tag:theconversation.com,2011:/ca/topics/minor-parties-7419/articlesMinor parties – The Conversation2022-05-25T05:49:23Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1837222022-05-25T05:49:23Z2022-05-25T05:49:23ZClive Palmer and One Nation flopped at the election. What happened?<p>Many commentators tipped Clive Palmer’s United Australia Party (UAP) and Pauline Hanson’s One Nation to perform well this election by scooping up the “freedom” and anti-vax vote from voters angry about how the pandemic was handled.</p>
<p>But this wasn’t the case. </p>
<p>The parties did see a modest rise in their vote, but not enough to translate into significant electoral success. Neither party won any seats in the lower house. </p>
<p>UAP candidate Ralph Babet is likely to <a href="https://www.crikey.com.au/2022/05/24/meet-ralph-babet-clive-palmer-acolyte-and-maybe-victorias-newest-senator/">pick up Victoria’s sixth Senate seat</a> – in part thanks to preferences from the Coalition, who put UAP second on their how to vote cards in the state. But this may be all Palmer gets for his obscene campaign spending.</p>
<p>UAP leader and former Liberal MP Craig Kelly lost his seat of Hughes, and Palmer failed in his bid for a Queensland Senate spot.</p>
<p>One Nation also failed to pick up any extra Senate seats. Pauline Hanson is projected to hold onto her Senate seat, only just, while Malcolm Roberts continues as a Senator having earned a six year term in the 2019 federal election.</p>
<p>As a <a href="https://theconversation.com/populism-and-the-federal-election-what-can-we-expect-from-hanson-palmer-lambie-and-katter-179567">populism researcher</a>, I’ve taken a keen interest in these minor parties. Here’s why I think they did so badly.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-actually-is-populism-and-why-does-it-have-a-bad-reputation-109874">What actually is populism? And why does it have a bad reputation?</a>
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<h2>United Australia Party</h2>
<p>UAP garnered about an extra 0.7% of the national primary lower house vote compared to 2019 (for a total of 4.1%), after spending an estimated A<a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-04-07/clive-palmer-united-australia-party-election-spending-influence/100973064">$70</a>-<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/may/22/clive-palmers-massive-advertising-spend-fails-to-translate-into-electoral-success">$100 million</a>. In Queensland the party has thus far secured just 4.3% <a href="https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/palmer-and-hanson-fight-it-out-for-last-qld-senate-seat-20220522-p5angz">of the Senate vote</a> – and this is where Palmer himself was the lead Senate candidate.</p>
<p>While in 2019, the party didn’t have much of a platform outside of being anti-Bill Shorten, this wasn’t the case in 2022. They had visible policies on cost-of-living, such as housing affordability and investing Australian superannuation funds in Australian companies.</p>
<p>The party also tried to position itself as the voice of the “freedom” movement, opposing COVID lockdowns and vaccine mandates.</p>
<p>The fact that none of this seemed to resonate – particularly their interest rate policies – surprises me.</p>
<p>I expected the party’s populist, anti-major party, “freedom” agenda to resonate in some parts of the country. For example, many predicted UAP would <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/politics/federal/palmer-s-people-why-the-united-australia-party-will-do-particularly-well-in-victoria-20220427-p5aghd.html">poll well in the outer suburbs of Melbourne</a> where there’s high levels of anti-lockdown and anti-Dan Andrews sentiment.</p>
<p>While it did poll better than it has before in some of these areas, it didn’t translate into electoral success, nor make much of a dint in preferences as it did last election.</p>
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<h2>One Nation</h2>
<p>One Nation struggled despite fielding candidates in <a href="https://theconversation.com/race-for-the-senate-could-labor-and-the-greens-gain-control-181350">149</a> of 151 House of Representatives seats.</p>
<p>The party’s national primary lower house vote increased a bit – up about 1.8% to 4.9% – but this was mostly because it ran in many more seats than last election.</p>
<p>Early in the Senate vote count it looked like Hanson might lose her Senate seat, but now she’s <a href="https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/national/federal-election/hanson-tipped-to-triumph-over-cannabis-candidate/news-story/1a17b8e14bb942c19b07c671b75b7d68">projected to just hold on</a>.</p>
<p>She faced fierce competition from Palmer, former Queensland Premier Campbell Newman, and a relatively unknown minor party called <a href="https://theconversation.com/legalise-cannabis-australia-did-well-at-the-ballot-box-but-reform-is-most-likely-to-come-from-a-cautious-approach-183612">Legalise Cannabis Australia</a>. Hanson is very well known – particularly in Queensland – so it was also surprising to see her fighting for her political life against a little known party.</p>
<h2>6 reasons why UAP and One Nation flopped</h2>
<p>So why did both parties fail to perform as well as some thought they might? Here are some of the key reasons:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>They were competing for the same small segment of the electorate. Both are populist right parties, they tried to brand themselves as the parties of the “freedom” movement, and likely took votes off each other in the process.</p></li>
<li><p>They were also competing for votes against the right wing of the Coalition, some of whose candidates share very similar views in terms of sentiments regarding immigration and vaccination mandates. </p></li>
<li><p>The wind has been taken out of the sails of the “freedom” movement. Since lockdowns finished and almost all COVID restrictions have been phased out, the cause is not as urgent. This freedom banner brought together disparate groups – spanning from the far-right to “wellness” and alternative health groups – but the links between the groups were always tenuous. Now the shared enemy of lockdowns has disappeared, there doesn’t seem to be social, class or political linkages holding them together. If this election was held last year – or even a few months ago – both parties might’ve had more success.</p></li>
<li><p>Populists often campaign against the “corruption” of the ruling classes. However, it was hard for UAP or One Nation to get much traction on this as almost every non-Coalition party or candidate – from Labor, to the Greens to the teal independents – was also campaigning on the same issue.</p></li>
<li><p>One Nation’s anti-immigration stance is one of its key policies. The fact that Australia had barely any immigration since the beginning of the pandemic made campaigning on the party’s bread-and-butter issue very difficult.</p></li>
<li><p>There’s been a lot of talk about parties using “<a href="https://theconversation.com/we-tracked-election-ad-spending-for-4-000-facebook-pages-heres-what-theyre-posting-about-and-why-cybersecurity-is-the-bigger-concern-182286">microtargeting</a>” in this election, but UAP’s strategy was the opposite. Their mass advertising and huge billboards were the modern equivalent to throwing a bunch of leaflets out of a moving plane. This election suggests this doesn’t work – you can’t just bombard people.</p></li>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/is-this-the-end-of-the-two-party-system-in-australia-the-greens-teals-and-others-shock-the-major-parties-182672">Is this the end of the two-party system in Australia? The Greens, teals and others shock the major parties</a>
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<p>None of this means we should write UAP or One Nation off for good. Hanson has proven herself a mainstay of Australian politics, and returned from the political wilderness before. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, Palmer has now contested three separate federal elections – each time, seemingly with a completely different platform. With his deep pockets, who knows whether or what he will run on in 2025.</p>
<p>This federal election, however, was not a “populist moment” for these parties. The real story in 2022 is not on the right, but on the other side of politics.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/183722/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Benjamin Moffitt receives funding from the Australian Government through the Australian Research Council’s Discovery Early Career Researcher Award funding scheme and from the Marianne and Marcus Wallenberg Foundation.</span></em></p>An expert on populism gives 6 reasons why these minor parties failed to gain electoral success.Benjamin Moffitt, Associate Professor, Australian Catholic UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1817052022-05-02T03:26:03Z2022-05-02T03:26:03ZPolls show a jump in the Greens vote – but its real path to power lies in reconciling with Labor<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/460702/original/file-20220502-16-7d1jod.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C6%2C3997%2C2476&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Russell Freeman/AAP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>A <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/labor-leads-polling-at-the-campaign-s-halfway-mark-20220501-p5ahiv.html?btis">major poll</a> published yesterday suggests the Greens are set to grow as a political force at this month’s election, showing its primary vote has risen markedly from 10% in 2019 to a current high of 15%.</p>
<p>Recent <a href="https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/climate-rises-as-the-no-1-voter-concern-20191115-p53auw">surveys</a> show <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-04-22/vote-compass-federal-election-issues-data-climate-change-economy/101002116">large numbers</a> of voters see climate change as their biggest concern, and the jump in Greens’ support indicates the issue is determining the way many people plan to vote.</p>
<p>The party goes to next month’s election armed with ambitious, big-spending policies. It strongly <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/greens-expecting-to-hold-balance-of-power-20220410-p5acem.html">fancies its chances</a> in at least five lower house seats and hopes to pick up three more Senate seats.</p>
<p>But for the Greens, the path to real power lies in a hung parliament where they can seek to extract policy concessions from a minority Labor government. The Greens and Labor have a <a href="https://www.mup.com.au/books/whitlams-children-electronic-book-text">mixed record</a> of working together, but can learn from past experience. So let’s take a closer look at what we can expect from the Greens in a hung parliament.</p>
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<img alt="rows of cupcakes bearing Greens logo" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/460708/original/file-20220502-21-8q34bd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/460708/original/file-20220502-21-8q34bd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460708/original/file-20220502-21-8q34bd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460708/original/file-20220502-21-8q34bd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460708/original/file-20220502-21-8q34bd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460708/original/file-20220502-21-8q34bd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460708/original/file-20220502-21-8q34bd.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">
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<span class="caption">The sweet smell of success: The real path to power for the Greens lies in a hung parliament.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">David Crosling/AAP</span></span>
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<h2>Seeking the balance of power</h2>
<p>Opinion polls earlier in the election campaign put the Greens at <a href="https://www.9news.com.au/national/federal-election-2022-newspoll-and-ipsos-polls-yet-to-see-big-impact-from-campaign/cf47963e-b9b3-4a8c-84c0-f2f70562dbd7">between 11%</a> <a href="https://www.pollbludger.net/2022/04/25/ipsos-55-45-to-labor/">and 13%</a> of the primary vote.</p>
<p>In 2010 they polled <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/rp/rp1112/12rp07">11.76%</a> in the House of Representatives (giving them a shared balance of power) and 13% in the Senate (delivering the balance of power outright).</p>
<p>The 2010 election led to the first federal hung Parliament in 70 years, although these are common outcomes in the states and territories. Labor Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s deal with the Greens in 2010 to form a minority government ended acrimoniously.</p>
<p>Labor leader Anthony Albanese has <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/labor-rules-out-fringe-deal-in-rebuff-to-greens-on-climate-20220207-p59uj9.html">ruled out</a> such a power-sharing deal this time around, as Bill Shorten did ahead of the <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/no-deals-major-parties-rule-out-return-to-gillardera-coalition-government-20160510-goqst4.html">2016</a> and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/apr/26/bill-shorten-rules-out-joint-climate-policy-process-with-greens-if-labor-wins-power">2019</a> elections. </p>
<p>But if a hung parliament does eventuate and Labor refuses a power-sharing deal, it would be left clinging to power, vote by vote. In any case, Labor would have to negotiate support from the Greens and independents in order to govern – and offer a swag of policy concessions in return.</p>
<p>The Greens are also a chance of recapturing the balance of power in the Senate, which means their influence after May 21 may still be significant.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/labors-lead-steady-in-newspoll-and-gains-in-resolve-how-the-polls-moved-during-past-campaigns-181953">Labor's lead steady in Newspoll and gains in Resolve; how the polls moved during past campaigns</a>
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<p>The ability to influence policy is key to the legitimacy and relevance of minor parties such as the Greens. </p>
<p>Under the Gillard Labor minority government, the Greens had significant policy <a href="https://greensmps.org.au/articles/10-years-greens-labor-agreement-formula-progressive-change">success</a>. They pushed Labor towards a carbon pricing policy that briefly turned around energy emissions growth, and a <a href="https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.w3p;query=Id%3A%22chamber%2Fhansardr%2Fde045419-4cf3-4a48-a502-ec68c5e81782%2F0009%22;src1=sm1">dental health</a> package for children and low-income earners. </p>
<p>These signature policies were short-lived though; abolished by Abbott Coalition government after the 2013 election.</p>
<p>Some Green initiatives <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Budget_Office/About_the_PBO">survived</a>, however, such as the Parliamentary Budget Office, the Clean Energy Finance Corporation and the Australian Renewable Energy Agency.</p>
<p>Relations between Labor and the Greens eventually failed once the Gillard government adopted a watered-down <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/b97aac1a-8567-11df-aa2e-00144feabdc0">mining tax</a>. The Greens also <a href="https://greensmps.org.au/articles/christine-milne-addresses-national-press-club">decried</a> Labor’s failure to make headway on environmental protection, national heritage, the Great Barrier Reef, Tasmania’s wilderness, the Murray Darling Basin and more.</p>
<p>So what policy demands can we expect from the Greens this time around?</p>
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<span class="caption">Relations between Labor and the Greens eventually failed.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Alan Porritt/AAP</span></span>
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<h2>A big policy agenda</h2>
<p>In the case of a hung parliament, the Greens would demand a <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/greens-will-demand-coal-gas-moratorium-as-condition-for-support-20220206-p59u54.html">halt</a> to all new coal, gas and oil projects for at least six months while they negotiate with Labor over climate policy. It would also push for a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/apr/28/greens-to-push-for-coal-export-levy-if-they-hold-balance-of-power">coal export levy</a> to fund disaster recovery and clean export industries.</p>
<p>In their 2022 electoral platform, the Greens are again aiming high. Their <a href="https://greens.org.au/platform">headline</a> policies include:</p>
<ul>
<li>a treaty with First Nations people</li>
<li>free dental and mental healthcare</li>
<li>wiping out student debt </li>
<li>building one million publicly owned, affordable, sustainable homes</li>
<li>overhauling labour laws to outlaw insecure work and increase wages. </li>
</ul>
<p>Should the Greens hold the balance of power, they would likely also call for the next government to urgently release the <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/action-on-environment-report-card-stalls-as-government-slow-to-release-20220406-p5ab75.html">delayed</a> State of the Environment report, and to implement the recommendations from a 2020 independent review into Australia’s <a href="https://epbcactreview.environment.gov.au/resources/final-report">environment laws</a>.</p>
<p>The party’s <a href="https://greens.org.au/platform/enviro#greenaus">environment platform</a> offers the usual extensive suite of policies and detailed measures to address the extinction crisis, green jobs, clean water, caring for country, sustainable agriculture, preventing animal cruelty, eliminating single-use plastics and improving ocean health.</p>
<p>As well as phasing out coal, oil and gas, the Green’s <a href="https://greens.org.au/platform/climate">climate policy</a> includes:</p>
<ul>
<li>banning political donations from fossil fuel companies</li>
<li>installing cleaner, cheaper power for homes and business</li>
<li>assisting workers in the clean energy transition</li>
<li>funding climate resilience</li>
<li>supporting cleaner cars, electricity and manufacturing.</li>
</ul>
<p>Their energy plan allocates A$17.1 billion to electrify Australian homes, $14.8 billion electrifying small businesses and $12.6 billion installing <a href="https://naturalsolar.com.au/solar-news/solar-battery-boom/">small-scale solar</a> batteries.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/if-it-needs-it-australia-can-draw-on-significant-experience-of-minority-government-62095">If it needs it, Australia can draw on significant experience of minority government</a>
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<h2>Where next for the Greens?</h2>
<p>If the polls are right, the Greens are a chance to reclaim the balance of power in the Senate and to share the balance of power in the House of Representatives. </p>
<p>In the longer term, the Greens aspire to <a href="https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/pale-labor-needs-greens-says-bob-brown/news-story/aa91d395809e700cceba6d613c7e43c4">replace Labor</a> in government. But as experience in Tasmania and the ACT shows, Greens ministers can successfully serve in Labor cabinets.</p>
<p>For now, the Greens are nipping at the heels of the major parties. The party’s best prospects for realising its policies in national government lie in reconciling with Labor and learning to work in coalition.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/albanese-pledges-to-make-gender-pay-equity-a-fair-work-act-objective-182281">Albanese pledges to make gender pay equity a Fair Work Act objective</a>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/181705/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>The Greens and Labor have a mixed record of working together, but can learn from past experience.Kate Crowley, Adjunct Associate Professor, Public and Environmental Policy, University of TasmaniaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1190052019-06-21T03:16:43Z2019-06-21T03:16:43ZDifficult for Labor to win in 2022 using new pendulum, plus Senate and House preference flows<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/280646/original/file-20190621-149810-215whz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Unless Labor improves markedly with the lower-educated, they risk losing the seat count while winning the popular vote at the next election. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Dan Peled</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>UPDATE: Links to Australian Electoral Commission pages in this article no longer work, as the Electoral Commission has moved its results to archived pages <a href="https://results.aec.gov.au/24310/Website/HouseDefault-24310.htm">available here.</a></em></p>
<p>Australian elections have been won in outer metropolitan and regional electorates, but Labor did <a href="https://tallyroom.aec.gov.au/HouseTppByStateByDemographic-24310.htm">badly in swing terms</a> in those types of seats at the May 18 election. In inner metropolitan areas, where Labor had swings in its favour, most seats are safe for one side or the other.</p>
<p>You can see this particularly in Queensland. The provincial seat of <a href="https://tallyroom.aec.gov.au/HouseDivisionPage-24310-157.htm">Capricornia</a> blew out from a 0.6% LNP margin to 12.4%, the outer metropolitan seat of <a href="https://tallyroom.aec.gov.au/HouseDivisionPage-24310-162.htm">Forde</a> from 0.6% to 8.6% and the rural seat of <a href="https://tallyroom.aec.gov.au/HouseDivisionPage-24310-311.htm">Flynn</a> from 1.0% to 8.7%.</p>
<p>In NSW, the rural seat of <a href="https://tallyroom.aec.gov.au/HouseDivisionPage-24310-138.htm">Page</a> went from a 2.3% to a 9.5% Nationals margin, and the provincial seat of <a href="https://tallyroom.aec.gov.au/HouseDivisionPage-24310-146.htm">Robertson</a> from a 1.1% to 4.2% Liberal margin. Even in Victoria, the only state to swing to Labor in two party terms, the outer metropolitan seat of <a href="https://tallyroom.aec.gov.au/HouseDivisionPage-24310-223.htm">La Trobe</a>, went from a 3.5% to a 4.5% Liberal margin.</p>
<p>Ignoring seats with strong independent challengers like Warringah and Wentworth, the biggest swings to Labor occurred in seats already held by Labor, or safe conservative seats. There was a 6.4% swing to Labor in Julie Bishop’s old seat of <a href="https://tallyroom.aec.gov.au/HouseDivisionPage-24310-238.htm">Curtin</a>, but the Liberals still hold it by a 14.3% margin. The Liberals hold <a href="https://tallyroom.aec.gov.au/HouseDivisionPage-24310-215.htm">Higgins</a> by a 3.9% margin despite a 6.1% swing to Labor.</p>
<p>After the election, the Coalition holds 77 of the 151 seats and Labor 68. Assuming there is no net change in the six crossbenchers, Labor <a href="https://tallyroom.aec.gov.au/HouseTppByDivision-24310-NAT.htm">will require a swing</a> of 0.6% to gain the two seats needed to deprive the Coalition of a majority (Bass and Chisholm). To win more seats than the Coalition, Labor needs to gain five seats, a 3.1% swing. To win a majority (76 seats), Labor needs to gain eight seats, a 3.9% swing.</p>
<p>As Labor won 48.5% of the two-party vote at the election, it needs 49.1% to deprive the Coalition of a majority, 51.6% to win more seats than the Coalition, and 52.4% for a Labor majority. Mayo and Warringah were not counted in swings required as they are held by crossbenchers. Warringah is likely to be better for the Liberals in 2022 without Tony Abbott running. </p>
<p>It will be a bit harder for Labor than the 0.6% swing notionally needed to cost the Coalition a majority, as the Liberals now have a sitting member in Chisholm and defeated a Labor member in Bass. The Liberals will thus gain from personal vote effects in both seats.</p>
<p>There will be redistributions before the next election, which are likely to affect margins. But unless Labor improves markedly with the lower-educated, they risk losing the seat count while winning the popular vote at the next election. </p>
<p>Had the polls for this election been about right and Labor had won by 51.0-49.0 (2.5% better than their actual vote), they would have added just three seats – Bass, Chisholm and Boothby – and the Coalition would have had a 74-71 seat lead.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/final-2019-election-results-education-divide-explains-the-coalitions-upset-victory-118601">Final 2019 election results: education divide explains the Coalition's upset victory</a>
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<h2>House preference flows</h2>
<p>The Electoral Commission will eventually release details of how every minor party’s preferences flowed between Labor and the Coalition nationally and for each state, but this data is not available yet. However, we can make some deductions.</p>
<p>Nationally, Labor won 60.0% of <a href="https://tallyroom.aec.gov.au/HouseStateFirstPrefsByParty-24310-NAT.htm">all minor party</a> preferences, down from 64.2% in <a href="https://results.aec.gov.au/20499/Website/HouseStateFirstPrefsByParty-20499-NAT.htm">2016</a>. This partly reflects the Greens share of all others falling from 44.0% in 2016 to 41.2%, but it also reflects more right-wing preference sources like One Nation and the United Australia Party (UAP). Had preferences from all parties flowed as they did in 2016, Labor would have won 49.2% of the two party vote, 0.7% higher than their actual vote.</p>
<p>In <a href="https://tallyroom.aec.gov.au/HouseStateFirstPrefsByParty-24310-QLD.htm">Queensland</a>, Labor’s preference share dropped dramatically from 57.9% in 2016 to just 50.2%, even though the Greens share of all others rose slightly to 34.8% from 34.1% in 2016. Of the 29.6% who voted for a minor party in Queensland, the Greens won 10.3%, One Nation 8.9%, the UAP 3.5%, Katter’s Australian Party 2.5% and Fraser Anning’s party 1.8%. The flow of these right-wing preferences to the LNP almost compensated for Greens preferences to Labor.</p>
<p>Parties like One Nation and the UAP would have attracted most of their support from lower-educated voters who despised Labor and Bill Shorten. As I wrote in my previous article, there was a swing to the Coalition with lower-educated voters.</p>
<h2>Final Senate results: Coalition has strong position</h2>
<p>In the <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/elections/federal/2019/results/senate">Senate that sits</a> from July 1, the Coalition will hold 35 of the 76 senators, Labor 26, the Greens nine, One Nation two, Centre Alliance two, and one each for Cory Bernardi and Jacqui Lambie. The final Senate results were the same as in my June 3 preview of the likely Senate outcome.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/coalition-likely-to-have-strong-senate-position-as-their-senate-vote-jumps-3-118040">Coalition likely to have strong Senate position as their Senate vote jumps 3%</a>
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<p>The table below gives the senators elected for each state at this half-Senate election. A total of 40 of the 76 senators were up for election. The one “Other” senator is Jacqui Lambie in Tasmania. The table has been augmented with a percentage of seats won and a percentage of national Senate votes won at the election.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/280159/original/file-20190619-52775-wgak73.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/280159/original/file-20190619-52775-wgak73.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/280159/original/file-20190619-52775-wgak73.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/280159/original/file-20190619-52775-wgak73.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/280159/original/file-20190619-52775-wgak73.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/280159/original/file-20190619-52775-wgak73.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/280159/original/file-20190619-52775-wgak73.png?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">
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<span class="caption">Final Senate results by state in 2019.</span>
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<p>There was a small swing in late counting against the Coalition. When I wrote my previous Senate article, they had 38.3% of the national Senate vote (up 3.1%). <a href="https://tallyroom.aec.gov.au/SenateStateFirstPrefsByGroup-24310-NAT.htm">They ended</a> with 38.0% (up 2.8%).</p>
<p>The Senate results are not very proportional, but this is mostly a consequence of electing six senators per state. If all 40 senators were elected nationally, the outcome would be far more proportional to vote share.</p>
<p>The Coalition and Greens benefitted from having large fractions of quotas on primary votes, which Labor and One Nation did not have in most states. Lambie was the only “Other” to poll a large fraction of a quota, and so she is the only Other to win.</p>
<p>Changes in Senate seats since the pre-election parliament were Coalition up four, Lambie up one, Labor, Greens and One Nation steady, and the Liberal Democrats, Brian Burston, Derryn Hinch, Tim Storer and Fraser Anning all lost their seats.</p>
<p>Ignoring Bernardi’s defection from the Coalition, changes since the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Australian_federal_election">2016 double-dissolution election</a> were Coalition up six, Labor and Greens steady, One Nation down two, and Family First, Liberal Democrats, Hinch and Centre Alliance all down one.</p>
