Saturday, July 30
The preference distribution process in Higgins has resulted in tiny changes, never more than one vote in either direction per polling booth, that have collectively added three votes for Labor and taken three from the Liberal National Party, increasing the Labor margin from 35 to 41. The last word from the AEC was that this would be finalised tomorrow.
In other late counting news, One Nation candidate Lynette Keehn has overtaken Labor to reach the final count in the regional Queensland seat of Maranoa. This is a feat no party candidate other than Hanson herself was able to achieve at the party’s high-water mark election of 1998. However, the Nationals-aligned Liberal National Party candidate, David Littleproud, has 49.2% of the primary vote and will easily win the seat, which is vacated by the retirement of Bruce Scott. Labor edged One Nation on the primary vote by 18.3% to 17.8%, but One Nation pulled ahead after distribution of preferences. The Greens achieved in a similar feat in Tony Abbott’s seat of Warringah, pulling ahead of Labor after trailing 14.8% to 12.2% on the primary vote, with Tony Abbott on 51.6% and independent James Mathison on 11.4%. A two-party count has now been completed in the seat, giving Abbott a winning margin over the Greens candidate of 11.6%.
In seats where non-traditional two-party outcomes were correctly anticipated by the AEC, we are now at the stage where Labor-versus-Coalition preference counts are being conducted, which will ultimately allow a national two-party preferred result to be determined. Such counts have been completed for Denison (a 15.3% margin for over Liberal) and Kennedy (a 6.9% margin for the Liberal National Party), and are in progress in the three Labor-versus-Greens seats in Victoria, Melbourne, Batman and Wills (barely started in the first case, nearly finished for the second and third).
Both factors have caused an illusory surge for Labor in the published national two-party preferred tally published by the AEC. Warringah and Maranoa are excluded from this tally for the time being, but we know the results favoured the Coalition by 52,923 to 33,743 in Warringah and 60,771 to 29,228 in Maranoa, and that these numbers will ultimately be added back into the count. Furthermore, the seats awaiting to be counted on a Coalition-versus-Labor basis are almost all conservative (Barker, Grey, Higgins, Indi, Mayo, Murray and New England), the sole exception being Grayndler. When all votes are added to the count, the Coalition should have a final two-party preferred total approaching 50.5%.
Thursday, July 28
Latest:
• The early stages of the preference distribution in Herbert, which is expected to be completed over the weekend, has resulted in Labor losing a vote at the Kelso booth and the LNP losing one at Riverside, leaving the Labor lead unchanged at 35 votes.
• I’m hearing that the button the Senate count in Western Australia will be pressed on Monday.
• Psephologists are having a field day with the publication of complete preferences for all Senate ballot papers from Tasmania, my own contribution being a paywalled Crikey article observing patterns of voter behaviour and their implications for yet-to-be-determined counts in other states. Money quote:
Particularly striking is the failure of voters to have followed how-to-vote cards, even in the case of the major parties who had the base of volunteers needed to disseminate them … fewer than one-in-ten Liberal voters chose to be guided by the party’s card — which, remarkably, recommended a sixth preference for Labor — while the share of Labor voters that did so barely even registered. It should not be presumed, however, that voters reluctant to toe the party line instead gave expression to finely calibrated rational choices. Ballot paper ordering had a substantial influence on preferences, leading to a kind of “soft” donkey voting, in which those who find their favoured party near the front end of the ballot paper tended to remain there when allocating subsequent preferences.
Part of my homework for the article included the development of this spreadsheet (note there are separate worksheets for the total result, above-the-line votes only and below-the-line votes only) which identify the frequency with which voters for each party (in rows) included each other party (in columns) in their top six. Kevin Bonham has put precise figures to the meagre rate of how-to-vote card adherence for the various parties, and David Barry has a nifty tool for exploring preference flows with greater precision than my own spreadsheet.
Wednesday, July 27: Tasmanian Senate result
The Tasmanian count ended with Richard Colbeck dropping out, and the final result being determined in favour of Nick McKim over One Nation by 141 votes. Result: 1.Abetz (Lib), 2.Urquhart (ALP), 3.Whish-Wilson (GRN), 4.Lambie (JLN), 5.Parry (Lib), 6.Polley (ALP) 7.Duniam (Lib), 8.Brown (ALP), 9.Bushby (Lib), 10.Singh (ALP), 11.Bilyk (ALP), 12.McKim (GRN).
