Green with envy

For the sake of completeness, a post on the finalisation of coalition negotiations by Helen Clark’s Labour Government in New Zealand is in order. Last month’s election saw a National Party resurgence at the expense of the minor parties, all but one of whom (the Maori Party) emerged with substantially fewer seats. This gravely complicated Clark’s task of stitching together a majority, since she faced a disparate assortment of minor parties including several who refused to work with each other. Most expected that Labour would reach an accommodation with the Green Party, so that the strengthened position of the National Party would have had the paradoxical effect of shifting the Government to the left. So there was widespread surprise, much of it unpleasant, when Clark unveiled a deal with right-of-centre parties Winston Peters’ New Zealand First and United Future New Zealand which gave the job of Foreign Minister to Peters – a man sometimes described by his harsher critics as “racist and xenophobic”.

All of which has proved very confusing for Australian observers familiar with the certainties of single-member electorates and majority government. The Poll Bludger’s local rag, The West Australian, managed three errors in 18 words this morning when it reported that this “bizarre deal” was “the only way Ms Clarke (sic) could form a minority government after a poor result in last month’s election”. There is little excuse for such befuddlement over the horse-trading that inevitably follows elections held under proportional representation, which is a major feature of democracy throughout mainland Europe. Charles Richardson had some acute observations on the process in today’s Crikey email:

New Zealand has finally got itself a new government, and it’s already clear to see who are the big losers. The Greens, despite strongly supporting Helen Clark’s Labour Party during the campaign, have been left out in the cold, and now say they will abstain on votes of confidence.

This is a real lesson in power politics. Being too close to Labour was the Greens’ undoing: it meant they could be taken for granted. The other minor parties could threaten to support the National Party, and therefore had to be bought off. But the Greens stuck in the Labour camp until it was too late – until Clark had stitched together enough other deals to no longer need them.

In Germany, remember, the Greens at least contemplated going into coalition with the right (the “Jamaican option” – black, green and yellow), although it didn’t work out that way. In New Zealand, they tried to show responsibility by portraying themselves as a reliable partner for Labour. But reliability isn’t always an advantage in politics.

On the other side, ACT, the NZ libertarian party, has the same problem. They succeeded against the odds in retaining a foothold in parliament, but their influence will be negligible. They were unable to influence the new coalition because they were too close to National to join in the bidding war.

Instead, New Zealand risks becoming an international laughing-stock with the protectionist Winston Peters as foreign minister – but outside the cabinet, and reserving the right to ignore collective responsibility. According to The New Zealand Herald, Greens co-leader Rod Donald “predicted it would be a ‘reactionary’ Government and said many of the demands Labour had accepted from NZ First and United Future were ‘socially, economically or environmentally destructive’.”

Mutch ado about something

The Liberal Party’s preselection for the Pittwater by-election has taken an interesting turn with the nomination of former Federal MP Stephen Mutch, who if successful could conjure an interesting election from what ought to be a straightforward Liberal walkover. Mutch threw his hat into the ring last week at a time when the preselection was looking increasingly like a lay down misere for Paul Nicolaou, favoured candidate of the "small-‘l’ liberal" faction known as "The Group" who nonetheless had cross-factional support. Other prominent figures who had been mentioned were progressively falling by the wayside, including Paul Ritchie ("close to the hard right and Christian fundamentalists", according to the Sun Herald), Robert Webster, Jason Falinksi and Adrienne Ryan, more than one of whom said they were withdrawing to give Nicolaou a clean run. Had he been given one, it seems clear the Liberals would have defused the threat of a rival independent getting enough traction to threaten the party’s hold on the seat.

Mutch threatens to make life interesting because he is an identifiable figure of the Right, having lost his Federal seat of Cook in 1998 when a coup by moderates delivered preselection to former Greiner-Fahey Government minister Bruce Baird. This was a major controversy at the time partly because it went against the wishes of the Prime Minister, who is now making it clear that he wants Nicolaou in Pittwater. It would not be hard to sell a Mutch preselection win as both an act of factional revenge and the coup de grace of a power grab that ended the career – and very nearly the life – of the popular former member. Whether this perception is fair or not is neither here nor there.

