A solid move on BludgerTrack this week, as the Labor primary vote spikes 0.9% at the expense of the Coalition and “others”. This translates to a 0.7% lift on two-party preferred and a gain of three on the seat projection, including one each from New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania, counterbalanced by a loss in Queensland (NOTE: This post originally gave Labor an extra 0.4% two-party preferred as well as an extra seat; this was based on an error which has now been fixed). Picking that apart:
• The model does not presently grant any weight to Ipsos, except in calculating the state totals and the leadership ratings, as it’s only with the publication of a second result that the model will have something to benchmark it against. This has the unfortunate effect of depriving the current BludgerTrack reading of what’s probably a strong result for the Coalition, perhaps causing it to lean a little more Labor than it should. That’s unless a Coalition lean proves to be a consistent feature of Ipsos, in which case it will be bias-adjusted accordingly. However, this certainly wasn’t evident in its Victorian state poll.
• Poll watchers have been looking askance at Newspoll’s two-party numbers recently, which have consistently been putting Labor a percentage point ahead of what the primary vote numbers would lead you to expect. Since BludgerTrack dispenses with pollsters’ two-party preferred calculations and determines its own after generating the primary vote numbers, Labor’s strong Newspoll showing has been making a less of an impression than some might expect.
• Morgan reverted to type in its latest fortnightly result after successive polls showed the Coalition in its strongest position since February, producing strong Coalition data points after the bias adjustment was applied. This time out, it’s back in the middle somewhere. A re-evaluation of Morgan’s performance this term caused me to very slightly amend its bias adjustment about 0.2% to Labor’s advantage.
• Essential Research has been a little counter-cyclical, nudging Labor downwards slightly where elsewhere they have edged up. Its bias adjustments, which had been factoring in a lean to Labor, are progressively moderating to accommodate the trend.
Ipsos provides a welcome new addition to the leadership ratings game, and early indications are that it has inherited Nielsen’s peculiarly low uncommitted ratings. The BludgerTrack aggregates eliminate such distinctions, and Ipsos combined with the Newspoll result causes Tony Abbott’s preferred prime minister lead to all but disappear, down from 3.1% to 0.7%. Abbott is also down 1.8% on net approval to minus 12.2%, while Bill Shorten is unchanged at minus 4.7%.
Australians have been electing most of our representatives based on their party affiliation for a long time now.
If MPs think they should be able to vote however they personally feel, and that they could get elected to do so, then they should run as independents.
Alternatively, if parties are started that have looser vote binding – like the Democrats, eg, that nominally allowed elected representatives to vote however they liked, provided they gave a formal explanation when they voted against the official party policy – this is an obvious point of differentiation that should pick up masses of votes if it’s such an important principle in the minds of the Australian public.
Personally I’m quite happy to have parties describe a policy platform when I’m voting and then to expect they will follow through with that platform (ie strict party discipline). I’m fairly politically aware and I often have little knowledge (or care, for the most part!) of what my local MP might personally value.
Nicholas@143
The few who are compelled enough to want change tries the best to convince the public that change is necessary, and they may convince some, but with the major parties preferring the status quo, it will come to naught. Even if they convinced one side, the congress is in deadlock so many times, it’s almost impossible.
This is why the right embraced the Tea Party movement too, rather than let them start their own insurgent party which would split the conservative vote.
Jackol
[… this is an obvious point of differentiation that should pick up masses of votes if it’s such an important principle in the minds of the Australian public]
There’s no simple way to untangle all the different reasons for a person’s single vote every few years under the current system.
William Bowe@150
I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me on the last reload. Now I know why.
I don’t really understand how anyone other than party heads and leaders could support sheep MP’s there is really no need to have sheep MP’s.
I think Sheep MP’s are the biggest weakness in our democracy.
As if either party actually honors it’s platforms or policies once elected – how could you justify requiring MP’s to meekly and mindlessly follow breaking the party line.
And they wonder why so many are disengaged.
That Latham article seems to have gone. The links leads to the AFR site with a message saying the page is unavailable.
I had high hopes for Clive – but he is just a two faced back stabbing FAT FRAUD, there to line his own pockets in backroom deals and is totally full of S**T …..