The full distribution of preferences can be viewed here. Above-the-line votes alone were enough to elect the top three Labor (Anne Urquhart, Helen Polley, Carol Brown) and Liberal (Eric Abetz, Stephen Parry, Jonathan Duniam) candidates, and the lead candidates for the Greens (Peter Whish-Wilson) and the Jacqui Lambie Network (Jacqui Lambie) had a quota when their first preference below-the-line votes were added to the above-the-line total. That left four seats outstanding, which were not determined until the final stages of the count, which are summarised thus:
Richard Colbeck’s below-the-line support wasn’t quite enough to keep him ahead of One Nation’s Kate McCulloch after preferences. Colbeck began the count with 13474 votes to McCulloch’s 8641, but McCulloch was the direct beneficiary of above-the-line preferences to One Nation, whereas above-the-line preferences to the Liberals were soaked up by David Bushby, who held the place above Colbeck on the Liberal ticket. By the key point in the count, McCulloch’s vote had swollen to 18136, whereas Colbeck had to rely entirely on below-the-line preferences to reach 16918, 1218 astern of McCulloch. Colbeck’s exclusion then unlocked a flood of preferences that were easily enough to elect Bushby, but also to just push Lisa Singh over the line with a gain of 2171 – evidently she garnered substantial support even from right-of-centre below-the-line voters.
Then came the distribution of the fairly substantial Liberal surplus, from which Labor did remarkably well, gaining 4412 votes compared with 2242 for One Nation and 1269 for the Greens, with 2816 exhausting. Presumably the Liberals’ remarkable decision to recommend a sixth preference to Labor had a fair bit to do with this. However, this was not decisive, and purely influenced the size of Catryna Bilyk’s margin over Nick McKim and Kate McCulloch in taking the eleventh seat (notably, fourth-placed Bilyk was elected later in the count than sixth-placed Singh – fifth-placed John Short lost out altogether). That left the twelfth seat as a race between McKim and McCulloch that began with McKim leading by 43 votes, ahead of the distribution of Labor’s 593-vote surplus. Those votes went 234 to McKim and 136 to McCulloch with 221 exhausting, and McKim carried the day by a margin of 141.
Tuesday, July 26
The recount of the primary vote and the indicative two-party count has now been completed with the latter showing Labor 37 votes ahead, after adjustments to nine polling booths cut Labor back by 34 votes while reducing the LNP by one vote; the pre-poll count added four for the LNP and reduced Labor by three; and two was added to Labor’s total on postals. Now the count will proceed to a full distribution of preferences, beginning with the last placed Palmer United, who were pretty bold fielding a candidate given the local circumstances (he polled 316 votes, or 0.36% of the total). In theory, this should end by confirming the result of the indicative count, but the process of reviewing preference votes will surely turn up further minor anomalies. Should Labor’s win be confirmed, the Coalition is gearing up for a legal challenge based on suggestions up to 85 defence personnel stationed in the electorate were deprived of a vote because insufficient voting facilities were provided during an exercise being conducted South Australia, and 39 Townsville Hospital patients were denied a vote when they attempted to do so during the final hour of what should have been the polling period on election day. Michael Maley, a former Australian Electoral Commission official, has noted in comments that Section 367 of the Commonwealth Electoral Act would set a high bar on the defence personnel issue especially. The hospital issue could prove more problematic, depending on what the circumstances prove to have been.
Equally excitingly, it appears we are now finally to get to the business end of Senate counting, with Kevin Bonham hearing informally that the button will be pressed on the Tasmanian result tomorrow afternoon – although the AEC is being a little more circumspect publicly. The intricacies of the count have been explored in headache-inducing detail on Kevin’s blog – to cut a long story short, there look sure to be five Labor, four Liberal, one Greens and Jacqui Lambie, with the last seat up for grabs. He deems, without huge confidence, the order of likelihood for the final seat to be a second Green, a fifth Liberal, and One Nation. It appears almost certain that below-the-line votes will overturn the order of Labor’s ticket to deliver a seat to sixth-placed Lisa Singh at the expense of fifth-placed John Short. Richard Colbeck, the fifth-placed Liberal candidate, has also benefited from a backlash against his party’s ticket order, but not to the extent of overtaking fourth-placed David Bushby. However, it’s on the strength of his own votes that Colbeck will linger to the final stages of the count and leave the Liberals in the hunt for a fifth seat. The question is whether he finishes ahead of the One Nation candidate, in which case he could potentially end up ahead of the second Green, Nick McKim, if a generally right-of-centre pool of micro-parties preferences favour him with sufficient force – although it would be a tall order. If Colbeck drops out, it comes down to McKim versus One Nation, to be determined mostly by Liberal preferences, which would need to flow massively to One Nation for McKim to be defeated.
