The Australian Electoral Commission is dampening expectations about the progress of the count:
The initial sorting and collation of postal and other declaration votes already received by the AEC will finalise on Monday. The AEC will also check every declaration vote against the electoral roll and other requirements in order to include them to the count. Once this examination process is complete, the counting of declaration votes recently included in the count will begin. This is expected to be on Tuesday. Postal and other declaration votes will continue to be received, sorted and included in the count up until the deadline for receipt on 15 July.
What this amounts to is the AEC taking extra special care to ensure there are no repeats of the Senate fiasco from Western Australia in 2013. Many will grumble about the slow progress, but you can’t have it both ways. So no counting yesterday or today, which I’m personally relieved by as it’s giving me a chance to wrap my head around a complex situation. Here’s how I described it in response to a commenter’s query on the previous thread:
Barring some freaky late count development in a seat currently off my radar, I have the Coalition home in 70 seats, Labor home in 65, others home in five, and ten up in the air (though I haven’t yet absorbed Kevin Bonham’s notion that the Liberals could theoretically win Melbourne Ports, as may the Greens, although a Labor win seems most likely). So they would need to break 8-2 to Labor for them to win more seats than the Coalition (UPDATE: I beg your pardon — make that Coalition 69 and Labor 66, and Labor needing a break of 7-3). Out of the ten, I would, in descending order of degree, rather be in the Coalition’s position in Dunkley, Chisholm, Gilmore and Capricornia, and Labor’s in Herbert, Cowan and Hindmarsh. There are three seats I don’t even care to speculate about:
Flynn, because the LNP would make it home if they did as well on pre-polls and postals as last time, but that was apparently because they did well from fly-in fly-out workers, of which the electorate now has fewer with the end of the mining boom. It’s also possible that Labor has run a stronger postals campaign this time after abandoning the seat as a lost cause in 2013.
Forde, because there looks like being so very little in it.
Grey, because we don’t know enough about the preference flow yet, but the early indications are encouraging for the Liberals.
I’ll have a more detailed paywalled account of the situation in Crikey later today.
I have no problems with the new Senate voting system. Whoever gets into the Senate will be there because enough people voted for them. They should all be respected on that basis by whatever Government wants to get their legislation through.
hahahahahahaha
player one @ #1059 Monday, July 4, 2016 at 9:05 pm
Doesn’t bills get the ascent once both houses sign in?? We don’t have a presidential system who can veto bills. I remembered when the Queensland parliament had that thing about vote reform through a private member’s bill. I thought it would still go through if the government of the day didn’t vote for it as the numbers were for it.
Victoria @ 10.28pm: So Mrs Bronwyn Bishop is weeping for Australia. While she’s drying her eyes, she might want to reflect on her own contribution to the debacle for the coalition, including her woeful performance as speaker, her industrial grade avarice that dominated the media for about two months this time last year, and her stabbing of any back within range.
She’s a nut.
MartinB and the law of the conservation of seats.
Take Flynn off the ALP and put it with the undecided. So ALP -1 and undecided +1.
Now take Petrie from undecided and give it to the LNP. So ALP -1, LNP +1 (a net change of 2 in favour of the LNP) and undecided no net change.
This reconciles the two counts doesn’t it? Or am I misinterpreting your question?
Pedant
Agreed. A nut who lives in a bubble. No self awareness whatsoever
Sceptic – Where was Mark Kenny before the election? To be fair he did put up a two bob each way article last week offering some muted praise of Shorten’s campaign, but still predicting a comfortable Turnbull win.
The CPG have impeccable wisdom of hindsight, but struggle terribly with foresight.
Maybe if the Greens had campaigned on climate change instead of trying to wedge Labor at every turn, they wouldn’t have gone backwards this election.
nina661 @ #1200 Monday, July 4, 2016 at 10:53 pm
I am unfamiliar with the term ‘bench’. The rest is for others to decide.