Victorian State Election: Here comes Clive, without his candidates
Clive Palmer did not back a winner on Cup Day. Nor can he pick a victor in the two-horse race for Victorian premier.
“They [Andrews and Napthine] are pretty poor horses,” Palmer told Victorian journalists on Thursday.
Yes, Clive has finally entered the Victorian election with the mission to seize the balance of power in the upper house.
Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/victoria-state-election-2014/victorian-state-election-here-comes-clive-without-his-candidates-20141106-11hyad.html#ixzz3IGP83gXG
DN – of course, but there is no real barrier to entry for new political parties except for the fact that the Australian public just doesn’t seem at all interested in venturing outside of the established party system for very long.
If the Australian public really valued different qualities in our political parties then there has been ample opportunity to support those qualities at various times, and should be in future.
It is endlessly frustrating for me because I think there should be a much broader range of viable political parties in Australia (obviously requiring less dominance by the LNP and ALP), but Australians just don’t seem to be willing to vote for diversity no matter how much they express an unhappiness with the status quo. In the USA the deadening grasp of FPTP is at least an explanation for why 3rd parties fail, but here there really isn’t much excuse. So you vote for a new 3rd party that appeals to you – that doesn’t mean your vote is wasted or that it might vote-split your preferred major party’s vote. But people don’t do it in any great numbers for any length of time.
Anyway, back to the original point: complaining about the party discipline of the ALP and the LNP implies that you think there should be some enforced external change imposed on the system. I disagree – the system we have allows for parties to have less discipline, and if that was an important quality then parties that exhibit it should prosper at the ballot box. The evidence seems to indicate the opposite to be true.
Jackol, the idea that a large amount of support for something translates into votes (and action) is demonstrably false.
I’ll just point again to action on climate change.
Jackol
[Anyway, back to the original point: complaining about the party discipline of the ALP and the LNP implies that you think there should be some enforced external change imposed on the system]
Eh, “enforced external change”?
We live in a democracy, any change would come within from our existing democratic processes, of course.
Why do the Tories always have to run programs through private company? Its more like a personality disorder than a sound, reasoned position.
Yeah – just what we need for a faraway Ebola medical outpost – the sort of cost-cutting and ‘efficiency’ you get when company taking 10%-20% of what we spend on the program as profit.
That Latham article is still there.
DN – you can point it out as much as you like. It doesn’t alter the fact that in a discussion about the mechanisms underpinning our democracy it is irrelevant.
There are many examples of something having popular support not ‘getting up’, but that wasn’t the point under discussion. There is this notion floating around from a few here that loose party discipline is a Good Thing. I’m merely pointing out that there is no barrier to parties having loose discipline, and they can use it as a selling point. They don’t, here – in fact the LNP have clearly moved a very long way from their previously proudly held tradition of “every vote being a conscience vote”.
I don’t see this movement away from your preferred position as having been a factor in any loss of popular support.
I think a few people on here love party discipline when it backs up something they are in favour of (regardless of what the general Australian public might feel about it), and rail against party discipline when it stands in the way of their preference (again, regardless of what the broader public might feel about it).
Or let’s put it another way. A party based system means creating strong dependencies between various issues. In reality, those dependences may actually be weak or even non-existent.
However there is no way for voters to disentangle them, for example being forced to put in priority order things which are independent and could actually be enacted simultaneously.
Jackol
[ There is this notion floating around from a few here that loose party discipline is a Good Thing. I’m merely pointing out that there is no barrier to parties having loose discipline, and they can use it as a selling point.]
Well, no that wasn’t your point. Your point was (roughly speaking) that if “loose disicpline” was important to people, it would get votes and it’s not getting votes so it can’t be that important. Hence my *extremely* relevant example of action on climate change. An issue which has popular support and yet is struggling to get up.
Here’s a quote
[If the Australian public really valued different qualities in our political parties then there has been ample opportunity to support those qualities at various times, and should be in future.]
DN –
My apologies if I failed to communicate my point adequately.
But please don’t tell me what my point was.
I think the how we vote as evidence for robot sheep MPs as a good thing is laughable.