Community groups and writers of letters to the editor have been vociferous in their demands not only for a locally based candidate, which is predictable enough, but also for an ideological moderate, which is more telling. Saturday’s Manly Daily publicised a call by Harvey Rose and Jim Revitt, present and past holders of the title "Pittwater Citizen of the Year", for the election of an independent candidate in defiance of the "hard Liberal right", who stood "clearly against the widespread view of moderate Liberals throughout Pittwater". Rose said he was considering taking on the job himself. Another candidate who might have been of interest was Patricia Giles, a former Pittwater mayor who told Rebecca Woolley of the Manly Daily she had been approached by Labor with an offer of campaign assistance if she ran as an independent (which was denied by state general secretary Mark Arbib). She will instead run as the endorsed candidate of Fred Nile’s Christian Democratic Party, forestalling any possibility that she might harvest support from those who see the Brogden episode in terms of a takeover of the Liberal Party by the "religious right".

The Manly Daily names four confirmed candidates for Liberal preselection besides Nicolaou and Mutch – Robert Stokes, Stephen Choularton and Julie Hegarty, who were all covered in my earlier post, plus local businessman Mike Musgrave. The Sun Herald reports that the decision will be made by "a conference of 48 members from local branches and 48 from the state executive and the state council", of which the latter groups are often claimed to be under the control of the David Clarke/Opus Dei religious right. As much as the election buff in me wants them to pick Mutch, it will be Nicolaou if they have any sense at all.

UPDATE (19/10/05): Via Crikey, the Manly Daily reports that Pittwater Mayor Alex McTaggart is considering running as an independent.

Lucky numbers

All that time redesigning the site has prevented me making a timely entry into debate over the report of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters. The main headline-grabbers have been voluntary voting and four-year terms, which are respectively dead-on-arrival and likely to land in the too-hard basket due to the need for a referendum (at least on the current Prime Minister’s watch). Of greater significance is recommendation 37, "that compulsory preferential voting above the line be introduced for Senate elections, while retaining the option of compulsory preferential voting below the line". Antony Green has had a fair bit to say on this one:

A stinker of an electoral reform idea … a recipe for an informal rate of 20% or more. Sure you wouldn’t have had to fill in preferences for all 78 candidates below the line on the 2004 NSW Senate ballot paper, but you will have to fill in 29 preferences above the line. Whoopee! … Above all, the Committee’s mindless insistence on refusing to countenance any form of optional preferential voting is breathtaking. In his speech to the Sydney Institute last week, Senator Abetz stated that apart from the first five preferences, and perhaps the last five, voters don’t really care about their preference sequence and probably end up filling in the numbers randomly. If that’s the case, what exactly is the point of making voters fill in all their preferences?

Writing in yesterday’s Crikey email, Charles Richardson broadly agreed but noted that the abolition of preference tickets would mean an end to the use of dummy parties for preference harvesting, thus reducing the number of boxes to be numbered. The estimable Dr Graeme Orr of Griffith University Law School went so far as to dispute Antony’s basic premise, suggesting a requirement to number every box would bring the two houses’ systems into line and reduce "’1′ only" informal voting for the lower house. Antony has responded to both in typically persuasive fashion with another article in Crikey.

Ultimately, this is a disagreement about the second best system – all concerned agree that optional preferential voting for both houses is the best option. It is the only solution to the preference lottery that will not inflate the informal vote, and it will deliver the last two seats in any given Senate race to the candidates who come nearest a quota on the primary vote, as natural justice demands. The Coalition and the Democrats, and hence JSCEM (the committee includes five Liberal, one Democrat and four Labor members), have concluded otherwise. The Greens are not represented on the committee but they evidently concur – Bob Brown introduced a bill to the Senate earlier this year to require that all above-the-line boxes be numbered, with no provision for optional preferential voting.

It is clear why the Liberals and Nationals are not keen on OPV as their votes could no longer be relied upon to reinforce each other through preferences. This would compel them to avoid three-cornered contests in the House and run joint tickets in the Senate, provoking an eruption of turf wars they would prefer to avoid. Presumably the Democrats favour full distribution of preferences as it boosts the prospects of parties who underperform on the primary vote, which is the regrettable position in which they find themselves. The Greens’ wariness about OPV for the Senate (the House is a very different matter) makes less sense, as I argued in April.

