Is there a flaw in our election process?

[skipper kelly]

Is there a flaw in our election process when 59.66% of the Australian voting public 1st preference is against the political party which is now in government?

 

[DaveW]

Not at all.

How can you possibly expect any party to get a majority of the primary vote with the sheer number of parties and candidates out there?

Secondly, your number is a bit wrong. I think you've excluded National Party and Country Liberal voters.

 

[MightyFighting]

Also, the Liberals got more primary votes than anyone else. They would have won under any voting system.

 

[skipper kelly]

How can you possibly expect any party to get a majority of the primary vote with the sheer number of parties and candidates out there?.

My expectations???. I dont have any in relation to elections, I simply asked a question is the system flawed where 6 out of 10 people didnt vote for the Liberal Party but they are now in Govt.

Secondly, your number is a bit wrong. I think you've excluded National Party and Country Liberal voters.

The figures were off a website linked to a newspaper. I excluded those other 2 parties you mentioned because they are seperate entities to the Liberal Party.

 

[Bomber Spirit]

Given that it's unlikely for any party to ever poll 50% of the primary vote, the only solution to Skipper Kelly's perceived problem is to switch to some form of proportional representation.
But even that's not completely infallible. The senate has proportional representation, the Coalition's vote in the senate was even less (with so many candidates), but they now have a majority.

 

[skipper kelly]

Given that it's unlikely for any party to ever poll 50% of the primary vote, the only solution to Skipper Kelly's perceived problem is to switch to some form of proportional representation.
But even that's not completely infallible. The senate has proportional representation, the Coalition's vote in the senate was even less (with so many candidates), but they now have a majority.

But dont you find it amusing that only 4 out of 10 peoples 1st choice is the Libs and they will be governing the country.

 

[DaveW]

My expectations???. I dont have any in relation to elections, I simply asked a question is the system flawed where 6 out of 10 people didnt vote for the Liberal Party but they are now in Govt.

Ok then: No.

The figures were off a website linked to a newspaper. I excluded those other 2 parties you mentioned because they are seperate entities to the Liberal Party.

The National Party and Country Lib MPs are also in government.

Heck, the Liberal Party itself didn't stand candidates in some 15 or so electorates.

 

[Supermercado]

Get over it, it's called a democracy.

I wanted Howard to lose as much as anyone but clearly the people want him.

 

[CharlieG]

The Senate is no more than lip-service proportional representation, while only six spots are available in any one state.

There's no reason why a Senator should have a term twice as long as an MHR. Having 12 per state would be a start. Ideally, you'd want a little more than that - perhaps 16, but I'm not sure if the Constitution would allow for that. 16 spots per state would put the magic number around 6.25%.

 

[Bomber Spirit]

CharlieG, you're right about the senate being not that close to proportional representation. Especially considering, for example, that Tasmania has only 1/10 of the population of NSW but have the same number of seats. But that's a historical factor that created our constitution the way it is.
The constitution says the Senate would need to have approximately half the number of seats the House of Reps has - so you won't get 16 to a state unless we go over 200 seats in the House of Reps. But I don't know why they need 6-year terms; if they were all to be up every election then 12 in each state would be up. It would mean a lower quota would be needed to get elected, so the smaller parties would get more of a look in

 

[DaveW]

75 senators (with terms tied to the House of Reps) elected nationwide would make things interesting.

That's a quota of 1.3%.

 

[Bomber Spirit]

75 senators (with terms the same to the House of Reps) elected nationwide would make things interesting.

That's a quota of 1.33%.

We'd probably end up with some of the fruitcakes who are in the NSW upper house.

 

[DaveW]

Yep, bound to get a few nutters in there.

But how dare you quote me before I fix up my maths!

 

[DaveW]

Well Alan Ramsey has used your argument skipper (although he's including the entire Coalition vote), in what was an impressive amount of bile in yesterday's column.

Now we all have to pay for the comfortable idiocy of the manipulated minority. And it is a minority: the 46 per cent who voted for the Coalition, or 4.6 in every 10. The other 5.4, in the main, wanted something better, and were denied by a lowest common denominator system in which all the spoils go to a degraded 50 per cent plus one.

http://smh.com.au/articles/2004/10/10/1097406429536.html

I wonder if he realises Labor benefits more from the preference system. Or is he aluding to a desire for proportional representation?

 

[telsor]

OK, so we go to proportional representation as a whole..

so we would now be governed by a coalition of libs/nats/clp along with a bunch of nutty right wing/religious groups...ff, one notion, CDP...( the parties mentioned would have over 50% of the primary vote on current figures ).

