This post delves into wonkish matters arising from last week’s report by the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters into last year’s federal election, and can thus be seen as a sequel to my earlier post on that subject. That post has a stimulating comments thread that I would like to see continue if anyone has anything to contribute specifically concerning the matters covered in this post. However, the comments thread below this post will serve as the usual open thread for general political discussion, it being past time for a new one.
On with the show. Among the more surprising recommendations of last week’s JSCEM report was the introduction of optional preferential voting. Whereas committee recommendations very often die on the vine, the chances of something becoming of this one shortened last week when both One Nation and the Centre Alliance indicated it would have their support, potentially giving it the numbers in the Senate over the opposition of Labor and the Greens. This prompted me to dig into data from last year’s state election in New South Wales, which offers the most proximate and generally useful pointer to how such a reform would play out at a federal election.
The New South Wales Electoral Commission is the only electoral authority that conducts full data entry of lower house ballot papers and publishes all the data, something the AEC only does for the Senate. The broader utility of this has been limited by the fact of New South Wales’ peculiarity of optional preferential voting, but as noted, there is a chance that may shortly change. I have aggregated this data to determine how each party and candidate’s preferences flowed between the Coalition and Labor, which no one else had done so far as I could see.
For those with a professional interest, this spreadsheet lays it all out seat by seat and party by party — for the lay person, the following table should suffice. It shows the aggregated statewide results from the state election, inclusive of the rate of exhaustion (i.e. voters who availed themselves of optional preferential’s opportunity to number neither Coalition nor Labor boxes), and the equivalent results from New South Wales from the federal election.
The reform’s attraction to the Coalition lies in the 40.0% exhaustion rate for the Greens vote, which split 82.2-17.8 in Labor’s favour federally. That alone would have sliced nearly 1% from Labor’s two-party preferred vote. However, the high exhaustion rate among all other minor parties, whose preferences in aggregate tend to favour the Coalition over Labor (think Hanson, Palmer and the religious parties) would have pared that back by around 0.3%. Such a change would probably have made a decisive difference in Macquarie (which Labor held by 0.2%) and Lilley (0.6%, and with an above-par Greens primary vote of 14.0%), and made life still more uncomfortable in Cowan (0.8%) and Eden-Monaro (0.8%, followed by 0.4% at the by-election).
With testing the metric that WHO prefers is number of positives per number of tests, with a benchmark of 2%. For most of the pandemic all Australian jurisdictions have been picking up about 1:1,000 to 1:10,000 or 0.1 – 0.01%
Doesn’t mean more test can’t be done but lets say there are 1,000 asymptomatic cases in NSW (this is highly unlikely) and the gross population is 8M. The sensitivity of PCR tests in asymptomatic cases is no more than 66%. Therefore, with random testing, even with 1,000 cases in the community you need to do more than 10,000 tests to pick up 1 extra case.
For the tedious bores and partisans I would’ve thought that of most significance in WB’s analysis is that given the chance, the majority of minor party PV voters take the opportunity to not vote for either of the major parties at all. Greens voters slightly more inclined than not to give either of the majors a preference.
Seems pretty clear how moribund many voters feel the LNP and ALP are.
Just look at Vic where both the ALP and LNP have been shown to be corrupted by branch stacking by factions probably acting on behalf of vested interests and donors from industries such as fossil fuels. They have effectively excluded their own members from participation in policy and voting for their own party office holders, candidates and MP’s.
What fool would look to either of these parties as currently constituted and failing so miserably in the nation, people and planet’s interest, and think they’re worth any time or money to be a part of.
Reading PB only reinforces what a waste of time Labor is for the most part.
Seems to speak to how moribund auspol generally is that the discussion is more about manipulating the election processes to try and favour one of the moribund parties winning, even winning on less than a majority of actual electorate votes if required. Than to discuss and aim for a system that more clearly reflects the actual votes and wishes of the voters by having a more representative and fairer system.
I congratulate those of Murdoch’s conscious and unconscious minions who, when confronted with a gold standard public health disaster for Morrison, Berejiklian and the NSW Coalition Government, talk about Andrews and the Victorian Labor Government instead.
This makes profound electoral sense. Well done!
Let’s hope that Labor and the Greens learn this basic lesson in agenda setting and agenda framing.
Don’t lead with the NSW disaster Berejiklian/Morrison chin.
