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).
Albo announced he was taking leave in his PC in Tasmania yesterday when he was in Hobart. He said he was going on the walking tracks and was glad that where he was going they had no phone coverage. Marles has taken over.
steve davis
I have no confidence in Marles. How did he get the gig of Deputy?
Someone wrote months ago that Marles is a nice bloke who really cares. Nice doesn’t always cut through in politics, unfortunately.
The van driver is not connected to the northern beaches cluster.
I gather that means they dont have the index case yet.
Covidlive.com.au shows 16 new cases in NSW, all but one community transmission. I understand that these numbers are as at 8:00 PM last night.
https://covidlive.com.au/nsw
So it would appear that there are another 10 (or 12?) cases that have been identified since then, which will be included in tomorrow’s numbers.
On a side note: The first episode of the new version of The Stand has started.
Chant confirming that a person from the Avalon RSL cluster was contacted in Queensland by contact tracers, and told to come back in NSW. They had flown up to Queensland, but drove back, and received the positive test result during the drive back.
Authorities are now contact tracing those on the plane.
Scotty will be undone by the Virus.
Thanks to NSW.
Glady will go with him.
Marles once had a show on Murdoch TV with Christopher Pyne. Say no more.
Labor needs a leadership which is strong in politics the main reason why people in their electorate voted for Labor members
The current Labor leadership is more in self-interest than representing their electorates
I heard part of interview Brad Hazzard did on 2gb this morning. He is not concerned with the latest outbreak. Very confident that it will be managed and controlled quite easily.
Who is the female (young blonde) journo constantly referring to her phone?
Zero
Morrison will just blame her like everyone else. Nothing to do with me he will say .Thats why he is letting the state leaders make all the decisions so he has a get out clause. He’s just a Teflon coated tit.
NSW just copied WA by putting flight crews in quarantine hotels. It’s only took them 5 months.
Gladys has confirmed Daniel Andrews will take all further questions on the Northern Beaches cluster.
Lizzie
They really need to get their act together on masks
poroti @ #89 Friday, December 18th, 2020 – 9:56 am
Indeed. If only it was for the people of NSW and not for her own political future!
Still, one step at a time, I guess.
[‘Sydney COVID cluster grows to 28, including a person who tested positive in Queensland’]
If my math is correct, that’s a four-fold increase since last night.
NSW wide risk. Risk of unknown people starting new chains of transmission
Sarcasm off, its pretty clear that the Gold Standard NSW Health do NOT have this Sydney cluster under control. It could have spread to a plane load of people. Borders to NSW should be closed immediately by all adjacent states.
I never did like travelling for Christmas anyway.
Dr Chant
“Please take this seriously all across NSW.”
Gladys/Hazzard
“We’re diamond standard. Just relax, everyone.”
Lizzie
Yes in a nutshell.
It’s all that fucking Dan Andrews fault.
mercurial gold standard tarnishing
Morrison’s big failure.
Uniform rules for quarantine across the country.
The media will not tell you this of course.
Michael Pasco explores what the government isn’t telling us. He says that tucked away in the fine print of Thursday’s MYEFO statement was $1855.3 million worth of reduced revenue over four years for “decisions taken but not yet announced”.
—————————–
From BK morning news.
This comment could be taken one of several ways.
1) The government is laying the ground work for an election
2) Josh Frydenberg still can’t use his calculator
3) The government is being prudent by allowing for there being no successful vaccine and continued virus outbreaks
4) Future policies to be released
People are apparently rushing to fly out of Sydney before borders close. Fares have now gone up, of course.
If they don’t have the chain of transmission sorted, and it at least extends from Sydney airport to the northern beaches, why have they only declared the northern beaches a hotpsot? It could be all over Sydney, via the case that went to Qld back through the airport, among others.
C@t
More a butt plug..
