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Anyone who thinks electoral reform is great way to improve Canada should take a moment to digest the results of Australia’s latest government train wreck.
A national election was held Saturday but the results remain unknown, and aren’t expected before Tuesday. Counting ended with a virtual deadlock and the possibility of a hung Parliament. As Reuters reported Sunday: “Australia’s political parties began horsetrading on Sunday to break an anticipated parliamentary deadlock after a dramatic election failed to produce a clear winner, raising the prospect of prolonged political and economic instability.”
Horse-trading is what you get from systems like Australia’s, which contains many of the elements of the “preferential ballot” system favoured by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his Liberals. It wouldn’t be fair to suggest Canada is heading towards a system exactly like Australia’s, because there are so many variations on the model that seldom are any two exactly alike, but it contains many elements common to the type. For the record, Australia uses “a majority-preferential instant-runoff voting in single-member seats” for their equivalent of the House of Commons, and a “single-transferable proportional voting” for the Senate. Yes, they have an elected Senate. Seizing it from the hands of a small group of recalcitrant zealots was a key reason the election was called.
Before we get to comparisons with Canada, let’s recap Australia’s recent leadership history. Kevin Rudd, leader of the Labor party, became Prime Minister in 2007. He was ousted by his deputy, Julia Gillard, in 2010, who was in turn ousted by Rudd three years later. Fed up with Labor’s shenanigans, Australians dumped Rudd three months after his return and replaced him with a Liberal coalition under Tony Abbott. One peculiarity of Australian politics is that “Liberal” means “Conservative.” When Abbott proved too Conservative — and outright goofy at times —his party dumped him for Malcolm Turnbull, a former chairman of Goldman Sachs Australia, who was seen as a safe pair of hands.
Turnbull called Saturday’s vote because he felt his agenda was being blocked by the Senate. Usually, Australians vote separately for the Senate and the lower house, but Turnbull gambled on taking both to the polls at the same time. He evidently lost the bet: his solid majority disappeared and, as of Monday, the two major parties were in a virtual tie. If Labor emerges on top, Australians could have their sixth prime minister in six years.
So much for the stability of ranked voting systems. Australians are required to vote by law, a feature Trudeau’s Liberals are considering. Its employs a ranked ballot, which Trudeau is also said to favour. Australians mark their preferences in order: voters mark a “1” beside their top pick, a “2” beside their second favourite, and so on through the list of candidates. If no candidate gets a majority on the first go-round, the bottom candidate is dropped and the votes re-allocated until someone tops 50%. So the candidate in second place (or even third) could win if he/she has more support from the bottom of the list. Confusing as it sounds, Canada’s Liberals like the idea because they figure they’ll usually be picked #2 by NDP supporters, making it easy to regularly beat both the NDP and Conservatives.
Supporters claim this gives a more fair allocation of seats than Canada’s existing first-past-the-post system. They don’t like to get into the long list of liabilities, like, for instance, six prime ministers in six years. Australian parties oust a lot of leaders because they feel threatened every time popular opinion takes a turn. They also have to contend with numerous small, special-interest parties that carry outsized clout because they can swing the balance of power in the coalition governments that are common under the Liberal-favoured system.
Any candidate with a strong local power base can form a vanity party and hope to win enough seats to hold the government to ransom. In Australia there’s the Nick Xenophon Team, the Jacqui Lambie Network, the Palmer United Party of mining magnate Nick Palmer, the father-son Katter’s Australian Party of Bob and Rob Katter and — elected Saturday after a 20-year-absence — the radical anti-immigrant organization around Pauline Hanson, who has demanded a Royal Commission on Islam as her price for co-operation.
Sometimes the tiny parties team up to form a block of mini-interests. For three years, Xenophon, the Greens and the Family First Party were able to claim the balance of power in the Senate. A new arrival Saturday was 72-year-old Derryn Hinch, a former broadcaster and reformed hellraiser known as “The Human headline”, who says he’s never voted before but won a Senate seat for his Derryn Hinch Justice Party on the first try. Hinch, who believes he’s the only Australian senator to have a liver transplant, champions a registry to collect and publicize information on sex offenders.
While either Turnbull or Labor boss Bill Shorten may emerge as prime minister, they will need to trade favours and make deals to cement their position, enabling small special interests to overwhelm the intentions of the vast majority of voters and obtain preferred treatment for their cause.
If that sounds like a better way to run a country than the relative certainty that comes with Canada’s first-past-the-post system, by all means lend your support to the Liberal reform campaign. Turnbull had hoped for a mandate to confront a struggling economy that has suffered from a commodity collapse in mining much as Canada has felt the effects of the oil-price plunge. It’s unlikely the new government will have time for that now. Whoever wins will be too busy taking demands from the likes of The Human Headline. If that’s not a recipe for good government, what is?