Lead the punches direct to the Andrews chin.
Which reminds me.
What has Albanese done about the NSW disaster?
Isn’t this a roof top for him to shout from like that Liberal Victorian chappie?
I bet Albo’s done nothing, as usual.
boerwar
Ferguson?
And the pushback against Fitzgibbon is due to his deliberately and explicitly inviting leadershit in all over again (as he has done under 3 Labor leaders now).
(it’s possible I’m mixing up which politician said what :-P).
boerwar @ #100 Friday, December 18th, 2020 – 9:16 am
In Queensland Labor has in fact been doing this. Albo has been here along with Labor people from interstate. Plus our local Labor feds spreding themselves across the state.
The bloated oaf is at it again –
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/dec/18/clive-palmer-could-seek-unquantifiable-commonwealth-compensation-under-singapore-free-trade-deal
Hey Albo – Want to win the year? I have 2 words that will win just about every single seat in the big cities and most rural seats…
Regional Quarantine.
Announce that the feds should be doing their quarantine role and that if the ALP were in power that they would immediately build Howard Springs type facilities with open air for returning travelers in locations away from the major CBDs. This would have construction wins, bring more people home and minimize the risks…
Good Morning
Things are not looking good for Sydney today.
11:00 am we will find out how bad.
It was good to see that Palasczcuk got praise from a Sydney resident for acting in direct contradiction to the LNP politicians on ABC News 24.
Quoll
If you mean to say that we could investigate such things as proportional representation, multi member electorates, etc. then I’d agree with you. OPV on the other hand is a step towards FPTP, though I think it’s probably the lesser of two evils when compared to the alternative attempt at simplification that is GVT.
Quoll
I carefully put the options about the implications of William’s post rather than coming down on any one side.
But, why so sad? Let’s be positive and forward looking.
Crucially, how many regional electorates will the Greens pick up in the next Federal and next Queensland state elections?
The regional seats are like the key state in the electoral college in the US elections because regional seats decide the Federal and Queensland governments.
Liberals and Nationals in power = they do what they want.
Labor out of power = they can’t do anything.
Greens out of power = they can’t do anything.
ALBO is on leave in Tasmania.
BW
Exactly why Labor needs to cooperate with the Greens ACT style.
Now that fossil fuels are a stranded asset Labor can get ahead of the LNP talking about new jobs with renewables.
Green Hydrogen even wedges the LNP.
Dr Swan
Christmas will be a real problem. I would expect a long tail.
Lizzie I think Bruce Guthrie now writes for THE NEW DAILY which is free
guytaur
You seem to believe in the ACT “gold standard” of cooperation between political parties. Canberra does not represent the whole of Australia.
You wouldn’t know whether Albo is on leave or not.
For that matter, I can’t tell the difference between ScoMo being on the job or leave either :-P.
billie
I know. Bless him. I always read The New Daily and have happily subscribed to the SatPaper, which is gathering a strong team of writers. Unfortunately, we no longer have a decent source of Victorian news.
‘ajm says:
Friday, December 18, 2020 at 10:25 am
boerwar @ #100 Friday, December 18th, 2020 – 9:16 am
Instead of embracing Ferguson’s suggestion that Labor politicians should visit rural and regional workplaces
In Queensland Labor has in fact been doing this. Albo has been here along with Labor people from interstate. Plus our local Labor feds spreding themselves across the state.’
I am delighted to hear that Labor politicians are visiting rural and regional electorates because Labor is in desperate electoral need of the ability to see issues from a rural and regional viewpoint rather than from an inner urban Left viewpoint. IMO, that understanding is the key to future government. The Coalition gets this. To date the only person on the Labor side who seems to get it is Ferguson and he gets caned for it every single time. The Left should think carefully why Ferguson is the only Labor politician who frightens the Coalition in rural and regional seats.
What puzzles me, in terms of ensuring electoral success, is why the Left did not publicly boast about Labor politicians visiting rural and regional electorates instead of excoriating Ferguson for making the very suggestion.
The politics of self-indulgence? The pleasure of venting in the face of the pain of being powerless and pointless? Some deep-seated political kamikaze instinct?
DisplayName
You’re right on both counts.
Lizzie
What do you have against cooperation while staying competing independent political parties?