<h2>Senate preference flows for each state</h2>
<p>In the Senate, voters are asked to number six boxes above the line or 12 below, though only one above or six below is required for a formal vote. All preferences are now voter-directed.</p>
<p>With six senators to be elected in each state, a quota was one-seventh of the vote, or 14.3%. In no state was there a narrow margin between the sixth elected senator and the next closest candidate. Preference information is sourced from The Poll Bludger for Queensland, Victoria, WA and SA <a href="https://www.pollbludger.net/2019/06/19/senate-entrails-examined/">here</a>, for NSW <a href="https://www.pollbludger.net/2019/06/18/nsw-senate-entrails-examined/">here</a> and for Tasmania <a href="https://www.pollbludger.net/2019/06/17/tasmanian-senate-entrails-examined/">here</a>.</p>
<p>In NSW, the Coalition had 2.69 quotas on primary votes, Labor 2.08, the Greens 0.61 and One Nation 0.34. <a href="https://tallyroom.aec.gov.au/SenateStateFirstPrefs-24310-NSW.htm">Jim Molan</a> won 2.9% or 0.20 quotas from fourth on the Coalition ticket on below the line votes, but was excluded a long way from the end. The Greens and third Coalition candidate each got almost a quota with One Nation trailing well behind.</p>
<p>In Victoria, the Coalition had 2.51 quotas, Labor 2.17, the Greens 0.74 and One Nation and Hinch both 0.19. Hinch finished seventh ahead of One Nation, but was unable to close on the Coalition, with the third Coalition candidate elected just short of a quota. The Greens crossed quota earlier on Labor preferences.</p>
<p>In Queensland, the LNP had 2.72 quotas, Labor 1.57, One Nation 0.71 and the Greens 0.69. One Nation and the LNP’s third candidate, in that order, crossed quota, and the Greens extended their lead over Labor’s second candidate from 1.8% to 2.7% after preferences.</p>
<p>In WA, the Liberals had 2.86 quotas, Labor 1.93, the Greens 0.82 and One Nation 0.41. The third Liberal, second Labor and Greens passed quota in that order with One Nation well behind. The Liberals beat Labor to quota on Nationals and Shooters preferences.</p>
<p>In SA, the Liberals had 2.64 quotas, Labor 2.12, the Greens 0.76 and One Nation 0.34. The Greens and third Liberal, in that order, reached quota well ahead of One Nation.</p>
<p>In Tasmania, the Liberals had 2.20 quotas, Labor 2.14, the Greens 0.87, Lambie 0.62 and One Nation 0.24. <a href="https://tallyroom.aec.gov.au/SenateStateFirstPrefs-24310-TAS.htm">Lisa Singh</a>, who won from sixth on Labor’s ticket on below the line votes in 2016, had 5.7% or 0.40 quotas this time in below the line votes. On her exclusion, Labor’s second candidate and Lambie were elected with quotas, well ahead of One Nation; the Greens had crossed quota earlier.</p>
<p>Analyst <a href="https://kevinbonham.blogspot.com/2019/06/senate-reform-performance-review-2019.html">Kevin Bonham</a> has a detailed review of the Senate system’s performance at this election, after it was introduced before the 2016 election. One thing that should be improved is the issue of preferences for “empty box” groups above the line. Such boxes without a name beside them confused voters, and these groups received far fewer preferences than they would have done with a name.</p>
<h2>UK Conservative leadership: Johnson vs Hunt</h2>
<p>On June 20, UK Conservative MPs finished winnowing the field of ten leadership candidates down to two. In the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jun/20/jeremy-hunt-and-boris-johnson-are-final-two-in-tory-leadership-race">final round</a>, Boris Johnson won 160 of the 313 Conservative MPs, Jeremy Hunt 77 and Michael Gove was eliminated with 75 votes.</p>
<p>Johnson and Hunt will now go to the full Conservative membership in a postal ballot expected to conclude by mid-July. Johnson is the heavy favourite to win, and become the next British PM. I will have a fuller report for <a href="https://www.pollbludger.net/">The Poll Bludger</a> by tomorrow.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/119005/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Adrian Beaumont 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>Notionally, Labor will need a 0.6% swing to win the next election. But the details make it much more complicated - and difficult.Adrian Beaumont, Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1173992019-05-20T05:31:14Z2019-05-20T05:31:14ZLabor’s election loss was not a surprise if you take historical trends into account<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/275346/original/file-20190520-69192-2abrac.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">If Labor had won on Saturday, Bill Shorten would have been the least popular party leader ever elected prime minister, according to election data.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Lukas Coch/AAP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Polls had predicted a narrow win for Labor in this election, so what explains the Coalition victory? Data from the <a href="https://australianelectionstudy.org/about/">Australian Election Study</a> (AES), based on public opinion surveys conducted after every federal election from 1987 to 2016, provide some indications as to what long-term trends likely contributed to the result.</p>
<p>This includes rising voter disaffection with the major parties and an associated rise in support for independents and minor parties. Adding to the problems for Labor was Bill Shorten’s lack of popularity among voters when compared to other party leaders over the past three decades. </p>
<p>And not least, Labor’s focus on tax policies in the campaign was unwise given the long-term view among voters that the party is less reliable on economic issues. </p>
<h2>The rise of independents and minor parties</h2>
<p>Voters have become increasingly dissatisfied with democratic politics in Australia. Although the Coalition did win enough seats to form a majority government, voters have been gradually drifting away from the major parties in recent elections and casting protest votes for minor parties and independents in greater numbers. </p>
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<p>In this election, the historically safe Liberal seat of Warringah in Sydney <a href="https://theconversation.com/abbotts-loss-in-warringah-shows-voters-rejecting-an-out-of-touch-candidate-and-a-nasty-style-of-politics-117379">went to the centrist independent</a>, Zali Steggall. Another centrist independent, Kerryn Phelps, <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-05-20/election-2019-kerryn-phelps-to-concede-wentworth-to-dave-sharma/11128954">came close to defeating Liberal Dave Sharma in Wentworth</a> for the second time in the past year. Voters in these electorates may align with the Liberals on economic issues, but they are socially much more progressive than conservative elements within the party.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/minor-parties-perform-well-in-federal-election-and-reconfirm-the-power-of-preference-deals-117192">Minor parties perform well in federal election and reconfirm the power of preference deals</a>
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<p>While progressive voters in Sydney have increasingly moved toward centrist independents, many voters in Queensland, and to a lesser extent elsewhere around the country, <a href="https://theconversation.com/minor-parties-perform-well-in-federal-election-and-reconfirm-the-power-of-preference-deals-117192">moved to parties on the populist right</a>. Many of the preferences for these parties were directed to the Coalition, contributing to the election outcome. </p>
<p>So, although the Coalition won enough seats to form a majority government, there was a <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/elections/federal/2019/results/party-totals">small swing overall against both Labor and the Coalition</a> in favour of minor parties, underscoring voter disaffection with traditional party politics.</p>
<h2>Shorten’s popularity problem</h2>
<p>Leadership is not the only factor that matters in elections, but it is important. According to AES data, in eight of the last 11 elections, the party with the most popular leader won. The exceptions are the elections won by John Howard in 1998 and 2001, and Paul Keating’s win in the <a href="https://theconversation.com/issues-that-swung-elections-the-unlosable-election-of-1993-still-resonates-loudly-114924">1993 “unlosable” election</a>. </p>
<p>The Australian Election Study has been tracking leader evaluations based on surveys of voters since 1987, providing a good indication of what it takes, at the minimum, for a leader to win an election. The AES has found that generally around 10% of voters cast their ballots based on party leaders.</p>
<p>This can fluctuate depending on leader popularity. When a very popular Rudd was Labor leader in 2007, 20% of Labor voters cast their ballots based on the leader. In contrast, in the 2016 election when Shorten was leader, just 6% of Labor voters did so.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/view-from-the-hill-should-labor-jump-to-new-generation-leader-and-morrison-steal-some-shorten-policies-117382">View from The Hill: Should Labor jump to new generation leader – and Morrison steal some Shorten policies?</a>
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<p>Shorten’s unpopularity <a href="https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/05/bill-shorten-scott-morrison-australia-election.html">has been much discussed</a> in the lead-up to this election. He consistently lagged behind Scott Morrison, and before that Malcolm Turnbull, as preferred prime minister, even while Labor outperformed the Coalition in polls on the two party-preferred basis.</p>
<p>Over the last 30 years, the least popular prime minister to win an election was <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/not-the-popular-choice-emphatic-win-but-approval-rating-could-be-a-lot-better-20130908-2te74.html">Tony Abbott in 2013</a>. According to AES surveys, his average evaluation by voters was 4.3 on a scale from zero (strongly dislike) to ten (strongly like). Despite being such an unpopular leader, he benefited from the leadership dramas between Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard that dominated Labor’s time in government from 2007-13. </p>
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<p>In comparison, Shorten’s evaluation in the same survey in 2016 was 4.2 out of ten, lower than any election winner on record. Moreover, the AES has been asking voters to evaluate the party leaders in terms of leadership characteristics since 1993, based on factors like strong leadership, trustworthiness, honesty, intelligence, competence, knowledge and the ability to be inspiring, compassionate and sensible. </p>
<p>The 2016 data showed that Shorten was the poorest performer across these characteristics as a whole in the 23 years the questions had been asked about major party leaders, scoring lowest on seven of the nine characteristics. </p>
<p>So, given this evidence from the 2016 election, why did Labor retain such an unpopular leader? First, the new rules surrounding leadership changes introduced by Rudd in 2013 made it more difficult not just to remove sitting PMs, but also to change the leader while in opposition. </p>
<p>Labor was also eager to project an image of stability following the years of infighting by Gillard and Rudd. Lastly, Labor performed better than expected in the 2016 election (despite the loss), giving Shorten a mandate to continue on for another shot in 2019. </p>
<h2>Taxes as a policy centrepiece</h2>
<p>In recent elections, health, education and management of the economy have been the main issues that voters mention most frequently in AES surveys. </p>
<p>In the ten elections between 1990 and 2016, Labor polled better than the Coalition as the preferred party on health by an average of 17 percentage points, and on education by 16 points. On management of the economy, however, the Coalition has polled better by an average of 19 points over the last three elections.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/their-biggest-challenge-avoiding-a-recession-117381">Their biggest challenge? Avoiding a recession</a>
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<p>Taxation has rarely been among the top issues in elections, the main exception being 1998 when the main issue was the <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/Publications_Archive/Background_Papers/bp9798/98bp01">introduction of a GST</a>. But in this election, Labor chose tax policy as one of its policy centrepieces. </p>
<p>This choice was unwise for three reasons. First, Labor has consistently polled worse than the Coalition on taxation in AES surveys over the past 26 years, although the two parties did draw close in the 2016 election.</p>
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<p>Second, Labor was unable to adequately explain its tax policies to the electorate in this election campaign. <a href="https://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199270125.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780199270125-e-027">Studies</a> show voters are influenced most by their perceptions of how party policy will affect the overall performance of the economy — what is called “sociotropic” voting. In the absence of a link between Labor’s tax policies and better economic performance in the 2019 campaign, many voters simply saw the proposed changes as an unnecessary imposition.</p>
<p>Third, Labor argued that the tax changes <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/federal-election-2019/labor-s-32-billion-plan-to-tax-the-top-end-of-town-will-hit-10-per-cent-of-taxpayers-20190508-p51lf9.html">would affect only a small section of the electorate</a>, typically less than one in ten. While the direct effect may have been small, this ignored the much larger group of voters who aspire to gain an investment property, for example, and might have been impacted by Labor’s policies. </p>
<p>Australia has some of the highest levels of property and share investment in the world. The 2016 AES survey found that one in ten respondents said they or someone close to them owned an investment property, while one in three owned shares. The proportion of the electorate <em>potentially</em> affected by Labor’s proposed changes was, therefore, quite sizeable.</p>
<p>Though many political analysts are searching for possible answers to the Coalition’s surprising win, the AES data suggests it wasn’t so surprising after all – long-term trends are consistent with a Labor loss, given the various factors in play in this election. </p>
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<p><em>The above analyses are based on data from Australian Election Study surveys 1987 to 2016, representative public opinion surveys fielded after each Australian federal election. Data for the 2019 election will be available once the post-election survey has been fielded. For reports, data and further information see the Australian Election Study website:</em> <a href="https://australianelectionstudy.org">www.australianelectionstudy.org</a></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/117399/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>As part of the team behind the Australian Election Study, Ian McAllister receives funding from the Australian Research Council.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sarah Cameron 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>Election data suggests the Coalition’s victory wasn’t so surprising after all – long-term trends pointed toward a Labor loss, given the various factors in play in this election.Sarah Cameron, Research Fellow, University of SydneyIan McAllister, Distinguished Professor of Political Science, Australian National UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1171922019-05-19T11:25:40Z2019-05-19T11:25:40ZMinor parties perform well in federal election and reconfirm the power of preference deals<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/275285/original/file-20190519-69192-1yeuz7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Clive Palmer spent about $60million on advertising – despite not winning a seat, the UAP vote had a significant impact on some seat outcomes.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Kelly Barnes</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>This was an election brimming with surprises and shocks. An unexpected Coalition victory, and the inaccuracy of <a href="https://www.sbs.com.au/news/worse-than-the-trump-polling-fail-how-did-the-federal-election-polls-get-it-so-wrong">opinion poll predictions</a>, have many scratching their heads in the post-election wash-up.</p>
<p>What didn’t defy predictions, though, was another high non-major party vote of close to 25%. At this election, primary vote support for both Labor and the Coalition is <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/elections/federal/2019/results/party-totals">slightly diminished</a>, continuing a trend of waning faith in the parties of the political “establishment”.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/morrison-has-led-the-coalition-to-a-miracle-win-but-how-do-they-govern-from-here-117184">Morrison has led the Coalition to a 'miracle' win, but how do they govern from here?</a>
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<p>It is also unsurprising to see the popularity in certain regions of minor parties like Pauline Hanson’s One Nation (PHON) and Clive Palmer’s United Australia Party (UAP). In this, at least, it seems opinion polls were more accurate.</p>
<h2>Minor parties in the lower house</h2>
<p>As anticipated, though, neither of these minor parties looks to have won lower house seats. But at this point in the count, their voters’ preferences generally appear to have flowed strongly <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/federal-election-2019/queensland-helps-return-coalition-to-government-amid-labor-bloodbath-20190518-p51ost.html">in favour</a> of the Coalition. This has helped support large two-party-preferred swings for government MPs in formerly at-risk marginal seats.</p>
<p>Irrespective of recent controversies, PHON again managed to attract significant numbers of disgruntled voters, particularly in its home state of Queensland. The party’s national vote of 3% is more than double its effort at the 2016 election. In Queensland, PHON’s vote increased by over 3% to 8.7%. In most of the 59 electorates it contested, PHON <a href="https://www.sbs.com.au/news/one-nation-s-support-surged-across-the-country-was-it-all-thanks-to-labor">outperformed</a> its main minor party rival, the UAP.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/coalition-wins-election-but-abbott-loses-warringah-plus-how-the-polls-got-it-so-wrong-116804">Coalition wins election but Abbott loses Warringah, plus how the polls got it so wrong</a>
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<p>Palmer stood candidates in all 151 lower house seats and spent an estimated $60m on election advertising. <a href="https://www.sbs.com.au/news/the-end-of-clive-how-palmer-s-60-million-campaign-failed-to-net-a-single-seat">Despite this</a>, the UAP secured just 3.4% of the national vote, and gained roughly an equivalent figure in Queensland. But that remarkable spend may have paid off in different ways.</p>
<p>Major party strategists have claimed that Palmer’s outlay had an impact in <a href="https://www.news.com.au/national/federal-election/clive-palmer-claims-credit-for-coalitions-victory/news-story/8379d4f63ffcfed6a2cb0905b9140bde">shaping the election result</a>. This applies mainly in Queensland, where his omnipresent, bright yellow advertising frequently targeted opposition leader, Bill Shorten, with negative messaging.</p>
<p>In addition to this, though, UAP and PHON – plus Katter’s Australian Party (KAP) and other regionally-focused minor parties – campaigned hard on issues of great local concern to regional Queenslanders.</p>
<p>Prominent among these issues is the Adani coal mine project and, by association, the promise of employment opportunities in regional communities. The extent of desire for such opportunities in <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-05-19/how-labor-lost-queensland-and-gifted-the-coalition-a-third-term/11122998">regional Queensland</a>, and the likelihood that votes would follow such promises, was a factor in the election lead-up perhaps not fully appreciated outside those regions.</p>
<p>The Greens have again secured approximately 10% of the vote nationwide, consolidating their place as the minor party enjoying highest voter support. Despite running prominent and popular campaigns in government-held seats like Kooyong and Higgins in Victoria, the party <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/federal-election-2019/mixed-greens-result-disappoints-but-could-deliver-senate-balance-of-power-20190519-p51oyd.html">has not added</a> to its sole elected MP, Adam Bandt in Melbourne.</p>
<p>In addition, the Centre Alliance’s Rebekha Sharkie and KAP’s Bob Katter, as expected, retained Mayo in South Australia and Kennedy in far north Queensland respectively. Both could play key roles in the <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-05-19/federal-election-coalition-win-what-happens-next/11128280">potential formation</a> with Prime Minister Scott Morrison of a minority government.</p>
<h2>Independents in the lower house</h2>
<p>A feature of this election was the number of high-profile independent candidates challenging prominent government MPs in city and regional electorates. But the anticipated independent “wave” – mainly of hoped-for women representatives – crashing through at this election didn’t quite materialise.</p>
<p>The ‘blue ribbon’ contest in Malcolm Turnbull’s former seat of Wentworth is still to be formally decided. But Liberal candidate Dave Sharma looks to have <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-05-18/federal-election-results-wentworth-too-close-to-call/11126558?section=politics">won the seat back</a> from independent MP, Kerryn Phelps, successful there at last October’s high-profile by-election.</p>
<p>In another highly anticipated contest, independent candidate Zali Steggall has <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-05-18/federal-election-2019-tony-abbott-loses-warringah-zali-steggall/11126492?section=politics">succeeded sensationally</a> in capturing the safe Liberal seat of Warringah from Tony Abbott. The former prime minister had held the seat since 1994, yet suffered a two-candidate swing of almost 19% against him.</p>
<p>In Victoria’s Indi, Helen Haines defied doubts about the ability of a new independent to “inherit” a seat from a departing one. Haines <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-05-19/federal-election-helen-haines-wins-indi-replaces-cathy-mcgowan/11126690">secured the seat</a> with the committed support behind her of the “Voices for Indi” movement, which had previously propelled Cathy McGowan into parliament.</p>
<p>As anticipated, independent Andrew Wilkie easily retained his hold on Clark in Tasmania. This, though, was in the face of an improved Coalition standing in the island state, <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-05-18/federal-election-2019-bass-braddon-liberals-tasmania/11126696">potentially picking up two seats</a> from Labor.</p>
<p>By contrast, Rob Oakeshott failed to win the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/may/18/coalition-australian-election-challenge-independents-bush">regional seat of Cowper</a> in New South Wales, despite his recognisable status giving him a good chance of success. At Oakeshott’s second attempt at winning the seat, this time from the retiring Luke Hartsuyker, he was defeated fairly comfortably by the Nationals’ Pat Conaghan.</p>
<p>In all, the lower house crossbench currently stands at six MPs, an increase of only one member from the 2016 election.</p>
<h2>The Senate crossbench</h2>
<p>The Senate vote count is still underway and only roughly half-completed at this stage. Early totals indicate that the record crossbench of 20 senators elected in 2016 will be reduced in number.</p>
<p>Neither major party, though, will control a majority in the Senate. The Coalition will have to contend with a combination of right-wing and centrist minor party senators (including a returning <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/may/19/senate-results-hanson-young-returns-but-hinch-anning-and-burston-are-gone">Jacqui Lambie</a>) in addition to a likely 9 Greens.</p>
<p>In Queensland, where Clive Palmer was given the party’s best chance at winning a Senate seat, the UAP is currently well short of reaching a quota. PHON’s Queensland senate candidate, Malcolm Roberts, will likely <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/federal-election-2019/one-nation-s-roberts-tantalisingly-close-to-return-to-the-senate-20190518-p51oq1.html">capture the final spot</a> in that state and return to the upper house after his disqualification in 2017. Fraser Anning’s attempted re-election under his own party banner has been thwarted.</p>
<h2>Significance of preference deals</h2>
<p>It remains to be seen exactly how influential the Coalition’s preference dealing with the UAP and (for the Nationals) PHON proved to be. Yet Shorten contended in his election night concession speech that Coalition preference deals with these parties had “hurt” Labor’s support, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/may/18/australian-election-queensland-labor-hopes">particularly in Queensland</a> and New South Wales.</p>
<p>The closeness of the <a href="https://tallyroom.aec.gov.au/HouseStateFirstPrefsByParty-24310-NAT.htm">two-party-preferred</a> vote – currently 51.1% for the Coalition to 48.9% for Labor – indicates how little margin for error there is in losing voter support.</p>
<p>Significant backing for minor parties and independents at recent federal elections may not have converted to many lower house seats. But it at least ensures that preference dealing – and minor parties themselves – will continue to play a prominent role in our politics.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/117192/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dr Chris Salisbury is affiliated with Queensland's TJ Ryan Foundation.</span></em></p>Especially in Queensland, right-wing populist parties like One Nation and United Australia Party had a significant impact on how seats played out, and especially taking votes from Labor.Chris Salisbury, Research Associate, School of Political Science & International Studies, The University of QueenslandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1159132019-04-30T20:13:41Z2019-04-30T20:13:41ZHow much influence will independents and minor parties have this election? Please explain<p>For some time now, Australian voters have rattled the cage of the political establishment. Frustrated with prime ministerial “coups”, political scandals and policy inertia, growing numbers have <a href="https://theconversation.com/trust-in-politicians-and-government-is-at-an-all-time-low-the-next-government-must-work-to-fix-that-110886">turned away from</a> the major parties. </p>
<p>Does this mean minor parties and independent candidates will have a significant impact on the coming federal election?</p>
<p>Anti-major party sentiment doesn’t usually disrupt the numbers in parliament by much. Only five of 150 seats weren’t won by the major parties at the 2016 federal election, despite a national minor party/independent vote of over 23%. But a nationwide minor party Senate vote of over 35% in 2016 resulted in a record 20 crossbenchers – helped by a lower quota bar at a double dissolution election.</p>
<p>Familiar groups and faces are well placed to capitalise on this sentiment during the current election campaign. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/a-matter-of-mis-trust-why-this-election-is-posing-problems-for-the-media-116142">A matter of (mis)trust: why this election is posing problems for the media</a>
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<h2>Chasing the protest vote</h2>
<p>Despite internal instability rocking its New South Wales branch, the Greens will hope to capitalise on growing progressive support (in Victoria especially) and an expected anti-Coalition swing to secure <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/apr/22/the-fight-for-the-senate-who-gets-the-balance-of-power-and-which-minor-parties-will-survive">Senate influence</a>.</p>
<p>Yet with recent Senate voting rule changes being tested for the first time at a normal half-Senate election, the Greens may in fact <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/why-the-era-of-the-independents-in-the-box-seat-is-almost-over-20190115-p50rh4.html">struggle to retain</a>, let alone build on, their current nine Senate spots. Final Senate seats in most states will be fought over by a slew of (mainly right-wing) minor parties.</p>
<p>Clive Palmer’s United Australia Party (UAP), Pauline Hanson’s One Nation (PHON), and – unlikely as it seems – Fraser Anning’s new <a href="https://www.news.com.au/national/federal-election/fraser-annings-conservative-national-party-has-entered-the-election-race/news-story/efa3511906609fdfa5e783226e1d90f0">Conservative National Party</a> will chase the “protest vote” in all states and (apart from PHON) territories.</p>
