AV in action or inaction? New South Wales

The Australian state of New South Wales voted at the weekend, in an election that saw the 16 year old Labor government swept out of power in an avalanche. Such has been Labor's dominance in New South Wales that there's been no end of the use of words like "historic", "seismic", "unprecedented" and other clichés.

The main feature of interest for the UK is that New South Wales is one of two Australian states (Queensland is the other) which use optional preferential voting, i.e. the precise form of the Alternative Vote that we will voting on in May. Whereas in elections for the federal parliament and in most other states a voter is required to number all the candidates on their ballot paper for their vote to count, in New South Wales & Queensland state elections a voter need only indicate a single preference to be valid and does not have to worry about which of two utterly obscure independents they prefer to the other.

At the time of writing the results for the lower house so far:

88.3% counted.
Last updated Thu Mar 31 9:59 PM

Liberal 38.4% 51 seats
Labor 25.7% 20
Nationals 12.7% 18
Greens 10.2% 1
Others 13.0% 3

(ABC News: New South Wales Election 2011)

I stress these are not yet final results. Australia has different rules of voting and counting, the key ones being in relation to postal and "pre-poll" voting, plus a much greater emphasis on precision over speed than the UK, and with results declared at the polling station ("booth") level there's a heck of a lot more to be precise about. Postal votes can arrive in a period of some days after polling day - in a large country with limited rural postal services it's rather unworkable to require all postal votes to be received by polling day.

(A lot in the UK seem to think Australian elections take a long time to finalise counting because they use the Alternative Vote. This isn't true - Canada also takes a similar time for much the same reason, despite using First Past The Post.)

Despite this about 92 of the 93 seat results seem certain. The one uncertain one is Balmain, currently listed as a Green seat. This is a three way fight between the Liberals, Greens and Labor with uncertainty over who will be in the last two - see Antony Green's Election Blog: The Tight Finish in Balmain. The one prediction that seems solid is that whoever wins the seat will not have at least 50% of the total valid votes cast.

Of the wider results it's notable that the Liberals have secured a majority in their own right on just 38.4% of first preferences. Some of this is because they didn't stand in 20 seats, instead giving the Nationals a free run (and indeed they will be governing as a Coalition), but there is no requirement for a party to contest every seat. Critics of First Past The Post like to jump on such results but as this election shows they can happen under AV as well.

92 seats seem to have been won by the party who topped the poll on first preferences - the exception being the aforementioned Balmain. In general the Liberals, Nationals, Labor and Greens declined to recommend preferences to each other on the "How To Vote" cards given out at polling stations. For those hoping to see AV producing radically different results it's not lived up to expectations. However Balmain may see a victory from third place.

Of potential more interest for the UK is the upper house election but that's for another post...

The Alternative Vote in action: New South Wales

In the run-up to the Alternative Vote referendum in May there will be a lot of talk about other countries that use the AV voting system. And there will also be an election using the precise variant of AV that the UK will be voting on.

The Alternative Vote has a number of versions around but the one we will be voting on is the "full optional preference" version, practised in the Australian states of New South Wales and Queensland for state elections, whereby voters can number as little as a single candidate for their vote to be valid. (Elections for the federal parliament and most of the other states use the "compulsory preference" version where voters have to number all candidates to count.) New South Wales will be going to the polls on March 26th and it will be possible to compare the claims made in our AV referendum.

(For those who want to see & find out more of the election in the wider context the best guide is the ABC 2011 New South Wales Election.)

At least two claims have been made that are already possible to check against existing experience in the state. Quickly running through them:

Claim 1. AV will mean parties can fight elections as a Coalition, offering voters candidates from both parties.

The full number of candidates in the last (2007) election is available at ABC News Election Preview. There were 93 seats and with the Liberals and Nationals fighting as a Coalition it was possible for voters to have a choice.

However the table shows that each seat had only one Coalition candidate. In fact it would have been playing with fire for the Coalition to offer competing candidates in all but a few seats. There would have been a real risk of votes for one Coalition party failing to transfer to the other, not least due to many voters "plumping" or just using a single preference. For parties aiming to win as many seats as possible this is not a desirable situation and so it's unsurprising that the Coalition stands a single candidate. (In Queensland it proved even harder for the Coalition parties to agree such an arrangement and eventually the two parties merged to eliminate the problem.)

Claim 2. AV will put an end to negative campaigning and parties will have to offer positive reasons to vote for them.

This is one of the wilder claims, and frankly feels like a typical case of seizing on any unpopular element in politics and pretending the proposed change will magic it away. In fact the types of campaigning used reflect the political culture, the effectiveness of methods and any laws governing it far far more than the voting system in use. New South Wales is certainly not free of negative campaigning as this Labor party advert from the last election shows:

If you can find one positive reason to vote for Labor in there (beyond their ability to make cartoons and catchy songs) I'll buy you a pint.

(By the way there is one myth about AV that stems from New South Wales that can be cleared up. There's a belief in some quarters that AV will lead to ballot papers that are the size of tablecloths - some of you may remember David Dimbleby producing one such monster on a few election nights. In fact those monster ballot papers are for the state upper house which is elected by Single Transferable Vote with an option to use a Group voting ticket. That's something different from AV and there are plenty of good reasons for voting against it without the need to resort to such scare myths.)

