At first glance it seemed that minor parties did well in Saturday’s Queensland election, especially the right-wing, nationalist, xenophobic Pauline Hanson’s One Nation (PHON) and the progressive Greens – in other words, parties at the extreme ends of the political spectrum – but so far it is doubtful either will actually get any seats in Parliament. Or if they get any, it will be one each. Minor parties in Queensland do not have the option that is open to minor parties in other states and the Northern Territory, and federally, of holding the balance of power in the upper house (the house of review) because Queensland has only one chamber in its Parliament, where the upper house was abolished in 1932 by popular vote.
The minor party that has actually won seats at this point in time is Katter’s Australia Party, an agrarian-socialist outfit set up in 2011 by oddball conservative and north-Queenslander Bob Katter. The head of the KAP in Queensland is Bob’s son Robbie. The long-winded Bob is the sitting member in the federal Parliament for the north Queensland seat of Kennedy.
With power in the state Parliament so finely-balanced, the way that KAP politicians vote on key issues might turn out to be critical for the Australian Labor Party, which looks likely to form some sort of government this time. Whether the ALP under leader Annastacia Palaszczuk (pronounced “pala-shay”) will be able to form a government in its own right is another question. To have an outright majority, the ALP needs to have 47 seats in the Parliament. At the time of publication it had secured 43 seats, with 13 still undecided.
PHON got 13.7 percent of first preference votes and the Greens got 9.8 percent, and both had swings in favour. KAP got only 2.1 percent of first preference votes but it only ran candidates in a few northern seats, so its result is more focused than those of the other minor parties. The conservative Liberal National Party (LNP) saw its first preference vote drop by 7.9 percent. The ALP lost a little bit, mostly outside the populous south-east corner of the state. (The conservatives in power federally hold the balance of power in Parliament by the slenderest margin. Opinion polls for the federal Coalition are dire and have been dire for a long time.)
Muddying the waters a bit in the weekend’s Queensland election is the fact that the ALP government changed the voting system in 2016 to “instant-runoff voting” (according to Wikipedia). It’s known in Australia as “compulsory preferential voting”. It differs from the “single transferable voting” system used by all states for upper house elections and for the Australian Capital Territory (which has a unicameral parliament), and for the federal Senate, because it makes the voter mark a preference for each candidate listed on the ballot.
Candidates with the lowest totals get rejected and the second preferences on those ballots are allocated to the next eligible candidate, and this happens again if necessary until a single candidate can claim to have at least 50 percent plus one of the votes. Ballots that are not filled in correctly are not tallied and their total number is reported only as “informal”.
In an article published in The Conversation on 13 November this year, James Cook University’s Doug Hunt wrote :
Because its Parliament is unicameral, the lay of the land democratically in the sunshine state is more like the way it is in the USA, where the major parties always dominate the final outcome at elections.
In addition to the minor parties – which did especially well in the headstrong north – there are several independents in this election, some of whom have a chance of influencing the drafting and passage of legislation in Parliament.
One of these people is Sandy Bolton, who is set to take the seat of Noosa on the Sunshine Coast. The 53-year-old was an independent councillor of the Noosa Shire Council from January 2014 to March 2016 and ran for the post of mayor in 2016 but was beaten by at a poll by independent Tony Wellington. She then decided to throw her hat into the ring for state government representing her area. At the time of publication, it was too early to know which of the lower-ranked candidates would be knocked out in the count, so second preferences had not been allocated for the seat on the Brisbane Times’ election website:
The minor party that has actually won seats at this point in time is Katter’s Australia Party, an agrarian-socialist outfit set up in 2011 by oddball conservative and north-Queenslander Bob Katter. The head of the KAP in Queensland is Bob’s son Robbie. The long-winded Bob is the sitting member in the federal Parliament for the north Queensland seat of Kennedy.
With power in the state Parliament so finely-balanced, the way that KAP politicians vote on key issues might turn out to be critical for the Australian Labor Party, which looks likely to form some sort of government this time. Whether the ALP under leader Annastacia Palaszczuk (pronounced “pala-shay”) will be able to form a government in its own right is another question. To have an outright majority, the ALP needs to have 47 seats in the Parliament. At the time of publication it had secured 43 seats, with 13 still undecided.
PHON got 13.7 percent of first preference votes and the Greens got 9.8 percent, and both had swings in favour. KAP got only 2.1 percent of first preference votes but it only ran candidates in a few northern seats, so its result is more focused than those of the other minor parties. The conservative Liberal National Party (LNP) saw its first preference vote drop by 7.9 percent. The ALP lost a little bit, mostly outside the populous south-east corner of the state. (The conservatives in power federally hold the balance of power in Parliament by the slenderest margin. Opinion polls for the federal Coalition are dire and have been dire for a long time.)
Muddying the waters a bit in the weekend’s Queensland election is the fact that the ALP government changed the voting system in 2016 to “instant-runoff voting” (according to Wikipedia). It’s known in Australia as “compulsory preferential voting”. It differs from the “single transferable voting” system used by all states for upper house elections and for the Australian Capital Territory (which has a unicameral parliament), and for the federal Senate, because it makes the voter mark a preference for each candidate listed on the ballot.