<p>But intense competition for the conservative vote means they and other minor parties stand only an outside chance of winning <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-04-22/queensland-minor-parties-influence-on-federal-election-outcome/11004176">lower house seats</a>. One exception is Bob Katter likely holding Kennedy in north Queensland for his eponymous Australian Party.</p>
<p>Still, an expected high minor party vote will keep the major parties – and the media – focused on preferencing arrangements throughout the campaign. These preferences will likely play a key role in electing minor party candidates to the Senate, potentially returning familiar faces like One Nation’s Malcolm Roberts from <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/federal-election-2019/confronting-queensland-senate-ticket-sees-far-right-on-far-left-20190424-p51gv1.html">Queensland</a>.</p>
<h2>Deference to preferences</h2>
<p>Recent opinion poll results have unexpectedly placed Palmer’s party ahead of the field of minor parties on the right. Months of <a href="https://theconversation.com/view-from-the-hill-can-55-million-get-clive-palmer-back-into-parliamentary-game-115811">saturation advertising</a>, it seems, have imprinted the billionaire’s messaging on voters’ minds. Yet this sudden poll prominence, like Palmer’s billboard pledge to “make Australia great”, is largely <a href="https://theconversation.com/poll-wrap-palmers-party-has-good-support-in-newspoll-seat-polls-but-is-it-realistic-115802">illusory</a>.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, both major parties have responded to this seeming upsurge in UAP support. The Coalition has hurriedly concluded a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/apr/25/liberal-party-strikes-deal-to-exchange-election-preferences-with-clive-palmer">preferencing arrangement</a> that sees Palmer and Prime Minister Scott Morrison somewhat “<a href="https://theconversation.com/grattan-on-friday-all-is-forgiven-in-the-liberal-embrace-of-palmer-116011">reconciled</a>”. The deal might deliver much-needed preferences to Coalition MPs in marginal seats, particularly in Queensland. It also increases the chances of Palmer candidates – and the man himself – winning a Senate seat.</p>
<p>But these are big “maybes”. Minor party voters are renowned for following their own preference choices. In 2013, voters’ preferences from Palmer’s United Party candidates split only 54% the <a href="https://insidestory.org.au/its-not-what-you-ask-its-how-you-ask-it/">Coalition’s way</a>.</p>
<p>Clearly stung by the attention being shown to Palmer, Hanson has announced PHON will preference <a href="https://www.sbs.com.au/news/one-nation-to-preference-labor-last-in-four-key-seats">Labor last</a> in some key marginal seats held by Liberal incumbents. That includes Peter Dutton, whose seat of Dickson is under siege. In 2016, PHON took a different approach when it preferenced against sitting MPs, costing the Coalition its hold on Queensland seats like Herbert and Longman.</p>
<p>As part of the same deal, PHON will exchange preferences with the Nationals – whose leader Michael McCormack <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/federal-election-2019/it-just-makes-sense-nationals-leader-michael-mccormack-spruiks-deal-with-one-nation-20190429-p51i7v.html">claimed</a> “it just made sense” – lifting the Nationals’ hopes in marginal and at-risk regional seats.</p>
<p>Labor has also <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/federal-election-2019/preference-whisperer-glenn-druery-brokers-deal-between-derryn-hinch-and-labor-20190425-p51h9z.html">sealed a deal</a> to boost its chances in marginal Victorian seats, concluding an arrangement with Derryn Hinch’s Justice Party. This will see Labor how-to-vote cards in tightly contested seats like Dunkley and Corangamite suggest second preferences go to Hinch’s Senate candidates ahead of the Greens (repeating Labor’s approach at the 2016 election).</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/view-from-the-hill-shorten-had-the-content-morrison-had-the-energy-in-first-debate-116218">View from The Hill: Shorten had the content, Morrison had the energy in first debate</a>
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<h2>The reputational risks of preference deals</h2>
<p>But doing preference deals with minor parties carries reputational risks, as former Western Australia Premier Colin Barnett <a href="https://www.perthnow.com.au/politics/federal-politics/colin-barnett-warns-against-liberal-preference-deal-with-hanson-at-the-federal-election-ng-b881142342z">has warned</a>. As has often been the case with personality-driven outfits, choosing suitable or qualified candidates easily brings minor parties undone. </p>
<p>Anning’s party has already stumbled badly. A pair of candidates in Victoria and the ACT has been <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/federal-election-2019/fraser-anning-s-victorian-candidate-julie-hoskin-bankrupt-ineligible-20190425-p51h3m.html">called into question</a>, and a party supporter allegedly assaulted journalists <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/federal-election-2019/photographer-hurt-in-scuffle-at-fraser-anning-press-conference-20190426-p51hig.html">in Sydney</a>.</p>
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<p>Hanson’s party, no stranger to this pitfall, is still hosing down the controversy of the Al Jazeera taped conversations with party insiders, which has likely cost the party some support. Freshly released video footage has now forced Queensland Senate candidate, Steve Dickson, to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/apr/30/one-nations-steve-dickson-offers-to-resign-over-strip-club-footage">resign in disgrace</a>, in another blow to the often shambolic party’s standing.</p>
<p>Palmer’s candidates are similarly coming under scrutiny with doubts raised over <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/apr/28/question-mark-over-eligibility-of-at-least-19-clive-palmer-candidates">citizenship qualifications</a>, putting legitimate doubts into voters’ minds just as pre-polling has commenced.</p>
<h2>Familiarity is key for independents</h2>
<p>The best chances for independents are in lower house seats, yet there’s been <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-01-16/independents-wont-matter-as-much-as-you-think-next-election/10716834">only a dozen</a> elected to parliament in the last several decades. Those who’ve broken through in election campaigns, like Kerryn Phelps at last year’s Wentworth byelection, typically benefit when there’s some controversy or ill-feeling towards an incumbent or their party.</p>
<p>But in the absence of full-on media glare of a high-profile by-election contest, Phelps might struggle to <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-10-27/kerryn-phelps-wentworth-win-could-be-short-lived/10432386">hold her seat</a> – assuming the angst of local voters over Malcolm Turnbull’s deposing has dissipated. </p>
<p>Personal profile and high media interest puts Zali Steggall in with a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/feb/10/tony-abbott-on-track-to-lose-warringah-to-zali-steggall-poll-shows">chance to unseat</a> Tony Abbott in Warringah. Likewise, a well-organised local campaign structure such as “Voices for Indi” behind Cathy McGowan’s hopeful successor, Helen Haines, can <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-01-14/helen-haines-ready-to-take-baton-from-cathy-mcgowan/10713544">make the difference</a> – though transition of support from one independent to another isn’t assured.</p>
<p>Newcomers on the ballot paper generally find the odds against them. Candidates with an established record and <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-03-09/zali-steggall-helen-haines-independents-australian-politics/10786984">voter recognition</a>, such as Andrew Wilkie in Tasmania’s Clark (like the Greens’ Adam Bandt in Melbourne and Centre Alliance’s Rebekha Sharkie in South Australia’s Mayo), enjoy an easier path to reelection.</p>
<p>Similarly, Rob Oakeshott is given a <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-01-15/rob-oakeshott-announces-a-run-for-federal-seat-of-cowper/10716914">good chance</a> of winning the New South Wales seat of Cowper from retiring Nationals MP, Luke Hartsuyker. He carries strong name recognition from his time as Independent MP for the neighbouring seat of Lyne.</p>
<p>But recognition alone mightn’t be enough for Julia Banks, the former Liberal MP for Chisholm in Victoria who is now challenging in Greg Hunt’s seat of Flinders. Her <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/apr/28/labor-warns-coalition-deals-with-rightwing-minor-parties-will-cause-chaos">decision</a> to preference Labor’s candidate above Hunt might turn away potential support from Liberal-leaning voters, yet could put the seat within Labor’s grasp.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/more-grey-tsunami-than-youthquake-despite-record-youth-enrolments-australias-voter-base-is-ageing-115842">More grey tsunami than youthquake: despite record youth enrolments, Australia’s voter base is ageing</a>
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<h2>Minors and independents cloud the outcome</h2>
<p>The chances of an “independent tide” sweeping several seats this election is unlikely, in part due to the ability of major parties to drown out the competition. And counter to long speculation about the “<a href="https://theconversation.com/are-the-major-parties-on-the-nose-and-minors-on-the-march-its-not-that-simple-93569">march of the minors</a>”, there could in fact be a reduced crossbench in both the lower house and <a href="https://insidestory.org.au/voters-are-back-in-charge-in-the-senate/">Senate</a>. </p>
<p>But voter dissatisfaction with the major parties persists, and minor party preferences are likely to play a critical role in many seats.</p>
<p>The prominence of minor parties will maintain an air of unpredictability for the remainder of the campaign, clouding an election outcome many saw not long ago as a foregone conclusion.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/115913/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dr Chris Salisbury is affiliated with Queensland's TJ Ryan Foundation.</span></em></p>Voter dissatisfaction with the major parties means minor party preferences are likely to play a critical role in many seats, making the election outcome hard to predict.Chris Salisbury, Research Associate, The University of QueenslandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1114912019-02-25T01:01:42Z2019-02-25T01:01:42ZAustralia’s populist moment has arrived<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/260597/original/file-20190225-26177-1lt7ar5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Good economic times have allowed us to become complacent, meaning conditions are ripe.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This is part of a major series called Advancing Australia, in which leading academics examine the key issues facing Australia in the lead-up to the 2019 federal election and beyond. Read the other pieces in the series <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/advancing-australia-66135">here.</a></em></p>
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<p>Populism is driven by the view that everyday people are suffering economic hardship as the corporate and political elites prosper. A sense of rising inequality and injustice is the foundation stone of populist rhetoric.</p>
<p>In Australia, the <a href="https://theconversation.com/banking-royal-commission-no-commissions-no-exemptions-no-fees-without-permission-hayne-gets-the-government-to-do-a-u-turn-110974">financial services royal commission</a> has lent credence to these concerns across a large part of the Australian community. Its hearings and reports give weight to the view that Australia’s middle and working classes have been systematically ripped off by their financial service providers.</p>
<p>What is of concern for us here in Australia is not so much the lightning rod that has been the findings of the royal commission, but the prospect of much harder economic times ahead.</p>
<p>Australia is not used to tough economic times. It has been 27 years since our last major recession. In the past 26 years, the annual average unemployment rate has climbed on only five occasions. It has been steady or fallen in 21 of the past 26 years.</p>
<p>The economic tide could well turn against us over the next three years. This, as much as anything, will give vigour to the kinds of populist voices that are wreaking so much havoc in other Western societies right now. </p>
<p>Populism is toxic to democratic societies. It preys on people’s worst fears and appeals to their darker instincts. Populism brings poor policy decisions and entrenches political dysfunction. </p>
<p>We are already seeing the effects that growing discontent with the major parties has on our political system. A surge of support for populist candidates and parties will magnify these problems.</p>
<h2>Australian populism</h2>
<p>Defining the concerns of populism is a tricky business. The most common is that economic and political elites benefit at the expense of the public, whether that be because the system is rigged against them or because those elites break social convention and even the laws to extract from the rest. </p>
<p>An extension of this perennial theme is that the elites, particularly in the business world, get away with it. The authorities do not pursue them and they are rarely held to account by the law.</p>
<p>Populism tends to be cultivated in an environment of poor economic performance and is exacerbated by growing inequality, real or perceived.</p>
<p>Australia’s democracy has a long history of stable centrist parties dominating the parliament and public policy. Since our Federation in 1901, the two or three major parties at the time of each federal election have averaged about 90% of the primary vote.</p>
<p>These moderate tendencies are regarded as a hallmark of our nation, and key to the resilience of Australia as a society. But, as the accompanying chart shows, there have been periods when voters have drifted away from the major parties with considerable enthusiasm. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/260588/original/file-20190224-195864-iwn6wt.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/260588/original/file-20190224-195864-iwn6wt.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/260588/original/file-20190224-195864-iwn6wt.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=355&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260588/original/file-20190224-195864-iwn6wt.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=355&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260588/original/file-20190224-195864-iwn6wt.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=355&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260588/original/file-20190224-195864-iwn6wt.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=446&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260588/original/file-20190224-195864-iwn6wt.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=446&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/260588/original/file-20190224-195864-iwn6wt.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=446&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>For the first 30 years of our federal parliament, minor parties and independent candidates captured just 5% of the vote on average. The peripheral candidates were just that; peripheral and insignificant. That all changed in the 1931 election with the onset of The Great Depression and lasted right through to the second world war.</p>
<p>We experienced another extended period of major party dominance in the 1950s and the 1960s. In the 1970s a rising share of the vote started going outside the major parties and this has continued to this day. We now are in a situation where minor party and independent support is near the levels seen at the height of the Great Depression.</p>
<p>There also appears to be a greater polarisation within the major parties, particularly when they are in government. Not a single prime minister elected in the past decade has survived his or her first term of office – an unattractive milestone for a relatively young democracy.</p>
<p>Populism is always lurking below the surface of Australian society. It rears its head from time to time, but the broader community is pretty good at resisting its urges. A strong economy and low unemployment are critical ingredients in this success. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-actually-is-populism-and-why-does-it-have-a-bad-reputation-109874">What actually is populism? And why does it have a bad reputation?</a>
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<p>It could be argued that Australia is less susceptible to populism than other Western democracies. Just look at the contrast between what has happened here in the past ten years and the experiences of the United States or Europe.</p>
<p>Sure, the minor party vote has increased and some of that has been to candidates pushing a populist agenda. But these forces have largely operated at the margins of Australia’s policy agenda. </p>
<h2>Complacency is dangerous</h2>
<p>The once-in-a-century commodity boom supported our economy through both the global financial crisis and its destructive aftermath. It was a luxury not afforded the US or Europe.</p>
<p>The end of the mining boom was greeted by a residential construction boom. That too looks like concluding. The forces of weak income growth, high debt levels and sluggish economic activity are upon us.</p>
<p>Income and output growth are going to be much harder to come by in Australia in the years ahead. We cannot assume that just because we have avoided a significant recession for 27 years, we will avoid another one.</p>
<p>The last thing the Australian economy needs in this environment is greater political discord. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/rise-in-protest-votes-sounds-warning-bell-for-major-parties-93068">Rise in protest votes sounds warning bell for major parties</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>The major parties’ share of the vote is already at post-war lows. A new wave of populism that takes the vote of “others” to further heights could have serious consequences for effective management of our economy. </p>
<p>We have an open economy heavily burdened with debt and reliant on immigration and trade to provide a healthy underpinning to future economic growth. We don’t know how our economy would cope with a reversal of these key pillars of our modern prosperity.</p>
<h2>Curtailing populist anger is a priority</h2>
<p>Whether we like it or not, the evidence of misconduct in the financial services industry has become a flashpoint for popular discontent within Australia.</p>
<p>The financial services industry most certainly is not the root of all economic evil in our society, but that is irrelevant to the public mood and those who seek to take advantage of it.</p>
<p>The fact that the royal commission has laid bare such widespread abuse of market power means that right now the banking industry is the prime example of elites taking advantage of everyday people. Its extraordinary revelations have left Australians in a state of shock.</p>
<p>The broader community wants action, not just to prevent what was uncovered happening again, but to make sure that the people responsible are held accountable for the damage done.</p>
<p>Real or imagined, a lack of genuine accountability will mean people lose faith in the capacity of mainstream political forces and institutions to serve the broader community.</p>
<h2>What is to be done?</h2>
<p>If the moderate forces that operate in our parliament and government institutions are not seen to be delivering for the broader community, people will justifiably look elsewhere.</p>
<p>The immediate priority is to act following the final report from the royal commission. Commissioner Kenneth Hayne has made it perfectly clear that it is the role of the regulators, specifically the Australian Securities and Investments Commission. </p>
<p>There is every likelihood that more dangerous economic waters lie ahead. Policymakers will need to be both decisive and agile to deal with the malaise, whatever form it takes.</p>
<p>We are not facing a new financial crisis, at least we hope we are not. We don’t need to throw the kitchen sink at the economy right now. But the government we elect will have to work closely with the parliament and our key economic institutions to guide the country through new and uncertain economic times.</p>
<p>An effective parliament will be more important than ever.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-end-of-uncertainty-how-the-2019-federal-election-might-bring-stability-at-last-to-australian-politics-111827">The end of uncertainty? How the 2019 federal election might bring stability at last to Australian politics</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/111491/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Warren Hogan 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’s been 27 years since our last recession. Conditions are ripe for a populist revolt when the next one arrives.Warren Hogan, Industry Professor, University of Technology SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1002482018-07-26T19:56:08Z2018-07-26T19:56:08ZFactCheck: has Pauline Hanson voted ‘effectively 100% of the time with the Turnbull government’ in 2018?<blockquote>
<p>This year [Pauline Hanson] has voted effectively 100% of the time with the Turnbull government. Honestly you may as well vote LNP if you are voting One Nation because there is no difference.</p>
<p><strong>– Deputy opposition leader Tanya Plibersek, <a href="http://www.tanyaplibersek.com/transcript_doorstop_interview_caboolture_tuesday_10_july_2018">doorstop interview</a>, Caboolture, Queensland, July 10, 2018</strong></p>
</blockquote>
<p>In recent weeks, senior Labor Party figures have sought to draw attention to the voting patterns of Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party, arguing that a vote for the minor party is a vote for the Coalition.</p>
<p>At the Labor campaign launch in the Queensland seat of Longman ahead of Saturday’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/byelection-guide-whats-at-stake-on-super-saturday-99757">crucial byelections</a>, opposition leader Bill Shorten <a href="http://www.billshorten.com.au/address_to_the_longman_labor_campaign_launch_caboolture_sunday_22_july_2018">said</a> it’s “a fact that if you vote One Nation, you are voting [Liberal National Party]. You are not protesting, you are being used to send a vote to the LNP.” </p>
<p>On the same day, shadow finance minister Jim Chalmers described One Nation as “the wholly-owned subsidiary of Malcolm Turnbull’s Liberal Party”.</p>
<p>Earlier this month, deputy opposition leader Tanya Plibersek said that in 2018, Pauline Hanson had “voted effectively 100% of the time with the Turnbull Government”. </p>
<p>Let’s look at the records.</p>
<h2>Checking the source</h2>
<p>In response to The Conversation’s request for sources and comment, Tanya Plibersek said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Pauline Hanson voted with the Liberals to cut school funding and voted to cut family benefits while she voted herself a massive $7,000 a year tax cut. Australian voters deserve to know the truth about Hanson’s voting record in Canberra.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Plibersek’s comment related to votes on <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Senate/Powers_practice_n_procedures/Brief_Guides_to_Senate_Procedure/No_16">second and third reading votes</a> (including amendments) on legislation. </p>
<p>Plibersek’s office highlighted <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Statistics/Senate_StatsNet/General/divisions">20 such votes</a> in 2018 in which Labor and the Coalition disagreed. Of those, Hanson abstained from one vote, and voted 18 times with the government. (The equivalent of 95% of the time, with the abstention excluded.)</p>
<p>A spokesperson told The Conversation Plibersek used the qualifier “effectively” in her original comment to indicate that Hanson voted with the Coalition almost all of the time. </p>
<hr>
<h2>Verdict</h2>
<p>Deputy opposition leader Tanya Plibersek said Pauline Hanson has “voted effectively 100% of the time with the Turnbull Government” in 2018. </p>
<p>Parliamentary records show the figure to be between 83-86%, depending on the measure used.</p>
<p>Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party has cast 169 formal votes in the Senate to date in 2018. Of those, it was in agreement with the government 83% of the time.</p>
<p>If we look at the 99 occasions where the government and opposition were in disagreement, and One Nation cast an <em>influential</em> vote, we see that the minor party voted with the government 86% of the time.</p>
<hr>
<h2>Voting in the Senate</h2>
<p>Votes in the Senate can <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Senate/Powers_practice_n_procedures/Brief_Guides_to_Senate_Procedure/No_3">be determined</a> “on the voices” or “by division”.</p>
<p>For a vote to pass on the voices, a majority of senators must call “aye” in response to the question posed by the chair.</p>
<p>If two or more senators challenge the chair’s conclusion about whether the “ayes” or “noes” are in the majority, a division is called. </p>
<p>Bells are then rung for four minutes to call senators to the chamber. The question is posed again, and senators vote by taking their place on the right or left hand side of the chair, before the votes are counted by tellers.</p>
<p>Voting records are only published for votes passed by division.</p>
<h2>How has One Nation voted in 2018?</h2>
<p>We can look to <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Statistics/Senate_StatsNet/General/divisions/2018">parliamentary records</a> to test Plibersek’s claim.</p>
<p>Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Party is represented in the parliament by party leader and Queensland senator Pauline Hanson, and West Australian senator Peter Georgiou. New South Wales senator Brian Burston was a One Nation senator <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-06-18/brian-burston-will-run-for-clive-palmers-party-next-election/9879984">until June 2018</a>. </p>
<p>Plibersek’s comment referred to votes on the second and third readings of legislation in the full Senate, excluding <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Chamber_documents/Senate_chamber_documents/Glossary_of_Senate_terms">procedural votes, motions</a> and votes in Senate committees.</p>
<p>But votes that take place in Senate committees, after the second reading, but before the third, are also important. Much of the <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Senate/Powers_practice_n_procedures/Brief_Guides_to_Senate_Procedure/No_16">legislative process</a> is done “in committee”, where various parties propose amendments to legislation, and these are voted on. </p>
<p>So counting only the full Senate votes on legislation as being significant, as Plibersek did, does not give the full picture.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/229367/original/file-20180726-106511-1mdw93x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/229367/original/file-20180726-106511-1mdw93x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/229367/original/file-20180726-106511-1mdw93x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=597&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229367/original/file-20180726-106511-1mdw93x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=597&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229367/original/file-20180726-106511-1mdw93x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=597&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229367/original/file-20180726-106511-1mdw93x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229367/original/file-20180726-106511-1mdw93x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229367/original/file-20180726-106511-1mdw93x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Stages of consideration of bills in the Australian Senate.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Senate/Powers_practice_n_procedures/Brief_Guides_to_Senate_Procedure/No_16">Parliament of Australia, Brief Guides to Senate Procedure</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In this FactCheck, I will consider all the divisions, from a number of different angles.</p>
<p>There have been 187 divisions in the Senate so far this year. Of those, One Nation:</p>
<ul>
<li>voted with the Coalition on 141 occasions (or 75% of the time)</li>
<li>voted against the Coalition on 28 occasions (or 15% of the time), and </li>
<li>abstained from voting on 18 occasions (or 10% of the time).</li>
</ul>
<p>Of the 169 divisions where One Nation voted, it was in agreement with the government 83% of the time.</p>
<p>But it’s important to consider the balance of power.</p>
<p>When the Coalition and Labor vote the same way, minor party votes do not affect the outcome. When the Coalition and Labor are in disagreement, minor party votes are all important.</p>
<p>There have been 110 such divisions between the Coalition and Labor in the Senate in 2018 to date. </p>
<p>In these 110 divisions, One Nation:</p>
<ul>
<li>voted with the Coalition on 85 occasions (or 77% of the time)</li>
<li>voted against the Coalition on 14 occasions (or 13% of the time), and</li>
<li>abstained from voting on 11 occasions (10% of the time).</li>
