Where we at

Those Fairfax and WA Senate recounts are finally set to reach their conclusions over the coming days. That may not be the end of it though …

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The contents of the post below, written overnight, have been dramatically superseded by today’s events.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.

Author: William Bowe

William Bowe is a Perth-based election analyst and occasional teacher of political science. His blog, The Poll Bludger, has existed in one form or another since 2004, and is one of the most heavily trafficked websites on Australian politics.

2,655 comments on “Where we at”

Comments Page 52 of 54
1 … 51 52 53 54

  1. CC

    [ETS requires Australia to buy overseas carbon credits to meet Australia’s reduction targets.]

    Actually, no, it doesn’t.

    Overseas carbon credits are likely to be cheaper, so Australian companies are more likely to buy them – but if they wanted to pay more for ‘Australian owned’, there’s nothing stopping them.

    And the world doesn’t give a toss where the emission reductions come from, as long as they happen.

  3. Compact Crank@2543


    Funny how all the Howard haters forget about Bill Hayden.

    Funny how you forget thats a long time ago and many have moved on.

    We are told howard as a rat shit treasurer is long long ago – and people should move on.

    GG appointments for years have been seen as better to be non obvious partisan.

    Let abbott prove he hasn’t.

    In all probability he won’t have.

  5. [Dr Fiona Wood for GG!]

    She is still very much practising medicine, and would be unlikely to retire from her surgical practice in order to do it.

    Personally I think you need to give up the idea of Abbott nominating a woman for the role.

  6. [ruawake – you know Abbott about as well as you know my left big toe.]

    You weren’t here when I stated Abbott would lead the Liberal Party, I was laughed at by most. Please give me the courtesy of exclusion from the Abbott unfit mob you seem to have me tagged with.

  8. [zoomster – using overseas credits as an accounting method to “meet” our targets is a joke.]

    Does it matter where the CO2 is reduced, or is Aussie CO2 special?

  9. CC

    why? The emissions are abated, it doesn’t matter where that happens. If it’s the cheapest and most efficient way of doing it, then market economics tells you it’s the way to go.

  11. leone:

    Kirby is very much a man.

    However, Abbott is unlikely to nominate someone like Kirby who has a strong record of advocacy on social justice matters.

  12. Right, so we shouldn’t do anything to reduce our own emissions until the rest of the world acts ahead of us … but it’s not kosher to pay people elsewhere in the world to reduce emissions because we’re not doing it ourselves…

    Go figure.

    I will laugh and laugh and laugh if the LNP is forced to buy overseas permits to meet the 5% target.

  13. [shellbell
    Posted Sunday, November 3, 2013 at 9:05 pm | PERMALINK
    Michael Kirby for GG!

    He would feel unduly constrained.]

    Perhaps Bill Heffernan for GG? He certainly has never felt constrained, especially when doctoring defamatory Comcar driver sheets.

  14. Forgot about Michael Kirkby. He would be a good choice, a gentle and caring person. But if he’s an atheist it may be an issue, given it’s the monarchy he’s representing and all that. Perhaps.

  16. Tony Abbott will appoint a conservative who will not rock the boat by, for example, speaking out on social justice matters and who will seem very much like a natural fit. Another qualification would be that the appointee would have to be a monarchist.

  18. Kirdy WILL NOT be Abbott’s choice as he is GAY

    The prospect of a GG with a male partner in Yarralumla is to shocking to comtemplate …for Abbott(the new US Ambassador complete with”husband”will be hard for Abbott as it is”’
    almost as bad as a Black GG !!or some ethnic (just as bad)

    He knows no women who are suitable for any public office..in his party…so we are left with someone safe…..male hetrosexual and white…probably come down to a General..Cosgrove perhaps…..or some boring judge we have never heard of…of perhaps,,,my personal choice…Janette Howard

  21. CC

    Fair dinkum!

    You have no clue about what a tax is.
    You have no clue how an ETS works.
    You have no clue about the dynamics of a national certificate scheme.
    You have no clue about an international mechanism.
    You have no idea how they can work together seamlessly.

    All of this is obvious in your comments.

    So please stop commenting on the ETS until you get yourself up to speed.

  22. [prettyone
    Posted Sunday, November 3, 2013 at 9:12 pm | PERMALINK
    Forgot about Michael Kirkby. He would be a good choice, a gentle and caring person. But if he’s an atheist it may be an issue, given it’s the monarchy he’s representing and all that. Perhaps.]

    You’re right this time. Abbott will select one of the Rupert Rooters for GG – the monarchy after all is just so important to them.

    All that free publicity for Prince Harry photoed dressed in a bikini, through bribing Palace officials, and hacking the phone of his private secretary to get dirt on him cheating in his exams. And then there was the naked Las Vegas episode….

    Hell, why not Prince Harry as GG?

  28. We are well-overdue for an ageing, absurdly wealthy, white, male, climate science denying, carpet-bagging, grasping, avaricious fundamentalist christian for GG.

    There are plenty from which to choose.

  29. Where Abbott might surprise with a pick for GG is picking a woman to prove he “gets” them.

    Or someone like Noel Pearson.

  31. I like the sports theme idea but are there any (conservative) ex-sporties with sufficient legal/public experience to qualify them?

  33. BW

    Credlin is too smart to let that happen. Those Christian people can have an attack of conscience at the most inopportune times for her job as Shadow PM.

    Has to be someone who is no threat.

  34. Interesting US Governorship election in Virginia on Tuesday
    ________________________
    The Repubs are in dire straits in Virginia…heartland country…where a “libertarian” candidate is getting about 10% of the vote and gutting the “Tea-party” man Cuccinella …who is anit-anbortion /and a loud critic of global warming science,,..and was in a serious dispute with a respected climate scientist recently in Virginoia…a battle he lost in court)
    So the Dems may capture a true blue conservative state
    a real boost for Obama…on Washington’s front door…literally
    …as you drive in from Ronald Reagan Airport at Washington the signs on the freeway say”To City Center” or”To Viginia”

    http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/newsmax-zogby-poll-virginia/2013/11/02/id/534444?ns_mail_uid=811

  36. I like the sports theme idea but are there any (conservative) ex-sporties with sufficient legal/public experience to qualify them?

    Dawn Fraser!

    Qualified in life, of course.

  37. Noel Pearson is not actually a bad guess, and a possibility given his closeness to Abbott and Abbott being “PM of Indigenous Affairs”.

  39. Changes in SSTs may well be killing off thousands of shearwaters. Some small fish species move down the water column as the water heats up… inadvertantly placing themselves beyond the normal hunting range of shearwaters.

  42. Given that there has to be some sort of pretence that the GG should demonstrate somewhat inclusive tendencies, I doubt that Pearson computes as GG.

    At all.

  44. with the cricket season fast approaching, a reminder of World Series Cricket in 1977/78.

    See if you can spot the ring in from the sponsor.

  48. poroti – thanks for the red neck link earlier today.

    A bit too kind but gets the message across.

    The Howdown was the best line.

  50. No RC clergy can be appointed GG, as the GG nominally represents the Queen who is the head of the Church of England. But a RC can be GG eg William Deane.

    Abbott might surprise and appoint his mate Noel Pearson.

    Some talk of Justices Kiefel or Crennan being appointed.

    That would allow Abbott to replace them with a conservative on the HC.

    I have long said it would be Peter Cosgrove, a military man, a hardened Tory, attends many Liberal Party fund raisers, and good mate of John Howard.

    Just regret Labor didn’t reappoint Quentin Bryce for a few more years.

Comments Page 52 of 54
1 … 51 52 53 54

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *