Update (Thursday 6pm):
The contents of the post below, written overnight, have been dramatically superseded by today’s events. Firstly and most straightforwardly, Clive Palmer has been declared the winner in Fairfax by 53 votes. Secondly and more dramatically, the Australian Electoral Commission has made the bombshell announcement that 1375 verified votes from the original count, including 1255 above-the-line and 120 informal votes, have gone missing during the recount process. The AEC will proceed with a declaration tomorrow, but the initial balance of opinion among noted authorities (by which I so far mean Antony Green and Nick Minchin) appears to be that this will be the subject of a successful legal challenge that will cause the result to be declared void, resulting in the entire state of Western Australia going back to the polls.
The legal issues involved in this are beyond my pay grade (paging Graeme Orr and Antony Green), but I am aware of two precedents worth examining:
• On February 15, 1908, a “special election” was held in South Australia to resolve a protracted dispute over the result of the election of December 12, 1906. The Senate election system at this time simply involved voters crossing boxes of three candidates (in the case of a half-Senate election), with the elected members being those to receive the most votes. Naturally enough, most voters voted for the three candidates of their favoured party. Support in South Australia being evenly balanced between Labor and “Anti-Socialist” (hitherto identified as “Free Trade”), this resulted in six candidates receiving very similar shares of the vote. Anti-Socialist Sir Josiah Symon and Labor’s William Russell emerged slightly ahead of the field and were clearly elected, but very little separated another Anti-Socialist candidate, Joseph Vardon, and two Labor candidates, D.A. Crosby and Reginald Blundell. The Court of Disputed Returns resolved that Vardon was the winner by two votes, but that it would have gone differently had it not been for the failure of a returning officer to initial ballot papers. The result with respect to Vardon was consequently declared void.
There followed a dispute as to whether this constituted a casual vacancy to be filled by the state parliament, which the Labor-controlled parliament of South Australia sought to do by selecting one of its own, James O’Loughlin. This was challenged by Vardon in the High Court, which determined that under the legislation existing at the time it was up to the Senate itself to decide if a vacancy existed. A bill was then passed to have this particular matter and all future recurrences referred to the High Court, which concurred with Vardon that a casual vacancy did not apply with respect to a void election result, and that a fresh election had to be held specifically with respect to the third seat. This was duly held with Vardon and O’Loughlin as the only candidates, with Vardon emerging the winner by 41,443 votes to 35,779 (source: Psephos).
So while there is certainly a precedent for an entire state to go back to the polls for a Senate election, it was conducted in the context of an entirely different electoral system. Presumably a new election would have to be for all six seats, and not simply a partial election as was held in 1908. The Vardon matter also involved the question of casual vacancies, which does not apply here – in Vardon’s case, the result was declared void after his term had begun, whereas the term for this election does not begin until the middle of next year.
• The other precedent which springs to mind for a re-staging of a multi-member election was that which followed the state election in Tasmania in 1979. Under its Hare-Clark system, each of Tasmania’s five electorates returned seven members (now five). The result for Denison in 1979, which returned four Labor and three Liberal members, was declared void because three of those elected were found to have exceeded statutory limits on campaign spending. This caused a new election for Denison to be held on February 16, 1980, this time resulting in Labor losing one of its four seats to Norm Sanders of the Australian Democrats.
Original post:
That election we had a while back is still in a sense not over, with recounts continuing for Fairfax and the Western Australian Senate. While these recounts are shortly to conclude, there is unfortunately a fairly big chance that the next stop will be the courts.
• The WA Senate recount was, last I heard, scheduled to be concluded either tomorrow or on Monday. The recount could potentially overturn the election of Labor’s Louise Pratt and the Palmer United Party’s Dio Wang in favour of Scott Ludlam of the Greens and Wayne Dropulich of the Australian Sports Party if it closes a 14-vote gap between Shooters and Fishers and Australian Christians at an early point in the count (although Labor reportedly plans a legal challenge if this occurs). Rechecking of over a million above-the-line votes has inevitably turned up anomalies, most notably a bundle of several hundred votes that were wrongly assigned to the informal pile, eliciting a predictably hyperbolic response from Clive Palmer. It should be observed that such votes will only have the potential to change the result if they affect the vote totals for Shooters and Fishers and Australian Christians, which applies only to votes cast for those parties or those which fed them preferences (No Carbon Tax Climate Sceptics in the case of Australian Christians, Australian Voice, Australian Independents and Australian Fishing and Lifestyle Party in the case of Shooters and Fishers) – about 3.6% of the total. UPDATE: Oh dear – the AEC reports “a serious administrative issue” in which 1375 verified votes from the original count, including 1255 above-the-line and 120 informal votes, have gone missing. Nick Minchin, who had ministerial oversight over electoral matters during the Howard years, suggests the entire election may have to be held again.