</ul>
<p>If we look at the 99 divisions where the Coalition and Labor were in disagreement, and One Nation cast an influential vote, we see that the party voted with the Coalition 86% of the time.</p>
<p>By comparison, in the 110 divisions where Labor opposed the government, the Australian Greens supported the Coalition 5% of the time, and the Centre Alliance (formerly Nick Xenophon Team) did so 56% of the time.</p>
<p>The calculations for the Greens and Centre Alliance above do not include abstentions and cases where the party vote was split. <strong>– Adrian Beaumont</strong></p>
<h2>Blind review</h2>
<p>The author’s points and statistics appear to be all in order.</p>
<p>As the FactCheck shows, while One Nation has not voted with the government 100% of the time, it has supported the Coalition in a large majority of cases. <strong>– Zareh Ghazarian</strong></p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/162128/original/image-20170323-13486-72k52f.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/162128/original/image-20170323-13486-72k52f.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/162128/original/image-20170323-13486-72k52f.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/162128/original/image-20170323-13486-72k52f.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/162128/original/image-20170323-13486-72k52f.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/162128/original/image-20170323-13486-72k52f.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/162128/original/image-20170323-13486-72k52f.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/162128/original/image-20170323-13486-72k52f.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&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 Conversation FactCheck is accredited by the International Fact-Checking Network.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><em>The Conversation’s FactCheck unit was the first fact-checking team in Australia and one of the first worldwide to be accredited by the International Fact-Checking Network, an alliance of fact-checkers hosted at the Poynter Institute in the US. <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-conversations-factcheck-granted-accreditation-by-international-fact-checking-network-at-poynter-74363">Read more here</a>.</em></p>
<p><em>Have you seen a “fact” worth checking? The Conversation’s FactCheck asks academic experts to test claims and see how true they are. We then ask a second academic to review an anonymous copy of the article. You can request a check at <a href="mailto:checkit@theconversation.edu.au">checkit@theconversation.edu.au</a>. Please include the statement you would like us to check, the date it was made, and a link if possible.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/100248/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Ahead of Saturday’s crucial byelections, senior Labor Party figures have described a vote for Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party as a vote for the Coalition. What do the records show?Adrian Beaumont, Honorary Associate, School of Mathematics and Statistics, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/985442018-06-21T18:49:00Z2018-06-21T18:49:00ZClive Palmer has a Trump-style slogan, but is no sure bet to return to parliament<p>With August 4th looming as the earliest possible date for an election of the full House of Representatives and half the Senate, the founder of the now-defunct Palmer United Party and former MP, Clive Palmer, <a href="https://theconversation.com/view-from-the-hill-clive-palmers-back-on-the-trail-with-brian-burston-in-tow-98501">has flagged his intention to run again</a>. The new incarnation of the Palmer tilt will be the “United Australia Party”, which was also the name of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Australia_Party">predecessor to the modern Liberal party</a>. </p>
<p>Presumably in a bid to hitch himself to Donald Trump-style populism in the United States, Palmer’s early election advertising signals his desire to <a href="https://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/clive-palmer-funds-hundreds-of-make-australia-great-billboards/news-story/aeeacbe86f01a2da849c29a79a404640">“Make Australia Great”</a>. </p>
<p>Billboards featuring Palmer, his new party name and the slogan are popping up all over Australia.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1008516411126263808"}"></div></p>
<h2>Right-wing struggles</h2>
<p>Palmer’s re-emergence seems somewhat ludicrous given the disasters that befell his former party following the 2013 election that saw him and three senators elected. For those who have forgotten, <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-clive-palmers-personal-party-is-doomed-to-end-in-tears-38772">the PUP imploded</a> almost the moment it tried to have the first meeting of its new parliamentary team, and Palmer was also <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/business/clive-palmer-wins-court-case-against-chinese-company-20150504-1na97l.html">pursued in the courts</a> over his business interests. </p>
<p>The only survivor of the PUP era was Tasmanian <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-lambie-loose-in-the-top-paddock-of-parliament-32027">Jacqui Lambie</a>, and even she was unable to see out her next senatorial term, <a href="https://theconversation.com/shorten-recruits-keneally-for-bennelong-as-citizenship-crisis-claims-lambie-87436">thanks to problems with her citizenship</a>.</p>
<p>Given all this, it would seem Palmer’s return to the fray is another manifestation of his narcissistic nature, although there is also a strong hint of opportunism behind the formation of the UAP. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/mining-magnate-property-tycoon-politician-just-who-is-clive-palmer-6646">Mining magnate, property tycoon - politician? Just who is Clive Palmer?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>In the past two general elections, <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-39111317">an array of minor right-wing parties</a> – be they anti-environment, socially conservative or populist – have captured seats in parliament, only to later disintegrate between election cycles. Presumably, Palmer sees a potential constituency and he is out to win its vote.</p>
<p>Palmer’s UAP is yet another in the pantheon of right–of-centre minor parties that have grown in number over the last three electoral cycles that have been notable for their volatility and lack of discipline. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/politics/2016/07/09/the-return-pauline-hanson-and-one-nation/14679864003470">re-emergence of Pauline Hanson</a> and the One Nation party is a case in point. Having struggled to survive after the 1998 election, One Nation re-appeared in time for the 2016 Senate vote, securing four seats and exercising some cross-bench influence over the balance of power in the upper chamber. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-mice-that-may-yet-roar-who-are-the-minor-right-wing-parties-17305">The mice that may yet roar: who are the minor right-wing parties?</a>
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</em>
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<hr>
<p>However, from the moment the parliamentary team got together, One Nation started to fall apart through the disqualification of senators and <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com.au/one-nation-pauline-hanson-brian-burston-2018-5">ongoing tensions</a> between Hanson and the remnants of her party. </p>
<p>Indeed, the implosion of One Nation since the 2016 election may well have been the catalyst for Palmer’s re-mobilisation, especially in Queensland, where the populist, anti-establishment vote has been quite strong for some time. </p>
<p>Palmer has been the beneficiary of this vote in the past. In 2013, Palmer won the lower house seat of Fairfax and Glen Lazarus, who led the PUP Senate ticket in Queensland, easily secured a seat in the upper chamber. </p>
<p>The PUP lost the populist vote to One Nation in the 2016 election, but with One Nation’s recent struggles, Palmer clearly thinks he can win back this segment of the electorate and return to national politics.</p>
<h2>Uncertain return</h2>
<p>There are some serious obstacles ahead of him, though. First, it remains to be seen if his candidacy will be viewed as credible by voters, given what happened the last time he ran. </p>
<p>It’s also worth remembering the structural barriers that stand in the way of candidates from outside the major party system. Palmer’s party has flagged its intention to contest every lower house seat, but his candidates will be unlikely to garner 35% of the vote anywhere – the minimum prerequisite for winning a seat. </p>
<p>The UAP’s best hope is in the Senate, and especially in Queensland. But here, changes to the Senate voting system will also hurt the party’s chances. </p>
<p>Unlike the 2013 election, Palmer and his party will be contending with a quasi-optional preferential voting system thanks to <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-changes-to-the-senate-voting-system-are-being-proposed-55128">changes made by Malcolm Turnbull’s government</a> two years ago. There is no guarantee all the primary votes cast for the plethora of tickets running for Senate in each state will flow through as preferences to other right-of-centre candidates.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/face-the-facts-populism-is-here-to-stay-63771">Face the facts: populism is here to stay</a>
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</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/preference-whispering-too-successful-for-its-own-good-21302">“Preference-whispering” arrangements</a> that were so important to the PUP’s success in 2013 will not be in place for the next Senate election. Indeed, the next election will be a half-Senate contest, which will make it even harder for minor party candidates to succeed.</p>
<p>All of this serves to remind that, despite their larger-than-life personas, these minor-party populists like Palmer and Hanson win very small shares of the vote.</p>
<p>While he might try to plagiarise the American president, the truth is that Palmer is no Donald Trump. Trump was the official candidate of one of the two major parties that dominate the US political system and won nearly half of the popular vote in the 2016 election.</p>
<p>Palmer is a fringe player who will be depending on the interchange of preferences with other fringe players and the vagaries of the Senate voting system to be able to gain a foothold in the Australian parliament.</p>
<p>He will also need to hope the Australian electorate has either forgotten or forgiven him for his performance the last time he was in the parliament.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/98544/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>Clive Palmer believes he can recapture the magic that saw him elected to Parliament in 2013, but what his new party – and others on the right – need is more discipline.Nick Economou, Senior Lecturer, School of Political and Social Inquiry, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/985012018-06-18T11:07:16Z2018-06-18T11:07:16ZView from The Hill: Clive Palmer’s back on the trail, with Brian Burston in tow<p>Surely Clive Palmer is one soufflé unlikely to rise twice – although predictions are hazardous when we’re talking about a man dedicated to buying votes.</p>
<p>It beggars belief that Palmer, discredited in the political shambles and business disasters and disgraces of the last few years, can be starting out again, planning to run candidates in “all seats” in the House of Representatives and for the Senate.</p>
<p>The comings and goings into, out of and within the Senate this term have made that house a travesty.</p>
<p>The changes to the Senate voting system will curb the ability of “rats and mice” – micro parties and independents - to win seats at the election. But any voters so angry about the more conventional parties that they are tempted to look Palmer’s way again might like to consider the shenanigans on Monday.</p>
<p>Senator Brian Burston, formerly of One Nation, after his acrimonious divorce from Pauline Hanson told the Senate just after 10am that he was sitting as an independent.</p>
<p>He was one of three senators making statements about their new affiliations. Tasmania’s Steve Martin, who was on the Jacqui Lambie election ticket but had sat as an independent, reported he’d joined the Nationals since the full Senate last met; Fraser Anning, formerly of the One Nation ticket who’d also been an independent, put on record that he had now moved to the Katter’s Australian Party.</p>
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<em>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/grattan-on-friday-the-loners-who-lead-and-trash-personality-parties-98336">Grattan on Friday: The loners who lead, and trash, 'personality' parties</a>
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<p>An hour or so after his declaration, Burston had publicly re-partnered - as had already been anticipated. Now he “leads” the United Australia Party (UAP) in the Senate - its sole member. In today’s Senate, you don’t need company to have a party.</p>
<p>The UAP is the new iteration of the Palmer United Party, which made a splash at the 2013 election but had drowned by 2016.</p>
<p>It will be recalled by those who follow these things that Palmer had originally wanted to use the UAP moniker, ripping off the name of the major conservative party of the 1930s and early 1940s.</p>
<p>But someone had grabbed a similar name ahead of him and so we had PUP, three of whose candidates reached the Senate on Palmer’s popularity and money, while the man himself won the Queensland seat of Fairfax. Then the PUP family imploded, just as the Hanson clan has done in this parliament.</p>
<p>Palmer, welcoming Burston as his face in the Senate, said he looked “forward to a long and happy relationship with him”. Clive is not a man who learns from experience.</p>
<p>Palmer also doesn’t like “name” parties these days. “The structure of one-person parties has been shown to be a failure. It is not about Derryn Hinch, Jacqui Lambie, Clive Palmer, Pauline Hanson, Cory Bernardi or Bob Katter, that’s not what matters,” he said in a statement. Never mind that Palmer has huge billboards of himself around the place over the slogan “MAKE AUSTRALIA GREAT”.</p>
<p>“What matters is that we need to unite the country to do what’s best for all our citizens”. Palmer claimed to have had a big response to his new party.</p>
<p>Whatever the truth of that, having a parliamentary representative means the UAP doesn’t need the 500 members otherwise required for registration. It’s a two-way street – Burston knew any prospect of his being re-elected would be better if he had a rich backer. When Hanson wanted someone else to head the next NSW Senate ticket, he was shopping around.</p>
<p>Palmer thrives on hyperbole and publicity. His Monday news conference with Burston was typically farcical, with its clashes with the media and plenty of blather. Palmer praised Burston’s “courage” – Burston publicly fell out with Hanson over her breaking the deal with the government to back the company tax cuts – and his “foresight to stand up for the people who elected him, to aim for their aspirations”.</p>
<p>The Labor member for Herbert, Cathy O'Toole broke protocol and joined the fray, confronting Palmer about the fallout out from the collapse of his company Queensland Nickel in 2016. Later Palmer said he was “discussing with my political advisors” the possibility of contesting Herbert.</p>
<p>Among his declarations Palmer said that “Australians are sick of parties based on vanity”. Let’s hope so.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/98501/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michelle Grattan 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>Any voters so angry about the more conventional parties that they are tempted to look Palmer’s way again might like to consider the shenanigans on Monday.Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/935692018-03-22T19:09:16Z2018-03-22T19:09:16ZAre the major parties on the nose and minors on the march? It’s not that simple<p>Three political parties – the ALP, the Liberal Party and the National Party – dominate Australian politics. This dominance is particularly noticeable in the electoral contests for parliamentary lower houses, especially where these involve single-member electoral districts and electors cast a preferential vote.</p>
<p>In general, the vast majority of Australians vote for the three main parties. The dominance of the three parties’ representatives in state and federal parliaments reflects this.</p>
<p>Occasionally, developments in the party system can challenge this major party dominance. In 1955, for instance, the <a href="https://theconversation.com/australian-politics-explainer-the-labor-party-split-74149">Labor Party split</a> and the Democratic Labor Party (DLP) was created. During the 1980s and 1990s, the Australian Democrats party emerged, declaring it intended to “keep the bastards honest”. And in 1998, Pauline Hanson’s One Nation burst on the scene. </p>
<p>Neither the DLP nor the Democrats ever succeeded in winning a seat in the House of Representatives. One Nation also failed to win a lower house seat in the national parliament, although it did win seats in the Queensland parliament in 1998.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/liberals-win-south-australian-election-as-xenophon-crushed-while-labor-stuns-the-greens-in-batman-93355">Liberals win South Australian election as Xenophon crushed, while Labor stuns the Greens in Batman</a>
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<p>Here was prima facie evidence of the capacity of new parties to upset major party dominance over election outcomes. But this was to be overshadowed by another recurring theme – new parties quickly imploding due to weak organisation.</p>
<p>Within months, all the Queensland One Nation MPs left the party to form a new body (the <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/am/stories/s197030.htm">City Country Alliance</a>). At the next election, they all lost their seats. </p>
<p>Since then, other minor parties have similarly secured stunning lower house victories, only to be overwhelmed by internal instability.</p>
<p>Clive Palmer and his <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/palmer-united-party-7490">Palmer United Party</a> secured a House of Representatives seat in 2013, after which the party fragmented. </p>
<p>In 2016, the Nick Xenophon Team’s (NXT) Rebekha Sharkie won the House of Representatives <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/federal-election-2016/guide/mayo/">seat of Mayo</a>. Fifteen months later, Xenophon <a href="https://theconversation.com/xenophons-shock-resignation-from-senate-to-run-for-state-seat-85322">resigned from the Senate</a> to create yet another party (SA-Best) to participate in the recent South Australian state election. SA-Best appears to have failed in its bid to win a seat in the SA Legislative Assembly, and the rump of the NXT left behind in the Senate now has no leader and apparently no organisation.</p>
<p>Arguably the non-major party with the greatest impact in the party system is the Australian Greens. The party has secured House of Representatives seats on four occasions (a byelection win in Cunningham in 2002, and the seat of Melbourne in general elections in 2010, 2013 and 2016). This was matched by a significant increase in the number of seats held in the Senate, and by lower house success in state elections in <a href="https://theconversation.com/victorian-election-labor-triumph-or-coalition-disaster-or-neither-34364">Victoria</a>, <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-04-01/nsw-2015-election-results-booth-map/6353688">New South Wales</a>, <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-12-07/greens-claim-first-queensland-seat-in-wealthy-brisbane-suburbs/9234442">Queensland</a> and <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-03-15/greens-secure-second-seat-in-tasmanian-election/9550666">Tasmania</a> (albeit under a proportional electoral system). </p>
<p>It is stating the obvious to note that these minor party successes are the result of swings in voting behaviour at the expense of the major political parties. The total national primary vote cast for the main parties <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-07-03/election-results-historical-comparison/7560888">has been in decline</a>.</p>
<p>But this in itself is no guarantee of inevitable change in the representational share between the major and minor parties, especially in single-member district electoral systems.</p>
<p>The shift of voter support away from the major parties has been variable and spread over a large number of alternative minor parties. In the 2013 and 2016 federal elections, more than 50 organisations registered as parties with the Australian Electoral Commission. Few of these parties polled over 1% of the vote. Only a handful polled over the <a href="http://www.aec.gov.au/Parties_and_Representatives/public_funding/index.htm">4% threshold</a> to qualify for public funding.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/211505/original/file-20180322-165554-okq01q.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/211505/original/file-20180322-165554-okq01q.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=333&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/211505/original/file-20180322-165554-okq01q.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=333&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/211505/original/file-20180322-165554-okq01q.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=333&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/211505/original/file-20180322-165554-okq01q.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/211505/original/file-20180322-165554-okq01q.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/211505/original/file-20180322-165554-okq01q.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Primary vote trends in Australia.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Author supplied</span></span>
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<p>Once again, only the Greens – and, in the 2016 election, the NXT – have been capable of amassing a sufficient primary vote in a particular seat to have a chance of winning lower house representation.</p>
<p>But as the <a href="http://tallyroom.aec.gov.au/HouseDivisionPage-21751-199.htm">Batman byelection</a> reminds us, even a primary vote approaching 40% does not guarantee victory. Bland references to declining support for the major parties tend to obscure just how difficult it is for minor parties to win lower house seats, especially if their electoral support is evenly spread over a wide range of districts. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/after-16-years-electoral-dynamics-finally-caught-up-with-labor-in-south-australia-93553">After 16 years, electoral dynamics finally caught up with Labor in South Australia</a>
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<p>By the same token, the <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-07-03/election-results-historical-comparison/7560888">increasing proportion</a> of the Australian electorate casting a primary vote for a party other than Labor, Liberal or National is a significant development, and appears to be a recurring theme in recent elections.</p>
<p>It is also having a representational impact, but not in lower houses that use single-member electoral districts (that is, all Australian parliaments except Tasmania and the Australian Capital Territory). </p>
<p>Rather, the real locus of minor party impact is to be found in those parliamentary chambers elected under a proportional system. The <a href="https://theconversation.com/liberals-win-south-australian-election-as-xenophon-crushed-while-labor-stuns-the-greens-in-batman-93355">SA-Best result in South Australia</a> is an example of this: while his party failed to win a lower house seat, Xenophon’s latest venture did secure two seats in the proportionally elected Legislative Council.</p>
<p>The Greens might have suffered an adverse swing in the last state election in Tasmania, but still hold two seats in the House of Assembly. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, the minor parties have a significant impact on national policy debate by holding the balance of power in the Senate. This has been the reality in the Senate for some time.</p>
<p>The recent elections in Tasmania, South Australia and the byelection in Batman have left an impression that the advance of the minor parties has stalled, maybe permanently. This is not necessarily the case.</p>
<p>If the demographic patterns to the voting alignments in Batman are repeated at the Victorian state election on November 24, the Greens could win at least four lower house seats. Meanwhile, the current rate at which electors are voting for minor parties can still have significant representational consequences for proportionally elected chambers such as the Senate. </p>
<p>The sense of minor party failure associated with these recent election contests has been due in part to the tendency to make hyperbolic claims about their prospects in the first place.</p>
<p>The flipside of this is to guard against hyperbolically pessimistic conclusions on the basis of recent electoral events. Tasmania, South Australia and Batman were not good elections for SA-Best or the Greens (or, indeed, Rise Up Australia, the Jacqui Lambie Network or the Australian Conservatives), but that may have been due to the peculiarities of the particular elections.</p>
<p>There is a significant non-major party vote in the Australian system. The place to observe its impact is in the contest and representational outcomes for Australia’s proportionally elected upper houses, including the Senate.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/93569/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>The recent elections in Tasmania, South Australia and the byelection in Batman have left an impression that the advance of the minor parties has stalled. This is not necessarily the case.Nick Economou, Senior Lecturer, School of Political and Social Inquiry, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/930682018-03-12T19:02:34Z2018-03-12T19:02:34ZRise in protest votes sounds warning bell for major parties<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/209633/original/file-20180309-30969-1c5bxrf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Minor parties led by high-profile candidates such as Nick Xenophon are particularly appealing away from the big cities.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Russell Millard</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Protest politics is on the rise in Australia. At the 2016 federal election, votes for minor parties hit their highest level since 1949. More than one in four Australians voted for someone other than the Liberals, Nationals, ALP or Greens in the Senate, and more than one in eight did likewise for the House of Representatives. First-preference Senate votes for minor parties leapt from 12% in 2004 to 26% in 2016. </p>
<p>The major parties are particularly on the nose in the regions. The further you drive from a capital city, the higher the minor party vote and the more it has risen.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/209826/original/file-20180311-30961-e1ahad.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/209826/original/file-20180311-30961-e1ahad.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/209826/original/file-20180311-30961-e1ahad.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/209826/original/file-20180311-30961-e1ahad.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/209826/original/file-20180311-30961-e1ahad.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/209826/original/file-20180311-30961-e1ahad.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/209826/original/file-20180311-30961-e1ahad.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Figure 1 – Minor party vote over time by distance to the GPO.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Grattan Institute</span></span>
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<p>What’s going on? <a href="https://grattan.edu.au/report/a-crisis-of-trust/">A new Grattan Institute report</a> finds that the minor party vote is mostly a protest against the major parties. It’s a vote for “anyone but them” in favour of a diverse group of parties, often headed by “brand name” personalities.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/209827/original/file-20180311-30972-psksgm.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/209827/original/file-20180311-30972-psksgm.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/209827/original/file-20180311-30972-psksgm.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/209827/original/file-20180311-30972-psksgm.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/209827/original/file-20180311-30972-psksgm.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/209827/original/file-20180311-30972-psksgm.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/209827/original/file-20180311-30972-psksgm.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Figure 2 – Minor party vote by state 2016 election.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Grattan Institute</span></span>