It is the gold standard and while other jurisdictions have fossil fuel and a just transition that does not leave workers behind to work out Labor is going to have to deal with that anyway.
boerwar @ #71 Friday, December 18th, 2020 – 9:37 am
It’s not as binary as you present it.
Being ‘tough’, ‘hard’ incisive’ whatever doesn’t necessarily mean shouting and ranting, indeed that would be counterproductive.
Speak softly and carry a big stick.
Abbott rarely ranted and shouted.
He just never shut up.
Kronomex
One of the IED’s embedded in most of these ‘free’ trade agreements is that they enable this sort of litigation.
The costs to Australia in terms of constrains on socially-useful legislation and regulation are, IMO, already significant.
The costs to Australia in terms of litigation are also enormous.
In touting the Agreements, the blowhards promised all sorts of benefits.
I daily expect a full and systematic public accounting of the real-world disbenefits by Morrison, Frydenberg and Birmingham.
I’m betting on Gladys wearing her blue uniform or navy today for her presser.
It won’t be a multi-coloured outfit, that will be for a good news day. The red coloured one will not be used until this is well and truly over.
Remember than Dan code:
Are you all ready to go?
KayJay, I don’t see your usual chirpy comments this morning. TIAs can be confusing, frustrating and alarming. If perhaps you are reading but unable to post, you have my best wishes for a speedy return to normality. Best of luck to you.
So Alpha Zero
With 3000 + coming through Sydney each week and quarantining for 2 weeks and with about 2% becoming sick
The commonwealth just needs to build an isolated 7,000 bed facility with modern quarantine facilities (will we go for -ve pressure rooms?) and an associated 150 bed infectious diseases hospital that can handle intubated patients until air transferred (very risky). We must also build accommodation for 15-20,000 clinical, security and other staff who agree to live in a country location.
Morrison has obviously failed in his duties.
boerwar:
Friday, December 18, 2020 at 9:37 am
[‘But I have yet to see, beyond repeated assertions of the mantra, that shouting and ranting is, electorally, the way to go.’]
I’m not advocating that Labor should, as you put it, shout & rant. Far from it. There are a plethora of issues going to mismanagement, incompetence, prima facie corruption that Labor could aggressively prosecute but it really hasn’t laid a glove on the teflon-coated Morrison Government. Yes, there’s a pandemic to deal with, Albanese being obliged to take a nuanced approach but at some stage, Labor has to demonstrate to the electorate that it’s a viable alternative government. Let’s hope the New Year will bring with it more vim & vigour on Labor’s part. As for Albanes’s leadership, there is no doubt internal dissent, not by any means solely the result of media beat-ups. The fact that Fitzgibbon was given free rein to speak out, coupled with no senior Labor figure publicly defending Albanese’s leadership leads to a reasonable conclusion that he’s in trouble. Finally, you mentioned Abbott. He was an extremely effective LOTO, giving the impression that Labor was all at sea. One such example, MPI’s. Labor had one on the last sitting day but it went down like a lead balloon.
steve davis @ #108 Friday, December 18th, 2020 – 10:39 am
I’m going Albo spotting.
‘DisplayName says:
Friday, December 18, 2020 at 10:23 am
boerwar
Ferguson?
And the pushback against Fitzgibbon is due to his deliberately and explicitly inviting leadershit in all over again (as he has done under 3 Labor leaders now).
(it’s possible I’m mixing up which politician said what :-P).’
Any Labor leader who fails to carry the regional electorates is, by definition, a failure. Ferguson gets it. At the moment, the Left in both Labor and the Greens do not.
Ferguson’s great political gift to the Labor is to force it to confront this core strategic electoral issue.
Why am I not surprised.
https://theintercept.com/2020/12/17/chelsea-manning-terrorism-defense-department/
Guardian:
Growing alarm as US government investigates extent of hacking campaign
Kari Paul reports:
US authorities on Thursday expressed increased alarm about a large and sophisticated hacking campaign affecting government networks.
The cybersecurity unit of the Department of Homeland Security warned that the hack “poses a grave risk to the federal government and state, local, tribal and territorial governments as well as critical infrastructure entities and other private sector organizations”.
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (Cisa) also warned that it will be difficult to remove the malware inserted through network software. “Removing this threat actor from compromised environments will be highly complex and challenging for organizations,” the agency said in the statement.