It's even grimmer down under

I've just seen the news that the Liberal Party of Australia have elected as their new leader Tony Abbott. (ABC News: Shock win for Abbott in leadership vote)

This is the equivalent of if the UK Conservative Party in its darkest years had ever elected John Redwood as leader.

So anyone who ever thought that either the William Hague or Iain Duncan Smith years were so horrible and there was no lower that the Conservatives could have sunk, think again. There truly was a lower point possible.

And to Australian conservatives, I'm afraid this looks even worse than the Downer Months. You have my deepest sympathies.

It's grim down under...

Once upon a time Australia had a successful conservative party called the Liberal Party, for reasons of Australian history. It governed Australia for 42 of the last 60 years. Sure it had its ups and downs but it persevered and gave conservatives around the world hope and inspiration. Not for nothing were Robert Menzies and John Howard so admired by the British right.

Sadly that was then and this is now. In the last two years the Liberal Party lost a federal election and has imploded. First it elected as leader its very own version of Iain Duncan Smith, Brendan Nelson. Then it deposed him after only nine months. Next it elected Malcolm Turnbull who has lasted until now despite rubbish poll ratings and endless speculation.

But in the last week the party has descended into chaos over proposed climate change legislation. A large number of front benchers have resigned and at a meeting of the parliamentary party a motion to hold a leadership election was defeated by only 48:35, despite the only challenger coming forward being unelectable even by current Liberal standards. (ABC News: Defiant Turnbull takes on climate rebels & Conservativeinternational: Six frontbenchers quit Liberal frontbench in protest at Malcolm Turnbull's climate change deal with Kevin Rudd) One of them, Tony Abbott, is likely to be the credible challenger for the leadership that Turnbull has so far not yet faced.

What makes this even more ridiculous is that it's highly likely the Australia's Labor government will get climate change legislation passed one one way or another - either moderate proposals now with Liberal backing in the Senate or radical proposals after a potential "double dissolution" election that will give the Green Party the balance of power in the Senate. But common sense and pragmatism seems lacking in all this.

Here in the UK the Conservatives went through a horrible six years of naval gazing, infighting and umpteen leadership elections before we even began to get our spirit back. Now it seems that affliction has spread to the Australian Liberals and will harm them for a long time to come.

Oh and yes the Liberals have had leadership problems in the past. They once had an eight month leadership by Alexander Downer that few remember with praise - see YouTube: The Downer Months. But the party then had ideas and alternative talent, and soon found a viable new leader who swept them to election. Today it seems to have none of these.

The leadership election is on!

My apologies for not blogging for a while but several other matters have consumed my time lately. But news caught my eye today of the imminent leadership election. After just a year in post, during which confidence in him has steadily eroded and many have looked to other leading figures who in the past declined to run for the leadership, he's finally taken the plunge to face his critics head on and called a leadership election to settle the matter.

So is Brendan Nelson going to keep his job? Will Peter Costello finally actually stand for the leadership after a record of not doing so that dwarfs David Miliband's? Or will it be Malcolm Turnbull?

What, you thought I was talking about another party's leadership problems? You seriously expected Gordon Brown to find his bottle? Or David Miliband to find a nomination form?!

For more details about the Liberal Party of Australia leadership election, 2008, see ABC News: Nelson calls leadership spill

...or Costelliband?

A further thought about men who decline to run for their party's leadership more than once has reminded me of this clip on YouTube of the former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating berating Peter Costello over the latter's failure to stand for the Liberal Party leadership both times he had the chance:

"A low altitude flier." With a cancelled trip abroad that doesn't sound so distant does it?

P.S. I've got not idea who our answer to Paul Keating is though:

Anyone care to suggest a counterpart?

Conservative mergers - all the rage?

A few years ago the Canadian Progressive Conservative Party and the Canadian Alliance merged to form the Conservative Party of Canada. It is now the government of Canada. Then this week we heard the proposals for a Conservative-Ulster Unionist merger which could well become the government of the United Kingdom at the next election. And yesterday in Queensland, Australia the National Party and the Liberal Party merged to become the Liberal National Party of Queensland. (ABC News: Qld conservatives hail new party) It remains to be seen if the Liberal and National parties in the rest of Australia will follow the trend (although in the Northern Territory this merger was made decades ago) but the new party offers a single force to take on the Labor state government and start a conservative revival across Australia.

So will we see more conservative mergers in other countries around the world?

Liberal leadership problems

He was very narrowly elected as Liberal leader late last year, with his opponent casting doubt over his potential for success. Now he's facing abyssmal poll results and a new Prime Minister who seems impossible to dent. Few believe he will ever be Prime Minister, and naturally further leadership speculation is growing.

So is it time for another leadership election?

Or is Brendan Nelson safe?

What, you thought I was talking about someone else?

The Australian: Nelson defends 9 per cent poll rating has the full story of the latest woes for the Liberal Party of Australia.