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<p>So why are Australian voters angry? And why are they particularly angry in the regions?</p>
<p>Falling trust in government explains much of the dissatisfaction. Since 2007, there has been a significant increase in the share of people who believe that politicians look after themselves and that government is run by a few big interests. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/209828/original/file-20180311-30986-h1e1a6.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/209828/original/file-20180311-30986-h1e1a6.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/209828/original/file-20180311-30986-h1e1a6.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/209828/original/file-20180311-30986-h1e1a6.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/209828/original/file-20180311-30986-h1e1a6.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/209828/original/file-20180311-30986-h1e1a6.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/209828/original/file-20180311-30986-h1e1a6.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Figure 3 – Trust in government over time.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Grattan Institute</span></span>
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<p>The growing belief that government is increasingly conducted in the interests of the rulers rather than the ruled feeds voter disillusionment. Minor party voters have less trust in government than those who vote for the majors. And outsider parties have tapped into these concerns with their promises to “keep the bastards honest” and to “drain the swamp”. </p>
<p>Economic factors are less important than you might expect. The rise in the minor party vote doesn’t seem to be about stagnant wages or rising inequality: <a href="https://grattan.edu.au/report/a-crisis-of-trust/">the vote grew most strongly when real wages were rising but inequality wasn’t</a>. And the biggest increase in the minor party vote was between 2010 and 2013 – <a href="http://ada.edu.au/ADAData/AES/Trends%20in%20Australian%20Political%20Opinion%201987-2016.pdf">when Australians were more optimistic about their immediate financial future</a> than at any other point in the past 15 years. </p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/discontents-identity-politics-and-institutions-in-a-time-of-populism-80882">Discontents: identity, politics and institutions in a time of populism</a>
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<p>But economics is still relevant. The minor party vote increased as unemployment rose, and <a href="http://www.essentialvision.com.au/globalisation">minor party voters are more likely</a> than others to have negative views about globalisation and <a href="http://www.essentialvision.com.au/free-trade-agreements-generally-2">free trade</a>. The protectionist economic policies of many minor parties may therefore account for some of their appeal. And some of their anti-globalisation and “Australia first” rhetoric also <a href="https://grattan.edu.au/report/a-crisis-of-trust/">taps into broader cultural anxiety</a> about the pace and direction of change. </p>
<p>Many minor parties appeal to voters who don’t like the way our society is changing. Minor parties want to protect the cultural symbols and narratives associated with “traditional Australia”. They are <a href="http://www.essentialvision.com.au/date-of-australia-day-2">more likely to oppose</a> changing the date of Australia Day, for example. </p>
<p>These views are particularly prominent among One Nation voters: <a href="http://scanlonfoundation.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/ScanlonFoundation_MappingSocialCohesion_2017.pdf">more than 90% of them strongly agree that maintaining an Australian way of life and culture is important</a>. They are also much more likely to be sceptical about the benefits of immigration: <a href="http://scanlonfoundation.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/ScanlonFoundation_MappingSocialCohesion_2017.pdf">about 50% of One Nation voters believe that multiculturalism has not been good for Australia</a>, compared with 15% of Liberal/Nationals voters (the next highest group). </p>
<p>This sense of being left behind by the pace of economic and social change is more prevalent in regional Australia, where the minor party vote is higher and growing faster. Regions hold <a href="https://grattan.edu.au/report/regional-patterns-of-australias-economy-and-population/">a falling share of Australia’s population and therefore of Australia’s economy</a>.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/same-sex-marriage-results-crush-the-idea-that-australian-voters-crave-conservatism-87316">Same-sex marriage results crush the idea that Australian voters crave conservatism</a>
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<p>At the same time, Australia’s cultural symbols are becoming more city-centric: <a href="https://www.quarterlyessay.com.au/essay/2011/06/fair-share">less about mateship and more about multiculturalism</a>. People in regional areas are sensitive to this cultural change and are attracted to parties that promise to restore cultural and political power to the regions. Several of the more popular minor parties to arrive on the political scene in recent years – notably One Nation and Nick Xenophon – have gained higher support in the country than they have in the cities. </p>
<p>The rising minor party vote sends a signal to our major party politicians: Australians are not satisfied with politics as usual. Major parties seeking to increase their appeal should focus on what matters to voters: restoring trust and social cohesion. </p>
<p>Rebuilding trust will be a slow process. A period of leadership stability and policy delivery could go a long way. And improving the way we do our politics – reforming political donation laws and tightening regulation of lobbying and political entitlements – could help reduce the incidence of trust-sapping scandals and reassure the public that the system is working for them. </p>
<p>Politicians should also seek to dampen rather than inflame cultural differences. Politicians can lead by stressing the common ground between city and country and between communities with different backgrounds. </p>
<p>Failure to heed the warning will mean more elections where Australians unleash their displeasure at the ballot box.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/93068/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Grattan Institute began with contributions to its endowment of $15 million from each of the Federal and Victorian Governments, $4 million from BHP Billiton, and $1 million from NAB. In order to safeguard its independence, Grattan Institute’s board controls this endowment. The funds are invested and contribute to funding Grattan Institute's activities. Grattan Institute also receives funding from corporates, foundations, and individuals to support its general activities as disclosed on its website.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Carmela Chivers and John Daley do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The minor party vote in Australia is historically high and growing, as trust in the bigger parties slides away.Danielle Wood, Program Director, Budget Policy and Institutions, Grattan InstituteCarmela Chivers, Associate, Grattan InstituteJohn Daley, Chief Executive Officer, Grattan InstituteLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/873162017-11-15T19:21:18Z2017-11-15T19:21:18ZSame-sex marriage results crush the idea that Australian voters crave conservatism<p>Australians have overwhelmingly <a href="https://theconversation.com/same-sex-marriage-survey-by-the-stats-a-resounding-yes-but-western-sydney-leads-no-vote-87258">voted “yes”</a> for same-sex marriage. This means politicians will have to give up relying on the myth that a cultural backlash against the progressive agenda is driving voters to minor parties.</p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/same-sex-marriage-result-delivers-much-needed-good-news-for-embattled-turnbull-87510">Same-sex marriage result delivers much-needed good news for embattled Turnbull</a>
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<p>The minor party vote is on the rise in Australia. In the 2016 federal election, first-preference Senate votes for minor parties (including the Greens) reached over 35% – <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-07-03/election-results-historical-comparison/7560888">the highest level since 1949</a>. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/feb/23/tony-abbott-takes-aim-at-turnbull-and-lays-out-conservative-manifesto">Conservative politicians</a> and <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-opinion/pynes-samesex-marriage-treachery-consists-of-giving-people-what-they-want-20170626-gwyhky.html">commentators</a> in Australia push the “outsider politics” theory, arguing that the Liberal Party should embrace conservative social values to bring disenchanted voters back into the tent. </p>
<p>These same voters are supposed to have been pivotal players in the shock election of Donald Trump in the US, the Brexit vote in the UK, and the upsurge of populist right-wing parties in Europe. </p>
<p><a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2818659">Some research argues</a> these voters are those who are fearful of losing their established status by the expansion of rights to minority groups. They tend to be <a href="https://www.vox.com/2016/9/19/12933072/far-right-white-riot-trump-brexit">white</a>, <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2818659">older, and less educated</a>.</p>
<p>But the same-sex marriage ballot suggests that appealing to these voters would not be an election-winning strategy here. The clear majority of Australians – including Australians from a broad spread of electorates – have rejected the conservative position on marriage.</p>
<h2>How Australia voted</h2>
<p>More than <a href="https://marriagesurvey.abs.gov.au/results/">61% of voters who participated in the survey</a> were in favour of changing the Marriage Act so same-sex couples can marry. The strongest support came from electorates in the inner-cities of Victoria and Sydney. The outer suburbs of Sydney, and regional Queensland were the least in favour. </p>
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<p>In general, the electorates with the highest levels of support for marriage equality are those with a high percentage of tertiary educated people, and more people working in services rather than agriculture and manufacturing. But there was no discernible difference in the vote by average age of the electorate, and support was not higher in areas with <a href="https://grattan.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/890-Regional-patterns.pdf">a large Australian-born population</a>.</p>
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<p>While most inner-city electorates said yes to same sex marriage, plenty of the regional electorates did too. It is notable that once you get more than 40kms from the CBD, the average “yes” vote doesn’t vary much by location. In other words, Australia’s regions are no more or less conservative than the outer suburbs of our cities on the question of marriage equality.</p>
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<p>But there are important differences between states. Queensland electorates – whether in the city or the regions – were much less likely to support same-sex marriage, as were electorates in western Sydney. Victorian electorates had the highest level of support. </p>
<p>The difference in voting between regional areas in Queensland compared to regional areas in Victoria is particularly striking. Most electorates in regional Victoria delivered a yes vote in excess of 60%. </p>
<p>In contrast, many regional electorates in Queensland were below 50%. These differences can’t be explained by education levels or age profiles, which are not notably different between these parts of the country. </p>
<p>The explanation for this state-based “cultural divide” remains an open question. </p>
<h2>If not “outsider politics” then what?</h2>
<p>The result of the same-sex marriage survey is not surprising to people familiar with the survey data on Australian attitudes: support for marriage equality and for LGBT rights more generally has been <a href="https://theconversation.com/revealed-who-supports-marriage-equality-in-australia-and-who-doesnt-82988">increasing over the past decade</a>. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.australianelectionstudy.org/about.html">Other surveys reveal</a> rising support for a whole range of socially progressive issues, including access to abortion, decriminalisation of marijuana, and support for women in business.</p>
<p>It’s very unlikely that a “yes” vote for marriage equality would have passed in Australia ten years ago. Those arguing for a closer embrace of more socially conservative positions are moving in the <em>opposite</em> direction to the electorate. </p>
<p>Politicians seeking to explain rising voter dissatisfaction will need to look elsewhere. An upcoming Grattan Institute report will show that falling trust in government is the most important explanation for the rising minor party vote. </p>
<p>This means the government’s response to the same-sex marriage ballot will be vital. An overwhelming 79.5 % Australian voters participated in the ballot – higher than for <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/politics/eu_referendum/results">the Brexit vote in England</a> (72%) and well above the <a href="https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/no-voter-turnout-wasnt-way-down-from-2012/">2016 US election</a> (58%). They did so because they hoped their time and effort would count.</p>
<p>They expect their political representatives to now follow through. If the government descends into ugly political infighting, or if the parliament fails to deliver the legislation as promised before Christmas, that would only compound the corrosive view that <a href="http://www.australianelectionstudy.org/publications.html">our politicians are out-of-touch and can’t be trusted</a>. </p>
<p>If the government wants to win back voter trust, then a good place to start would be to keep faith with the admirably clear wording of the survey and change the law to allow same-sex couples to marry.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/87316/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The ‘yes’ vote disproves that the rise of the minor party vote is the result of a cultural backlash from people who reject the progressive agenda, including the expansion of rights for minorities.Danielle Wood, Program Director, Budget Policy and Institutions, Grattan InstituteCarmela Chivers, Associate, Grattan Institute, Grattan InstituteLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/633072016-08-05T04:37:13Z2016-08-05T04:37:13ZSo, how did the new Senate voting rules work in practice?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/133185/original/image-20160805-501-k16skc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">In March, the government passed sweeping changes to the way Australians elect their senators.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Lukas Coch</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Australia has its <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-whos-who-on-the-new-senate-crossbench-62216">new Senate</a>. The Coalition will hold 30 seats, Labor 26, the Greens nine, and there will be 11 other crossbench senators.</p>
<p>In March, the government passed <a href="https://theconversation.com/senate-voting-changes-pass-so-how-do-we-elect-the-upper-house-now-55641">sweeping changes</a> to the way Australians elect their senators. <a href="http://www.prsa.org.au/history.htm#gvt">Group voting tickets</a>, whereby voting “1” above the line meant your preferences were those already lodged by the party you voted “1” for, were abolished. This returned control of preferences to individual voters.</p>
<p>When debating the changes, which Labor and other minor and micro parties opposed, some senators made predictions about the make-up of the new upper house. Labor’s <a href="http://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.w3p;query=Id%3A%22chamber%2Fhansards%2F120cdb07-6373-4ce4-8fe5-c2c4cfd5c68c%2F0037%22">Jacinta Collins</a> said:</p>
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<p>The principal beneficiary of this new voting system will be the Liberal Party … The Liberal Party’s true motivation is to achieve lasting electoral dominance in the Senate for the conservative parties and, over time, a lasting Senate majority in its own right.</p>
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<p>In fact, at the 2016 election the Coalition lost a net three Senate positions. It now has its lowest level of representation in the upper house in 70 years.</p>
<p>In February, Labor senator <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2016/s4412096.htm">Stephen Conroy</a> said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The stated aim of these reforms is to wipe out all of the minor party players. On everybody’s calculations, they’ll all be replaced by either a Liberal coalition, a Green or a Labor senator.</p>
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<p>In fact, the number of non-Green crossbench senators has increased from eight to 11.</p>
<p>Conroy <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2016/s4412096.htm">also said</a>:</p>
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<p>… over three million Australians’ votes will be discarded. They’ll be exhausted; they’ll be not used to calculate who’s actually going to get into the Senate.</p>
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<p>In other words, Conroy claimed more than 20% of Australians would vote and preference candidates who would be excluded before the Senate count was completed. In fact, the incidence of exhausted ballots was less than 6%, not including exhaustions from the last defeated candidate. In other words, over 94% of votes were cast either for elected candidates or the one last defeated candidate.</p>
<p>The new Senate is representative of the wide range of views in Australia – and far more so than the House of Representatives, as the table below indicates:</p>
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<p>The 18.7% of people who voted for “Others” includes many supporters of small parties who preferenced larger parties ahead of other parties. An example would be a supporter of the Arts Party who preferenced one of the major parties ahead of a party like the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers. It was never the case that all who voted for the smaller parties would preference another smaller party candidate ahead of any of the major parties.</p>
<p>After the final Senate results were declared, Labor leader Bill Shorten <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-08-04/final-senate-make-up-confirmed-with-11-crossbenchers/7689788">said</a>:</p>
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<p>The presence in such numbers of One Nation in the Senate is a direct result of Mr Turnbull and Mr Di Natale’s action in terms of their so-called electoral reform. </p>
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<p>There is no evidence that this is so. Pauline Hanson would have been elected under the previous electoral rules; she received more than one quota. The presence of other senators from her party is due to large numbers of people voting for, and giving preferences to, One Nation. </p>
<p>And, under the previous system, One Nation senators may well have been elected because other smaller parties may have preferenced One Nation ahead of other parties.</p>
<p>The vast majority of voters are represented in the Senate by someone they voted for, or directed their preferences to. The table below shows the percentage of votes that contributed to the election of senators in each of the six states:</p>
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<p>This table is based at the stage when just one defeated candidate remained in the count: this is the fairest way of calculating these figures.</p>
<p>An even higher percentage of ballots contributed to the election of senators. This is because when a candidate is elected, the votes not needed for their election – the “surplus” – are transferred to the candidate next preferred by the voter, but at a lower vote value (the <a href="http://www.prsa.org.au/gregoryj.htm">transfer value</a>).</p>
<p>In South Australia, for example, 269,824 people voted for the ALP above the line and those preferences ended up with the unsuccessful fourth Labor candidate, Anne McEwen. Around 86% of the value of each vote cast for Labor above the line counted to elect the first three candidates, but the remaining 14% of the value of those votes ended up with the unsuccessful last candidate.</p>
<p>Under the previous Senate voting system, all preferences had to be expressed below the line. This meant that, in each of the six states, all 12 senators elected would have a full quota of votes, and at least 12/13 (92.31%) of the votes would contribute to the election of a senator. </p>
<p>So, how did it work this time? Overall, 90.02% of the votes contributed to the election of senators. The difference between that and the 92.31% figure cited above is the extent of exhaustion.</p>
<p>What is exhaustion? Suppose a Tasmanian voted for the following six parties, then left the rest of the ballot paper blank.</p>
<p>1 Citizens Electoral Council</p>
<p>2 Arts Party</p>
<p>3 Voteflux</p>
<p>4 Australian Liberty Alliance</p>
<p>5 Science Party</p>
<p>6 Renewable Energy Party</p>
<p>The candidates for those parties all received few votes and were all excluded from the count early, meaning this Tasmanian voter’s ballot became exhausted, as it indicated no further preferences and thus could not further influence the result.</p>
<p>Much more typically, exhausted ballots come at the end of the count. In Tasmania, for example, 29.5% of all the exhausted ballots were from the surplus of Liberal candidate David Bushby. At the point in the count when his surplus was distributed, three candidates remained: Catryna Bilyk (Labor), Nick McKim (Greens) and Kate McCulloch (One Nation). The value of Bushby’s suplus was distributed as follows:</p>
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<p>Surely it is no surprise that 2,816 of those Liberal supporters had no desire to support any of the three remaining candidates. Voters made deliberate choices either to express preferences or not, according to what they believe.</p>
<p>Another important feature of this Senate election, which has not happened for at least 60 years, was the election of a candidate out of order on their party’s ticket. Despite being listed sixth, Labor’s Lisa Singh was elected ahead of the fourth candidate down the column, Catryna Bilyk. The fifth candidate on the ticket, John Short, was unsuccessful. That happened because 26.8% of Labor voters marked their votes below the line, and 18.2% of those gave their first preference to Singh.</p>
<p>The concerns raised about the changes to the Senate system, and the predictions of loss of representation, did not eventuate. Rather, the new system has worked to produce a house of parliament much more representative of the range and balance of Australians’ political views than the House of Representatives.</p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stephen Morey is the National Secretary of the Proportional Representation Society of Australia. He is a recipient of an Australian Research Council grant, but not for research related to this article,</span></em></p>The new Senate is representative of the wide range of views in Australia – and far more so than the House of Representatives.Stephen Morey, Senior Lecturer, Department of Languages and Linguistics, La Trobe UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/603132016-06-09T06:44:33Z2016-06-09T06:44:33ZVote 1 ‘Other’: what’s driving more voters to back a minor party this election<p>How important will minor parties and independents be in this federal election? And how significant is the latest Newspoll result, showing a record 15% of those surveyed said they’d rather <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/federal-election-2016/newspoll-one-in-four-voters-may-spurn-voting-for-major-parties/news-story/eda17567d65d613ffc36c77d63767f1b">vote for an independent or “other party”</a> than the Coalition, Labor or the Greens?</p>
<p>Watch Griffith University’s Anne Tiernan and Duncan McDonnell discuss those issues and more, including:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>The crucial lessons the Nick Xenophon Team learnt from the Palmer United Party – and how that’s shaped that party’s choice of candidates in this election.</p></li>
<li><p>How populists around the world – including Pauline Hanson in Australia, Donald Trump in the US and Marine Le Pen in France – have successfully tapped into some people’s feeling being “under siege”.</p></li>
<li><p>How Australia’s system of compulsory voting is masking people’s dissatisfaction with democracy and the major parties in particular, which mirrors problems across Western Europe and the United States.</p></li>
</ul>
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<p>Below is an edited transcript of this video, which was created in partnership between Griffith University and The Conversation, with time markers beside each question.</p>
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<p>Hi, I’m <strong>Professor Anne Tiernan</strong> and I’m director of the Policy Innovation Hub of Griffith University. Welcome to Scrutineers, our coverage of the 2016 Federal Election Campaign. I’m delighted today, to have as my guest, <strong>Dr Duncan McDonnell</strong>, a senior lecturer in the School of Government and International Relations at Griffith University and a great expert on populism.</p>
<p>And so it’s topical this week, Duncan, to be talking about populism with the rise of Pauline Hanson and the expectation that she may indeed pick up a Senate seat in Queensland this time.</p>
<p>So who is the Hanson voter? Who votes for populist parties in Australia? What’s the archetype?</p>
<p><strong>Duncan:</strong> Well, I think it’s pretty similar to populist voters across Western democracies. It’s people who feel left behind by politics. It’s people who feel that the major parties, be they centre-right or centre-left, have essentially abandoned them. That politics has become something in the hands of financial interests, the banks, the markets, intellectuals, cultural, media elites, who don’t represent the people, who don’t say what the people are worried about, what they want and so on. And the likes of Hanson – Palmer to a slightly lesser extent – come into politics and say, “you know what, we are going to give democracy back to the people. I say what the man standing around his barbeque is thinking.” That’s a very powerful message.</p>
<p>[1:44] <strong>Anne:</strong> And it is in parts of regional Queensland, I imagine. Have you done any calculations on where you think her support will come from?</p>
<p><strong>Duncan:</strong> Well, Hanson’s support has always been more a non-urban support. It’s more been provincial areas and that’s exactly the archetype of populist parties in Europe too. You would expect parties like these in Europe, for example, to do well in cities where there are high levels of immigration and so on because they are radical right parties. They don’t. They tend to do much better in the peripheral areas – areas which maybe don’t have very high immigration but people are worried about it. </p>
<p>They think the world around them is changing, that their identity, their values, their traditions have all been undermined somehow. Hanson taps into that in Australia when she talks about the danger of Muslims coming in and wanting to introduce sharia law and suddenly we won’t be able to have nativity plays before you know it and the world around you will change terribly and the elites don’t care. That’s the Hanson message. It’s the message of all right-wing populists. It’s the message of Donald Trump.</p>
<p>[2:43] <strong>Anne:</strong> Absolutely, and I guess this is an international phenomenon that’s playing out in Australia as well. And I think, to what extent is it the economic conditions that give rise to it? I’m struck by similarities between the economic outlook in 1996 and how things are now. Or is it more than the economy? Is it more than sort of technological changes? And to what extent are the parties responsible for this in terms of their own incapacity to respond to these legitimate concerns people might have?</p>
<p><strong>Duncan:</strong> Well, I think it’s all of the above. Certainly, the fact that parties have increasingly withdrawn from the zones of engagement in society with ordinary voters. It’s a common complaint, that we only see major politicians at election time and we don’t see them at any other point in time.</p>
<p>Right-wing populists are very effective at actually establishing grassroots presences, being around the community, being seen in a way that we don’t really associate with mainstream politicians anymore. So, the populist vote is in part an anti-mainstream party vote; it’s in part an anti-immigrant vote; it’s in part a response to, as you say, economic conditions, the fear that my children are going to be worse off than I was. And to some extent, they’re right.</p>
