Extract from The Guardian website:
The rerun election may have implications – above all for climate policy – far beyond the simple choice of six senators
- Lenore Taylor, political editor
- theguardian.com,
Election-weary voters in a state preoccupied with shark culls and a
deflating mining boom will soon face a scrummage of 77 candidates in a
rerun of the Western Australian Senate ballot that could shape the
Abbott government’s first term and even influence global climate talks.
If it were a novel, the 5 April poll in the west would have way too much plot.
Forced upon voters because of the astonishing bungle after last September’s general election in which 1375 ballot papers were somehow lost, the WA Senate rerun has taken on importance far beyond the simple election of six members of the upper house.
It has become an early referendum on the gathering ambitions of the new Coalition government and the effectiveness of the Labor opposition just getting up off the mat. And its outcome could complicate even further the jumble of minor party and independent senators sitting on the upper house crossbench who will determine the fate of every piece of government legislation opposed by Labor and the Greens.
This crucial verdict is being cast by a state which covets its otherness and distance from Australia’s eastern seaboard, reminding those “over east” that its capital city is closer to Jakarta than Canberra.
It is also a state that has had a very different recent economic experience than the rest of the country, with the mining investment boom, now coming to an end, trucking in riches but also a higher cost of living and stretched public services.
But if the WA Senate rerun is a referendum on the Coalition’s polarising resolve to be a free-market, low taxes, no hand-outs, more logging, we’re-not-doing-much-about-this-theory-called-climate-change-we’re all-about-economic-growth kind of administration, the west may just be the polarised kind of place to cast that verdict.
It has, after all, given us mining billionaire Gina Rinehart who – with her personal wealth of almost $20bn – has criticised “the left” for advocating welfare policies Australia simply could not afford, and warned Australians they are competing with countries that offer $2 an hour wages. On the other hand, the celebrated author Tim Winton believes the prosperity of his state’s mining boom has bred “a certain smugness that has paralysed parts of the communal brain”.
And it has elected Greens senator Scott Ludlam, now once again facing the voters, whose recent speech – in which he declared it was wrong for Australia to act as though his state was “just Gina Rinehart’s inheritance, to be chopped, benched and blasted’' – has been viewed on YouTube more than 793,000 times.
It is also a contest that is difficult to predict.
Observers, including the ABC’s Antony Green and the Truthseeker blog, believe the Coalition will win three of the six seats, Labor another two and that the sixth seat will be fought out between the Greens and the Palmer United Party or the Nationals.
The election is using same complicated system of distributing preferences that gave us the assorted crossbench elected in the general election, a system that allows obscure parties to get elected on a tiny number of votes, which has been widely criticised and is now subject to a parliamentary inquiry. It makes the final seat almost impossible to predict. At a very long shot PUP preferences could even see the Help End Marijuana Prohibition party (Hemp) get elected. Perhaps the Senate could get more wacky after all.
And that unpredictable final seat will write the last and crucial chapter of this somewhat fantastic electoral story.
Already in the Senate that will sit from July are the two senators-elect from the Palmer United Party (the creation of the east coast mining magnate Clive Palmer) – former rugby league player Glenn “the brick with eyes” Lazarus, and Tasmanian Jacqui Lambie. They will be joined by the “motoring enthusiast” Ricky Muir, who starred in a YouTube video in which he play fights with kangaroo poo and who – after the election – entered a still-unclarified voting “alliance” with Palmer. Also elected is the pro-gun, pro-free market Liberal Democrat David Leyonhjelm and the Family First party’s Bob Day.
The Senate numbers mean that if the final seat falls to PUP, the Coalition government will need the votes of the PUP bloc for every piece of legislation opposed by the Greens and Labor.
But if the Greens win it and the west returns one fewer Coalition, or conservative-leaning senators on 5 April than it did last September, then Tony Abbott will immediately have a more difficult task assembling crossbench support. In that case the veteran South Australian independent senator Nick Xenophon and the Victorian DLP senator John Madigan will be dealt back into the mix.
And that could change the outcome of a lot of things. It could, for example, prevent the Coalition completely dismantling the policies and institutions Australia has established to deal with climate change, although it is unlikely to change the fate of the actual carbon price.
Xenophon and Madigan are clear that they will continue to vote for the repeal of the carbon pricing scheme. Given that Leyonhjelm and Day have also backed the repeal, this leaves the scheme in the hands of the PUP voting bloc, even though Palmer owns a nickel refinery against which the government is considering legal action to recover an $8.4m outstanding carbon tax bill. (Palmer himself won a lower house seat in the September election and Queensland Nickel’s former managing director Phil Collins is now his chief of staff.)
Palmer’s only reservation about the repeal is that it should be made retrospective, which would, of course, waive his own company’s outstanding liability. Palmer did not vote on the repeal bills in the lower house, conceding a conflict of interest, but insists conflict-of-interest concerns do not apply to the senators representing the party he funds and which has Palmer, his wife, his son and his nephews on its “interim executive”.