I don’t want some loony independent but I would vote for a good liberal candidate over a clown ALP candidate – but by that logic I’m supporting the sheep / clown idea which I am not.
It is really in the hands of the Party and for the ALP reform process if it is ever to move beyond a farce to reality it will need to consider how to connect locally when so much of its present values and focus is on head office. I had one very senior labor figure say being a local person actually made you a bad politician – maybe because you cared and wouldn’t be a sheep.
The point my example was in response to is in 165 and 153.
I have provided a counterexample. Your proposition is demonstrably false.
DN – I’m not arguing that what the Australian public professes to value is not reflected in the way that they vote, or that it isn’t a lot more complicated than that.
As I said, I find it endlessly frustrating that, eg, there is a lot of polling evidence over the last few years that Australians (and Americans and Brits and pretty much everyone else) are very unhappy and dissatisfied with their systems of government and their dominant political parties.
But fundamentally we all have the power to change our systems and change our parties.
Something that is supposed to be democratic is supposed to come from the will of the people. The will of the people is that our current parties are unsatisfactory, and yet – despite actually having the mechanisms to fix what is wrong – nothing changes.
149
Victoria does not have 100% fixed terms like the USA. It has the get out, necessary in parliamentary systems, that a successful vote of no confidence can, if there is no successful vote of confidence soon enough after it, trigger a new election.
There was never any actual deadlock in the Victorian Parliament, if there was then there could have been a new election unless the Speaker resigned and there was no agreement on a replacement.
The biggest flaw in the Victorian fixed term provision is that there is no means of resolving a tied vote for the Speaker in the even numbered Assembly.
Had the ALP retained Bentleigh, then there would have been a need to resolve who got the Speaker and who got Government. Victoria may have been taken to a referendum to change the number of MPs in one or both house(s) to have an odd number, probably (at the Likely insistence of the Nats) an increase.
DN –
So because something that has popular support (depending on how you ask a polling question that has no impact on governance) didn’t determine government action we can say … what, exactly?
[But fundamentally we all have the power to change our systems and change our parties.
]
I do not think that is true on either the party or system level. How is Labor party reform going? It isn’t.
Well, the US isn’t doing terrifically well on climate change, either.
Democracy isn’t well adapted for quick, decisive action, particularly in cases where the expert advice goes one way and public sentiment the other.
I’ve seen numerous examples locally of issues dragging on for years in an effort to win the voters over to the view of the experts. Arguably, a ‘better’ result would have been achieved by the relevant government biting the bullet and doing what’s needed regardless (which tends to be the outcome anyway, emotional responses to issues being what they are).
Our system also wouldn’t work well if parties had to stick to their platform regardless, because life isn’t predictable. Issues arise which no one anticipated and where decisions can’t be delayed until after the next election; circumstances change in such a way that yesterday’s policy position would simply be silly to implement.
So ‘pure’ representative democracy would see delays to decision making (as it sometimes does) for no good reason; because quick, decisive action is sometimes necessary, a system where parties totally toed the line they’d taken to the election would do the same.
We whinge when politicians break promises, but we should be careful about why we’re doing that. Where they do so where the circumstances they find themselves in are perfectly predictable, breaking promises may be justifiable (and indeed, preferable to the alternative).
Jackol @ 171
We’re talking about translation into votes.
[… this is an obvious point of differentiation that should pick up masses of votes if it’s such an important principle in the minds of the Australian public]
My example demonstrates that many voters, despite supporting a particular issue, voted for a party that does not support that issue.
And so. Voters may very well prefer parties with loose discipline but still not vote for that reason.
The reason (or part of the reason) that I’m proposing is that our system (part of which is a strong party structure) forces dependencies between issues that are not necessarily there. For example, requiring that voters choose between issues even if those issues are independent.
Jackol @ 169
Democracy is just a word. It is the actual system that matters. I am arguing, that regardless of our describing our system as a democracy – with all the hopes and wishes that entails – the system itself is a factor in failures to propagate the decisions of the electorate, not just our politicians, parties, media, voters, etc.
WWP –
so if the ALP is broken, why aren’t we seeing the rise of a new centrist party? We have the power to fix our parties if we stop supporting the old parties and support new parties that have the mechanisms that we think are better.