<p>[4:00] <strong>Anne:</strong> To some extent, they are absolutely right. Which is why I think young people are really going to feature in this campaign quite a bit and that’s something we’ll talk about down the track.</p>
<p>In terms of other populist parties that are emerging in the 2016 campaign, we had the extraordinary Newspoll yesterday that showed that as many as <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/federal-election-2016/newspoll-one-in-four-voters-may-spurn-voting-for-major-parties/news-story/eda17567d65d613ffc36c77d63767f1b">15% of Australians won’t vote for any major party</a>, including the Greens. Now, [ABC election analyst] Antony Green’s raised questions about whether that’s accurate or not. But you know, one gets the sense that the disenchantment with the major parties is more significant than it’s ever been. And particularly given the leadership chaos on both sides, which is actually getting less of a run in this campaign than I thought it might. The big ads haven’t come out yet. But it’s an interesting [issue] – what do you make of the 15%? Where do you think those votes are going to go?</p>
<p><strong>Duncan:</strong> Well, I don’t think it’s particularly surprising. If we look at stats, for example, on satisfaction with democracy in Australia, it’s essentially plummeted over the last decade. Faith in the major parties has plummeted. Membership of the major parties over several decades has plummeted.</p>
<p>So, although because of the compulsory voting system you have in Australia, everything looks fine and dandy if we just look at turnout. Of course, if we look at who actually registers to vote then we start getting worried again. But if we just look at turnout, everything looks fine in Australia. But then when you scratch beneath that surface and look at how people feel about their democracy, how they feel about the major parties, it’s clear. There’s the exact same type of fertile terrain of dissatisfaction with democracy that we see across Western Europe, that we see in the United States as well.</p>
<p>[5:33] <strong>Anne:</strong> So Duncan, populism seems to be a pejorative term in politics. What distinguishes a populist like [Nick] Xenophon who doesn’t seem to attract that kind of negative connotation from you know, a Palmer or a Pauline Hanson or some of the other populist movements that we’ve seen emerge?</p>
<p><strong>Duncan:</strong> It is a pejorative term. At least for academics, we tend to understand it as meaning that a particular party has an ideology which essentially views the world as being split up into two groups. On the one hand, there is the people who are good, they are virtuous, they are attached to their traditions, they are a silent majority, they are hard-working, clean-living, and so on and so forth. Then on the other side of politics there’s the bad elites. Maybe the media elites, financial, political so-on-so-forth, who have somehow usurped democracy, which have taken democracy and used it for their own interest, to push their own agendas and so on, who do not reflect the voice of the people.</p>
<p>So in a way, populism, it’s a conversation about democracy. It’s saying that the sovereign people have somehow had democracy taken away from them and the job of the populist is to restore democracy back to the people. So, it’s really about democracy. </p>
<p>But I suppose what distinguishes the likes of Hanson, or Marine Le Pen in France, or even Donald Trump, is that they propose a vision of which … the people are not only under siege from above from a series of elites, but also from below by a whole series of undesirable others. In the case of Trump they may be Mexicans. For most populists, they tend also to be Muslims; Muslims, anti-Islam feeling is something that tends to ignite populists the world over. We see it with Hanson, we see it with Trump, we see it with Marine Le Pen. So, right-wing populists have that idea: the people are under threat from all sides, both by the elites, from below, by all these dangerous others. That’s a very simplistic but quite compelling message.</p>
<p>[7:35] <strong>Anne:</strong> And I think that binary, I mean, you draw that binary really well. Do they ever deliver? Do populists ever deliver on their promise, or do they just increase the disaffection where they have gained power?</p>
<p><strong>Duncan:</strong> Well, they do both to some extent. We did a book last year called <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Populists-Extremism-Democracy-Daniele-Albertazzi/dp/0415600979">Populists in Power</a>, in which we looked at what happens when right-wing populists get into government in major democracies. And we did that in Switzerland and Italy and did a lot of research going from parliament level right down to the grassroots to look at what happens in these parties and what their policies are, and what they do when they get into government.</p>
<p>And we found that actually they do, certainly, not only change the debates on things like immigration in their countries, it becomes acceptable to say things that were not acceptable a decade ago about immigrants. They also get to introduce some of their key policies. For example in Switzerland, they were able to really tighten up on asylum policy. And the Swiss People’s Party held the Justice Ministry. In Italy, The Northern League, proposed all sorts of repressive measures about immigration including even fingerprinting people. They weren’t able to get it all through, but you can see how those kinds of things do change the debates in a country.</p>
<p>[8:43] <strong>Anne:</strong> Hmm, and so far we haven’t seen too many of these candidates have to step down for behaviour or issues from the past because the other parties are not watching them, you know, the major parties aren’t watching them in the same sort of way.</p>
<p><strong>Duncan:</strong> That’s absolutely true. I think it also does help though. For example, I know in the case of the Xenophon team, that they learnt some of the lessons of the Palmer United Party and they scrutinised their candidates extremely well. Those that are running for the NXT have been through all sorts of vetting procedures lasting months, psychometric tests, interviews, presentations, which are things that I think we can very clearly see were not the case in PUP. Otherwise Palmer may not have chosen some of the people who ended up being senators for that party.</p>
<p><strong>Anne:</strong> And I think we would have to say it’s not the case in the major parties either at Commonwealth or state level, or we wouldn’t have the kinds of embarrassments and scandals that we have had.</p>
<p>Duncan, that’s been a fantastic discussion. Thanks so much for your time this morning for being on Scrutineers.</p>
<p><em>Credits: Produced by <a href="http://livelab.com.au/">LiveLab</a> at Griffith University’s <a href="https://www.griffith.edu.au/visual-creative-arts/queensland-college-art/studios/griffith-film-school">Griffith Film School</a>. Filmed at The Ship Inn, Brisbane. Transcript by Ebony Hindle.</em></p>
<iframe src="https://www.podbean.com/media/player/h7i43-6003b1?from=yiiadmin" data-link="https://www.podbean.com/media/player/h7i43-6003b1?from=yiiadmin" height="100" width="100%" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" data-name="pb-iframe-player"></iframe><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/60313/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Watch Anne Tiernan and Duncan McDonnell discuss the popularity of minor parties and independents in this election – including what the Nick Xenophon Team learnt from the Palmer United Party.Anne Tiernan, Professor, School of Government and International Relations; Director, Policy Innovation Hub, Griffith UniversityDuncan McDonnell, Senior Lecturer, School of Government and International Relations, Griffith UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/552992016-02-24T00:56:04Z2016-02-24T00:56:04ZPolitics podcast: senator David Leyonhjelm on Malcolm Turnbull<p>Liberal Democrat senator David Leyonhjelm has accused Malcolm Turnbull of failing to live up to his promise to liaise closely with the Senate crossbenchers.</p>
<p>As the “micro” players react furiously to the government’s proposed Senate voting changes, Leyonhjelm tells Michelle Grattan he has not heard from Turnbull since his call in his first week as prime minister. Despite the “reservoir of goodwill” he enjoyed on taking over, Turnbull did not follow through.</p>
<p>The Coalition government has been appallingly bad at negotiating with the crossbenchers, Leyonhjelm says. Unlike the Gillard government, which negotiated successfully with lower house crossbenchers, the Abbott and Turnbull governments never learnt how to do it.</p>
<p>Leyonhjelm and the other “micro” Senate players have been invited to dinner at The Lodge this week. They are ready to vent their sense of grievance to Turnbull face-to-face.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/55299/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michelle Grattan 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>Liberal Democrat senator David Leyonhjelm says the government has been appallingly bad at negotiating with the crossbench.Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/551282016-02-22T23:39:04Z2016-02-22T23:39:04ZExplainer: what changes to the Senate voting system are being proposed?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/112300/original/image-20160222-25879-drf1j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The government's changes to the Senate voting system will almost certainly pass with the support of the Greens and Nick Xenophon.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Mick Tsikas</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Labor has announced <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/feb/22/malcolm-turnbull-moves-to-overhaul-senate-voting-system-before-election">it will oppose</a> the government’s <a href="http://www.prsa.org.au/2016-02-22_cwth_electoral_amendment_bill_2016.pdf">proposed changes</a> to the way Australians elect their senators. Labor’s opposition is almost certainly moot, however, as the government has the support of the <a href="http://www.prsa.org.au/history.htm#CWTH_5_campaigns">Greens</a> and independent senator <a href="http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/south-australia/senate-reform-could-boost-nick-xenophon-kill-off-minor-parties/news-story/0d9d44c77f301498ef250eb767d2b4b0">Nick Xenophon</a> to pass its legislation in the upper house.</p>
<p>Introducing the proposal on Monday, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull referred to the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters’ <a href="http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Joint/Electoral_Matters/2013_General_Election/Final_Report">unanimous recommendations</a> on changes to the Senate voting system. This made it seem like the government was adopting all of them. </p>
<p>However, one of the committee’s most important recommendations – for optional preferential voting below the line – was ignored. So, the government’s proposed changes do not match <a href="https://www.pm.gov.au/media/2016-02-22/joint-media-release-senate-voting-reform">Turnbull’s statement</a> that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… the outcomes will reflect faithfully what each and every voter intends as they exercise their democratic choice.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>So, what are the changes? And how will they affect us as voters?</p>
<h2>What are the changes?</h2>
<p>For the <a href="http://results.aec.gov.au/17496/Website/SenateUseOfGvtByState-17496.htm">nearly half a million Australians</a> who vote below the line – ranking candidates as well as parties – there is just a tiny token improvement: increasing allowable mistakes from three to five, but only “as long as 90% of the ballot paper below the line is filled in correctly”. </p>
<p>In other words, voters will still have to mark all the numbers and hope they don’t make too many mistakes.</p>
<p>There is significant change for those voting above the line. Currently, when you vote “1” in your chosen party’s box, you are voting for its candidates in the order that the party decided, and then your preferences go to all the other candidates as the party has decided. This system used <a href="http://www.prsa.org.au/history.htm#gvt">“group voting tickets”</a>, which list a preference order for all candidates.</p>
<p>Under the government’s proposed changes, if you vote “1” above the line, your vote will only go to that party’s candidates. No preferences will be transferred to other candidates. </p>
<p>Voters will be told to preference at least six blocks of candidates (party groups), numbering at least 1 to 6 above the line. This means voters – rather than the parties – will now choose which parties they wish to preference.</p>
<p>But the government realised that far too many voters would just vote “1” – as most have for decades. So, it has proposed a “savings provision”, which will make your ballot formal – meaning it can be counted – even if you just vote “1” above the line. If you do this, your vote will be transferred only to candidates of the party you have voted “1” for. </p>
<p>If that party has insufficient votes, your vote will become “exhausted” and cannot be transferred further.</p>
<h2>Do the changes benefit voters?</h2>
<p>The 2013 federal election results <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-2013-senate-contest-australia-lurches-to-the-right-17535">raised concerns</a> over just how “microparty” candidates were elected with very few first preference votes. They did gain enough support for election, but that was by preferences. Those preferences were mostly via the group voting tickets.</p>
<p>It was argued that many of those voters for candidates of small parties – for example the Animal Justice Party in Victoria – might not have wanted their preferences to proceed to elect the Motoring Enthusiasts’ Ricky Muir, but they nevertheless did. That would have been proper if the voters themselves had preferenced the Motoring Enthusiasts candidates, but it was the party lodging the group voting ticket that actually made the decision. </p>
<p>The proposed removal of group voting tickets is an improvement, but it could have been so much more. </p>
<p>The fairest way of overcoming this perceived problem is to <a href="https://theconversation.com/trusting-the-voters-to-decide-their-preferences-should-guide-senate-reform-48084">trust the voters</a>:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>to decide who gets their first preference and all their subsequent preferences; and</p></li>
<li><p>to let them decide how many further preferences they give.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>But the government’s changes don’t do that, and still perpetuate a very discriminatory difference between below-the-line and above-the-line voters. </p>
<p>Below-the-line voters have to mark virtually all the boxes, sometimes as many as 115 or even more, expressing preferences for virtually all candidates. Above-the-line voters are asked only to mark six boxes, and their vote will count even if they mark only one. </p>
<p>That doesn’t meet a standard for an electoral system voters can be confident in. How genuine is a reform declaring a particular numbering as formal if expressed above the line, but informal if written out below the line?</p>
<p>Australia’s Constitution <a href="http://www3.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/coaca430/xx7.html">requires federal MPs</a> be “directly chosen by the people”. This was intended to mean that voters must choose the individuals that will represent them. For the Senate, the only way for all voters to do that is to vote below the line.</p>
<p>Under the new rules voters are still significantly discriminated against if they want to “directly” choose the candidates. These voters still have a much higher formality requirement than those voting above the line, choosing party groups. A candidate might again ask the High Court – more probingly than it was asked <a href="http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/cases/cth/HCA/1984/75.html">in 1984</a> – to decide whether that still meets the constitutional requirement.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/55128/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stephen Morey is the honorary National Secretary of the Proportional Representation Society of Australia. He has received funding from the Australian Research Council for research on the Tangsa Naga languages of Northeast India and Northwest Myanmar. </span></em></p>What are the government’s proposed changes to the way the Senate is elected? And how will they affect us as voters?Stephen Morey, Australian Research Council Future Fellow, Linguistics, La Trobe UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/550272016-02-22T01:01:42Z2016-02-22T01:01:42ZSenate voting reform: keep it simple, or too many people’s votes won’t be counted<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/112102/original/image-20160219-1274-3u7d86.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Senate elections can give parties other than Labor, Liberal and National a chance of winning a seat.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Lukas Coch</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Turnbull government has unveiled <a href="https://twitter.com/political_alert/status/701559911428132865">sweeping changes</a> to how Australians vote for their senators ahead of this year’s federal election.</p>
<p>If passed, the government’s proposal would allow voters to cast at least six preferences above the black line on their Senate ballot paper, rather than requiring voters to fill in all boxes below the line. It would abolish controversial <a href="http://australianpolitics.com/voting/electoral-system/senate-group-voting-tickets">“group voting tickets”</a>.</p>
<p>The Senate voting system is already very complicated. It is by no means certain that voters understand the intricate details of how the transferable vote system, which is at the heart of how the Senate is elected, works.</p>
<p>This is evident in the slightly mischievous claims about candidates such as Ricky Muir winning Senate seats with paltry primary votes. Muir’s <a href="http://results.aec.gov.au/17496/Website/External/SenateStateDop-17496-VIC.pdf">share of the primary vote</a> in 2013 was not great, but it was quite a lot more than that won by the second-placed Liberal and Labor candidates on their respective party tickets.</p>
<h2>Evolution of the Senate voting system</h2>
<p>Since its introduction in time for the 1949 election, one of the outward signs of the Senate voting system’s complexity was the regularity with which rates of informal voting <a href="http://australianpolitics.com/voting/informal/senate-statistics">reached or even exceeded 10%</a>.</p>
<p>Reflecting on the <a href="http://australianpolitics.com/voting/elections/1974-federal">1974 double-dissolution election</a>, Colin Hughes – later chief electoral commissioner – <a href="https://www.questia.com/library/86085742/australia-at-the-polls-the-national-elections-of">reported on</a> the relationship between the high informal vote and the number of candidates on the ballot paper, the lack of any party identifier with those candidates, and the requirement that voters cast a numerically ordered preference for each of those candidates. </p>
<p>Hughes also noted that scrutineers had reported to him that the vast majority of informal votes cast in NSW in particular had been voters who had given their primary vote to the Labor candidate. Had those votes counted, he argued, Labor would have won an additional seat – an outcome that might have avoided the onset of the <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/archives/80days/stories/2012/01/19/3411587.htm">1975 constitutional crisis</a>.</p>
<p>Labor <a href="http://blogs.abc.net.au/antonygreen/2015/09/the-orogins-of-senate-group-ticket-voting-and-it-wasnt-the-major-parties.html">reformed the Senate voting system</a> in 1983 when it returned to government. Party identifiers were now included on ballot papers. </p>
<p>Voters could also now cast a single preference above a thick black line. In so doing, the ballot would be assumed to correspond with the allocation of preferences as determined by that party as lodged with the Australian Electoral Commission – known as <a href="http://australianpolitics.com/voting/electoral-system/senate-group-voting-tickets">group voting tickets</a>.</p>
<p>More than 90% of Australians now <a href="http://www.tallyroom.com.au/27224">vote this way</a> in the Senate. The informal vote has dramatically declined from an average of nearly 10% to being regularly <a href="http://australianpolitics.com/voting/informal/senate-statistics">less than 3%</a>.</p>
<p>But these achievements have been overwhelmed by the controversies the group voting ticket system has also been responsible for. These controversies have arisen over the representational outcomes that have occurred since the system was introduced. These in turn have always been precipitated by the fate of political parties other than Labor, Liberal and National. </p>
<p>Group voting tickets have given all political parties’ organisational wings the chance to participate in the wheeling and dealing of preference allocations. These deals have had real impact. Part of the reason the Australian Democrats <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/09/18/1095394062567.html?from=storylhs">declined as a presence</a> in the Senate was due to Labor placing it behind other parties – such as the Greens – in its group voting ticket. </p>
<p>In 1984, Labor was able to cruel Peter Garrett’s first attempt at a parliamentary career when it <a href="http://www.crikey.com.au/2014/05/12/common-sense-prevails-in-senate-preferential-voting-changes/?wpmp_switcher=mobile">preferenced against</a> Garrett’s Nuclear Disarmament Party. In 1998, all the major parties <a href="https://theconversation.com/hanson-gets-the-band-back-together-can-she-make-an-impact-34747">preferenced against</a> Pauline Hanson’s One Nation.</p>
<p>In 2004, Labor in Victoria <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/10/10/1097406425742.html">preferred Family First</a> to the Greens. This helped Family First’s Steve Fielding secure a Senate seat despite gaining less than 2% of the primary vote.</p>
<h2>What’s happened recently?</h2>
<p>In 2013, while the Liberal and National parties enjoyed a strong swing in the House of Representatives and were on track to secure a large majority, they did not fare <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-2013-senate-contest-australia-lurches-to-the-right-17535">quite so well</a> in the <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/federal-election-2013/results/senate/">upper house</a>. </p>
<p>The biggest swing in the Senate vote was to the raft of tickets and candidates other than the main parties – a group dubbed the “microparties”. But this vote was spread out over multiple parties; few won a primary vote of more than 2%. Most won less than 1%.</p>
<p>In a lower house contest, such a paltry vote would not translate into winning seats. The Senate electoral system, however, is a proportional system that utilises the transferable vote. This means a ballot may be counted for its primary value, then for its “surplus” value, and then for its value as a preference. </p>
<p>Thus, Senate elections can give parties other than Labor, Liberal and National a chance of winning a seat.</p>
<h2>What might change mean?</h2>
<p>The presence of parties like the Australian Motoring Enthusiasts Party in the Senate following the 2013 election appears to have been the last straw for critics of the group voting ticket system. </p>
<p>Change – justified on the grounds that there is something not quite right about such extensive microparty representation and so something needs to be done to curb it – <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/feb/12/senate-voting-changes-coalition-wins-over-nick-xenophon-and-greens">was negotiated</a> by the Coalition, independent senator Nick Xenophon and the Greens.</p>
<p>This signals that the Greens now see themselves as part of the mainstream party system. It appears to assume that Green candidates will still get elected even if the flow of Labor surplus guaranteed under the present system – provided Labor chooses to preference the Greens – will be denied under the proposed changes.</p>
<p>If the government’s changes are passed, a leap in the informal voting rate will occur. <a href="http://aec.gov.au/About_AEC/research/paper10/index.htm">Research into informal voting</a> by the Australian Electoral Commission notes the relationship between rising rates of informal voting and complexities in a voting system. The system will thus go back to disenfranchising voters (most likely from lower socioeconomic backgrounds) in ways that it did prior to the Hawke government’s 1983 reforms.</p>
<p>There are better ways to mitigate the power of the party secretariats in the preference wheeling-and-dealing process. In <a href="https://www.vec.vic.gov.au/Voting/StateElections.html">Victoria’s upper house</a>, voters can still vote for a group voting ticket or they can give as few as five preferences below the black line. </p>
<p>This doesn’t completely do away with the group voting ticket. But it does try to give voters a viable option to go their own way by reducing the complexity of voting below the line.</p>
<p>Victoria enfranchises voters by simplifying the system. It is a good principle. It ought to be applied to the federal sphere as well.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/55027/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>Those who do understand the Senate voting system have the potential to wield some influence both in its conduct and in debates about how it might be reformed.Nick Economou, Senior Lecturer, School of Political and Social Inquiry, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/412392015-05-06T01:55:53Z2015-05-06T01:55:53ZWhat Westminster can learn from minority government in Australia<p>The UK is <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk-election-spells-the-end-for-the-biggest-law-in-political-science-40706">poised to enter minority government</a> (again). This time it <a href="http://may2015.com/category/seat-calculator/">could well be with a hung parliament</a>. </p>
<p>According to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Z1msuGsusQY">leading scholars</a> on UK polling, this is not the result of de-alignment, it is the result of electoral re-alignment. In other words, it is not that the Brits are turning off to political or policy issues. It is because they are turning away from major party politics.</p>
<figure>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Another term of minority government would confirm the breaking of the British political mould.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Minority government is nothing new in other Commonwealth nations, such as Australia. Australia has had governments with a minority of members in one of its two houses for almost all of the last 30 years. </p>
<p>So what can Westminster learn from Australia about making minority government work?</p>
<h2>Five elements of successful minority government</h2>
<p>In my book with Richard Denniss, <a href="https://www.mup.com.au/items/152294">Minority Policy</a>, we interviewed ten former Australian MPs from across the political spectrum about minority government. Their responses provide a guide on how prime ministers, minor parties and independents have worked together over the last three decades to provide stable (if not uneventful) government in Australia.</p>
<p>The former MPs identified five general features of successful minority government:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Relationships – by far the strongest theme was the importance of respectful and trusting relationships (between parties and just as importantly between individual MPs).</p></li>
<li><p>Negotiation – to be successful in minority government, leaders need to take a transactional approach and genuinely seek consensus (in a hung parliament the job of prime minister usually goes to the leader who inspires most confidence in this area).</p></li>
<li><p>Information – all MPs agreed that information must be shared clearly, regularly and openly (trying to tactically withhold or misrepresent information just created resentment and opposition on the crossbench or the backbench).</p></li>
<li><p>Consistency – MPs on all sides need to keep their word and hold to their policy positions (if crossbenchers “backflip” it undermines their credibility, while if governments abandon commitments to crossbenchers it undermines their capacity to negotiate future support).</p></li>
<li><p>Mandate – all the MPs had no problem with minor party or independent MPs representing the interests of those who elected them – even if it frustrated a government (where there were concerns these involved the current influence of unrepresentative <a href="https://theconversation.com/change-is-needed-to-the-senate-voting-system-26534">micro-parties in the Senate</a>).</p></li>
</ol>
<p>As these MPs looked back on their experiences of minority government, they saw varied performances by prime ministers, but in time they saw them all coming around to these five principles. This is why the last three decades of Australian politics are generally seen as stable and functional; governments are generally remembered for their policy achievements.</p>
