Unsurprisingly, I agree more with the UK Labour man than the Tory.
The result is much better than News Limited would have had us all believe.
In 1996, we were reduced to 49 seats and 46.37% of the two-party vote and at the next election in 1998, we came within a whisker, with 50.98% of the two-party vote and won back 18 seats, but 67 seats left us short of victory.
In 2004, we won 60 seats and 47.26% of the two-party vote and in 2007 we all remember that Labor won 52.70% and 83 seats as Rudd coasted to victory.
This time we're set for roughly 57 seats and 46.67% of the 2pp.
In vote terms, we're nearer 96, but in seat terms, we're just behind 04. If anyone tells you that Labor's gone for a generation, they're simply wrong, and if Abbott fails to deliver, the Liberals can lose.
CENTRAL COAST MATTERS
For local central coast matters, McKinna and Bracken had an influence, but only to guarantee the seats to the Liberals.
Robertson is a narrow Liberal win. This is in no small way due to McKinna's 9% - taken from Labor and the Liberals, but more from Labor - flowing mostly to the Liberals.
Dobell is still very tight, but the Liberal will most likely win. Bracken's 8% is a big factor here too.
These guys weren't independents; they were shills. They did a deal to guarantee that tight contests will swing to the Liberals.
I'd have had a lot more respect for Lawrie in particular if he had actually asked the parties to speak to a set of issues he identified rather than just mouthing meaningless motherhood statements and then doing a deal with the Libs. He's either a patsy or (if he thought he was a chance of winning) a dope.
THE SENATE
None of this is the real story though; once Rudd's honeymoon ebbed, the only interest in the House result was the degree. It's in the Senate that the action is on.
The main thing is the rise of Palmer and success of a number of vote-harvesting microparties. Results are far from certain - there are a couple of weeks of counting yet, and it's going to be messy in some states, but it looks like some microparties are a chance of getting up. They get votes through having a bunch of tiny parties with names that attract the wayward voter's pencil and harvest just enough votes to stay in the race and through complicated cross-preferencing arrangements they hope to get one of them to stay in long enough to get someone elected. It's gaming the system, not democracy.
In NSW, the Liberal Democratic Party (pro-gun 'libertarians'; basically not far from being a socially liberal tea party group) took advantage of being drawn in group A and won nearly 9% and will be in the Senate. Because of the resulting preference flows, the Libs knock off the Greens for the 6th spot, so there are 4 right wing senators from NSW and only the 2 Labor senators on the left.
In Queensland, Palmer Party polled 10% and Glenn Lazarus will get up, in the place of a Labor senator.
In Tassie, Palmer Party polled 7% and will knock off a Labor senator.
In ACT, there's a faint possibility that the Greens might knock off the Liberal Senator, while in the NT it's one Labor, one CLP as it has ever been.
SA is a mess. Xenophon polled 26%, and because he knocked the Labor and Liberals' primaries around so badly, Labor missed out on electing even a second senator (it's the bible-bashing SDA droog Don Farrell, so I'm not exactly crying about that) but unfortunately Family First are the beneficiary because we preferenced them ahead of the Libs and Xenophon. Family First get the gig despite having received only 3.77% of the vote.
WA is worse. Some group called the Australia Sports Party look like they're up, alongside 3 Libs, one Labor and one Green. I'm pretty politically aware (as you will all know) but I'd literally never heard of these guys. It's a fair bet that most of WA hadn't either, their primary vote count is just 1908 - 0.22% of the vote.
They harvested votes from:
- Australian Voice Party
- Rise Up Australia Party
- Stable Population Party
- Australian Motoring Enthusiasts Party
- Family First Party
- Wikileaks Party
- Shooters and Fishers Party
- Help End Marijuana Prohibition Party
- Animal Justice Party
- Sex Party
- Australian Independents
- Australian Christians
- No Carbon Tax Climate Sceptics
- Australian Fishing and Lifestyle Party
- Liberal
- Liberal Democrats
- Stop The Greens
- Smokers Rights
- Australian Democrats
In Victoria, same mess, but this time it's 2 Libs, 2 Labor and a Green, with the Libs missing out to another microparty I've never heard of; the Australian Motoring Enthusiast Party. They've polled 11232 votes (0.52%) and then harvested from:
- Bank Reform Party
- Australian Fishing and Lifestyle Party
- Help End Marijuana Prohibition Party
- Shooters and Fishers Party
- Stable Population Party
- Senator Online
- Rise Up Australia
- Building Australia Party
- Bullet Train For Australia
- Family First
- Citizens Electoral Council
- No Carbon Tax Climate Sceptics
- Palmer United Party
- Katter's Australian Party
- Democratic Labor Party (who must be feeling pretty ripped off they couldn't pull the same shit as last time when they were elected on just 2.33% but this time miss out to someone with not even a quarter of that)
- Socialist Equality Party
- Sex Party
- Australian Voice Party
- Wikileaks Party
- Drug Law Reform
- Stop CSG
- Animal Justice Party
- Australian Independents
They're grab bags of microparties and scraps off the big parties. These are accidental Senators.
In WA a party that polled not even two thousand votes might get a senator, while Labor polled nearly a quarter of a million and will also get only one senator.
That's not proportional representation, it's gaming the system.
This is why Senate voting needs reform; voters should be able to direct their preferences above the line rather than relying on the parties to direct their votes.