In the lead up to the WA poll he has boasted that “only the Palmer United party can remove the carbon and mining taxes”, but he later told Guardian Australia he had not changed his view that the carbon tax repeal needed to be retrospective.
“I asked why [Abbott] hadn’t repealed the tax from when he was elected. He still hasn’t done it, and he can’t do anything without me. He can only do something if we support it,” Palmer said. “We’ll make up our mind how we will vote when our senators take their seats.”
In other words, after WA has voted.
Despite the deliberate ambiguity, most observers guess his senators will vote for the repeal.
But Xenophon and Madigan both say they will not support the repeal of the so-called “greenbank”, the $10bn clean energy finance corporation that the Coalition is intent on abolishing, even though in the next financial year it will make a profit for the government. They also say they may not support the proposed abolition of the climate change authority – the government’s independent climate policy adviser.
And their position on the renewable energy target is unclear. They have both raised deep concerns about wind power. Xenophon tells Guardian Australia he believes Australia needs “a strong renewable energy target, but with more emphasis on baseload renewables”.
This is why some of the most acute observers of Australia’s climate debate, such as professor Ross Garnaut, who advised the former Labor government on climate policy, are watching the WA Senate poll very closely.
“Australia is seen internationally as a country that is going backwards on climate policies, with a risk of failing to do its fair share in an increasing global effort,” Garnaut says, citing recent meetings in Europe, including with the British climate adviser Lord Nicholas Stern.
“Free riding by one country makes it more difficult for others to make the case for strong action within their home electorates. So the chances of progress within the international community … would be higher if Australia were to retain its laws for providing independent advice on emissions targets through the Climate Change Authority and retain carbon pricing. The outcome of the Senate election in WA will change the odds of repeal of laws underpinning each – possibly in different ways.”
The major parties agree the west is a test, just not what it is a test of.
The Coalition says it gives WA voters the chance to make sure the Senate respects the will of the people with the abolition of the carbon and mining taxes, which it says are “anti-WA”. In nationwide terms the Coalition is polling below its September result, although it is unclear how this translates to WA.
Labor hopes to link unpopular cuts to services by the state government to the likelihood of federal cuts in the budget to be brought down in May, arguing that voters in the west can send Canberra a message not to cut spending too hard. But it is also trying to play down clear policy disagreements between its candidates, and is concerned that its vote may be reduced by a low turnout.
The Greens want people to focus on where jobs might come from as the mining boom slows down.
Meanwhile lobby groups trying to inform voters have been unable to find PUP’s policies, and the party itself is running ads promising to return WA’s “GST credits” – which the government has already said it won’t do.
Voters in the west have a fortnight to make their choice.
If it were a novel, the 5 April poll in the west would have way too much plot.
Forced upon voters because of the astonishing bungle after last September’s general election in which 1375 ballot papers were somehow lost, the WA Senate rerun has taken on importance far beyond the simple election of six members of the upper house.
It has become an early referendum on the gathering ambitions of the new Coalition government and the effectiveness of the Labor opposition just getting up off the mat. And its outcome could complicate even further the jumble of minor party and independent senators sitting on the upper house crossbench who will determine the fate of every piece of government legislation opposed by Labor and the Greens.
This crucial verdict is being cast by a state which covets its otherness and distance from Australia’s eastern seaboard, reminding those “over east” that its capital city is closer to Jakarta than Canberra.
It is also a state that has had a very different recent economic experience than the rest of the country, with the mining investment boom, now coming to an end, trucking in riches but also a higher cost of living and stretched public services.
But if the WA Senate rerun is a referendum on the Coalition’s polarising resolve to be a free-market, low taxes, no hand-outs, more logging, we’re-not-doing-much-about-this-theory-called-climate-change-we’re all-about-economic-growth kind of administration, the west may just be the polarised kind of place to cast that verdict.
It has, after all, given us mining billionaire Gina Rinehart who – with her personal wealth of almost $20bn – has criticised “the left” for advocating welfare policies Australia simply could not afford, and warned Australians they are competing with countries that offer $2 an hour wages. On the other hand, the celebrated author Tim Winton believes the prosperity of his state’s mining boom has bred “a certain smugness that has paralysed parts of the communal brain”.
And it has elected Greens senator Scott Ludlam, now once again facing the voters, whose recent speech – in which he declared it was wrong for Australia to act as though his state was “just Gina Rinehart’s inheritance, to be chopped, benched and blasted’' – has been viewed on YouTube more than 793,000 times.
It is also a contest that is difficult to predict.
Observers, including the ABC’s Antony Green and the Truthseeker blog, believe the Coalition will win three of the six seats, Labor another two and that the sixth seat will be fought out between the Greens and the Palmer United Party or the Nationals.
The election is using same complicated system of distributing preferences that gave us the assorted crossbench elected in the general election, a system that allows obscure parties to get elected on a tiny number of votes, which has been widely criticised and is now subject to a parliamentary inquiry. It makes the final seat almost impossible to predict. At a very long shot PUP preferences could even see the Help End Marijuana Prohibition party (Hemp) get elected. Perhaps the Senate could get more wacky after all.