<h2>Particular lessons of the Gillard experience</h2>
<p>The likelihood of the UK having a hung parliament after the <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/uk-general-election-2015">May 7 general election</a> also points to a specific case, namely the hung parliament under the prime ministership of Julia Gillard between 2010 and 2013. This is a particularly useful case study because the Australian confidence and supply arrangements will (in all likelihood) most closely align with the arrangements adopted by the UK parliament.</p>
<p>In the Australian case, the Labor government did not have majority in either house and had to negotiate with crossbenchers in both. This was a tumultuous three years. Gillard struggled with perceptions of illegitimacy and ultimately lost the top job.</p>
<p>That said, in these three years, more legislation was passed than in the last three years of majority government under John Howard. Much of this involved major legislative packages. </p>
<p>Most importantly, the events under Labor highlight two things. First, hung parliaments are able to run full term. Thanks to the new fixed terms in UK politics, should there be a hung parliament, it too is likely to have to function full term. </p>
<p>Second, despite significant legislative success, a government can still be dogged by perceptions of illegitimacy. </p>
<p>Andrew MacIntosh and Richard Denniss (see <a href="https://www.mup.com.au/items/133823">Gillard Government</a>, Chapter 11) address this second point by analysing the role of climate change policy within the hung parliament. They suggest that the cause of Labor’s perception problems was crossbenchers’ demands for action on climate change as part of securing their support to form government. </p>
<p>They argue that this led Gillard to break her well-publicised <a href="https://theconversation.com/redefining-the-lie-politics-and-porkies-14685">2010 election promise</a> not to introduce a carbon tax. Not only did this reinforce public perceptions that politicians conveniently break their promises, but it gave rise to a strong <a href="https://theconversation.com/is-australia-still-not-ready-for-a-female-prime-minister-15424">political and public campaign</a> that branded the prime minister as “Juliar”.</p>
<p>Another perspective on this second point was provided in an interview with key crossbench MP Tony Windsor, for our book. He observed that the obsession with authority and power within the major parties led to a perception by Gillard (and Labor) that minority government reflected their own weakness. </p>
<p>Windsor noted that Gillard never effectively explained the conditions of her forming government, and that internal perceptions of political weakness led to her party’s reticence to explain the need for compromise and consensus. Hence, he argued, the public was left interpreting minority government through a majoritarian tradition and without a suitable lens for the conditions at hand. </p>
<p>In Windsor’s view, this created a situation where a lack of marketing of legislative success left far more scope for allegations of illegitimacy in media and online forums.</p>
<h2>Managing the gaps between promises and perceptions</h2>
<p>Meanwhile, writing with John Warhurst (See <a href="https://www.mup.com.au/items/133823">Gillard Government</a>, Chapter 4), I offer yet another view on the hung parliament under Gillard. We argue that perceptions of the performance of the parliament suffered from being framed by both the loftiest and lowest of aspirations.</p>
<p>For those hoping that minority government would result in cultural change within parliament - including the removal of major party thinking and procedures in its operations - judged against these lofty ideals, the parliament largely failed. For those who foreshadowed transience, chaos and impotence - in both political and policy terms – against these low expectations, the parliament was a success. </p>
<p>What each of these interpretations shares is an emphasis on the gap between the expectations and the actualities of minority government (and particularly hung parliaments).</p>
<p>The theme of expectation gaps is adopted by Matthew Flinders’ work in <a href="http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/product/9780199644421.do">defence of politics and democracy</a>. He argues that despite widespread criticism, Western democracies deliver more than than most realise and make a positive difference in people’s daily lives. </p>
<p>However, a challenge Flinders identifies is the significant gaps between what politicians promise, what the public demands and what our parliaments can realistically deliver. In his consideration of the unrealistic expectations that result from this, we see a broader principle that applies just as much to minority government as it might to democracy. I’d suggest that unless the UK adopts a realistic and pragmatic understanding of minority government, it too may see minority government contributing to further declines in public confidence in democracy. </p>
<p>Right now minority government is regarded with some enthusiasm in the UK, but that may not last.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/S_pgsvqNKaE?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Not everyone in the UK is worried by the prospect of minority government - some welcome it.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Australian experience should be both warning and encouragement to our friends in the UK. Most importantly, it highlights the inadequacy of analysing minority government through a fading majoritarian tradition, while it also feeds into debates about the future of our political systems and democracy.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>You can see The Conversation’s comprehensive UK election coverage <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/election-2015">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/41239/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Brenton Prosser 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 UK is poised for another minority government, this time possibly with a hung parliament. Australia’s long experience of such arrangements offers lessons in how to manage minority government.Brenton Prosser, Senior Research Fellow, Australian National UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/403872015-05-03T19:38:28Z2015-05-03T19:38:28ZUK election prediction: this week’s result won’t reflect the voters’ will<p>This week the “mother of parliaments” faces a <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/uk-general-election-2015">general election in the UK</a>. The level of voter support that individual parties are likely to get can now be predicted at about one third for each of the two traditional parties (Conservative and Labour) and one third divided between a range of other parties. This has been the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_2015_United_Kingdom_general_election">finding of opinion polls</a> for several years now.</p>
<p>What we can’t predict from these figures, because of the electoral system, is who would “win” the election and form a majority in the House of Commons.</p>
<h2>Why is this so?</h2>
<p>The electoral system in use for the 650 members of the House of Commons is the single-member electorate system, whereby each winner is decided by the “f<a href="http://www.prsa.org.au/pluralit.htm">irst past the post</a>” method. This means that voters have to put a cross next to the name of one candidate only. Whichever candidate gets the highest number of crosses wins and is the sole representative of the constituency, even if well short of 50% support.</p>
<p>When this happens across a range of constituencies, it leads to distorted election results. For example, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_general_election,_2005">in 2005</a>, the Labour Party under Prime Minister Tony Blair “won” the election with a large majority in Parliament, 356 seats, but only 35.3% of the votes.</p>
<p>Today, in many constituencies in the UK, there are three, sometimes four or even more candidates who have a real chance of winning. Consider a possible constituency where not only Conservative and Labour, but also Liberal-Democrats, UK Independence Party (UKIP) and the Greens each has solid support. Norwich South is an example, where <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_in_United_Kingdom_constituencies,_2010%E2%80%9315#NorwichSouth">five parties are over 12%</a> in recent opinion polls. If candidates of those five parties are the only candidates on the ballot paper, the leading candidate can be elected with just over 20% support, as in this hypothetical example:</p>
<iframe src="https://d3602hfvnbc5pq.cloudfront.net/iQpQr/2/" frameborder="0" allowtransparency="true" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" webkitallowfullscreen="webkitallowfullscreen" mozallowfullscreen="mozallowfullscreen" oallowfullscreen="oallowfullscreen" msallowfullscreen="msallowfullscreen" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>In this situation, despite the fact that 78% of votes were cast for other candidates, the Greens would win. Fortunately in Australia, <a href="http://www.prsa.org.au/votesyst.htm#3">preferential voting</a> means that the Greens candidate could only go on to win if also preferred by sufficient voters whose first preference was for candidates receiving fewer votes.</p>
<p>Results like this hypothetical example, where a large of majority of voters do not support “the winner” are increasingly common in first-past-the-post systems such as in the UK, Canada and India, where there are also multiple parties. When this is repeated in many constituencies, as is often the pattern, parties with far less than 50% support can form a majority government. </p>
<p>In India, for example, the present government coalition received just 31% of the vote but <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_general_election,_2014#Results">won 282 of the 543 seats</a>. In Britain, which has effectively been a multiparty state for over a generation, the Conservatives and Labour routinely get a far higher percentage of seats than votes.</p>
<p><strong>UK opinion poll trends, April 2010 to present</strong></p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/80017/original/image-20150501-30721-ft4sl8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/80017/original/image-20150501-30721-ft4sl8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/80017/original/image-20150501-30721-ft4sl8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=291&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/80017/original/image-20150501-30721-ft4sl8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=291&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/80017/original/image-20150501-30721-ft4sl8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=291&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/80017/original/image-20150501-30721-ft4sl8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=365&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/80017/original/image-20150501-30721-ft4sl8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=365&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/80017/original/image-20150501-30721-ft4sl8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=365&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Lines represent the opinion polling trend (using a 15-day moving average) and each dot an individual poll result. BLUE: Conservative. RED: Labour. PURPLE: UK Independence Party (UKIP). YELLOW: Liberal Democrats. GREEN: Green Party.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_general_election,_2015#Opinion_polling">Wikimedia Commons/Impru20</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The fracturing of the vote in the UK means that in recent opinion polls, the <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/general-election-2015/11374181/latest-poll-tracker.html">lead is see-sawing</a> between Labour and the Conservatives, averaging out to something like this:</p>
<p><br></p>
<iframe src="https://d3602hfvnbc5pq.cloudfront.net/oPtKQ/1/" frameborder="0" allowtransparency="true" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" webkitallowfullscreen="webkitallowfullscreen" mozallowfullscreen="mozallowfullscreen" oallowfullscreen="oallowfullscreen" msallowfullscreen="msallowfullscreen" width="100%" height="260"></iframe>
<p>Let’s suppose that there is a cluster of five constituencies, as a group voting exactly according to this pattern. And let’s suppose the votes for the parties in each of these constituencies are as in the table below. Although in these five constituencies the Conservatives lead the total votes by 1%, because of the support within each of these winner-take-all constituencies, they win one seat, Labour wins three and UKIP wins one.</p>
<p><br></p>
<iframe src="https://d3602hfvnbc5pq.cloudfront.net/YK9qX/1/" frameborder="0" allowtransparency="true" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" webkitallowfullscreen="webkitallowfullscreen" mozallowfullscreen="mozallowfullscreen" oallowfullscreen="oallowfullscreen" msallowfullscreen="msallowfullscreen" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>What has happened here is that Labour has comfortably retained its two safer seats, but the Conservatives have lost votes to UKIP in their formerly safest seat by a narrow margin. (Exactly this happened in several <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_Kingdom_by-elections_%281979%E2%80%93present%29#Present_Parliament">recent by-elections</a>.) Labour wins the seat listed as “marginal” by a narrow margin.</p>
<h2>The election contest is wide open</h2>
<p>It is certainly possible that results like this could be repeated in sufficient different parts of the country to mean that, for example, Labour could “win” the election despite having fewer votes than the Conservatives and less that one-third of the overall vote. </p>
<p>ABC election analyst Antony Green has observed that electoral results suggest the system may indeed <a href="http://blogs.abc.net.au/antonygreen/2015/04/how-the-uks-electoral-system-may-disadvantage-the-conservatives-on-7-may.html#more">work in Labor’s favour</a>. Others, including celebrated US tipster Nate Silver, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/apr/27/nate-silver-statistician-us-2012-predicts-uk-general-election-result">are predicting</a> a Conservative victory, with the caveat that the outcome could be “incredibly messy”.</p>
<p>Regardless of who forms government, because of the electoral system, the House of Commons is extremely unlikely to represent the will of the British people, as expressed by actual votes cast. With exactly the same percentage of votes cast across the country, similar to the opinion polling cited above, there could easily be one of three results:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>A large majority of seats for Labour</p></li>
<li><p>A large majority of seats for the Conservatives</p></li>
<li><p>A hung parliament.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>In the UK it is clear that no party has any chance of getting the support of anywhere near a majority of the voters, and yet one or other of those parties may yet win a substantial majority of seats.</p>
<p>Is it any wonder that UK voters are increasingly turned off from the political process?</p>
<p>The solution is to introduce 21st-century electoral arrangements that actually represent the voters’ will. The best system, known as single transferable vote proportional representation, has been operating for nearly a century in the UK’s closest neighbour, the Republic of Ireland, and was adopted for the Northern Ireland Assembly with cross-party support. Proportional representation for the UK would mean that:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Each of the parties that receives a substantial percentage of the vote would actually be represented in parliament (the first-past-the-post system <a href="http://may2015.com/featured/would-you-like-5-million-votes-and-4-seats-or-1-million-votes-and-56-seats/">favours parties with concentrated support</a> in some electorates, rather than broadly distributed support). </p></li>
<li><p>The majority in parliament would represent the views of the majority of voters</p></li>
<li><p>Voters for substantial minority parties across the country would have their own representatives</p></li>
<li><p>There would be competition everywhere, leading to regional representation in line with local support levels.</p></li>
</ul>
<hr>
<p><em>The author thanks Geoffrey Goode and Bogey Musidlak, of the Proportional Representation Society of Australia, for their help in preparing this article.</em></p>
<p><em>You can read The Conversation’s comprehensive coverage of the UK general election <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/election-2015">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/40387/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stephen Morey is the National Secretary of the Proportional Representation Society of Australia (PRSA), and secretary of the Victoria Tasmania branch of the PRSA.</span></em></p>This week the “mother of parliaments” faces a general election in the UK. The ‘first past the post’ electoral system means we can’t predict the result with certainty, nor expect it to match the vote.Stephen Morey, Australian Research Council Future Fellow, Linguistics, La Trobe UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/380342015-03-26T19:34:16Z2015-03-26T19:34:16ZNSW voters set to back Baird, but upper house is too close to call<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/76044/original/image-20150325-12305-yjq95e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">New South Wales Premier Mike Baird looks likely to keep enjoying the view from the top of the state after the March 28 poll.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.facebook.com/mikebairdMP/photos/pcb.852868001508109/852855004842742/?type=1&theater">Mike Baird/Facebook</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>With just one full day of campaigning left in the New South Wales election, the result is already clear. Mike Baird’s Liberal and National government will be re-elected, though with a reduced number of Coalition members returning to the treasury benches.</p>
<p>Had there not been shock results in Queensland and Victoria, where first-term governments fell in narrow races, this completely run-of-the-mill result in NSW would be filed unnoticed among the tradition of Australian voters giving new governments the benefit of the doubt. </p>
<p>For the jaded observer, wondering if all the election sound and fury has signified anything, the evidence is that little has really changed over the course of the campaign. Monday’s <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-03-23/nsw-election-liberals-mike-baird-beats-labors-luke-foley-polls/6339672">Fairfax/Ipsos two-party preferred poll</a> showing the Liberal Nationals ahead on 54% of support to Labor’s 46% is unchanged from <a href="http://www.galaxyresearch.com.au/1112-mar-2015/">Galaxy polling</a> in January.</p>
<p>Given so many journalists put on their party frocks to dance at this ball, the parties could have at least been a bit more creative in their campaigning.</p>
<p>So many of the protagonists have been pictured in grainy black and white images, complete with menacing music, that NSW politics has looked like a 1950s noir film.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/dfJ4oBEdFKw?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">NSW Labor.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>On some of its “<a href="http://www.liberalchoiceshurt.com.au/">Liberal choices hurt</a>” billboards, Labor has juxtaposed boyband-fresh Premier Mike Baird against grim, Fagin-like images of Prime Minister Tony Abbott. In other ads, like this one, Baird is pictured alongside Abbott, with the question for voters: “What do we really know about NSW Premier Mike Baird?”</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/cl5saDUdwqQ?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">NSW Labor.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Meanwhile, the Liberals have played up the fact that Luke Foley became leader of the Labor Party only at the start of this year by attacking him as an “<a href="http://www.RiskyFoley.org.au">L-plater</a>” – a line straight out of the federal Liberals’ 2004 campaign ads against Mark Latham.</p>
<p>To the NSW Liberals’ credit, they have at least shown a little more creativity in how they have used the L-plate graphic: not in the L for Labor, nor the L for Luke, but in the middle of Foley. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/rCzJwQXoXbg?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Liberal Party NSW.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/-M6GpuUTJ0E?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Liberal Party, 2004.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>‘The Abbott effect’ hasn’t all gone one way</h2>
<p>Contrary to most expectations, <a href="https://theconversation.com/making-abbott-invisible-in-nsw-campaign-will-prove-difficult-37347">including my own</a>, the Liberals have done a pretty good job of keeping the prime minister away from the campaign. </p>
<p>Unable to exclude the New South Welshman completely from his home state, when Abbott has not been kept busy <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/mar/13/tony-abbott-eats-raw-onion">eating onions in Tasmania</a> or <a href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/australias-pm-apologizes-for-goebbels-comparison/">crow in Parliament</a>, the NSW branch has included him in events related to “signature” Abbott policies. For instance, the prime minister was there for the <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/nsw-state-election-2015/tony-abbott-and-mike-baird-turn-first-sods-for--westconnex-20150308-13y859.html">turning of the first sod</a> of the WestConnex road project, which the federal government has backed via both the Roads of the 21st Century and Asset Recycling initiatives.</p>
<p>He was also at the NSW Liberals’ official launch last Sunday, where Baird made a point of saying: “What a pleasure it is to stand here in front of a friend of mine, the prime minister, Tony Abbott.” </p>
<p>As all the news reports noted afterwards, <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/state-politics/nsw-election-mike-baird-dodges-friendly-fire/story-fnsgbndb-1227273713650">Abbott left the talking to Baird</a>.</p>
<p>The prime minister has played some part in this campaign, with higher education reforms and the looming federal budget keeping national issues in voters’ minds. </p>
<p>A month ago, The Sydney Morning Herald’s <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/comment/baird-effect-v-abbott-effect-a-precarious-balance-20150227-13r1nc.html">Peter Hartcher warned</a> that: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The Abbott effect imposes an average penalty of 3% across state seats held by the junior coalition partner, the Nationals, and 7% across Liberal seats, according to well-placed sources.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>As it has turned out, it has not all been one-way traffic. Abbott’s continued visibility on the national stage has also helped highlight Baird’s positives.</p>
<p>When Baird replaced Barry O'Farrell as the state leader just under a year ago, the Liberals played up Baird’s close ties to the prime minister: not only as a <a href="http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2014/04/17/christian-surfer-next-nsw-premier">surfing buddy of Abbott’s</a>, but as a fellow Christian with an attractive family, who also represents a north-shore Sydney electorate.</p>
<p>However, Baird in election mode is the anti-Abbott: relaxed where the other is wooden; articulate, not faltering; friendly, not threatening.</p>
<p>As the ABC’s Vote Compass has shown, Baird is <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-03-26/antony-green-vote-compass-nsw-analysis-mike-baird-popularity/6348658">extraordinarily popular</a> for a state leader. He has a personal approval rating of <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/mike-bairds-popularity-trumping-electricity-sale-fears-20150322-1m4xi1.html">60%</a>. Even the worst black-and-white attack ad image just makes the man look more chiselled. </p>
<h2>What the privatisation debate revealed</h2>
<p>Policy-wise, the election has been interesting in highlighting key differences: though not so much differences between the two major parties, as between Australian voters and the political elite. The most obvious example of this has been the issue of privatisation.</p>
<p>Stripped of the capacity to raise revenue, state governments have had to use asset sales to fund new infrastructure and, at times, recurrent expenditure. This is a basic reality of Australian federalism that structurally pushes parties in government towards neo-liberal policies. </p>
<p>From the outset, Baird has been keen to establish an electoral mandate for “poles and wires” privatisation, stating there was <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/nsw-state-election-2015/bairds-doordie-infrastructure-plan-there-is-no-plan-b-20150227-13r2wz.html">“no Plan B”</a> to fund his A$20 billion of election commitments. </p>
<p>While Labor has had privatisation at the core of its campaign, it has been somewhat disingenuous. The ALP has long been an advocate of <a href="http://www.crikey.com.au/2013/03/12/is-privatisation-next-in-labors-tattered-playbook/?wpmp_switcher=mobile">privatising various state-owned assets</a>, not only in NSW but nationally. </p>
<p>Its conversion to the anti-privatisation cause has clearly been one of electoral necessity: giving it an issue to beat up the government on, while also attracting vital union members and funds. </p>
<p>Labor has prided itself on the success of its <a href="http://insidestory.org.au/rules-for-radicals-comes-to-carrum">“community organising” campaigns</a>, a la <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-10897082">Obama</a>, in delivering recent electoral gains in <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/comment/victorian-state-election-how-labor-and-the-unions-blew-up-the-coalition-20141130-11x325.html">Victoria</a> and Queensland.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/76063/original/image-20150326-12309-3201wy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/76063/original/image-20150326-12309-3201wy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/76063/original/image-20150326-12309-3201wy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=313&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/76063/original/image-20150326-12309-3201wy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=313&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/76063/original/image-20150326-12309-3201wy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=313&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/76063/original/image-20150326-12309-3201wy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/76063/original/image-20150326-12309-3201wy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/76063/original/image-20150326-12309-3201wy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.unionsnsw.org.au/knocking4change">Unions NSW</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/mar/26/nsw-election-2015-doors-open-for-campaigners-who-dont-mention-politics">union-led volunteer campaign</a> has covered impressive territory: reportedly doorknocking more than 27,000 homes across the state (<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/mar/26/nsw-election-winner-seems-clear-fear-anxiety-nerves-take-hold">The Guardian says</a> the residents were home about half the time); putting up <a href="https://www.facebook.com/NSWPowerSellOff">fluorescent banners</a> along main streets and highways; and making <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/mar/26/nsw-election-winner-seems-clear-fear-anxiety-nerves-take-hold">3,500 phone calls</a> in the past two weeks.</p>
<p>But Labor’s stance on privatisation left it vulnerable on another key policy front, which voters in Sydney are particularly concerned about.</p>
<p>On transport, Labor split in opposite directions: on one hand, running against major road infrastructure in the inner west of Sydney; on the other, releasing a pro-Parramatta Road expansion policy for western Sydney seats. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/nsw-state-election-2015/westconnex-boss-tony-shepherd-says-labors-plan-would-create-more-innerwest-congestion-20150220-13k0ab.html">Trimming WestConnex’s tunnel and exit into St Peters</a> has been at the heart of this compromise. But it was telling that the ALP released its modest transport policy in the <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/nsw-state-election-2015/nsw-state-election-2015-alp-reveals-modest-infrastructure-plan-20150219-13j13e.html">first week of the campaign</a>, and Foley has largely run <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/remove-mike-baird-and-you-remove-tony-abbott-luke-foley-tells-the-faithful-20150322-1m4wie.html">quiet on transport</a> since.</p>
<h2>Minor parties in the major battle ahead</h2>