This article was featured in the National Post.
Alastair
A national election was held Saturday but the results remain unknown, and aren’t expected before Tuesday. Counting ended with a virtual deadlock and the possibility of a hung Parliament. As Reuters reported Sunday: “Australia’s political parties began horsetrading on Sunday to break an anticipated parliamentary deadlock after a dramatic election failed to produce a clear winner, raising the prospect of prolonged political and economic instability.”
Horse-trading is what you get from systems like Australia’s, which contains many of the elements of the “preferential ballot” system favoured by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his Liberals. It wouldn’t be fair to suggest Canada is heading towards a system exactly like Australia’s, because there are so many variations on the model that seldom are any two exactly alike, but it contains many elements common to the type. For the record, Australia uses “a majority-preferential instant-runoff voting in single-member seats” for their equivalent of the House of Commons, and a “single-transferable proportional voting” for the Senate. Yes, they have an elected Senate. Seizing it from the hands of a small group of recalcitrant zealots was a key reason the election was called.
Before we get to comparisons with Canada, let’s recap Australia’s recent leadership history. Kevin Rudd, leader of the Labor party, became Prime Minister in 2007. He was ousted by his deputy, Julia Gillard, in 2010, who was in turn ousted by Rudd three years later. Fed up with Labor’s shenanigans, Australians dumped Rudd three months after his return and replaced him with a Liberal coalition under Tony Abbott. One peculiarity of Australian politics is that “Liberal” means “Conservative.” When Abbott proved too Conservative — and outright goofy at times —his party dumped him for Malcolm Turnbull, a former chairman of Goldman Sachs Australia, who was seen as a safe pair of hands.
Turnbull called Saturday’s vote because he felt his agenda was being blocked by the Senate. Usually, Australians vote separately for the Senate and the lower house, but Turnbull gambled on taking both to the polls at the same time. He evidently lost the bet: his solid majority disappeared and, as of Monday, the two major parties were in a virtual tie. If Labor emerges on top, Australians could have their sixth prime minister in six years.
So much for the stability of ranked voting systems. Australians are required to vote by law, a feature Trudeau’s Liberals are considering. Its employs a ranked ballot, which Trudeau is also said to favour. Australians mark their preferences in order: voters mark a “1” beside their top pick, a “2” beside their second favourite, and so on through the list of candidates. If no candidate gets a majority on the first go-round, the bottom candidate is dropped and the votes re-allocated until someone tops 50%. So the candidate in second place (or even third) could win if he/she has more support from the bottom of the list. Confusing as it sounds, Canada’s Liberals like the idea because they figure they’ll usually be picked #2 by NDP supporters, making it easy to regularly beat both the NDP and Conservatives.
Supporters claim this gives a more fair allocation of seats than Canada’s existing first-past-the-post system. They don’t like to get into the long list of liabilities, like, for instance, six prime ministers in six years. Australian parties oust a lot of leaders because they feel threatened every time popular opinion takes a turn. They also have to contend with numerous small, special-interest parties that carry outsized clout because they can swing the balance of power in the coalition governments that are common under the Liberal-favoured system.
Any candidate with a strong local power base can form a vanity party and hope to win enough seats to hold the government to ransom. In Australia there’s the Nick Xenophon Team, the Jacqui Lambie Network, the Palmer United Party of mining magnate Nick Palmer, the father-son Katter’s Australian Party of Bob and Rob Katter and — elected Saturday after a 20-year-absence — the radical anti-immigrant organization around Pauline Hanson, who has demanded a Royal Commission on Islam as her price for co-operation.
Sometimes the tiny parties team up to form a block of mini-interests. For three years, Xenophon, the Greens and the Family First Party were able to claim the balance of power in the Senate. A new arrival Saturday was 72-year-old Derryn Hinch, a former broadcaster and reformed hellraiser known as “The Human headline”, who says he’s never voted before but won a Senate seat for his Derryn Hinch Justice Party on the first try. Hinch, who believes he’s the only Australian senator to have a liver transplant, champions a registry to collect and publicize information on sex offenders.
While either Turnbull or Labor boss Bill Shorten may emerge as prime minister, they will need to trade favours and make deals to cement their position, enabling small special interests to overwhelm the intentions of the vast majority of voters and obtain preferred treatment for their cause.
If that sounds like a better way to run a country than the relative certainty that comes with Canada’s first-past-the-post system, by all means lend your support to the Liberal reform campaign. Turnbull had hoped for a mandate to confront a struggling economy that has suffered from a commodity collapse in mining much as Canada has felt the effects of the oil-price plunge. It’s unlikely the new government will have time for that now. Whoever wins will be too busy taking demands from the likes of The Human Headline. If that’s not a recipe for good government, what is?
This article was featured in the National Post.
Alastair
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