Thursday’s comments were the most detailed yet from the agency since reports of the hack emerged over the weekend. The US government on Wednesday confirmed that an operation by elite hackers, suspected to be Russian, affected its networks and said the attack was “significant and ongoing”.
“This is a developing situation, and while we continue to work to understand the full extent of this campaign, we know this compromise has affected networks within the federal government,” said a joint statement issued by the FBI, Cisa, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (Odna).
Agencies contributed reporting.
‘Oakeshott country says:
Friday, December 18, 2020 at 10:51 am
Morrison has obviously failed in his duties.’
+1
Morrison will soon learn that it is dangerous to take your holidays while the shit is hitting the fan at work.
Late Riser
I assumed that if KayJay went to hospital he would stay in overnight for tests.
My Ken had frequent TIAs and once it was established that they were not directly stroke-related, he was later given mild epilepsy medication. I can’t remember how much that helped, but he became very accustomed to them and ignored them.
Zerlo
Multiple levels of system failure in US governance arrangements, IMO.
It is a massive hack with significant political, economic and militarily strategic consequences.
During the week since the hack, as the consequences – only some publicly acknowledged – have become clear the POTUS has been busy tweeting narcissistically about how he wuz robbed.
And this is before we get to the US Covid death toll.
Microsoft was breached in the massive hacking campaign disclosed by U.S. officials this week, according to people familiar with the matter, adding a top technology target to a growing list of vital government agencies.
The Redmond, Washington, company used the widely deployed networking management software from SolarWinds Corp, which was used in the suspected Russian attacks on U.S. agencies and others. It also had its own products leveraged to further the attacks on others, the people said.
Reuters could not immediately determine how many Microsoft users were affected by the tainted products. The Department of Homeland Security, which said earlier Thursday that the hackers used multiple methods of entry, is continuing to investigate.
BW
The Greens do get the regional thing.
What has happened is the Murdoch LNP propaganda has been accepted by Labor.
Thus Just Transition was used by Morrison to mean job cuts using Adani to say so.
Now chickens are coming home to roost.
Coal is stranded at ports in China and you get articles like this
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/dec/17/australias-newest-coal-fired-power-plant-deemed-worthless-by-japanese-owner
Labor has to have a broad church. It needs both the regions and the inner cities. Labor cannot afford to lose the votes it has. It cannot afford to lose city votes chasing the votes of the right.
Mavis
I think we can safely agree that Labor can do lots of useful things right now to improve its electoral outcomes in the next election.
One of the keys would be to listen to useful advice.
Another key would be to ignore a significant amount of hostile, denigrating and snarking ‘advice’ from urgers who are basically hostile to Labor.
So only another 10 cases – 28 in total.
Noted that one has since travelled to Queensland.
Oakshott,
It is a tricky problem to solve but there are options:
University campus, Ski Resorts, Military facilities, Former mine FIFO sites, school camps. Heck we will have huge swabs of commerical real estate – think outside the box.
Howards Springs is on the border of suburbia in Darwin, it obviously doesn’t need to be too far removed from the city.
The main problem is that the Morrison Government wants nothing to do with anything, so they can’t be pinned. Albo should be pointing this out and being proactive.
Open air environments make a huge difference…
28 cases in NSW now.
15 community transmissions
Gladys speaks too fast, almost a gabble. Not easy to sort out what she’s really saying (for me, anyway).
lizzie
My assumption too. I’m hoping KJ is in Read-Only mode.
Kirky
I know stuff-all about how the stats reflect reality but I would have thought that 10 after 19 seems like a really good outcome.
The quarantine failures bring to the forefront the risk management policy considerations implicit in the notion that, with respect to vaccinations, ‘Australia can afford to wait.’
Good sign that America has been identified as the likely source.
Not enough money in NSW Health is what i hear, they need more money and resources.
Fulvio Sammut @ #133 Friday, December 18th, 2020 – 9:58 am
Sorry. I can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic. If you are then I have to agree. A year ago I thought he could not possibly recover from his Hawaiian holiday snaps.
Swedish King says that Covid response ‘failed’ with more than 7800 dead.
But dopes like Adam Creighton are still praising this strategy.
Sorry. I can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic. If you are then I have to agree. A year ago I thought he could not possibly recover from his Hawaiian holiday snaps.
Scott was saved by the Virus.