<p>The electorate <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-03-26/antony-green-vote-compass-nsw-analysis-mike-baird-popularity/6348658">loathes privatisation</a>, providing minor parties across the state with some traction and a chance to differentiate themselves from Labor, the Liberals and the Nationals in this campaign.</p>
<p>In inner Sydney, the Greens have worked the <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-fewer-drivers-are-likely-to-use-westconnex-than-predicted-38286">WestConnex</a> angle hard in an attempt to win the newly established progressive seat of Newtown – though polls suggest <a href="http://blogs.crikey.com.au/pollbludger/2015/03/22/reachtel-labor-leads-in-ballina-newtown-and-strathfield/">a Labor win</a> there. The Greens have also campaigned on the issue of cruise ship pollution in an attempt to retain Balmain, in an <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/mar/10/alan-jones-backs-balmain-residents-battle-against-cruise-ship-pollution">odd alliance with broadcaster Alan Jones</a>. That’s an issue neither of the major parties has clean hands on. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, the Greens’ campaigns in regional NSW – particularly their push for a <a href="http://nsw.greens.org.au/policies/nsw/coal-and-coal-seam-gas">ban on coal seam gas</a> – could deliver more seats in the upper house. </p>
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<p>The battle for the upper house is really the one to watch. As <a href="https://theconversation.com/nsw-privatisation-could-hinge-on-a-single-upper-house-vote-38297">this Conversation article</a> covers in more detail, the Baird government’s post-election plans including privatisation could hinge on a single upper house vote.</p>
<p>The new No Land Tax Party has two advantages in its favour: it won the first position on the Legislative Council ballot paper, and it has the ability to raise considerable funds from supporters in the commercial real estate industry.</p>
<p>Having been frustrated by the Shooters and Fishers party in the last parliamentary term over disputes about the NSW Game Council and hunting in parks, the Liberal Nationals are hoping for a strong enough vote in the upper house so they need only negotiate with the Christian Democrats. Polling indicates this will be extremely close. </p>
<p>As preferences will be very important, the unusual way voters have preferenced in recent state elections makes our ability to predict the outcome even <a href="http://insidestory.org.au/polls-and-preferences-the-new-challenge-for-election-watchers">less reliable than in the past</a>.</p>
<p>On election night, all eyes will be on the Legislative Council. The <a href="https://theconversation.com/nsw-privatisation-could-hinge-on-a-single-upper-house-vote-38297">21 seats</a> up for grabs there will – almost certainly – determine if likeable Mike Baird can act on his mandate for privatisation.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/38034/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter John Chen 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 just a day of campaigning left in the New South Wales election, the result is already clear. Mike Baird’s government will be re-elected – but the battle for 21 upper house seats will be crucial.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/393022015-03-26T01:21:28Z2015-03-26T01:21:28ZScorn the crossbench, ignore Australian political history<p>Tony Abbott seems to have been entirely surprised by the entirely predictable. The Australian Senate has been amending and rejecting government legislation since federation. Yet in the lead-up to the last election Abbott declared that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>There will not be deals done with independents and minor parties under any political movement that I lead.</p>
</blockquote>
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<p>Last week, the prime minister <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-03-18/glenn-lazarus-says-abbott-feral-senate-comment-disrespectful/6330114">called them</a> “feral”. He’s not off to a good start.</p>
<p>But Abbott is not alone in ignoring the crucial role played by crossbench and backbench members of parliament. The media and academics often pay too little attention to the people to whom the constitution has given veto power over policy.</p>
<p>Every time an Australian goes grocery shopping they derive a lasting benefit from the transitory power of the Australian Democrats. John Howard, Peter Costello, the Australian Treasury and the overwhelming majority of academic economists thought removing food from the GST made no sense. The Democrats disagreed.</p>
<p>Significantly, unlike the bureaucrats and the academics, the Democrats got to vote in the Senate. Despite his personal preferences, Howard <a href="http://australianpolitics.com/1999/06/22/howards-commitments-to-meg-lees-on-the-gst.html">agreed</a> that a GST on most things was better than a GST on no things. </p>
<p>It is not only crossbenchers but backbenchers from the major parties who often act as the “marginal” member whose final position shapes the outcome. In order to privatise Telstra, Howard persuaded Mal Colston to quit the ALP and <a href="http://australianpolitics.com/1998/10/15/howard-to-accept-colston-vote.html">vote with the Liberals</a> in exchange for promoting him to deputy president of the Senate.</p>
<p>Such chaos! Such uncertainty! I don’t remember the business community complaining about those shenanigans, and I certainly don’t remember the Coalition crying foul.</p>
<p>Julia Gillard <a href="https://theconversation.com/speaker-slipper-slips-in-as-gillard-claims-a-tactical-victory-4453">pulled a similar trick</a> with Peter Slipper when she was in a minority government supported by the Greens’ Adam Bandt and three independents. Perhaps unsurprisingly, many of those who sat mute or quietly cheered when Howard did “whatever it takes” to win his Telstra vote howled in outrage at Gillard’s gambit.</p>
<p>Political commentators spend a lot of time talking about focus groups and marginal voters. Political scientists spend a lot of time talking about “evidence-based policy” and orderly “policy cycles”. But while they may disagree about what “really” drives policy, both groups often overlook the role of the “marginal member of parliament”.</p>
<h2>Chaos? Or just the way the system works?</h2>
<p>In our recent book, <a href="https://www.mup.com.au/items/152294">Minority Policy: Rethinking governance when parliament matters</a>, Brenton Prosser and I draw on historic and international evidence to spell out the crucial role of the independent MP or minor party bloc of votes that have the final say on the form, and passage, of legislation. </p>
<p>Rather than analyse the role of the crossbench, and backbench through the prism of “chaos”, we seek to understand their motivations, analyse their strategies and discuss the role they have played in Australian policymaking.</p>
<p>For 27 of the last 30 years, the Australian government has lacked a majority of the votes required in the Senate to pass legislation without the support of independent or non-government senators. Queensland and the ACT are currently led by minority governments and no Australian state is governed by a party with a majority in both houses. But dealing with the crossbench is not “the new normal”; it has ever been thus.</p>
<p>In writing our book, we interviewed former backbench and crossbench MPs, state and federal, in order to better understand the motivations, tactics and objectives of parliamentarians whose individual votes have, at times, led to the passage, defeat or amendment of legislation. Perhaps unsurprisingly, all of the “marginal members” we interviewed thought it was their role to shape, or block, the passage of legislation that affected their constituencies.</p>
<p>But while crossbench and backbench MPs often play a crucial role in the final shape of legislation, this role is largely ignored in academic and media analyses of policymaking. Even the bureaucracy often appears to be blindsided by the bleeding obvious – namely, that those with the power to block a reform often choose to do so.</p>
<h2>Crossbench vote on the rise</h2>
<p>In the past 30 years, Australian voters have been electing steadily more minor party and independent members of parliament. While modifications to the voting rules may change the composition of minor party candidates that get elected, only the most radical and undemocratic of voting reforms would significantly reduce the number of crossbenchers who get elected. </p>
<p>Whether this leads to “crisis” or a more consultative style of parliamentary decision-making will be determined by the personalities of those we elect and the expectations of those who vote. For those who argue that minor parties are nothing more than an unexpected consequence of voter frustrations, it is important to reflect on the Senate by-election that took place in Western Australia soon after the Abbott government took office.</p>
<p>In the lead-up to the April 2014 Senate by-election, Abbott made clear that he <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/11/tony-abbott-bill-shorten-battle-over-whats-best-for-western-australia">wanted a mandate</a> from the Western Australian voters. The Liberal Party vote fell by more than 5%. So did the ALP vote, while the vote for minor parties and independents <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/06/voters-punish-major-parties-in-western-australian-senate-election-rerun">hit an all-time high</a>.</p>
<p>The Constitution spells out quite clearly that a new law can only be made if a majority of both houses of parliament support it. Given how unusual it is for a government with a majority in the lower house to simultaneously hold a majority in the upper house, the role of “marginal members” to break or shape legislation should be well understood by journalists, political scientists and especially prime ministers.</p>
<p>While recent events suggest that the role of the crossbench has been overlooked by some who should know better, it is likely that recent events will reduce the chances of such an oversight occurring again. At least for another generation. </p>
<hr>
<p><em>Minority Policy: Rethinking governance when parliament matters (MUP 2015) will be launched in Melbourne on Tuesday, March 31, at 6.30pm in the Institute of Postcolonial Studies boardroom (RSVP <a href="http://theausinstitute.nationbuilder.com/book_launch_melbourne">here</a>).</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/39302/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dr Richard Denniss is executive director of The Australia Institute. He co-authored Minority Policy: Rethinking governance when parliament matters (MUP 2015) with Dr Brenton Prosser, Senior Research Fellow at the Australian National University and former chief of staff to Senator Nick Xenophon.</span></em></p>Instead of treating crossbenchers in parliament as a source of chaos and an aberration, we should recognise that they play a crucial role in shaping legislation as the constitution provides.Richard Denniss, Adjunct Professor, Crawford School, Australian National UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/359122015-01-18T19:20:44Z2015-01-18T19:20:44ZPalmer misses the party as PUPs struggle to be heard in Queensland<p>It’s been a surprisingly muted campaign from the Palmer United Party (PUP) ahead of Queensland’s January 31 poll – and on Sunday, the man who started it all couldn’t even make it to his own party.</p>
<p>At the 2013 federal election, you could hardly turn on your TV, go to your letterbox or drive up a major highway in southeast Queensland without seeing Clive Palmer’s beaming face on a bright yellow background. </p>
<p>Only a year-and-a-half later, Palmer and his PUPs have been largely missing in action in the snap Queensland election, while the Liberal National government and Labor opposition have run prominent primetime broadcast, print and social media campaigns.</p>
<p>Just like the federal campaign launch, PUP’s Queensland election launch was held at the <a href="http://palmercoolumresort.com.au/">Palmer Coolum Resort</a> on the Sunshine Coast. But unlike in 2013, when party founder Palmer <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ffd08bUGzZs">made a dramatic entrance</a> to the soundtrack of Eye of the Tiger, this time he made headlines for being a <a href="http://www.sunshinecoastdaily.com.au/news/palmer-no-show-pups-mcdonald-launches-qld-campaign/2514392/">“no-show”</a> with the flu.</p>
<p>Instead, it was left to John Bjelke-Petersen – who was only appointed as the <a href="http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2014/12/28/sir-johs-son-lead-qld-pup">new state party leader</a> several weeks ago and who is best known as the son of long-serving Queensland Premier Sir Joh – <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-01-18/palmer-uniter-party-launches-campaign/6023618">to pledge</a> to abolish Queensland’s payroll tax and stop coal seam gas exploration until the water table is secured. </p>
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<h2>PUP’s prospects</h2>
<p>Polling currently suggests that PUP will <a href="http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/queensland/queensland-state-election-2015/queensland-election-2015-back-to-the-polls-if-hung-parliament-is-the-result-20150112-12mkjo.html">struggle to win any seats</a> in the next state parliament. </p>
<p>Only days after the early election was called, Queensland’s Courier-Mail newspaper <a href="http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland-state-election-2015/first-poll-of-queensland-election-campaign-shows-surging-support-for-lnp/story-fnr8vuu5-1227180188179">reported</a> a Galaxy poll showed PUP support falling from 12% of voters surveyed in August 2014 to just 3% this month. The newspaper’s state political editor, Steven Wardill, <a href="http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland-state-election-2015/first-poll-of-queensland-election-campaign-shows-surging-support-for-lnp/story-fnr8vuu5-1227180188179">declared</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The Palmer United Party’s first Queensland election is now over before it officially began.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Other polling for Seven News Brisbane found the party’s support had dropped from 15% in July last year to 6% this month.</p>
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<p>But when asked last week what had gone wrong in Queensland, Palmer <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-01-14/palmer-predicts-pup-will-hold-balance-of-power-qld-election/6015706">replied</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Absolutely nothing. Our support’s increased in Queensland … I think we’ll achieve the balance of power in Queensland and stand as the last centurion of the gates to protect the sale of our schools and hospitals.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>From the main stage to a sideshow</h2>
<p>For Palmer, this state election is personal. Even though he’s not standing for election, the former LNP lifetime member had a spectacular falling out with the Newman government after its election in March 2012, sparking his decision to form <a href="https://theconversation.com/titanic-ambitions-palmers-federal-push-shouldnt-be-lightly-dismissed-13825">his own political party in April 2013</a>.</p>
<p>In the lead-up to the 2013 federal election, Palmer wasn’t shy about setting his sights high. </p>
<p>Offering himself as <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8-3DHZw--E">“the next prime minister of Australia”</a>, Palmer declared in his TV ads and speeches: “Don’t you know, we’re talking about a revolution.” The leader of the new Palmer United Party was everywhere, blanketing not only Queensland but many other electorates nationwide with ads promising tax cuts and a better deal for pensioners.</p>
<p>Although he didn’t make it to the Lodge, in the 2013 election Palmer was elected in the lower house electorate of Fairfax on the Sunshine Coast, together with three PUP senators from Queensland, Western Australia and Tasmania.</p>
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<p>At the time, a significant number of Australians were attracted to the maverick value of the Palmer brand. Here was someone, a former insider, set to give the major parties a shake-up. </p>
<p>Since then, the PUP’s parliamentary performances have suggested a party still finding its feet, its organisation dominated by its leader’s personality. </p>
<p>Federally, Palmer has imposed himself far more than most first-time MPs, working with his senators to broker crucial deals on issues like the <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-07-14/palmer-confirms-support-for-renewed-push-to-axe-carbon-tax/5593448">carbon tax repeal</a>. But more recently, the resignation of one of his three senators, Tasmanian Jacqui Lambie, and the chairing of a <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-11-13/shaky-start-to-queensland-government-inquiry/5889922">Senate inquiry into the Queensland government</a> (which got off to a shaky start) haven’t helped Palmer’s cause.</p>
<p>In state politics, the party has a similarly mixed record. </p>
<p>Within the Queensland parliament, two government MPs (Alex Douglas from Gaven and Carl Judge from Yeerongpilly) quit the LNP to join the PUP – only to both resign from the PUP last year. </p>
<p>Douglas accused the party of a <a href="http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/queensland/alex-douglas-quits-palmer-united-party-20140811-102pxf.html">“jobs for the boys”</a> culture, while Judge <a href="http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/queensland/carl-judge-quits-palmer-united-party-20141008-113brv.html">said</a> he felt the fledgling party was better off focusing on federal issues.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/69192/original/image-20150116-5198-jq4b8n.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/69192/original/image-20150116-5198-jq4b8n.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/69192/original/image-20150116-5198-jq4b8n.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=765&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69192/original/image-20150116-5198-jq4b8n.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=765&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69192/original/image-20150116-5198-jq4b8n.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=765&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69192/original/image-20150116-5198-jq4b8n.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=962&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69192/original/image-20150116-5198-jq4b8n.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=962&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/69192/original/image-20150116-5198-jq4b8n.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=962&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 2014 election results for Victoria’s upper house.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.vec.vic.gov.au/Results/State2014/Summary.html">Victorian Electoral Commission</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Like Queensland, in the Northern Territory there has been interest in the PUP brand among restless members of the Legislative Assembly. But all <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmer_United_Party#Resignation_of_Alison_Anderson_and_Larisa_Lee">three members who defected to PUP</a> have since left the party to return to the Country Liberal Party or to sit on the crossbench.</p>
<p>And at the most recent state election before this Queensland campaign – Victoria’s poll last November – PUP candidates garnered a mere 1.95% of the votes for the upper house and failed to win a seat.</p>
<h2>Who else might Queensland’s protest voters support?</h2>
<p>Queensland is famous for producing political mavericks and eponymous political parties. </p>
<p>This election, Pauline Hanson is also back for <a href="https://theconversation.com/hanson-gets-the-band-back-together-can-she-make-an-impact-34747">another go</a>, in the seat of Lockyer.</p>
<p>In 2011, federal member Bob Katter has lent his name to a party aiming to capture some of the seats in the north of the state. Katter’s Australian Party (KAP) holds three of the 89 state seats, but its support has slipped since the 2012 election and pollsters have tipped the KAP may <a href="http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/queensland/queensland-state-election-2015/queensland-election-2015-back-to-the-polls-if-hung-parliament-is-the-result-20150112-12mkjo.html">hang on to only two of those</a>.</p>
<p>What about the Greens? I’d have to agree with <a href="https://theconversation.com/lnp-gains-in-two-new-queensland-polls-36101">Adrian Beaumont</a>, who’s noted elsewhere on The Conversation that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Queensland has never been a great state for the Greens, and on current polling they will probably do worse than their 7.5% at the 2012 election.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Queenslanders like their independents and a number <a href="http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/queensland/queensland-state-election-2015/queensland-election-2015-back-to-the-polls-if-hung-parliament-is-the-result-20150112-12mkjo.html">are tipped</a> to either hold or win their seats, including Peter Wellington in Nicklin, Chris Foley in Maryborough and Julie Boyd in Mackay. </p>
<p>Wellington, Foley and the KAP’s Robbie Katter and Shane Knuth have already held talks about <a href="http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland-state-election-2015/independents-prepare-for-hung-parliament-in-queensland-state-election/story-fnr8vuu5-1227181547502">an “informal coalition”</a> to block asset leases and wind back bikie laws – two of the LNP government’s signature policies.</p>
<p>After January 31, there’s a good chance Clive Palmer will continue to use his federal platform to niggle his LNP nemesis in Queensland. But it is looking less and less likely there will be a PUP member on board what promises to be a colourful state crossbench.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/35912/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Donna Weeks is presently chair of the Queensland chapter of the Australasian Study of Parliament Group. She is an associate of the Queensland public policy think tank TJ Ryan Foundation.</span></em></p>It’s been a surprisingly muted campaign from the Palmer United Party (PUP) ahead of Queensland’s January 31 poll – and on Sunday, the man who started it all couldn’t even make it to his own party. At the…Donna Weeks, Lecturer, Japanese Studies and International Relations, University of the Sunshine CoastLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/360352015-01-09T11:45:37Z2015-01-09T11:45:37ZOfcom got it wrong: it’s time to listen and learn from fringe parties<p>The UK’s broadcast regulator Ofcom <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/jan/08/ofcom-blow-green-party-election-debate-boost-ukips">recently released a draft ruling</a> that the Green party lacks sufficient support to qualify as a major party. This could give mainstream media the excuse they were searching for to overlook the Greens in much of their coverage of the 2015 UK election. Yet given that the contest is likely to yield another coalition government, it is now more important than ever to create a space for fringe parties in our nation’s political discourse. </p>
<p>Though Westminster is not in the habit of looking outside of its own closed networks – and that is part of the problem – there are two main sources of hope close to home. The first is the Celtic fringe – in particular, the devolved administrations in Scotland and Wales – and the second is the European model, as represented in the Nordic and Baltic states. </p>
<p>Both the Welsh and Scottish parliaments were <a href="http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/visitandlearn/Education/18663.aspx">specifically designed</a> to ensure that no single political party could easily hold a majority: they positively encouraged the formation of coalition governments. In 2007, the SNP became the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2007/may/08/scotland.devolution2">first party</a> to form a single-party, minority government in the Scottish parliament, after a series of coalitions from 1999. </p>
<h2>Building bridges, not burning them</h2>
<p>The key thing that distinguishes policy making in coalition governments is the need to reach consensus across different political parties, in order to develop and enact legislation. In the Celtic and European models, this usually extends to involving key civic partners around specific policy issues. </p>
<p>For example, German energy policies have been developed by key partnerships involving political parties like the Greens, and environmental NGOs; childcare policies in the Nordic states were developed by achieving cross-party consensus with strong support from civic feminist organisations and trade unions; long-term care policies in the Baltic states were developed by political parties working in conjunction with NGOs representing carers and care agencies.</p>
<p>This consensus-led approach to policy making has several effects. Including a wide range of them ensures that coalition governments draw on different types of evidence to create policy. It also means that the key players, whose co-operation is needed to implement the policy, are much more likely to be co-operative, because the design of the policy will reflect their values and goals. </p>
<p>Coalition leadership tends to form around issues that are important to civic society, instead of exclusively around government policies. This leads to a mix of top-down and bottom-up policy making. Another feature of coalition-led governments is that it is never advisable to alienate any group completely, as they may be possible future policy partners. So, arguably, coalitions lead to better, more inclusive governance. </p>
<h2>Let’s get visible</h2>
<p>Another distinguishing feature of the Celtic and European approaches to political campaigning is that all parties are visible in the run up to an election. Each party is invited to take part in debates, and given fairly even-handed coverage by traditional media, since there is no way of guaranteeing that those parties will not be working with other key interest groups or parties in the future.</p>
<p>All this appears in stark contrast to the current approach taken in the run up to the UK’s 2015 general election. At present, the main parties – the Conservatives, Labour Party and Liberal Democrats – appear regularly in traditional media, alongside the UK Independence Party (UKIP). Other parties and leaders are conspicuous by their absence. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/260000-people-sign-petition-to-include-green-party-in-election-debates-9856948.html">Social media campaigns</a> are currently running to protest the mainstream media’s failure to include the leaders or policies of the SNP, Plaid Cymru and the Green Party in their coverage. The Ofcom decision is likely to choke the momentum of such movements. </p>
<h2>Female leadership in fringe parties</h2>
<p>The major parties are all led by men, drawn from a small circle of elite politicians, who are well versed in adversarial, majority-led politics. The fringe party leaders are all women, drawn from a much wider range of backgrounds, used to consensus building, coalitions, and working with a wide range of non-elite stakeholders. </p>
<p>This pattern is echoed internationally: the Nordic and Baltic coalitions are all filled with strong female leaders – many of them openly feminist – used to working towards consensus around issues and policies. The visible presence of women and other non-elites in democratic and civic politics leads to different styles of policy making. </p>
<p>For example, it is currently only the fringe parties who are offering credible policy alternatives to austerity-led welfare and economic policies. Denying them a voice in the debate is denying voters access to anything other the centrist consensus on austerity-based approaches to economic and social policy. </p>
<p>Voters should arguably be given a wider choice of policies and values, beyond the debate around how severe spending cuts should be. In particular, the Celtic fringe and Green parties are offering a different vision of policy around universalism, social solidarity and a different style of leadership.</p>
<p>The UK’s fringe parties could potentially hold the balance of power in a future coalition more effectively than our three larger parties. Letting them into the debate and into government could improve governance and transform politics and policy making in the UK. But to vote for them, the electorate first has to see and hear them.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/36035/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kirstein Rummery receives funding from the ESRC and this article presents preliminary findings from the 'Fairer Caring Nations' project, carried out as part of the programme of work at the Centre on Constitutional Change</span></em></p>The UK’s broadcast regulator Ofcom recently released a draft ruling that the Green party lacks sufficient support to qualify as a major party. This could give mainstream media the excuse they were searching…Kirstein Rummery, Professor of Social Policy, University of StirlingLicensed 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.