Scott is correct mathematically isn’t he – the effect of your vote exhausting is to increase every other remaining candidates share of the initial quota – by lowering the quota
The most interesting thing imo that happened in the count is Bushby’s surplus electing Bilyk!
And Bushby’s surplus (LP) electing Bilyk (ALP) was due to most LP voters preferring the ALP to the only other 2 left in the race – Greens or One Nation. But it was done by the expressed preference of the voters, not due to a party ticket.
And do I read the PDF correctly that only 9,531 votes exhausted out of 339,159? That’s less that 3%. How does that compare with the estimated exhaust-ageddon?
Also, when will the AEC push the button on the section 282 re-count to give us the result if this had been a half senate election?
Is One Nation able to challenge the count? I can’t see any point in Colbeck doing so, as he was so far off the mark vs One Nation.
@Mark Cowan – not sure about the AEC, but I am running a section 282 count from the raw data right now. Should have the results inside half an hour if my program behaves as expected. However I don’t think there’s much suspense – it should be the same as the first six elected (2 ALP, 2 LIB, 1 GRN, 1 JLN) albeit possibly not in the same order.
scott bales @ #39 Wednesday, July 27, 2016 at 3:22 pm
The Coalition had prominently before them a submission from me that showed that the combined impact of the changes if applied to the previous two federal elections would have been a Labor and Green blocking majority, or if applied to 2013 as a double dissolution would have been more crossbenchers than were actually elected. Either they were under no illusions about the possibilities of the changes or else they were fifty times more blinkered about them than Labor were, which isn’t possible.
Your solution would actually lead to less accurate outcomes than having all votes exhaust. It would mean parties could send 100% of exhausting preferences to a specific party when in practice if the voters made the decision for themselves they would send those preferences all over the place. Exhausting them is actually more accurate – especially in cases where parties do deals with ideologically opposed parties.
If parties don’t like missing preferences because of exhaust then the burden is on them to appeal to voters such that voters preference them in their top 6 or preference beyond 6. With such a weak rate of following of how-to-vote cards (especially among micro-parties) if a party can’t jag enough top-6 preferences and has a weak primary vote then it does not deserve to be elected.
This is not a bad voting system, it is a very good one that will deliver a very fair Senate representation of how people in different states voted. It has some faults, mainly the unduly limited savings provisions for below-the-line votes. But nothing works perfectly the first time around.
@ Mark – not many really made estimates for how many exhausted votes there would be in the ACT, NT or Tas.
Tas voters are a little more used to voting below the line, and didn’t have anyone pushing a ‘just vote 1’ campaign.
Lets wait and see what the exhaustion rate is in the larger states. NSW has nearly twice as many parties as Tas, which significantly increases the odds that none of your 6 parties will be elected, or in the running for the last spot (i.e. exhausted)
Additionally, 3% is potentially much more significant than you think. Virtually all of that is going to come from others, meaning it is up to 20% of the others vote exhausting.
hahaha
“exhaust-ageddon”
As a McKim was ahead of a McCulloch by 139 votes, they may well decide the result by a caber toss.
I’ve just run a section 282 count from the raw data (it went quicker than I expected due to the reduced field). Six year terms will go to Eric Abetz (LIB), Anne Urquhart (ALP), Stephen Parry (LIB), Helen Polley (ALP), Jacqui Lambie (JLN) and Peter Whish-Wilson (Greens). They were elected in that order with Whish-Wilson beating Lisa Singh by 6,825 votes for the last spot.
There were 5,616 ballots that didn’t express a preference for any of the candidates included in the section 282 count and which therefore played no part. A further 7,794 votes exhausted during the count.
Crikey, Dean! That made me look at the last few pages of the distribution table after all. After the elimination of Colbeck and election and distrib of surplus of Bushby (count 353) McKimwas just 41 ahead of McCulloch. Singh had a giant surplus of 4, 2 of which went to McKim, 1 exhausted and the other “lost to fractions” (I’d say lost to rounding down) , and then Bilyk’s surplus gave McKim 234, McCulloch 136, with more exhausted and lost to fractions, so McKim snuck a bit firther ahead and was elected with 81% of a quota. Only 36% of a quota exhausted. I presume Kevin will put all this in a neat table by the evening. So, yeah – close! And how did McKim do us a favour BK, except by being there? – it’s the voters we should thank.