• The Fairfax recount grinds on even more laboriously, owing to the Clive Palmer camp’s tactic of challenging literally every vote that goes against them, requiring them to be sent to the state’s chief electoral officer for determination. The tactic seems to have worked, because the recount process has seen Palmer’s lead steadily inflate from seven to 58. The ABC reports the recount should be concluded either by tomorrow or early next week. However, the Liberal National Party is reportedly set to launch a legal challenge against the result which, if the experience of the Victorian seat of McEwen at the 2007 election is anything to go by, will result in the Federal Court reaching determinations of its own on the status of disputed ballot papers.
• Meanwhile, Kevin Bonham comprehensively catalogues points at issue in the Senate electoral system and the relative merits of proposed solutions, and a piece from Antony Green on the South Australian Legislative Council system also has a lot to say about the Senate.
JB:
[ Would those proposing to stop live animal export globally, based on one or two cases of mistreatment also propose to ban pets based on the 100s of cases of mistreatment and dumping of dogs and cats we see each year?]
You do know that dumping pets is illegal, right?
Palmer ia currently 57 votes ahead
kakuru:
Yes, rank hypocrisy indeed!
[Tricot
Posted Thursday, October 31, 2013 at 10:30 am | Permalink
Badcat……How dare you!
We are 20 years ahead of you as we have been living in Conservative Paradise for going on 5 years now.
Get your facts straight please.
]
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Oh well us “mexicans” here in Vic are a bit ahead of QLD – someone on here said to turm my watch back 100 years when crossing the border into QLD ….
[Oh, and nice to see that wonderful symbol of middle-eastern protest, ‘the burning effigy’]
Nice dog-whistle. Effigy burning has a thoroughly Anglo-Saxon history and remains a common protest practice throughout Britain to this day.
Martin B
As in Guy Fawkes?
Same-sex marriage laws introduced to NSW Parliament
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-10-31/same-sex-marriage-laws-introduced-to-nsw-parliament/5060260
Only a few hundred years ago they didn’t use effigyies they just burned people.
Mind you yesterday’s protest was a bit ugly and throwing shoes at police is not protest but violence.
lizzie@70
IIRC it was referring to Peter Costello. 😀
For heaven’s sake get a grip Joe Blow. Burning Guy Fawkes in effigy has been a fundamental English institution for 400 years, and burning effigies in general is a time-honoured protest activity. So is flag burning.
I condemn throwing shoes, sandwhiches, and misogynist comments urging death-by-drowing at politicians.
Burning Guy Fawkes is a protestant/catholic thing. It is the sort of thing that happens when Mad Monks lurk near fire fronts.
[Joel Fitzgibbon @fitzhunter 29m
Bob Baldwin couldn’t explain his govt’s NBN wind-back on @1233newcastle. “Go ask Turnbull”. Very sad day for the Hunter]
Watching the video of that protest it highlighted how restrained police have to be at times. They were just batting those shoes away and tolerating it. That police officer, who will probably get disiciplined for pushing the megaphone away, who had a crazy young woman screeching at him through a megaphone two inches from his face tolerated it for a time before he pushed back. My hat goes off to the police in those situations.
It is a pity the police showed tolerance for calls to murder Gillard.
They let public standards of civic discourse drop at the behest of the most destructive LOTO Australia has ever had. The next thing they know they are getting shoes thrown at THEMSELVES.
[The Abbott Government’s proposed repeal of Australia’s climate legislation will be heard through history.
This action is being taken at a time when the rest of the world is moving in the other direction. As the effects of climate change become clearer to the Australian public, the political legacy of this act of repeal is likely to be seen as a historic mistake.