An interesting observation was made at Palmer’s Oz Politics by "Sceptic", bearing in mind that anonymous blog comments should be treated with due caution:

The interesting side issue will be the attitude of the party administrations. I don’t think either (Liberal federal director) Brian Loughnane or (ALP national secretary) Tim Gartrell will be too impressed with changes to the ATL Senate voting. More informal votes lead to less public funding for the major parties. It is an open secret that Mr Loughnane leaned on John Howard to junk the option of voluntary voting for this very reason. Imagine if these reforms lead to a financial crisis for the major parties in the future. You would assume that the PM, a loyal party man, would consider this very carefully.

For this and other reasons, my expectation is that the Government will invoke concerns over the informal vote to justify the abandonment of recommendation 37, which will join voluntary voting and four-year terms in the graveyard of major reform proposals resulting from the committee inquiry.

Do as you’re told

Even before the Prime Minister formally scotched the idea, it was clear that Liberal Party advocates for voluntary voting should not have been holding their breath. The implacable opposition of the non-government parties would have required united Coalition support to get it through the Senate, but the Nationals (not to mention many Liberals) are no more keen on the idea than Labor. No doubt the National Party knows its own business, but I am puzzled by their apparent conviction that voluntary voting would damage them. It is true that much of their support comes from rural and small-town areas where incomes are no higher than in urban Labor seats, but it’s also true that voluntary council elections attract far higher turnouts on the National Party’s turf than in the cities. Why would federal elections be any different?

The Australian Election Study has been asking respondents if they would have voted if not compelled to since the survey after 1996 election, providing a one-to-five ranking from "definitely would have voted" (chosen by about 70 per cent of respondents) to "definitely not". Combining results from the four surveys from 1996 to 2004 allows us to cross-tabulate these responses with voting intention for nearly 7000 respondents, including 2976 who voted for the Liberal Party, 2607 for Labor, 333 for the Nationals, 332 for the Democrats and 305 for the Greens. The following table combines responses of "probably would have voted" and "might, might not" into a "maybe" category, and "probably not" and "definitely not" (the latter accounting for only 2.6 per cent in 2004) into "unlikely". The Democrats and Greens vote has also been combined because patterns for the two were very similar.

This makes it clear enough why Labor is united in opposition to voluntary voting, and bolsters Liberals who support it on the basis of realpolitik. But it doesn’t explain why the Nationals are less keen, since their own pattern is no different from the Liberals?. It’s also interesting to note that the Democrats and Greens appear to do well out of reluctant voters. This doesn’t surprise me, since minor parties have traditionally absorbed protest votes from the politically disengaged. However, it runs contrary to Bob Brown’s argument that his support for compulsory voting must be founded purely on principle since his party has "the highest proportion of tertiary-educated voters who are most likely to vote without compulsion". I might have marked that down as self-serving spin, but Antony Green also reckons that "the only party certain to benefit from voluntary voting would be the Greens, who have by far the highest ratio of members to voters of any Australian political party". I hesitate to say that an argument of Antony’s does not persuade me, but I still need to be sold on this one. While it is true that the party has a large activist support base, this does not preclude the possibility that just as many of its voters are alienated and disengaged, and that it receives relatively little support from those who fall in between.

One thing past experience makes clear is that electoral reform is governed by the law of unintended consequences, as demonstrated by the parties’ repeated failures to skew the system in their favour. Malcolm Mackerras notes in Crikey that the last two substantial changes to the system – the expansion of Parliament in 1984 and the introduction of semi-proportional representation to the Senate in 1948 (note the eerie Orwellian inversion of those two dates) – were introduced by Labor governments acting out of perceived self-interest, but they have resulted in fairly regular Senate majorities for the Coalition and none for Labor. By the same token, the conventional wisdom that Labor would suffer under voluntary voting might well be misplaced. Antony Green observes that turnout at this year’s British election was especially low in Labour strongholds, suggesting compulsory voting would have boosted their share of the national vote without having much effect on seat totals. By extension, voluntary voting in Australia could cut margins in safe Labor seats without having a substantial impact in marginals.