You have a point there Jack A Randa.
Either way, ON didn’t get the seat.
Can an expert in AEC mechanics explain the vote count numbering system in the distribution of preferences in, say, the Tasmanian Senate.
The Count after Count 9 is called Counts 10-12. This the first candidate excluded and they had 4 votes. They had them from the beginning and, indeed, as they were no. 2 in their group these votes must have all be BTL.
I had thought the multiple counts might have referred to bundles of votes held by a candidate – that they had picked up from other distributions. When I was an RO in a similar election there were specific rule about which the order in which one went through the various bundles a candidate had received when on-distirnuting them.
But in this case there is online bundle so why are there three counts 10-12.
“online bundle” = “only one bundle”
@Vernula Publicus – The reason it can take multiple counts to eliminate a candidate is that they can have ballots sitting in their pile at different weights, because they have been received at a reduced weight from the surplus of candidates elected earlier. Ballots at each weighting are distributed separately, starting with the highest weight.
As it turned out, while the candidate eliminated had four votes and had all of them since the primary count, he likely received some fractional votes from surpluses. However because these were received one at a time at less than full weight, each transfer would have been rounded down to zero (all rounding is downwards). So while he received zero additional votes in those surplus distributions (the fractional votes go into the Loss by Fraction at the bottom of the tally), he would have had some additional ballots sitting on his notional pile.
Count 10 would have distributed his four full-weight ballots, while counts 11 and 12 would have distributed the ballots held at a reduced weight. Even though those ballots didn’t amount to votes for the candidate, they are still distributed and can end up counting later in the count if they are transferred simultaneously with another such vote to a single candidate (e.g. two votes received separately at a wight of 0.6 each, both rounded down to zero, but subsequently distributed together for 1.2 votes, rounded down to 1, which comes off the Losses tally).
@Dean Ashely – slaps head realising how foolish he had been. I had completely failed to consider the zero vote bundles. Thanks very much.
The loss due to fraction raises an interesting question in itself. When we did this on paper with an abacus we needed to round – I thought the AEC had managed to buy a computer to do this, in which case they should be able to carry very tiny fractions, so that loss due to fractions should be even more negligible than it is now.
Indeed, now that I have read your explanation more carefully i see that loss due to rounding is more subtle. Namely that the rule seems to round each bundle down rather than the sum of all the bundles. Again that made sense on paper but not for a computer.
The AEC could do that in a jiffy, VP, but the procedure is all laid out in abacus-era legislation.
Senate result seems pretty representative to me. Hopefully the doomsayers will chill out about it now.
meher baba @ #55 Wednesday, July 27, 2016 at 4:44 pm
They can request a recount or go to court seeking a full re-election but I am not sure on what basis as no irregularities have been alleged in the state. If they asked for a recount just on the basis of a 141-vote margin without providing extra evidence I expect that would be refused. I also suspect they had stuff-all on the ground by way of scrutineering and therefore won’t have any evidence to buttress a case.
Jack A Randa (#62) – I can guarantee interminable waffle, but I don’t usually do neat tables 😉 We’ll see.
On the Senate rule changes. I like them on the basis that i CAN now know exactly where my vote goes. Yup, i think the Libs did have other objectives in proposing and crafting the changes but that doesn’t seem to have worked out as they may have planned. Which is a bonus.
scott bales @ #58 Wednesday, July 27, 2016 at 4:59 pm
It may virtually all come from others in other states (we’ll see) but in Tasmania it sure didn’t. 43% of the exhaust in Tasmania came from the Colbeck preferences and the consequent surpluses of Bushby and Bilyk. Of all vote-values expressed for parties other than Labor, Liberal and Green in Tasmania, a mere 6.9% of that value ended up leaving the count. That level of exhaust probably cost One Nation (and nobody else) a seat, but given that they only polled a 2.6% primary and couldn’t convince more voters to put them top-six (mainly because they did sweet stuff-all here apart from drape pictures of Hanson near the odd PPVC) it’s hard to say their non-election is unreasonable.
From my understanding of that pdf LNP did really badly with preference flows.
eg FF preferences usually go straight to the LNP with the old system, this time, count 335-343
FFP -11,074
ALP +3180 (28.7%)
LNP +3166 (28.6%)
ON +1752 (15.8%)
GRN +1080 (9.8%)
I had thought these changes in voting would mean votes would be less likely to swap between right and left parties, but looks like they will be all over the place.
Bug1: there is a lot of all over the place in the flows, but FF is an extreme example because a lot of those are donkey or partial donkey (voter chooses their six parties and donkeys them). FF were first on the ballot, ALP second.