. . .
A year from now, the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon will host a Head of Government Summit on climate change as one pillar of “ambition” including targets and actions by countries. Australia and other nations will be expected to come to this meeting with bold new pledges to reduce emissions to levels that can hold warming below 2C.
The Abbott Government will face its first real test on climate policy internationally in a couple of weeks at the international climate talks in Warsaw. One of the main issues will be the willingness of governments to increase the level of ambition on climate action.
It will be interesting to see whether the Government even sends a minister, given that it plans to put forward its repeal of the climate policy legislation while the Warsaw Conference of Parties (COP) is underway. The absence of an Australian minister at a COP would be highly unusual. Given this would be due to efforts of the new government to dismantle the legislative basis for Australia to increase its level of ambition, would speak for itself.]
http://theconversation.com/australia-is-hot-dry-and-risky-so-why-cut-climate-action-19535
Zoomster #16
Excellent analysis of the insipidity that goes on here …… The jumping at shadows created by the meja and the inability to even see the meja itself changing tack on its own creative writing.
Talk about the need for eddication reform …… Apparently reading of prose, comprehending of what’s written, and then a modicum of analysis is a lost skill in society generally and for many PBers specifically.
I was talkin to a friend this morning who is an inveterate PB lurker. He made these two salient comments:
1) So many PBers claim / infer themselves to be from various professions where half a brain would presumably be required.
2) Yet in so many comments many of them show an inability to understand the simplest things.
Specifically he was referring to the widespread failure of them to understand that the current Climate legislation has two distinct and totally different phases ….. the government set price phase (the so called “carbon tax”), followed by the main game, the trading scheme.
In the first phase the government totally runs the show; in the second phase a trading scheme ( like the ASX) runs the show, according to the rules set up by the gumment.
But most troubling to my lurker friend was the fact that so many commenters are totally conned by the meja and Abott’s tactics of of purposely obfuscating so that the gullible can’t differentiate between the phases, and setting the hares running with carefully placed stories.
As to Frednk’s subsequent comment to you that all this confusion is from the NSW Right, why go to conspiracy theories when the evidence is there in black and white in the meja’s totally transparent manipulations of the circumstances, day after day.
My friend is spot on.
Demo? What Demo? Twenty rat-bags and a small contingent of coppers.
The kids today don’t know what “Demo” means.
‘Shoulda seen it in my day. Now, they were real demos!’
Well, we know why the Abbott Government is destroying the Climate Commission. It believes that 97% of the world’s climate scientists are right, while the Abbott Government reckons that they are hogwash.
Does anyone know if the ALP Feds policy on SSM is to fully support it or to have a conscience vote?
psyclaw
Not sure whether to be flattered or insulted by your insights.
Andrew Leigh in the Tele:
[Today, Treasurer Joe Hockey is playing the same political games as Peter Costello. Step one: attack Labor’s legacy. Step two: appoint big business leaders to a Commission of Audit. Step three: cut programs that middle Australia depends upon (like the Schoolkids Bonus) and hike taxes on low-wage workers (one in three will pay higher superannuation taxes). Step four: deliver tax cuts to magnates.
But just as AFL fans are quick to smell a team that’s tanking, Australians are too smart to be fooled by Mr Hockey’s political diversions. If you’re a coach who’s taken over a quarter of the way into the season, you’d better step up and start leading. You can’t go into the big game blaming your predecessor.]
http://www.andrewleigh.com/blog/?p=5120
The way for the Labor Party to deal with being misrepresented on climate change is for the Labor Party to make a clear statement of its climate action policies.
Rudd as LOTO and in his two iterations as PM was all over the place like a mad man shitting on this issue and the Labor Party now needs to adopt clear and unequivocal stance.
AGW is not going to go away so Labor might as well get on the side of history on this.
Dio
The policy is to have SSM but the practice was a conscience vote. I don’t think that has changed.
But I am guessing a bit.
Dio at present their policy is a conscience vote unless it has recently changed.
[I suppose you are right. What’s a burning effigy or two, eh? But, if someone had held up a nasty poster about Gillard, this thread would be humming, right?]
Yes nobody does feral like the left.
Holding up a sign with some harsh words in a peaceful protest against Gillard… OMG… MORAL OUTRAGE MORAL OUTRAGE!
Burning Effigy’s, violent scuffles and punching police and throwing shoes like morons at the Lib Party Headquarters… by the left? Well thats just democracy and free speech.
Lizzie
Half of my town is in Baldwin’s electorate. (Fortunately I’m not, but I’m not much better off re actual local representation since Fitzgibbon, a notable grub, is my local member.)
But back to Baldwin, since he is on the Abbott front bench, he is evidently in possession of much more capability (ie merit) than all coalition ladies except JBishop.
Since he is palpably inarticulate and of less than average intellect, and usually presents in public as a bumbling fool, the coalition ladies must be of particularly poor quality.
‘The Left’ did not burn an effigy.
But the Rabid Right is actively promoting mass cruelty to Australian sheep.
Where is the moral outrage from Liberal supporters about the way in which Abbott is promoting mass cruelty to Australian sheep?
Good to see the Government now runs Australia’s live export policy rather than handing the reigns over to an extreme vegetarian group posing as a animal rights group.
Animals Australia shouldn’t be the judge, jury and executioner when it comes to Australians livelihoods without question just because one of their vegetarian agitators shot a video.
zoomster
Are you still banging on about Labor keeping an election promise, made by Rudd and Bowen, to terminate the “carbon tax” phase by July 2014 and that nothing has changed in Labor policy?
Rudd and Bowen aren’t the leaders of Labor now.
Labor has a new leader. One of the merits of electing a new leader is the ability to ditch policies and/or promises made by an ex-leader. To let go of the past.
Now we’re being spooked by ‘breaking election promise theory’ and trapped in a nightmare of Ruddisms.
Are you seriously suggesting Labor has to keep the idiotic different tax zone for northern Australia proposed by Rudd?
Or shifting Garden Island to Queensland?
Or keeping to a commitment to raise taxes on cigarettes?
Or retaining axing part of the FBT?
Or a $6000 toolbox for the ‘blokes’?
Rudd had no qualms trashing the Gillard/Swan legacy. Dropping Labor policies like hot cakes.
It was Rudd and Bowen who have created this mess for Labor. They completely muddied the water regarding the price on carbon.
That the electorate didn’t understand the ETS part of Labor’s carbon reduction policy was obviously a failing of Gillard, not to mention a rabid press, and Abbott for successfully branding the whole fixed-price/ETS as a tax.
If Rudd had had any integrity, he would have spent the time cutting through/getting the message to electorate about the ETS, not handing Abbott the ‘carbon tax’ message on a plate.
Shorten should be out there front and centre demanding Labor keep to the original policy implementation.
Instead, where’s he been? Hijacked on a plane in Afghanistan looking like a complete Nelson, pushed into the background, and posting a bipartisan photo-op on twitter with Abbott.
And leaving a few useless spokespeople back in Australia to trying to argue the case that Labor is sticking to an election promise. And still unable to get the message out.
Labor should watch this Democrat’s take on the Republicsans, and stick to its bloody guns:
Van Jones: Let’s Stop Trying to Please Republicans
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLHb4Pb0Xwg
Bishop is negotiating with the Ayotollahs who support international terrorism in order to send asylum seekers back to one of the countries in the world that officially executes more prisoners than almost any other country?
Surprised?
Back in the good old days Guy Fawkes night was so cool. To be brave you had to hold onto a Tom Thumb as it went off and if you dropped it before then you were a coward. At times we did expand the challenge to slightly bigger bangers which is probably why fireworks eventually got banned.
Not sure if many here remember Jumping Jacks. They were a firework that went off in stages but jumped randomly between bangs so you were never sure where the next bang would happen. One Cracker Night mum was sitting in what she though was a safe place and dad let off a Jumping Jack which after the second bang landed under mum’s chair and went off. It was really funny but Cracker Nights were somewhat restrained after that effort.
Good to see that amateur family butchers in Jordan are now running Australia’s live trade exports.
dwh
We used to hold thrippenny bungers between our teeth and try to spit them out at the last second…
Nah. Just kidding.