The system allows any sort of party with any sort of structure and any sort of approach to party voting discipline. The system (ignoring the reality of the way Australians are disengaging from politics and political parties), as such, is not broken. Except that it is clearly broken in the relationship between the public and the political class.
zoom
I’m not arguing that a better system would necessarily produce outcomes I desire. I am talking “better” in the sense of propagating voter intent.
Naturally if we’re talking about a system that does what I want, you should make me dictator ;).
A big advantage of strong party discipline is that it gives voters clarity about the legislative agenda they are voting for. You know for sure that if the ALP is elected to a majority in the House, then a Bill to introduce emissions trading will pass the House, and will get the votes of all ALP Senators.
If, on the other hand, every MP and every Senator is allowed to freelance on legislation, you really don’t know what you’re going to get. If there’s a Labor Government, you could expect that emissions trading legislation is more likely to emerge than if the LNP has a House majority but you have no idea how many Labor MPs and Senators might decide to vote against their party’s policy. If there’s no party discipline, every legislative outcome depends on the views, interests, allegiances, and moods of 226 individuals. This is too uncertain, opaque, and prone to corruption.
MPs and Senators should be free to speak frankly in public about divergences between their personal views and their party’s policy. As long as they are respectful and mature about it, I think the voters would actually like it. It is so annoying to see politicians pretend to support policies with which they disagree. Far better would be a statement like this:
“My personal view is that civil marriage should remain for heterosexual couples only. I believe this promotes stability and a wholesome tradition which has served society well. But I was elected with the endorsement of the Labor party, and I have a duty to vote for Labor party policy on the floor of the House. The policy of my party is to change the Marriage Act to include same-sex couples. I must fulfil my commitment to the party which nominated me as a candidate for Parliament.”
I’d love to see Joe de Bruyn make that statement some day.
The system is broken. Are you suggesting that the intent of voters is clearly reflected in the one vote for a person that they get every few years?
I mean a Labor MP or Senator with views like Joe de Bruyn’s.
Why, for example, do we have arguments over “mandate”? Perhaps it’s because politicians can only guess the exact reasons they were voted in?
I agree, btw, with zoom’s discussion of whether other possibilites (such as direct democracy) are practical. They may not be. Then we’re stuck with a system that doesn’t reflect voter intent very well.
WWP
[How is Labor party reform going? It isn’t.]
It is too.
I repeat: the Labor party is a series of state branches.
Reform in the Labor party will happen on a state to state basis, even where these affect the party federally. (Senators, for example, are preselected differently according to the State branch doing the preselection).
Queensland and NSW have moved to rank and file preselections (and other reforms — not being my state, I’m not familiar with the details).
Victoria is delaying its reform discussions until after National Conference – which means these will happen next year.
National Conference itself will discuss reforms, and (all indications are) will recommend some to the States.
It would appear that the reforms some people want involve the Federal party dictating to the State branches what should happen. That might be a good reform but even that would require each State to have their Conference sign off on it!
The irony of Rudd’s reforms – which still haven’t been formalised, and are only in place due to the good will of caucus – is that greater democracy was imposed on the party by by passing its democratic institutions.
zoomster
[
Democracy isn’t well adapted for quick, decisive action, particularly in cases where the expert advice goes one way and public sentiment the other.]
Back about 2010 I remember an article that said sometimes single party states have an advantage advantages. The Chinese had just had one of their major Party congresses (5 year plan ?) and had committed to reducing carbon intensity of the economy. They decreed that it be so and that that $1 trillion dollars worth of spending would be committed. No if no buts it was happening.
It made my blood boil every time PMBO and co screamed about the Chinese “doing nothing” . They had just committed a trillion dollars to replacing old power stations with new efficient lower emission ones , green energy + renewable energy projects.Working to reduce CO2 emissions per unit of GDP their target was to be even more efficient than Japan.
z,
The other problem with our democracy is that many can agree with a concept but differ violently on how to deal with it. World peace, protecting the environment etc are all noble goals. However, what specifically gets done is variable because of different views, interests and circumstances.