There are countless other imponderables, such as the impact it would have on the way parties operate. The need to mobilise voters might even compel Labor to re-engage with the world beyond its internal culture and the attendant bastardry and skulduggery that we’ve been hearing so much about lately.

Poll Bludger Version 2.0

Welcome to the new-look, WordPress-powered Poll Bludger, which comes complete with comments and automatic archiving and sundry other delights that I wrongly thought I woudn’t need when I got the ball rolling. I have ironed out the site’s kinks to the extent that it looks okay on Internet Explorer 6.0, but past experience suggests there might still be problems with other browsers. Any issues that could be brought to my attention would be much appreciated. Comments are open on this post and the one previous, so please drop in and say hi.

Prospective Pittwater preselection participants

The Poll Bludger has been regrettably quiet during the current period of ferment owing to other commitments, one of which has been the overhaul of the site which will be unveiled very shortly. Commentary on proposed electoral reforms will have to wait until I’ve had more time to think about it – the first order of business is the less mentally demanding matter of the Pittwater by-election.

Antony Green led us through the electorate’s convoluted history in Tuesday’s Crikey email:

Pittwater has never seen an orderly handover of MPs at a general election. Bob Askin won Pittwater in 1973 (it had previously been known as Collaroy), but retired and caused a 1975 by-election, when he was succeeded by Bruce Webster. Webster quickly tired of serving in an ineffectual opposition and resigned in mid-1978. The only reason a by-election was not held on this occasion is because after Labor’s victory at the Earlwood by-election, Neville Wran used the vacancy and two others in Cessnock and Wollondilly to call an early election. Max Smith won Pittwater and retired in 1986 causing another by-election. His successor Jim Longley also retired in 1995 after the defeat of the Fahey government and caused the by-election at which Brogden was elected. By-elections have also been the chosen way for MPs to depart the blue blood eastern suburbs seat of Vaucluse. Since 1936, only Keith Doyle in 1978 has retired at a general election. Murray Robson caused a by-election by dying in 1957, and his successor Geoffrey Cox also died causing a by-election in 1964. After Doyle’s resignation, by-elections continued, with Rosemary Foot resigning in 1986, Ray Aston dying in 1988 and Michael Yabsley resigning in 1994. For those interested, current Liberal Leader Peter Debnam won that by-election, having first defeated John Brogden for Liberal pre-selection.

The present Liberal preselection is living up to high expectations, with an enormous field of aspirants emerging against a backdrop of open factional warfare. The Poll Bludger hears talk of senior Liberal wets complaining that 100 new members have suddenly joined the Pittwater branch, although Brad Norington of The Australian reported last Friday that a moderate candidate (Paul Nicolaou) was the front-runner. Factional heavies will want to be careful, since those wronged by flawed preselection processes have a habit of winning as independents and holding their seats for years or decades to come. This danger would appear especially pronounced given local disaffection over the party’s treatment of their popular former member.

Those who have been mentioned as contenders, rightly or wrongly, are as follows:

Paul Nicolaou. A confirmed starter, Nicolaou is chief executive of the Millennium Forum, the NSW Liberal Party’s fundraising arm, and a Greek community bigwig who formerly chaired the Ethnic Communities Council. He contested John Watkins’ electorate of Ryde at the 2003 election and suffered a 9.0 per cent swing. Despite his reputation as a moderate, the Daily Telegraph reported that Nicolaou would have the support of the Right, who are perhaps demonstrating consciousness of the limitations of their power. A nudge from the Prime Minister might have been a factor here – Jonathan Pearlman of the Sydney Morning Herald reported he was keen to see Nicolaou compensated for losing the upper house seat he was promised as a result of factional realignments favouring the Right.