Martin B, Jackol and others re assent – there was also a case in Victoria in 2005 where, a Bill having been passed, the gummint realised that the stakeholders (racing people and bookies) needed a longer transition period than the Bill provided, so they advised the Gov to delay assent by 6 weeks. But maybe Victoria is special because there is an express section in the Constitution Act (87E) about the exec giving advice to the Governor. There are some academic articles about it by the usual suspects (John Waugh, Anne Twomey) and a Vic Parliament staffer by name of Kate Murray, but none seem to be free on the web at the moment. Fwiw, I’m firmly of the view that,, in his/her role of giving assent, the Gov is part of the Parliament and should take advice from the two Houses and not the executive. But then it’s cetainly possible that if regulations are needed the exec might not play ball. Just means that if indies push a Bill though against the gummint’s will they’d better put the detail in the Bill itself.
450 grams?
How much does a keyboard weigh?
bemused @ #1209 Monday, July 4, 2016 at 11:00 pm
‘How much you can bench’ means how much weight you can lift while you are on a bench press.
Basically this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rT7DgCr-3pg
Words to live by for future Greens campaigns….
Good to see Erica believes in innoculations.
Hugely delightful to hear Great Uncle Otto’s little nephew sooking about GetUp! in Bass. Bottom line is, Mr Nikolic very obviously got his constituents offside, which can easily happen in Tasmania when you behave like a bully. See http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/academic-accuses-liberal-whip-andrew-nikolic-of-threatening-his-career-over-letter-of-criticism-20150315-144gti.html
bemused – do u even lift bro
“The parties get access to the electoral rolls, and a regular ons and offs listing. This gets fed into the databases where information is aggregated and cross matched against other datasets – like phone numbers”
I figured as much, the point I was trying to make though is that they seemingly sent this letter to everyone on the electoral roll in 14 different electorates in the final 24 hours of the campaign. That was either a desperate last minute attempt to salvage as many votes as possible, or they knew how they were polling for a while.
boerwar @ #1152 Monday, July 4, 2016 at 10:17 pm
First, there is no and there never was a need for Labor to do a deal with the Greens as they will never support the Coalition. (Unless they want to do a Democrats and wipe out their support.)
Second it’s impossible to say the Greens caused the problems in the previous Labor Government with all the internal leadership bickering going on throughout.
n.b. I deliberately not used the the G and R words as they have no importance to my argument. No war please.
450 grams, that’s at least one (dinner) plate…
The sore losers parade continues apace. Erica, Young Josh, Malcolm, Potato Dutton etc etc
Depends what’s on it.
millennial @ #1213 Monday, July 4, 2016 at 11:05 pm
Wouldn’t have a clue. Never done it.
Just a thought:
Should we be forced back to a HoR election because neither major party can get a guaranteed 76 votes it may be worth Oakshott (if not Windsor) having another go. The LNP would be so on the nose and the swing away from them so severe that they would have an improved chance of getting in in those circumstances.
I’m thinking Sarah Hanson-Young is past her used-by date. Wouldn’t mind seeing her being replaced by the more effective Robert Simms.
Now that I think about it, I should probably start an Arya Stark sort of list and start adding to it, Eric Abetz, Nick McKim, Don Farrell, George Christensen, Michael Danby, Steve Ciobo and David Feeney.
Joe Bullock would be in that list too if he hasn’t resigned by now.
All bills passed by Parliament require Royal Assent (delegated by the Constitution to the GG) to become law. This is normally a formality, but the constitution doesn’t say that the GG is obliged to give assent. If the PM advises the GG not to sign (e.g. both Houses pass a Marriage equality bill against the will of the Government), my understanding is that the GG won’t sign.
teh_drewski @ #1217 Monday, July 4, 2016 at 11:06 pm
I was lifting a glass of wine earlier this evening.
teh drewski
Look at his avatar. He’s cut as.
teh_drewski @ #1217 Monday, July 4, 2016 at 11:06 pm
My sentiments exactly. What exactly is going on here???
And Peter Dutton. How could I forget. On the list you go.
steve777 @ #1226 Monday, July 4, 2016 at 11:12 pm
Constitutional Crisis II?
Feeling my decision to skip the gym today was the wrong way to go …
Slackboy72 – exactly what I was thinking- Macadamia nuts!
Despite the lack of agreement from the crossbenchers, I think they’ll still provide confidence. At least for the first year or two.
Got one of those too. I live in the Fairfax electorate, which went 60/40 to the LNP. Either their internal polling was crap, or they just blasted that letter out to everyone.