Even without the donkeys, my impression is that people who vote for Family First in Tassie are not actually anywhere near as right-wing as the two appalling and very extreme homophobes FF ran on the Tasmanian ticket. I think many of them are really low-information voters who are voting for the party as a sort of brand they have vaguely heard of that they think has a cool name, and that some of them are just voting for random micros they have heard of.
And yes, bad preference flows to the Coalition off the micros were a feature of my sampling and I did wonder if what I was seeing was real. But when I thought about the Coalition being thumped 57+ to 43- on 2PP in the state, it made more sense. The Liberal campaign was just totally on the nose down here in a way none of the polls spotted. Voters either didn’t like the new economy focus or they didn’t like the fact that the Tasmanian Liberal ticket were way to the right of Tony Abbott.
Oh by the way, I’m trending on Twitter.
Scott – “Additionally, 3% is potentially much more significant than you think. Virtually all of that is going to come from others, meaning it is up to 20% of the others vote exhausting.”
And if those who vote for others have absolutely no preference as between the candidates who’ll be fighting for the last places, what is wrong with that? (Actually I think there’s something a bit wrong with the brains of such people, but one of our fundamental freedoms is the freedom to make silly judgments – and of course to wear the consequences.) You’re shaping up as more of a totalitarian than anyone suspected, mate.
And KB, of course you’re trending on twitter – you’re a minor star!
Just want to take the time to say thanks Mr. Bowe and Mr. Bonham for your sterling analysis through this whole process. It really has been quite the thing.
Re the Libs’ intent in moving the amendments – first, let’s not forget that they had been recommended by the bipartisan JSCEM, and it was the party of the people that changed its mind and got quite hysterical about it, for reasons that I still don’t understand. Secondly, I suspect they knew they might end up with another bunch of minors and indies getting elected, but they were just so fed up with having to negotiate with the previous bunch that they thought a new lot couldn’t be any worse. Time will be the judge on that one.
Good point about the donkey vote, will be interesting to watch FF preferences in other states, under the old system i think 90% of preferences went to LNP, really doesnt look like that will happen now.
Another example, opposite to FF i guess is Sex Party
ASP -9280
ON +2607 (28%) Left->Far Right; How to explain this ?
ALP +1650 (17.8%) Left->Left; Seems reasonable
LNP +1526 (16.4%) Left->Right; Seems reasonable
FF +1084 (11.7%) Left->Right; but donkey
GRN +508 (5.5%) Left->left; Policies would be closest to ASP, least preferences
Well, the end result is pretty terrific, even if the margin isn’t quite.
A fantastic result for Lisa Singh, and it will be interesting to see if it has any effects on future voting behaviour. Will this kind of thing ever be able to escape the Hare-Clark utopia down there and make it to the mainland? Perhaps the major parties will oblige by demoting, I don’t know, Penny Wong or Marise Payne and we’ll find out.
A near miss for the Greens, too. Seems the Tasmanian Greens still have some recovering to do. Hope they get to it before the 2018 state election.
And I also want to echo the appreciation expressed above for Messrs Bonham and Bowe, without whom we would all have been woefully misinformed by electorally illiterate reporters. Looking forward to the remaining five button pushes, and may they all turn out so well! (Well, six, but it’s not as though the ACT will be exciting.)
An odd thought about the details of the calculations – Singh had a surplus of 4 on top of the quota of 26090, so the computer calculated the transfer value of 4/26094 which is 0.0001533 (rounded slightly) and then had to work through the data file looking at the votes sitting to her credit and giving that fraction of each vote to the next-preferred candidate, ending up with 2 (rounded) for McKim, 1 (rounded) which exhausted, and 1 effectively thrown away (total of the others plus the roundings already mentioned). What a lot of flips and flops for such a small result, but how quickly achieved. What useful servants these computer things are. Something of a Vernula Publicus, but someone’s already taken that name.
Meanwhile, the margin in Herbert is down to 35.
http://vtr.aec.gov.au/HouseDivisionPage-20499-165.htm
I like the changes to the Senate voting procedures. No one gets elected unless enough people vote for them. No more ‘preference whispering’, no more candidates selected via dodgy deals done in smoke filled rooms, as Steve Fielding was.
Sure, it’s not perfect. The last seat can still be a contest between the opposite ends of the spectrum, but that’s how it goes. The process might be rather opaque to many voters, but choosing 12 Senators out of 100+ Candidates via preferential voting is never going to be simple.