And that unpredictable final seat will write the last and crucial chapter of this somewhat fantastic electoral story.
Already in the Senate that will sit from July are the two senators-elect from the Palmer United Party (the creation of the east coast mining magnate Clive Palmer) – former rugby league player Glenn “the brick with eyes” Lazarus, and Tasmanian Jacqui Lambie. They will be joined by the “motoring enthusiast” Ricky Muir, who starred in a YouTube video in which he play fights with kangaroo poo and who – after the election – entered a still-unclarified voting “alliance” with Palmer. Also elected is the pro-gun, pro-free market Liberal Democrat David Leyonhjelm and the Family First party’s Bob Day.
The Senate numbers mean that if the final seat falls to PUP, the Coalition government will need the votes of the PUP bloc for every piece of legislation opposed by the Greens and Labor.
But if the Greens win it and the west returns one fewer Coalition, or conservative-leaning senators on 5 April than it did last September, then Tony Abbott will immediately have a more difficult task assembling crossbench support. In that case the veteran South Australian independent senator Nick Xenophon and the Victorian DLP senator John Madigan will be dealt back into the mix.
And that could change the outcome of a lot of things. It could, for example, prevent the Coalition completely dismantling the policies and institutions Australia has established to deal with climate change, although it is unlikely to change the fate of the actual carbon price.
Xenophon and Madigan are clear that they will continue to vote for the repeal of the carbon pricing scheme. Given that Leyonhjelm and Day have also backed the repeal, this leaves the scheme in the hands of the PUP voting bloc, even though Palmer owns a nickel refinery against which the government is considering legal action to recover an $8.4m outstanding carbon tax bill. (Palmer himself won a lower house seat in the September election and Queensland Nickel’s former managing director Phil Collins is now his chief of staff.)
Palmer’s only reservation about the repeal is that it should be made retrospective, which would, of course, waive his own company’s outstanding liability. Palmer did not vote on the repeal bills in the lower house, conceding a conflict of interest, but insists conflict-of-interest concerns do not apply to the senators representing the party he funds and which has Palmer, his wife, his son and his nephews on its “interim executive”.
In the lead up to the WA poll he has boasted that “only the Palmer United party can remove the carbon and mining taxes”, but he later told Guardian Australia he had not changed his view that the carbon tax repeal needed to be retrospective.
“I asked why [Abbott] hadn’t repealed the tax from when he was elected. He still hasn’t done it, and he can’t do anything without me. He can only do something if we support it,” Palmer said. “We’ll make up our mind how we will vote when our senators take their seats.”
In other words, after WA has voted.
Despite the deliberate ambiguity, most observers guess his senators will vote for the repeal.
But Xenophon and Madigan both say they will not support the repeal of the so-called “greenbank”, the $10bn clean energy finance corporation that the Coalition is intent on abolishing, even though in the next financial year it will make a profit for the government. They also say they may not support the proposed abolition of the climate change authority – the government’s independent climate policy adviser.
And their position on the renewable energy target is unclear. They have both raised deep concerns about wind power. Xenophon tells Guardian Australia he believes Australia needs “a strong renewable energy target, but with more emphasis on baseload renewables”.
This is why some of the most acute observers of Australia’s climate debate, such as professor Ross Garnaut, who advised the former Labor government on climate policy, are watching the WA Senate poll very closely.
“Australia is seen internationally as a country that is going backwards on climate policies, with a risk of failing to do its fair share in an increasing global effort,” Garnaut says, citing recent meetings in Europe, including with the British climate adviser Lord Nicholas Stern.
“Free riding by one country makes it more difficult for others to make the case for strong action within their home electorates. So the chances of progress within the international community … would be higher if Australia were to retain its laws for providing independent advice on emissions targets through the Climate Change Authority and retain carbon pricing. The outcome of the Senate election in WA will change the odds of repeal of laws underpinning each – possibly in different ways.”
The major parties agree the west is a test, just not what it is a test of.
The Coalition says it gives WA voters the chance to make sure the Senate respects the will of the people with the abolition of the carbon and mining taxes, which it says are “anti-WA”. In nationwide terms the Coalition is polling below its September result, although it is unclear how this translates to WA.
Labor hopes to link unpopular cuts to services by the state government to the likelihood of federal cuts in the budget to be brought down in May, arguing that voters in the west can send Canberra a message not to cut spending too hard. But it is also trying to play down clear policy disagreements between its candidates, and is concerned that its vote may be reduced by a low turnout.
The Greens want people to focus on where jobs might come from as the mining boom slows down.
Meanwhile lobby groups trying to inform voters have been unable to find PUP’s policies, and the party itself is running ads promising to return WA’s “GST credits” – which the government has already said it won’t do.
Voters in the west have a fortnight to make their choice.
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