Also, some Coalition guy on Lateline just finished rubbishing Tasmania as being full of poor, uneducated, gullible welfare bludgers, which of course is why all the Tasmanian electorates fell to Labor. Good luck ever winning their support again in the future. Do these people ever bother to think before they open their mouths?
Can’t stop watching this… Hilarious!!
https://youtu.be/MlBDoGIr1jA
Hah! Some of my Lib spin spouting friends kept on saying how the ASX will crash because of the election gridlock. It seems the market is ignoring all that.
teh_drewski @ #1208 Monday, July 4, 2016 at 11:00 pm
What is that kitten in your gravatar standing on? The kitten is too big for it to be fingers and I can’t make it just what it is, unless that is one teeny tiny kitten?
Have I entered a parallel universe? Peter Martin is tipping a possible Labor-Greens-NXT “unofficial alliance” to form government:
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/federal-election-2016/australian-federal-election-2016-look-at-the-senate-labor-offers-stability-the-coalition-cant-20160704-gpycd8.html#ixzz4DRhn81BI
a r @ #1235 Monday, July 4, 2016 at 11:17 pm
Hope someone keeps a video of that.
If the numbers were to fall out in such a way that both houses of parliament passed a bill for same sex marriage, and if Mr Turnbull was still PM, he’d be better off advising the GG to sign, if only to ensure that he could point to at least one success in achieving in his time in office something in which he claimed to believe.
If he advised the GG not to sign, so as to appease one more time the conservative elements in his party, his status in the history books as nothing more than a ventriloquist’s dummy would be guaranteed.
This is bizarre: “Liberal candidate Julia Banks said voters in Chisholm were angry about CFA and sky rail.”
No CFA presence in Chisholm and ‘sky rail’ nowhere near Chisholm.
Re: Bills becoming Law
It comes from the fact that we are a constitutional monarchy.
When the monarch gave (had taken away) the right to invoke Laws to (by) the Parliament they maintained the right to authorise all Laws. This was imposed on the British colonies in the form of Royally appointed Governors as the Monarch representative. With the creation of colonial governments the Governor maintained this role.
So legislation passed by a parliament only becomes law once it is signed by the Governor or GG in the Federal sphere.
@AR
Seeing as they were also expecting a comfortable majority I’d say all signs point to internal polling being rubbish. I was entertaining the idea that they saw this outcome coming and were simply adopting the strategy of projecting an image of confidence to win votes, but I guess they were genuinely taken by surprise.
J K @ 11.19pm: Not sure if you would remember this Downfall parody from 2008, which is directly about Mr Turnbull losing an election, and which seems to have foreshadowed the speech he gave on Saturday night.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEOwfMo38Os
More on the royal assent.
The last time an Act of the British parliament was refused the royal assent was in 1707 when Queen Anne refused the assent to the Scottish Militia Bill. As it happens, she did so on the advice of her ministers. When George IV considered refusing the assent to one of the catholic emancipation bills he was advised by his ministers that it was a matter of his signature or his crown. These days it is considered the Queen has no discretion to refuse assent in the UK. Anyone arguing otherwise would be considered eccentric at the very least. For colonies (like Australia) the matter is somewhat different. Indeed the refusal of assent to colonial legislation was one of the issues leading to the American revolution. And the Australian Constitution in its archaic way (ss58,59) seems to regard it as a real discretion resting with the monarch and their representative.
jimmydoyle @ #1239 Monday, July 4, 2016 at 11:21 pm
This is what I have been thinking. Not an alliance, but if Labor is able to patch itself a minority government in the HoR, many of the bills will be passed through agreement with NXT and the Greens.
[Labor-Green-Xenophon alliance ]
Yeah that will work. *shakes head sadly and heads to bed*
On the look of the still adm,itedly early figures, Melbourne Ports has to ber in the marginal category. There are sufficient minor parties with Greenish credentials to push greens ahead of Danby by a nose.
It seems highly likely that Danby by issuing HTVs supporting Liberals, will give Turnbull a majority. Oh the irony. The greens would need to get about 21/27 (about 68%) of ALP preferences to cross the line. It looks as if Danby has still got 80% of greens preferences.
Bemused
I daresay the Herald Sun made them angry about the CFA and skytrain even though they were not affected.
I read once that one of the London tabloid editors had that as a daily goal. To make readers angry.