Are you suggesting that would be a better alternative?

 

[Tim56]

The sheer arrogance of Alan Ramsey is breathtaking.

 

[CharlieG]

OK, so we go to proportional representation as a whole..

so we would now be governed by a coalition of libs/nats/clp along with a bunch of nutty right wing/religious groups...ff, one notion, CDP...( the parties mentioned would have over 50% of the primary vote on current figures ).

Are you suggesting that would be a better alternative?

Well - I just looked at the total votes, nationwide, so far... the site is http://vtr.aec.gov.au/NationalTotal-12246.htm

Just some quick calculations with a 76 seat senate, nationally-based proportional representation. Result is that 70 of the seats go to parties fulfilling full quotas, without the need for preferences. The breakdown is:

Libs - 31
ALP - 29
Greens - 5
Nationals - 4
Family First - 1
Democrats - 0
One Nation - 0

The other six seats would go to preferences, and honestly the only parties outside the five parties with clear quotas that I could see winning seats are the Dems and One Nation. So the result - at least for this election - would be very close to the reality, without any of the CDP, CEC etc style parties getting in.

With only half of the preference seats, we'd again have 38 Coalition Senators, and Family First (perhaps also One Nation) again having the balance of power. Ouch.

 

[Frodo]

A flaw?

Yes, the upper house. Just like the house of Lords in needs aboloshing. One federal parliament is enough (and how many trees does it take to produce those huge senate voting papers)

 

[jim boy]

A flaw?

Yes, the upper house. Just like the house of Lords in needs aboloshing. One federal parliament is enough (and how many trees does it take to produce those huge senate voting papers)

A bit idealistic, but I'd like to see the way the Senate is formed changed. Equal representation for the states is a bit anachronistic today. However I do find that when the Senate is not controlled by the government of the day, then the legislative seems to work better. Specifically sloppy legislation or politically motivated legislation gets addressed and revised without greatly hindering the workings of parliament.

A senate where, by statute, the parties in power in the HOR cannot have control of the senate would result in a governement that has to govern with the interests of all Australians, not just a portion.

 

[medusala]

A bit idealistic, but I'd like to see the way the Senate is formed changed. Equal representation for the states is a bit anachronistic today. However I do find that when the Senate is not controlled by the government of the day, then the legislative seems to work better. Specifically sloppy legislation or politically motivated legislation gets addressed and revised without greatly hindering the workings of parliament.

A senate where, by statute, the parties in power in the HOR cannot have control of the senate would result in a governement that has to govern with the interests of all Australians, not just a portion.

So regardless of the govt getting a landslide in the lower house it would still be dictated to by parties in the upper house? Why do you find the senate works better when not controlled by the govt of the day? Govt control of the senate hasnt occurred for decades. Can you give specific examples to back your case or did you just make up this on a whim?

 

[jim boy]

So regardless of the govt getting a landslide in the lower house it would still be dictated to by parties in the upper house? Why do you find the senate works better when not controlled by the govt of the day? Govt control of the senate hasnt occurred for decades. Can you give specific examples to back your case or did you just make up this on a whim?

It's true that it hasn't happened so much in Australia, so I'm looking more towards England, where the House of Lords is essentially a tory legislature. IMO opinion, the Labour government has worked better than the previous Tory government and this can be partly attributed to an upper house which isn't just a rubber stamp of the lower house. It has knocked back a number of pieces of legislation. As Frodo effectively said, why have an upper house if it's just a replica of the lower house?

 

[skipper kelly]

In my very simplistic world I would like to see a system where we could, too pinch a phrase from someone???, "keep the bastards honest" other than every 3 years at an election.

 

[medusala]

It's true that it hasn't happened so much in Australia, so I'm looking more towards England, where the House of Lords is essentially a tory legislature. IMO opinion, the Labour government has worked better than the previous Tory government and this can be partly attributed to an upper house which isn't just a rubber stamp of the lower house. It has knocked back a number of pieces of legislation. As Frodo effectively said, why have an upper house if it's just a replica of the lower house?

The House of Lords has been dramatically overhauled by Blair and he kicked out nearly all of the hereditary lords most of whom voted Tory but the vast majority of which didnt bother to turn up to parliament. The last tory govt also had issues with the lords.

The major difference in the UK is that members of both parties will vote against their own govt in the lower house. This also happened when Fraser had control in the senate. Same thing happens in the states.

However in Australia if an ALP pollie votes against his own govt then he gets kicked out of the party (unless they have changed party rules recently).