Extract from The Guardian
Senate voting reform is not entirely a “he said, she said” story, despite being so often presented that way.
The changes to Senate voting about to be introduced, and almost certainly passed, will change the makeup of the upper house to the advantage of the parties lining up to vote for them (the Coalition, the Greens and Nick Xenophon), will be to the disadvantage of the Labor party and are likely to be to the catastrophic (as in wipeout) disadvantage of the very small micro-parties (this being the one of the stated points of the exercise).
Only the follow-on questions are unclear: are these outcomes reasonable, a fairer translation of the will of the electorate, and does the new system make it more likely that the Coalition wins control of the Senate in its own right?
Whatever they’ve been talking about in public – tax cuts, steel workers’ jobs, unicorns, pixie horses, negative gearing, etc – behind the scenes politicians from all parties have been utterly preoccupied for months with this proposed change. That and the fact that the timing of their introduction provides some clues about the timing of this year’s federal election (spoiler – July or August are looking like good bets).
As revealed by Guardian Australia last week, the government has secured support from the Greens and independent senator Nick Xenophon for a compromise Senate voting reform plan. The finance minister, Mathias Cormann, has brokered the deal and it is expected to get the final tick off from cabinet on Monday.
Labor remains deeply divided about it. Deeply divided in a knock-’em-down-and-drag-’em-out kind of way. Shadow cabinet is also likely to discuss it on Monday. Until now Labor has been fobbing off queries by saying it has not seen legislation, but lower house MPs who sat on the recent Senate inquiry, Gary Gray and Alan Griffin, very strongly support even more far-reaching reforms while the Senate leadership, Penny Wong and Stephen Conroy, vehemently oppose them. (More about their reasons later.)
The government will introduce the bill this week. It will go to a committee, but only briefly. If all goes to plan it will be passed before the parliament rises for the winter break in March. In the Reader’s Digest version, the system abolishes the “group voting tickets” which allowed parties to do backroom preference deals and enabled the sophisticated “preference harvesting” that saw micro-party senators such as Ricky Muir elected with just 0.5% of the first preference vote, on the back of preferences from voters who probably had never heard of him. Voters will be asked to vote for six parties above the line, after which no more preferences are allocated.
Most experts agree the scheme will advantage the parties that are preparing to vote for it. The extent of the advantage depends on the assumptions you make about how voters and political parties will respond to the change, and how far into the future you are looking. In other words, no one can be certain.
According to Antony Green, the ABC’s election analyst: “The new system is likely to advantage the Coalition and bring it closer to an outright majority than the old system. This is because the new system gives greater weight to first preference votes and the Coalition gets more first preference votes, whereas the first preferences on the progressive side of politics are split between Labor and the Greens.”
By his calculations it remains highly unlikely the Coalition could win an outright majority at a half-Senate election, and also unlikely that it would win an outright majority in a double-dissolution election, although perhaps just slightly more possible than under the voting system now in place. The Greens would be advantaged because they are more likely to hold the balance of power in their own right, rather than sharing it with a line-up of independents. If Xenophon’s vote holds up he could be advantaged too, since at the 2013 poll preference harvesting cost him a second South Australian Senate seat.
On the question of fairness, Green argues the new system gives voters more control over where their preferences go and stops deals that elect micro-party senators over the heads of scores of other candidates with much higher first-preference votes.
And he says the new system will return a Senate where the numbers of senators representing the major parties more closely aligns with that party’s proportion of the Senate vote – because Labor is slightly overrepresented under the current system and under the new system will no longer be able to try to use preference harvesting to its own advantage as it battles for the third “left of centre” Senate spot in each state with the Greens.
But on that last point the most recent numbers don’t back Green’s argument. Based on the 2013 election, the Coalition already has more senators than its first preference vote would suggest it should.
The Coalition got 4.9m first preference votes (using the second West Australian Senate result) which is 36.7% of the total. It won 17 Senate spots, 42.5% of the total. Labor, meanwhile, won 3.96m first preference votes (29.6%) which is about in line with its result: 12 senators, or about 30% of the spots.
Green says this is because the last election was not normal, but rather had a high number of minor parties and in particular a higher number of right-leaning minor parties that may have drawn first preference votes away from the Coalition.
Another elections analyst, Ben Raue, who runs the Tallyroom website, thinks the new system will be “slightly advantageous” for the Coalition, although the advantage could be diminished if right-wing minor parties still attract votes that might otherwise go to the Coalition, but under the new system do not end up flowing back as preferences.