Politicians these days seem to be the grease that keeps our system moving forward. Everyone hates change and we pillory our elected representatives mercilessly for advocating it. However, we all usually accept the outcomes some years down the road.
Gough is a perfect example of this. Abused and thrown out of office in his time. But, now lauded as a true statesman and visionary. Where was all that love in 1975?
Is Murdoch’s pathetic FoxTel gouging monopoly about to be ‘boned’?
[Stan will offer a range of local and international programming to subscribers for a fixed monthly fee tipped to be around $10, with no minimum term commitment, and the company confirming it has secured the exclusive rights to Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul ahead of a tipped February 2015 launch date, to coincide with the latter show’s US launch.]
http://mumbrella.com.au/streamco-260812
DN –
Yes. I think some of the heat of our disagreement is as a result of what I see as the frustrating paradox at the heart of our democratic systems.
From my point of view the overall system allows for much more diversity of political party (in fact it was originally set up without much consideration of parties at all). If we had a political culture that was compatible with a much broader range of parties with much more diversity of internal structure, then – to my mind – the tension disappears. You can vote for a centre-left party that has values roughly aligning with your own that allows for more freedom for its elected members. I can vote for an economically dry hard-environmental party that enforces strong party discipline.
We have a system. We technically have the power. The problem, as I see it, is that there is a large portion of the Australian public that is so politically disengaged and timid that they are not willing to give a diverse range of political parties a decent go.
And it’s not even a matter of needing a majority of the population on-side. A viable party should be able to get a foothold in our system with 10% of the vote, a la the Greens.
Of course proportional voting would be a big help in easing the path to representation for new parties, but the dismal history of 3rd parties here (or 4th, I guess, now with the Greens looking fairly long term) doesn’t require PV.
Four year fixed terms were introduced because Governments were effectively in pre-election mode for the last 12-15 months and early elections abounded.
For example, suppose a Government won an election in March of year X. Early election speculation would start in the second half of year X+1 and from the start of year X+2 the Government would be on the lookout to spring an early election when the polls looked good, especially if they believed that things might not look so good later. That’s the gamble that Malcom Fraser took in 1983, for example (and lost).
Federally, the timing of Senate elections acts as a constraint, so early elections have been less common than they had been for the States.
[Are you suggesting that the intent of voters is clearly reflected in the one vote for a person that they get every few years?]
No, and that isn’t the intent of the system.
The system is that we elect someone whom we believe will make decisions on our behalf.
That doesn’t mean making the decisions we think we want (as I said before, there’s often a difference between what people want and what is actually needed).
It means we trust the person makes the best decision they can given the information they have at hand.
Not having the same information, we mightn’t agree with the decision; but we should (50.1% of us at least) trust that it seemed the best option available to our representative at the time.
Having that representative standing for a certain party makes it easier to predict the kind of decisions they’re likely to make – we don’t need to ask the candidate their position on every single issue that we can possibly think of.
I think our system would work better if voters did scrutinise the candidates on offer more vigorously. But they don’t – which may actually be a sign that the system is working.
People pay a great deal of attention to politics (and die to vote) when situations are obviously dire. Those living in (relatively) comfortable circumstances may pretend to be worried about politics, but they really aren’t.
Jackol
[The problem, as I see it, is that there is a large portion of the Australian public that is so politically disengaged and timid that they are not willing to give a diverse range of political parties a decent go.]
As I said in my last post, this may actually be because we don’t have a problem.
Where was all that love in 1975?
Going by 2PP, 43% of voters wanted Gough to continue as PM. Our single member electorate system exaggerates small differences.
zoomster – possibly. I do agree that if there were such serious problems with the system and with our parties that we would see (as you suggest) much more dramatic things going on in our political sphere. That’s kind of why I started by saying that if people really wanted things to be different, they would be different because we collectively have the power to change things. Votes on climate action notwithstanding.
Shirt-front, t-shirt, bare chested, our Mr Abbott will confront Mr Putin one way or another:
[Prime Minister Tony Abbott insists he will directly confront Russian president Vladimir Putin “one way or another” over the Malaysia Airlines tragedy.
Mr Abbott made the comments today in joint talks with visiting Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte.