And granted, no major party ever changes the electoral system unless they think they will come out ahead on the deal, so I’m sure the Liberals, Greens and Xenophons expected to benefit. But that doesn’t mean the change wasn’t for the better. In fact I was a bit puzzled at the ALP’s opposition to the change. I sometimes suspect that maybe they were happy to let the Greens and X’ers run with it and cop the blame from the minors come elction day.
Looking at the other States, I’ve done a rough mental calculation of what fraction of the BTLs are still unapportioned – ie, the number of Unapportioned divided by (total of all individual candidates + Unapportioned). Very roughly, it’s 1/8 for NSW, 1/5 for Vic, 1/3 for Qld and WA, 1/6 for SA – all showing much more progress than a week ago when the Unapp were way higher than the apportioned ones. So I think we can assume that they’re all getting somewhere near the end of the scanning, and a series of button presses is coming up. I think.
[not by dodgy deals and coercion]
Funny when an expert’s case relies on misrepresentation and exaggeration. The deals were in no way dodgy, and it is telling that the experts case is so weak this misrepresentation is necessary, and coercion really?
The good guys of Australian politics won a second Senate seat in Tasmania. This is heartening news for people with progressive views about how our economy and society should be organized.
So how have the Senate changes worked out in other states? Only one button press I know of so far.
Bug1 – not sure on this, but I think in recent times there has been some antagonism between Sex Party and Greens over issue of sex work – some in Greens believing sex work is degrading and supporting the so-called Swedish solution where clients of sex workers get charged, which is opposed strongly by some in Sex Party for a mixture of Libertarian or commercial (entrepreneurial?) reasons (it threatens the livelihood of sex workers). My memory is a bit hazy but I think that was quite a big issue, even though the two parties may appear close on policy in other ways. Sex Party was preferencing Labor ahead of Greens in the booth where I was handing out.
Sometimes people do the right thing for the wrong reasons. The Coalition’s support for the recently instituted pro-voter Senate voting reforms was one of those times.
Is the bottom half of that list the ones who will do a half-term?
If so, Labor will have three Senators competing in the half election.
wewantpaul @ #89 Wednesday, July 27, 2016 at 8:35 pm
Do you have even the slightest conception what “dodgy” actually means? How is it not “dodgy” to deal your supporters’ preferences away to an ideologically opposed party in the hope of gaining an advantage, or to game a system with webs of preference deals between often essentially fake parties with silly names set up to harvest preferences?
And yes, the system was coercive. Voters were coerced into signing their true preferences away through the fear of having their votes declared informal and the punitive task of having to fill out every square to express their opinion. The glorious preferencing freedom that voters have demonstrated when given the choice shows yet again that the preference flows displayed in the old system were all monstrous lies. Anyone who defends it is an accessory to industrial-scale lying about the true will of the voters.
I go further. The old Senate system was a denial of the human right of equal protection under the law for differing political opinions. Anyone who defends it is an accessory to the denial of human rights. A person whose views accorded with their party ticket could vote 1 above the line but a person whose views did not accord with any party ticket was not protected from having their vote declared informal unless they took time to fill out every single square. This was blatant discrimination. It was offensive and wrong.
I am dismayed that here on PB, a place of supposedly enlightened and informed discussion about polling matters, we have even one commentator let alone two trolling today’s fine demonstration of democracy in action against party machines and the way things used to go under preference harvesting, with the same old silly rubbish, still fighting a battle that has been deservedly and hopefully permanently lost. I cannot believe that, with every prediction of the opponents of reform in tatters, you people lack the shame to realise you were totally wrong.
Insulting me for calling the old system what it was is shooting the messenger. Fire away but by acting as a apologist for the defence of human rights you are only shooting yourself in the foot.
“denial of human rights” in the last sentence of course 😉
Looks like Qld may have finally delivered Herbert – one of the election night surprises.
Senate looking good so far – ALP+Greens 8 .. Liars + Lambie 6
Can we stop now please.
bug1 @ #83 Wednesday, July 27, 2016 at 7:07 pm
ASP is Shooters, Fishers and Farmers. Sex Party is ASXP. I think that makes sense of that one.
Kevin Bonham
#95
Hear Hear Kevin! Deliciously articulated.
boerwar @ #94 Wednesday, July 27, 2016 at 9:21 pm
Yes by either the order-of-election method or the Section 282 method. However the Senate might in theory decide to do something else.
I wonder if Labor will just do the same thing to Singh again in three years’ time.