He thinks it could benefit the Greens to the extent that they rely less on Labor preferences and, after a double-dissolution or a number of half-Senate elections, would be less likely to share the balance of power with a range of minor parties. And it would benefit Xenophon because his new party is more likely to be able to hold the balance of power on its own if the Coalition ends up just a few votes short of an absolute majority. Raue also thinks it is highly unlikely the Coalition would attain an absolute Senate majority.
Labor’s Gary Gray says people need to go back to the point of having a voting system “to accurately translate the wishes of voters into winners and losers in the parliament” rather than try to predict the results.
“If the Coalition gets more votes than Labor they should win. If we get more votes we should win. The system should not be about advantaging one side or the other.”
But Stephen Conroy says the changes pose a huge longer-term risk for Labor and progressive politics, because a Coalition government would either gain an absolute majority or be able to pass legislation through the Senate with only Xenophon’s vote or votes.
“A system that banks on the continued existence of Nick Xenophon in parliament is deeply flawed because ultimately he will retire and then that system will reboot to give the Coalition an absolute majority,” he says.
And he reserves particular anger for the Greens, who he says are doing “a filthy deal that sells out the future of progressive policies to get their bums on Senate seats”.
Greens spokeswoman Lee Rhiannon says it is not necessarily true that the Greens would gain more seats under the new system.
“In three states – Victoria, Tasmania and Western Australia – the Greens win a Senate spot outright without relying on preferences. That means we gain no advantage if the voting system is changed. In the other states where we do not gain an outright quota we will be in competition for the last spot with minor parties and possibly Labor candidates depending on the primary vote,” she says.
And then there’s the question of why the government is doing this now and whether it is a signal of an early poll – or a “snap” poll as some speculation calls it, whatever “snap” might mean given how widely it has been speculated.
All signals do seem to point to an election being called after the May budget, either for a long election campaign and a double-dissolution election in late July, or for a half-Senate election in early August.
Pushing through the Senate changes might make a double dissolution more attractive because only one of the eight crossbench senators, John Madigan, would face the voters in a half-Senate election whereas all senators face the voters in a double dissolution. A double dissolution would certainly return a more workable Senate for a Coalition government’s second term, if it wins one. A half-Senate election would leave seven of the crossbenchers in place, and as mad as hornets.
The debate about the merits of the proposed reforms, and the extent to which they benefit the Coalition, the Greens and Xenophon, is about to get ferocious.
There will be many arguments for, and against. That they are likely to benefit the parties who are preparing to vote for them is clear. The fight will be about how much, and whether there are good reasons for change, besides self interest.
The changes to Senate voting about to be introduced, and almost certainly passed, will change the makeup of the upper house to the advantage of the parties lining up to vote for them (the Coalition, the Greens and Nick Xenophon), will be to the disadvantage of the Labor party and are likely to be to the catastrophic (as in wipeout) disadvantage of the very small micro-parties (this being the one of the stated points of the exercise).
Only the follow-on questions are unclear: are these outcomes reasonable, a fairer translation of the will of the electorate, and does the new system make it more likely that the Coalition wins control of the Senate in its own right?
Whatever they’ve been talking about in public – tax cuts, steel workers’ jobs, unicorns, pixie horses, negative gearing, etc – behind the scenes politicians from all parties have been utterly preoccupied for months with this proposed change. That and the fact that the timing of their introduction provides some clues about the timing of this year’s federal election (spoiler – July or August are looking like good bets).
As revealed by Guardian Australia last week, the government has secured support from the Greens and independent senator Nick Xenophon for a compromise Senate voting reform plan. The finance minister, Mathias Cormann, has brokered the deal and it is expected to get the final tick off from cabinet on Monday.
Labor remains deeply divided about it. Deeply divided in a knock-’em-down-and-drag-’em-out kind of way. Shadow cabinet is also likely to discuss it on Monday. Until now Labor has been fobbing off queries by saying it has not seen legislation, but lower house MPs who sat on the recent Senate inquiry, Gary Gray and Alan Griffin, very strongly support even more far-reaching reforms while the Senate leadership, Penny Wong and Stephen Conroy, vehemently oppose them. (More about their reasons later.)
The government will introduce the bill this week. It will go to a committee, but only briefly. If all goes to plan it will be passed before the parliament rises for the winter break in March. In the Reader’s Digest version, the system abolishes the “group voting tickets” which allowed parties to do backroom preference deals and enabled the sophisticated “preference harvesting” that saw micro-party senators such as Ricky Muir elected with just 0.5% of the first preference vote, on the back of preferences from voters who probably had never heard of him. Voters will be asked to vote for six parties above the line, after which no more preferences are allocated.
Most experts agree the scheme will advantage the parties that are preparing to vote for it. The extent of the advantage depends on the assumptions you make about how voters and political parties will respond to the change, and how far into the future you are looking. In other words, no one can be certain.
According to Antony Green, the ABC’s election analyst: “The new system is likely to advantage the Coalition and bring it closer to an outright majority than the old system. This is because the new system gives greater weight to first preference votes and the Coalition gets more first preference votes, whereas the first preferences on the progressive side of politics are split between Labor and the Greens.”
By his calculations it remains highly unlikely the Coalition could win an outright majority at a half-Senate election, and also unlikely that it would win an outright majority in a double-dissolution election, although perhaps just slightly more possible than under the voting system now in place. The Greens would be advantaged because they are more likely to hold the balance of power in their own right, rather than sharing it with a line-up of independents. If Xenophon’s vote holds up he could be advantaged too, since at the 2013 poll preference harvesting cost him a second South Australian Senate seat.
On the question of fairness, Green argues the new system gives voters more control over where their preferences go and stops deals that elect micro-party senators over the heads of scores of other candidates with much higher first-preference votes.
And he says the new system will return a Senate where the numbers of senators representing the major parties more closely aligns with that party’s proportion of the Senate vote – because Labor is slightly overrepresented under the current system and under the new system will no longer be able to try to use preference harvesting to its own advantage as it battles for the third “left of centre” Senate spot in each state with the Greens.
But on that last point the most recent numbers don’t back Green’s argument. Based on the 2013 election, the Coalition already has more senators than its first preference vote would suggest it should.
The Coalition got 4.9m first preference votes (using the second West Australian Senate result) which is 36.7% of the total. It won 17 Senate spots, 42.5% of the total. Labor, meanwhile, won 3.96m first preference votes (29.6%) which is about in line with its result: 12 senators, or about 30% of the spots.
Green says this is because the last election was not normal, but rather had a high number of minor parties and in particular a higher number of right-leaning minor parties that may have drawn first preference votes away from the Coalition.
Another elections analyst, Ben Raue, who runs the Tallyroom website, thinks the new system will be “slightly advantageous” for the Coalition, although the advantage could be diminished if right-wing minor parties still attract votes that might otherwise go to the Coalition, but under the new system do not end up flowing back as preferences.
He thinks it could benefit the Greens to the extent that they rely less on Labor preferences and, after a double-dissolution or a number of half-Senate elections, would be less likely to share the balance of power with a range of minor parties. And it would benefit Xenophon because his new party is more likely to be able to hold the balance of power on its own if the Coalition ends up just a few votes short of an absolute majority. Raue also thinks it is highly unlikely the Coalition would attain an absolute Senate majority.
Labor’s Gary Gray says people need to go back to the point of having a voting system “to accurately translate the wishes of voters into winners and losers in the parliament” rather than try to predict the results.
“If the Coalition gets more votes than Labor they should win. If we get more votes we should win. The system should not be about advantaging one side or the other.”
But Stephen Conroy says the changes pose a huge longer-term risk for Labor and progressive politics, because a Coalition government would either gain an absolute majority or be able to pass legislation through the Senate with only Xenophon’s vote or votes.
“A system that banks on the continued existence of Nick Xenophon in parliament is deeply flawed because ultimately he will retire and then that system will reboot to give the Coalition an absolute majority,” he says.
And he reserves particular anger for the Greens, who he says are doing “a filthy deal that sells out the future of progressive policies to get their bums on Senate seats”.
Greens spokeswoman Lee Rhiannon says it is not necessarily true that the Greens would gain more seats under the new system.
“In three states – Victoria, Tasmania and Western Australia – the Greens win a Senate spot outright without relying on preferences. That means we gain no advantage if the voting system is changed. In the other states where we do not gain an outright quota we will be in competition for the last spot with minor parties and possibly Labor candidates depending on the primary vote,” she says.
And then there’s the question of why the government is doing this now and whether it is a signal of an early poll – or a “snap” poll as some speculation calls it, whatever “snap” might mean given how widely it has been speculated.
All signals do seem to point to an election being called after the May budget, either for a long election campaign and a double-dissolution election in late July, or for a half-Senate election in early August.
Pushing through the Senate changes might make a double dissolution more attractive because only one of the eight crossbench senators, John Madigan, would face the voters in a half-Senate election whereas all senators face the voters in a double dissolution. A double dissolution would certainly return a more workable Senate for a Coalition government’s second term, if it wins one. A half-Senate election would leave seven of the crossbenchers in place, and as mad as hornets.
The debate about the merits of the proposed reforms, and the extent to which they benefit the Coalition, the Greens and Xenophon, is about to get ferocious.
There will be many arguments for, and against. That they are likely to benefit the parties who are preparing to vote for them is clear. The fight will be about how much, and whether there are good reasons for change, besides self interest.
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