Mr Abbott has previously promised to “shirt front” Mr Putin over the MH17 tragedy, which killed 38 Australian citizens and residents.
Russia has still not agreed to a formal bilateral meeting, but Mr Abbott was confident he would be able to speak with Mr Putin.
“I’ll be in Beijing with him at the APEC conference, then of course we’re expecting him at the G20 conference in Brisbane,” Mr Abbott said.
“So one way or another, an opportunity will come up for me to speak personally with President Putin.”
]
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-11-06/abbott-says-he-still-intends-to-confront-putin-over-mh17/5871328
Jackol.
Ok, fair enough.
It’s a little like arguing over whether people should be able to fix their own psychological problems. They may not be able to, even if they know they have them, because those problems themselves get in the way. Such situations will be incredibly frustrating.
Of course, thankfully our democracy is more than just voting. It is the people, their social networks, all the human stuff. Even if the system is “broken”, a sufficient combination of those other (human) elements could serve to construct a vote that properly reflect the electorate’s intent – my argument is not that it is never reflected, just that it struggles mightily to do so.
[We have a system. We technically have the power. The problem, as I see it, is that there is a large portion of the Australian public that is so politically disengaged and timid that they are not willing to give a diverse range of political parties a decent go.]
I agree with this. Certainly I’m not arguing the system is flawed in order to excuse other problems. It would be nice (not sure if practical) though, to find a system that is both democratic and yet doesn’t depend so heavily on human flexibility in order that it be *properly democratic. There is obviously some tension between these goals.
* for some definition of “properly”
zoom
[As I said in my last post, this may actually be because we don’t have a problem.]
When you think things could be done better, inevitably you see problems with how they’re already done ;). I’m being cheeky. Sure, things mostly work – I’ve said this before and been pulled up on it :P.
There is, I think, no natural direction to progress. There’s mostly just different and arguments over whether what we have serves our purpose. We’re humans and we can invent new purpose, that’s when things that were previously considered working become “broken”.
I thought it pertinent to make it known that Michael Wooldridge, former Howard government Health Minister, is a Director at Aspen Medical, the company managing Australia’s ebola response.
http://www.smh.com.au/business/former-health-minister-michael-wooldridge-and-prime-trust-directors-breached-duties-20131212-2za5a.html
[JimmyDoyle
Posted Thursday, November 6, 2014 at 5:49 pm | PERMALINK
I thought it pertinent to make it known that Michael Wooldridge, former Howard government Health Minister, is a Director at Aspen Medical, the company managing Australia’s ebola response.]
The government needs to explain why this company was chosen and whether other (suitable) private operators were invited to submit an expression of interest.
JimmyDoyle
Ah yes, he’s the one who slid into a job in “health”. He’s porked up a bit since then, hasn’t he.
Although I’m suspicious of how they got the contract, I heard their boss man interviewed this morning, and I have to admit he was excellent.
citizen,
He’ll probably round up some of his old Uni mates for a re-run of the glory days hazing his political opponents.
Lizzie and Citizen, apparently there was no tender process
This year the New South Wales Labor conference voted down John Faulkner’s proposal that party members select candidates for the Senate and for the NSW Legislative Council.
The Labor Party still has much to do before it can claim to be a democratic, membership-driven party.
It’s instructive that it took a unilateral decree by a PM who was outside the party’s culture (Kevin Rudd) to shape this creaky collection of tribes into something approaching a party of the twenty-first century. The change didn’t come from within. The culture, institutions and allegiances within the party are not conducive to democracy.
I’m very happy that members and federal parliamentarians now have an equal say in electing the parliamentary leader. I wish the Greens would adopt the same policy. But we must not deceive ourselves that this is anywhere near enough. The power of the factional powerbrokers must be dispersed across the entire membership. Unions shouldn’t have a reserved bloc of seats on the National Executive. All candidates should be chosen entirely by remembers. Overturning a pre-selection must be exceedingly rare, done only in narrowly and explicitly defined circumstances, and followed by another vote by members if at all possible.
This “Rome wasn’t built in a day” stuff won’t cut it. The party is 125 years old. It’s time to get cracking.
http://insidestory.org.au/the-winter-of-senator-faulkners-discontent