Robert Webster. Webster is a former National Party member and Planning Minister in the Fahey Government who left politics in 1995, but now apparently wants back in with the Liberal Party with a view to assuming the leadership. Andrew Clennell of the Sydney Morning Herald (who the Poll Bludger remembers as a young buck with Perth’s Community Newspaper Group) reported that Webster would not run if Paul Nicolaou did, which it seems he is going to. Jonathan Pearlman of the Sydney Morning Herald reckoned him a potential leadership aspirant if Peter Debnam did not perform well.

Jason Falinski. Much of the early talk centred on Falinski, whose credentials as a member of Brogden’s Left faction include state presidency of the Australian Republican Movement and a background working for John Hewson and Malcolm Turnbull. So it was hard to know what to make of the Daily Telegraph‘s revelation that Falinksi asked party headquarters to transfer his membership to Pittwater a week before Brogden’s leadership implosion. Christian Kerr at Crikey asked: "Have the left in the NSW Liberal Party heeded the Prime Minister’s call and stopped fighting the right – only to turn on each other? Or is this just the latest claim in a ruthless campaign of undermining where the facts all too often are going missing?" Unnamed Liberal MPs quoted in the Daily Telegraph (why do I get the feeling I’ve typed those words before?) said Falinski had "previously been positioning himself to challenge for preselection in Vaucluse, held by new Liberal leader Peter Debnam". That would not seem feasible at present, and he also ruled out nominating for Pittwater.

Adrienne Ryan. Not for the first time, the high-profile Ku-ring-gai councillor and ex-wife of former Police Commissioner Peter Ryan has been spoken of as a potential Liberal candidate. Ryan told the Manly Daily she hadn’t ruled it out, apparently without swearing.

Ross Cameron. Scott Howlett of the Parramatta Advertiser (another Poll Bludger associate from his Perth days) reported last week that the defeated Federal Member for Parramatta might be considering Pittwater as a vehicle for a comeback. However, he is apparently more keen on assuming the ultra-safe Federal seat of Mitchell when Alan Cadman finally retires, and has not been heard of since in relation to the preselection.

Paul Ritchie. Chief executive of employer group Australian Business Ltd and a former senior advisor to Brogden.

Robert Stokes. The Manly Daily reports that Stokes is the favoured candidate of Brogden, for whom he worked as an advisor. He isn’t getting much press though.

Julie Hegarty. The Pittwater councillor told the Manly Daily she had been "approached by many".

Other names tossed around include local police officer Bob Goymour; lawyer David Begg; former Young Liberals federal president Tony Chapell; Crown Insurance Group general manager Jonathan O’Dae; local party member Stephen Choularton; and Michael Darby, arch-conservative son of former Manly MP Douglas Darby. The Manly Daily reports the preselection is likely to be decided on October 29; the by-election itself is most likely some way off, as the Government would want tensions in the Liberal camp to simmer for as long as possible.

Gone to the Brogs

Recent events have amply illustrated that politics is a brutal game, in which practitioners are subjected to relentless acts of bastardry from ambitious rivals, muck-raking journalists and sundry other scumbags and bottom-feeders. Worst of the bunch are the psephologists, who spend their time between elections anticipating the next health crisis or personal breakdown that will bring on an eagerly awaited by-election. So it has been with the protracted demise of former New South Wales Opposition Leader John Brogden, who has today pulled the plug on his political career a month after the dramatic events that ended his leadership. The result will be a by-election in about two months for the leafy northern beaches electorate of Pittwater. Of itself, this is unlikely to be particularly interesting given the 20.1 per cent Liberal margin and the certainty that Labor will not field a candidate. But given the fault lines that Brogden’s fall exposed in the New South Wales Liberal Party, the preselection could be a doozy, and this site will be over it like a rash.

In other news, the Poll Bludger has been hard at work on a redesign through WordPress that will make the site up to 70 per cent less clunky and stupid-looking, as well as furnishing it with a comments facility and other blog-related bells and whistles.

Helen back

The Poll Bludger caught about 45 minutes of the coverage of the New Zealand election on Sky News before casting his mind to the New South Wales by-elections, by which time he had developed an clear picture of a looming National Party victory. This was because the service Sky was using operated on raw early figures from conservative rural and small town booths without comparing them with equivalent booth results from the previous election – a matter simple enough that your humble correspondent managed it quite effectively on this site during today’s by-election count through Microsoft Excel and a lot of cutting and pasting.