Superior NSW QR code bunk
”Just got a train from a crowded Town Hall station. Hardly anyone was masked…”
Things have been nearly normal here for a while now, at least for those who don’t travel much and don’t go to big crowded events. You need to sign in to restaurants, clubs and pubs (normally via QR code). This is being enforced. I’ve also seen QR codes popping up in other places like supermarkets, but they’re mostly ignored. Mask-wearing has mostly gone out of fashion but I think that it’s about to make a comeback.
Cud
I can never unthink that image association now. Please post carefully!
steve davis @ #146 Friday, December 18th, 2020 – 11:22 am
Three Capes walk….
guytaur @ #171 Friday, December 18th, 2020 – 11:50 am
Neither will Labor.
Unless they are sure of finding source asap, I am not sure why GladysB and Hazzard are so confident.
… in the fine print of Thursday’s MYEFO statement was $1855.3 million worth of reduced revenue over four years for “decisions taken but not yet announced”.
Pre-election tax cuts?
Steve777
Masks should be mandated immediately
Victoriasays:
Friday, December 18, 2020 at 11:55 am
Unless they are sure of finding source asap, I am not sure why GladysB and Hazzard are so confident.
*********************************************
They could KNOW who the source is but releasing who it is could be uncomfortable…
When Saint Scotty of the Marketing runs away…I mean, goes on holiday, are we going to be bombarded with those horrible posed images of him doing all the Scotty things we have come to dread and detest?
Alpha zero
Doesnt explain why Dr Chant is not confident though
The wording from NSW Health’s official news release…
First of all, what do they mean by “recent clusters”? Are they going back to late Oct/early Nov?
Secondly what is their genomics telling them about the relationship between the virus found in the van driver, versus the NB cluster? It doesn’t really answer that question. I’d have thought by now they’d have genomics for him and the cleaner and could confirm or rule out that the NB cluster is genomically connected to the one of those two cases.
Attempts to escape unnoticed didn’t work!
‘steve davis says:
Friday, December 18, 2020 at 11:47 am
It’s all that fucking Dan Andrews fault.’
Nice try at deflecting from Albanese, but no potato.
Albanese has the secret power to stop the Federal and New South Wales governments from doing what they want and so Albanese is fully accountable for everything that happens.
Trump remains silent as massive cyber hack poses ‘grave risk’ to government
(CNN)When President Donald Trump convened his Cabinet at the White House Wednesday as Washington absorbed news of a massive data breach, the heads of most agencies relevant to the intrusion — including the Department of Defense, the State Department, the Justice Department, the director of national intelligence and the Central Intelligence Agency — were absent.
After the meeting, Trump said nothing about the attack, which went undetected by his administration’s intelligence agencies for months. As those agencies now mobilize to assess the damage — which the government said Thursday could be more widespread than initially thought, posing a “grave risk to the federal government” — the President himself remains silent on the matter, preoccupied instead with his election loss and his invented claims of widespread voter fraud.
The massive data breach, revealed in the final weeks of Trump’s administration, amounts to a dramatic coda for a presidency clouded by questions of deference to Russia and unsuccessful attempts to warm relations with its President, Vladimir Putin. Just as he has largely ignored the latest surge in coronavirus cases, Trump appears to have all but abdicated responsibility in his final weeks in office.
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/12/17/politics/trump-silence-cyber-hack/index.html
Victoria
Can you point me to the official source that confirms this?
Premier Berejiklian says one airline was found a few weeks ago to have breached its own guidelines when its crews were allowed to attend venues around Sydney. None of those venues were on the northern breaches.
She said it was difficult to punish those crews, given many weren’t Australian and were travelling in and out of the country.
“In any given time there are…several hundred travelling in and out on any given day.”
lizzie
That stopping cars randomly at the border isn’t going to be effective. I can well imagine a group of NB residents deciding not to fly and instead driving.
Taz
It might be difficult to punish them, but it would be a lot easier if they all stayed at the same quarantine hotel and were under police escort at all times. Gladys has questions to answer on this.
Socrates you can guess what I think of London’s Gherkin 🙂