Candidates with the lowest totals get rejected and the second preferences on those ballots are allocated to the next eligible candidate, and this happens again if necessary until a single candidate can claim to have at least 50 percent plus one of the votes. Ballots that are not filled in correctly are not tallied and their total number is reported only as “informal”.
In an article published in The Conversation on 13 November this year, James Cook University’s Doug Hunt wrote :
Compulsory, or full preferential, voting requires an elector to number every box beside each candidate on the ballot paper sequentially in order of the voter’s preference. If no candidate achieves a majority of “1” votes on the first count, the candidate with the lowest number of votes is eliminated from the ballot, and their votes allocated to the remaining candidates according to the eliminated candidate’s second preference.
This process continues until one candidate reaches a majority (50% plus one) of votes. The aim is to elect the most preferred candidate, rather than the simple plurality required under first-past-the-post voting.In some Australian elections, preferences are decided between parties in deals done on a seat-by-seat basis, so the LNP might swap preferences in a job lot in a seat with PHON in the same seat, but for Queensland this time around the only thing that parties can do is suggest preferences on how-to-vote cards that are handed out by candidates and their flocks of volunteers, who hover around voters entering polling stations. There is no obligation for voters to follow these suggestions.
Because its Parliament is unicameral, the lay of the land democratically in the sunshine state is more like the way it is in the USA, where the major parties always dominate the final outcome at elections.
In addition to the minor parties – which did especially well in the headstrong north – there are several independents in this election, some of whom have a chance of influencing the drafting and passage of legislation in Parliament.
One of these people is Sandy Bolton, who is set to take the seat of Noosa on the Sunshine Coast. The 53-year-old was an independent councillor of the Noosa Shire Council from January 2014 to March 2016 and ran for the post of mayor in 2016 but was beaten by at a poll by independent Tony Wellington. She then decided to throw her hat into the ring for state government representing her area. At the time of publication, it was too early to know which of the lower-ranked candidates would be knocked out in the count, so second preferences had not been allocated for the seat on the Brisbane Times’ election website:
Another regional electorate where the result was still to close to call at the time of publication was Rockhampton in central Queensland. Here, the ALP candidate was ahead of independent Margaret Strelow, the former (ALP) mayor of the town of the same name. Her home page says she is “of a certain age” and notes that she was married in 1978 and has four grown-up children. It was too early to know which of the other candidates would be knocked out, so it was impossible to know at the time of publication how voters’ second preferences would be allocated:
Another central Queensland electorate that was too close to call was Mirani, where the ALP candidate was just ahead of the PHON candidate. It was possible at the time of publication that Mirani would go to PHON, based on expected second preference flows from LNP voters:
Further north, in north Queensland, there were four electorates where it was still too close to call at the time of publication. These included Cook, where the ALP was coming first but it wasn’t clear which of the next-running candidates would be knocked out, so their second preferences could not yet be allocated:
The other close races in the north were Hinchinbrook, where the LNP was ahead of the PHON with 29.9 percent of first preferences, Mundingburra, where the ALP was ahead of the LNP with 31.7 percent of first preferences, and Thuringowa, where the ALP was ahead of the LNP with 32.3 percent of first preferences.
Further south, in Bundaberg, the LNP was ahead of the ALP with 35.7 percent of first preferences.
In the southeast corner, where the bulk of the state’s population is, there were three electorates on the Sunshine Coast with tight races: Caloundra (LNP ahead of ALP with 38.8 percent of first preferences), Noosa (already mentioned), and Pumicestone (ALP ahead of LNP with 36.3 percent of first preferences). Here is the detail for Pumicestone, showing that the seat could go to the LNP on the back of PHON second preferences:
There were also two electorates on the Gold Coast with tight races: Bonney (LNP ahead of ALP with 43.8 percent of first preferences), and Gaven (LNP ahead of ALP with 46.4 percent of first preferences). Here is the detail for Gaven:
The “preference count” shown on the Brisbane Times election website means total votes for each candidate after distribution of second preferences on ballots where first preferences had gone to eliminated candidates, in these cases the ONP’s Greg Fahey (Pumicestone) and the Greens’ Sally Spain (Gaven).
In Brisbane, the seat of Maiwar was a might-win for the Greens, but again the result would depend on where individual voters put their second preferences:
By 11.24am on Sunday, the Brisbane Times reported on its website that ABC psephologist Antony Green had given 48 seats to the ALP. "I think they have a certain 46, and they only need one more vote," Green said. "At the moment we are giving them another two on prediction.” The ALP’s state secretary, Evan Moorhead, publicly claimed victory at 12.59pm on Sunday.
It should be remarked that the advice given to voters by parties regarding preferences was usually predictable, for example the Greens preferencing the ALP ahead of the LNP (as in the case of Gaven, which would become an ALP seat on the back of Greens preferences), and PHON preferencing the LNP ahead of the ALP (as in the case of Pumicestone, which would become an LNP seat on the back of PHON preferences). And because progressives tend to preference progressives, and conservatives conservatives, voters would be naturally inclined to give preferences conforming to the official party advice contained in how-to-vote cards.
The Brisbane Times is a Fairfax-owned news website that was established in 2007. Its editor is Danielle Cronin, who provided information about the new Queensland voting system for this report. The site ended its live election coverage at 6.16pm yesterday with the same 13 seats still to be decided.
No comments:
Post a Comment