The situation looked quite different by the close of play, with Helen Clark being able to deliver what effectively amounted to a victory speech at the end of the evening. The key to the situation was Labour’s ultimate lead over the Nationals of one parliamentary seat and 1.1 per cent, since both New Zealand First and United Future New Zealand had resolved to support whichever party led on these measures. Had the National Party remained ahead, their support of these parties along with ideological fellow travellers ACT New Zealand would have produced 62 seats compared with the opposing bloc’s 60. The other close shave, the Green Party’s narrow surplus over 5 per cent, was less consequential – a Labour-dominated coalition could have been constructed even if they had been wiped out, so long as Labour remained ahead of the Nationals. As it stands, there seems little chance that there will be a significant change in the current results, with the National Party looking more likely to drop an existing seat than Labour.

Labour (40.7 per cent, 50 seats): Although down two seats on 2002, Labor look set to finish one all-important seat ahead of the Nationals. The way the votes are currently stacked means there is more prospect of the Nationals losing a seat in late counting than Labour. Since both New Zealand First and United Future New Zealand have stated they will fall in behind the party that wins the most seats, Helen Clark will be able to stitch together a precarious multi-party government.

National (39.6 per cent, 49 seats): As agonising as it must have been to have watched their early lead slowly disappear, the outstanding feature of this election has been the recovery of the National Party under Don Brash. The party’s vote rocketed to 39.6 per cent from a mere 21.1 per cent in 2002, with their representation up from 27 seats to 49.

New Zealand First (5.8 per cent, 7 seats): Winston Peters looks like he will narrowly lose the seat of Tauranga which he has held since 1984 (initially for the National Party), but the party’s success in breaking the 5 per cent barrier gives him a list seat to fall back on. The party has nevertheless dropped six seats from its 2002 performance, although realistically any minor party can feel relieved if it reaches the 5 per cent threshold.

Green Party (5.1 per cent, 6 seats): The Greens have cut it very fine indeed but they do not look in danger of falling below the 5 per cent threshold, going on the precedent of 2002 when they polled 12.0 per cent of postal, pre-poll and absentees votes compared with 6.5 per cent of normal votes.

Maori Party (2.0 per cent, 4 seats): The new parliament will enjoy its first ever overhang due to the near-exclusivity of this party’s support among those who vote in the seven Maori electorates, of which it won four – leader Tariana Turia easily retained Te Tai Hauauru and three colleagues also enjoyed comfortable victories. The remaining three remain with Labor. The Maori Party’s party vote would only warrant two seats, which is why the new parliament will have 122 rather than the usual 120, with 62 required for a majority rather than the usual 61. New Zealand tabloids are no doubt calculating the cost to the taxpayer even as we speak, and this is unlikely to be the only query raised over MMP in the election’s aftermath.

United Future New Zealand (2.7 per cent, 3 seats): Party leader Peter Dunne easily retained the seat of Ohariu-Belmont which he has held since 1984 (initially for the Labour Party) with 46.8 per cent of the vote against Labour’s 24.3 per cent and the Nationals’ 20.0 per cent. This meant his party was able to hold three of the nine seats it won in 2002 despite plunging well below the threshold, from 6.8 per cent to 2.7 per cent.

ACT New Zealand (1.5 per cent, 2 seats): This party looked gone for all money just one fortnight ago, but Rodney Hide has scored his first ever victory as an electorate MP and will get a bonus list seat for his trouble. This means that every minor party that won seats in 2002 has survived, though each has also lost seats. Hide scored 44.1 per cent against 33.6 per cent for National incumbent Richard Worth, who will remain in parliament through a list seat.

Jim Anderton’s Progressive (1.2 per cent, 1 seats): The Poll Bludger had earlier suggested that a Jim Anderton victory in his electorate of Wigram was not a foregone conclusion. This was not one of my better calls – Anderton in fact increased his vote from 36.0 per cent to 48.5 per cent. However, the party vote for his Progressive Coalition was down from 1.7 per cent of 1.5 per cent, costing it its bonus list seat.

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