[greg barber @GregMLC 13m
… ]
Watch Melbourne’s urban sprawl, 1986 to 2011, in an animation
BW we never got that far. Thrippenny bungers were know as letterbox killers. Lots of letterboxes suffered around cracker night.
Diogenes
Read my #117
Why do you think that throughout the election campaign Labor hammered Abbott for not allowing a conscience vote.
Why just 3 weeks ago was Paul Howes on all the front pages, radio n tv when he was calling for the Labor policy to be changed to a compulsory vote ?
[Qantas Airways @QantasAirways 18h
Please be aware of Frequent Flyer scam emails circulating, do not open and please delete. Report to @SCAMwatch_gov – http://bit.ly/1do91Jj ]
[ Boerwar
Posted Thursday, October 31, 2013 at 11:12 am | Permalink
dwh
We used to hold thrippenny bungers between our teeth and try to spit them out at the last second]
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They looked like – and almost had the same effect – as a stick of gelignite ….
Remember the rally driver ‘Gelignite’ Jack Murray – who used to ‘liven’ up towns and places throwing out sticks of gelignite on his rally events …
davidwh@133
Holding Tom Thumbs as a challenge?
You quincelanders are a bunch of wooses. Penny bungers was more like it. 😉
The bigger ones were capable of demolishing a letter box. 👿
[Good to see that amateur family butchers in Jordan are now running Australia’s live trade exports.]
Animals Australia doesn’t run Australia’s live export policy… they did under Labor who were happy to shut down the jobs of hundreds of Australians just to keep their AA masters happy.
The coalition won’t be so gutless and easily manipulated. Deal with it.
Yep the thrippenny bungers were dangerous items. Personally I liked the penny bungers best. You could do more with them without the danger of doing real damage. Many a treacle tin ended up on the house rood after being put into orbit via a penny bunger.
Our children these days are so protected 🙂
psyclaw
I mention it because we were told repeatedly by one bludger that the policy was to change to a compulsory yes vote after the election.
badcat@140
I had a couple of mates who used to play around with gelignite when they went camping in the bush.
They didn’t appreciate others camping too close to them and letting of a stick of gelignite in the middle of the night was usually enough to move the intruders on and reclaim their space.
Bemused there was one larger than a Tom Thumb but about half the size of a penny that you could use for the challenge. Can’t remember what they were called? Don’t think I was ever game to try it with a penny. Yep I’m a woose 🙂
ABC24 says Abbott to address media in Melbourne – soon?
[ davidwh
Posted Thursday, October 31, 2013 at 11:22 am | Permalink
Our children these days are so protected
]
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With some of horrific violent computer games they play – I sometimes wonder David ….
kezza
No, I’m doing none of those things.
What I’m doing is pointing out that Labor’s policy on climate change is crystal clear, and perfectly consistent with its past policies on climate change.
I’m far from a Ruddite. But Labor has consistently argued for a short term fixed carbon price, followed by transition to an ETS. Gillard accepted a slightly longer period for a fixed price – still perfectly consistent with Labor policy – and Rudd merely indicated that a re elected Labor government (with, one would hope, a majority in the HoR) wouldn’t need to maintain a commitment to something that Labor hadn’t supported (policy wise) to begin with.
I make no criticism of Gillard here. She did exactly what she had to do, and had the courage to take the inevitable outcries on the chin.
And I’m really not at all interested in discussing Rudd at all. At present, he’s the past. I hope he stays there. But I can’t see any reason to bring his name into any discussion about Labor at present.
Shorten may be overseas, but that hasn’t stopped other Labor MPs denying the fairfax story and reconfirming that Labor’s position is that it will only vote to repeal the fixed price IF we then move directly to an ETS. As that’s unlikely to happen, Labor will vote against repealing the fixed price (carbon tax).
The leader doesn’t have to be the only person to speak on behalf of the party. That’s exactly the bind Labor’s trying to get out of, and against Labor’s own traditions as a colleagiate party.
Labor’s position on carbon pricing is crystal clear.
[ I am simply pointing out that there is a large element of the left that attempted to claim the high moral ground regarding personal attacks on Gillard – claiming that male politicians were never attacked like this. ]
JB, it only looks like “high moral ground” to you because you are standing in the gutter.