-08-23/coalition-announces-asylum-policy/4908186">allocating A$420 million</a> to pay Indonesian villagers for information, to buy unseaworthy boats, to boost the number of AFP officers working overseas, and to provide more funds for Australia’s border protection fleet. </p>
<p>The idea is to stop boats leaving Indonesia in the first place. For boats that do leave, the Coalition has promised that it will turn them back where it is feasible, and if it is not, the people on the boats will be transferred to Nauru or Manus Island for processing of their refugee claims. </p>
<p>These “buy back” and “push back” policies are the most politically sensitive of the government’s asylum seeker policies. They will result in illegal migrants remaining in or being returned to Indonesia purely to advance Australia’s national self-interest. One of the reasons the Indonesian governments has tolerated illegal entry of asylum seekers is that they make onward journeys to Australia. </p>
<p>For the Indonesian government to accept the push back policies, there will need to be some considerable payback, whether it be through offering more places in Australia’s resettlement program for refugees in Malaysia and Indonesia, or through contributing financial resources to finding other durable solutions for this refugee population. </p>
<p>If this analysis is correct, the new government’s preference for <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/federal-election-2013/how-the-parties-differ-on-asylum-seeker-policy-20130816-2s28d.html">reducing the annual humanitarian intake</a> to 13,000 from its current level of 20,000 seems misguided. In order to “stop the boats”, the government would be well advised to significantly increase the numbers in the humanitarian program and direct many of those extra places to resettlement of refugees in Malaysia and Indonesia. Expect there to be a debate about numbers in the humanitarian program early in the Coalition’s first term. </p>
<p>A concerning aspect of the government’s policy is its declaration that it will <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/federal-politics/federal-election-2013/number-of-arrivals-may-be-a-secret-20130903-2t3cz.html">no longer</a> release the numbers of boat arrivals, as this is considered “an operational decision, as part of Operation Sovereign Borders, for the three-star military officer”. This seems a surprising policy decision given that the government has staked its reputation on stopping the boats, and the best measure of success is the number of boats arriving. It is to be hoped that the decision not to freely release information on boat arrivals is not an attempt to avoid public scrutiny of its handling of asylum seeker policy, and in particular, the engagement of the navy in turning back boats. </p>
<p>The role of the media and concerned voices in parliament will be crucial to keeping the asylum seeker policy in the public eye where it can remain part of democratic deliberation. </p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/18010/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alex Reilly does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Asylum seeker policy experienced a rush of activity in the lead-up to the election. Behind the Abbott government’s bold promise to “stop the boats” in its first term of government is a series of specific…Alex Reilly, Associate Professor, Law School, University of AdelaideLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/181402013-09-12T06:08:27Z2013-09-12T06:08:27ZLost and found: the case of the ‘missing votes’ in Indi<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/31230/original/k2nvqmw6-1378964644.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Coalition frontbencher Sophie Mirabella appears likely to be unseated in her rural Victorian seat of Indi by a popular local independent candidate, Cathy McGowan.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Julian Smith</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Following a close count on election night, the result in the <a href="https://theconversation.com/indi-and-the-politics-of-personality-17228">rural Victorian electorate of Indi</a> is still unknown. As the counting of votes <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/sophie-mirabella-withdraws-from-frontbench-contention-20130912-2tlon.html">continued</a>, it was still unclear whether Liberal incumbent Sophie Mirabella will hold onto the seat, or whether independent candidate Cathy McGowan will produce an upset result.</p>
<p>In any case, McGowan’s bid for election was boosted last night when the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-09-11/misplaced-votes-extend-mcgowans-lead-over-mirabella-in-indi/4951666">found a box</a> of first preference votes that was mistakenly labelled. Instead of marking the box as containing 2,115 votes for McGowan, the AEC had marked it as containing 1,115 votes.</p>
<p>The error was discovered when a re-check found there were 1,000 additional votes for the Senate than the House of Representatives in the Wangaratta pre-polling station.</p>
<p>Finding the error suggests the AEC’s systems are effective, but they also highlight how the voting system comprises components that must all work together in order to reach a final result. At the close of the polls on election night, AEC officers manually count the ballot papers. </p>
<p>In addition to the official counters, the parties often nominate scrutineers who are responsible for inspecting the votes and how they are counted.</p>
<p>The Australian voting system is fairly robust. It is administered by the AEC which is a statutory authority, making it an arm’s length from the direct influence of parties or the government of the day. </p>
<p>It engages in continuous roll monitoring to ensure that it remains up to date. The AEC also spends a lot of effort in reviewing its processes, especially in weeding out <a href="http://www.aec.gov.au/about_aec/Publications/Backgrounders/files/2010-eb-fraud-and-multiple-voting.pdf">enrolment fraud</a>.</p>
<p>Despite these measures, sometimes things can go a bit awry. In 2010, for example, there were reports of irregular handling of pre-poll votes in the seats of <a href="http://www.aec.gov.au/About_AEC/Media_releases/e2010/10-01.htm">Boothby and Flynn</a>. After investigating the premature opening of ballot boxes by AEC officers, it was decided that a combined total of 4,283 votes were excluded from the final count. </p>
<p>In 2007, Labor’s Rob Mitchell was declared the winner in McEwen by just seven votes. After recounting more than 100,000 ballot papers, however, Liberal Fran Bailey was returned with a majority of just 12 votes.</p>
<p>There are back-up systems in place if a candidate believes an election result is incorrect. In particular, the High Court of Australia, siting as the Court of Disputed Returns, may inquire into the conduct of federal elections.</p>
<p>Some, such as Liberal MP Malcolm Turnbull, have argued for the <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/federal-election-2013/lets-ditch-the-paper-ballots-and-go-electric-malcolm-turnbull-20130910-2thiy.html">introduction of electronic voting</a>. Suggesting that such a system would yield less informal votes, proponents also suggest it would simplify the counting process. A switch to electronic voting, however, would require changes to the Electoral Act. It would raise questions about the integrity of such a process, especially in terms of being “hacker”-proof.</p>
<p>The current situation in Indi highlights how simple errors can make a major impact on electoral outcomes. So far, however, the AEC has demonstrated that it is able to deal with problems as they arise and maintain the integrity of, and confidence in, the voting system.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/18140/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Zareh Ghazarian does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Following a close count on election night, the result in the rural Victorian electorate of Indi is still unknown. As the counting of votes continued, it was still unclear whether Liberal incumbent Sophie…Zareh Ghazarian, Lecturer, School of Political and Social Inquiry, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.