Submitted 4 weeks ago by maniacalmanicmania@aussie.zone to australianpolitics@aussie.zone
https://www.tallyroom.com.au/60426
I’m not sure I agree with the authors take on the unfairness to the greens here. The greener electorates manage to elect green MPs. In the seats where they are close, the preferential voting system works as intended. The conservatives can say hey I want the libs in but if they don’t make it I would rather labour over the greens.
How else should it be done? As far as I can see switching to a first past the post system would be significantly worse.
I can’t be sure but I think the author means it’s unfair in the sense that you have a high ‘anti-establishment’ vote but those voters don’t end up with any representation. I don’t think they’re advocating for first past the post.
Perhaps the introduction of some sort of proportional representative system would make things a little more democratic.
People in the minority of their electorate will always feel a bit salty about the outcome, but that’s unsolvable. Having the senate mitigates this already in my opinion, where the greens have roughly proportional representation. There is perhaps an argument to make the senate pool federal rather than state and territory based (looking at you Tasmania).
Moving the lower house to a federal type pool would remove any chance of area localised representation. Not that our current system is great at that with most MPs only caring about the party line, but at last some electorates have members that care about local issues.
I reckon we ought to increase the number lower house seats to 225 seats by combining electorates in groups of 2, and sending 3 candidates from each.
That ought to fix the representation issues we currently have in the lower house, without entirely removing the local nature of lower house electorates.
Say what you will about any party, but when you see a party routinely get 10-13% of the vote, but only manage to get 0.66 to 1.33% of the seats, it’s kinda hard to argue we couldn’t improve the system any further.
Even taking preferences into account, I think our current system favours larger parties too much because of single-member electorates.
Though, I am very grateful for the system we already have. Thank Christ we are not the US or UK (or Canada).
3 is such an awkward number though. It would basically lock in 1 Labor 1 LNP all over the country, with the third being the only variable one. I’m not a huge fan of STV with 3. 5 is really where I’d like to see it start. Merging 3s to return 5 would work, and because of how STV works, you could still adapt for regions where that’s not viable, like the NT and rural WA.
Unless Australians are comfortable with sending a much larger number of lower house members, that would make the electorates get much bigger than they currently are, and I would guess removing local representatives would not be a popular move.
I’m not entirely convinced that 1 liberal and 1 Labor would be locked in everywhere. I think the change in electoral system would produce governments much more representative of how people vote. It would change us to a system where forming a coalition is practically expected.
5 does seem like a reasonable working number of members to send as a combined “delegation” from an electorate, but that’d be the maximum desirable, in my view.
With 225 members and sending 5 from each electorate, that would reduce the number to only 45 electorates in the whole country.
Something, I’m totally fine with, I think federal electorates ought to be much larger than state or local electorates, but it would probably be a hard sell to many people.
Really appreciate you sharing your thoughts on this :)
That’s completely the wrong takeaway for The Greens and sounds like the left-wing version of Jacinta Nampijinpa Price cope on ABC’s coverage last night, trying to blame everyone and everything except herself and her party. As a party they need to reassess what their goals are and whether their actions and their communication over the last term were effective in making progress towards those goals. Being super obstructionist on housing during a housing crisis, aggressively loud on Gaza during a period of rising antisemitism and hate in communities around Australia, publicly linking themselves to (and backing) unions with alleged links to criminal organisations are all things that may play well with their left-wing base but are not necessarily going to help them expand further.
A regular Greens voter like myself down in SA may appreciate and understand the nuances around some of these positions, but I seriously question whether the people who voted Green for the first time in Queensland at the last election were happy with the outcome. Don’t forget that action on climate change (and better relief for the disasters it causes) were massive issues at the last election, particularly in that region, and they were issues that the major parties were seen to be failing on. Those are mainstream issues that these Greens MPs were elected on, yet when they got into parliament they did not behave like a mainstream party and continued to play to their hardcore base. That is ultimately going to hurt them in a country where fringe politics is nowhere near as powerful due to compulsory voting.
It’s very important to remember that The Greens didn’t actually perform particularly poorly overall, this isn’t a total rejection from their existing supporters of their strategy and positioning within the system. It was only a failure to take their left-wing agenda any further. They need to decide whether they are willing to sacrifice some of that to manually peel off left-leaning Labor voters once again (rather than just automatically picking them up through disillusionment as they have been previously, that isn’t going to work after such a decisive result) or whether they are content to be a fringe party that plays an important role in the Senate but is mostly absent in the lower house.
TassieTosser@aussie.zone 4 weeks ago
Kinda disappointed in the election results. Was hoping for a Labor minority where they’d have to work for support.
prex@aussie.zone 4 weeks ago
The optimist in me says that they have no excuses now: They have to perfom.
notgold@aussie.zone 4 weeks ago
Agreed. Labor has been given the stage now, they better put on a performance.
Gorgritch_umie_killa@aussie.zone 4 weeks ago
This is slightly wrong. Just about everything the Government does has to pass both houses, so in a way minority government is the norm for Australia because its quite rare that a sitting government gets an outright majority in both houses.
In this cases it looks like its going to be the same, majority in lower house, minority in upper house.
The thing that undermines the bargaining power of a crossbench is when the two majors team up to pass legislation, which happens often enough. Afterall we don’t want an opposition that simply opposes everything because they’re the opposition.
So the crossbench, i think in this case the key players will be the Greens, have to have a strategy but be able to change their tactics as the Parliament progresses. Their failure to not get a deal from Labor last year on housing, and subsequent inability to find a path to back down for so long, and also the lib-lab team up on electoral and funding reform early this year, showws me they haven’t mastered parliamentary tactics yet.
Viewing it from the Party of Governments perspective, i think, is easier. Its not a cross-bench they’re dealing with, its two or more paths to passing legislation thpugh both houses.
Since Labor is in power, they have the option to attempt legislation with Liberal support, or Greens support. This is where the Greens need to step up, Labor will go with the Liberals if they’re the easier party to deal with on legislation, Greens should aim to be the Partner of choice for the Government this term, this can keep legislation primarily on the progressive side of the ledger.
maniacalmanicmania@aussie.zone 4 weeks ago
How do you suggest The Greens step up?
concentrator@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Normally I’d agree, but since Shorten’s loss Labor has been too petrified to do anything ambitious (read: too controversial/progressive) for risk of losing the center. Especially with the Voice flopping at the start of the last term.
Now they’ve got a chance to make some substantial long term changes instead of merely doing little bits of harm minimisation at the margins.