Extremists and AV - Australia's One Nation

As the Alternative Vote referendum approaches the debate's heating up and the argument has turned on how extremists like the British National Party will do under the system. With so few countries using AV there aren't that many comparisons out there, but there's one Australian party with a record to look at - One Nation.

One Nation was founded in 1997 by Pauline Hanson, a sitting federal MP, David Oldfield and David Ettridge. Hanson was originally nominated as the Liberal candidate in Oxley in the 1996 federal election but between nominations and polling day she was expelled from the party after she gained national fame from calling for the abolition of government assistance for indigenous Australians. However it was too late to nominate an alternative candidate or even remove "Liberal" from her place from the ballot paper. She went on to win the hitherto safe Labor seat. The following year she joined with Oldfield and Ettridge to form One Nation and the party had some successes, particularly in Queensland at the 1998 state election.

However the major Australian parties responded to One Nation by both trying to undercut its vote base and encouraging tactical voting against it, with Hanson defeated at the 1998 federal election. One Nation was also riven by splits with most of its elected members leaving the party and the New South Wales branch went solo (with the farce of the "One Nation" name in NSW being used by one group for state elections and another for federal elections) and losing its sole elected member as well. Some members founded breakaway parties like the City Country Alliance or the New Country Party; these parties also went nowhere.

Psephos - Adam Carr's Election Archive has all the election results from this period and shows the outcome. So without further ado:

Federal 1996 - House of Representatives in Queensland

Federal elections are conducted under the compulsory preference version of AV in which a voter needs to indicate preferences for all candidates in order for their vote to count at all.

(For the pedants out there, there were two minor exceptions at the time, though one has since been eliminated. If a voter numbers all but one candidates in order the blank space is taken to be a last preference and their vote is counted. There was also a provision in the law that if a voter numbered candidates but either skipped or repeated a number then their vote would be counted up until the "error" and then no longer transfer or "exhaust". There was a campaign in the early to mid 1990s to get voters to take advantage of this error overcoming mechanism to get de facto optional preferencing - see Langer vote for more - and by the 1998 election the provisions in the Electoral Act were changed so such votes are now invalid.)

As mentioned above Hanson was nominated as the Liberal candidate in Oxley but between nominations and polling day she was expelled from the party but it was too late to nominate an alternative candidate or even remove "Liberal" from her place from the ballot paper. Compared to the Liberal performance in 1993 she nearly doubled the first preferences to take 48.6%. Following the elimination of three Independents and the Greens she took enough transfers to get over 50% (although the majority transferred against her). Though not necessary to determine the winner, the elimination of the Australian Democrats saw transfers in her favour, pushing her to 54.7%.

Queensland 1998

One Nation won eleven seats in this election, which used the optional preference version of AV in which a voter need only indicate a single preference to be valid and which the UK will be offered. In none of the seats did they get 50% of first preferences. The seats broke down as follows:

Most first preferences but under 50% and won

• Barambah (43.5%)
• Burdekin (33.1%)
• Lockyer (39.8%)
• Maryborough (42.6%)
• Tablelands (42.0%)

Second on first preferences but won on transfers

• Caboolture (29.9%)
• Hervey Bay (33.8%)
• Ipswich West (38.6%)
• Mulgrave (31.0%)
• Thuringowa (34.9%)
• Whitsunday (30.7%)

Most first preferences and defeated on transfers

• Burnett (36.4%)
• Crows Nest (39.5%)
• Gympie (29.2%)

(None of these seats had separate Coalition candidates from the Liberal and National parties)

Crudely translating first preferences only into First Past The Post results would have given One Nation 8 seats under FPTP. Instead they won 11 under AV.

The overall result was Labor 44, the Nationals 23 & the Liberals 9, One Nation 11 and Independents 2. In theory One Nation could have held the balance of power but one of the Independents agreed to support a Labor government. Subsequently a One Nation MP resigned from the parliament and Labor won the resulting by-election, gaining an outright majority. The remaining One Nation MPs split with half forming the City Country Alliance and the rest going independent.

Federal 1998 - House of Representatives in Queensland

One of the biggest problems for de facto independent one member parties is that boundary changes can often undermine their electoral base. Changes at the 1998 election nominally made Oxley an Labor seat and Hanson contested the new Blair constituency, taking in parts of Oxley.

With competing Liberal and National candidates in the field plus more independents, Hanson topped the poll on first preferences with 36.0%. However Labor and the Coalition recommended preferences to each other. The Liberal candidate started in third place but overtook Labor on National preferences, then took the bulk of the Labor preferences to defeat Hanson 53.4:46.6. Note that Hanson still picked up 10.6% or over 7000 votes in preferences.

Queensland 2001

Most first preferences but under 50% and won

• Lockyer (28.3%)
• Tablelands (36.0%)

Second on first preferences but won on transfers

• Gympie (25.7%)

Most first preferences and defeated on transfers

There don't appear to have been any such cases.

Once again the crude comparison is FPTP 2, AV 3.

The overall result was Labor 66, the Nationals 12 & the Liberals 3, One Nation 3 and Independents 5. This time One Nation was a little more coherent and managed to lose only 1/3 MPs in the parliament.

Queensland 2004

Most first preferences but under 50% and won

• Tablelands (47.0%)

...and none of the other cases so no crude comparisons are necessary.

One Nation was now in heavy decline and riven by splits. Its sole MP here basically functioned as an Independent.

The overall result was Labor 63, the Nationals 15 & the Liberals 5, One Nation 1 and Independents 5. For once One Nation ended the parliament with all the members it started with.

Queensland 2006

Over 50% of first preferences

• Tablelands (50.4%)

One Nation only ran four candidates in this election; the other three secured tiny results of less than 5% each.

The overall result was Labor 59, the Nationals 17 & the Liberals 8, One Nation 1 and Independents 4. Once again One Nation managed to keep its only member for the full parliament.

Queensland 2009

The regular scourge of Independents and minor parties, boundary changes, abolished Tablelands. One Nation ran only two candidates including their sitting MP in the new Dalrymple constituency but she came second on both first preferences and final transfers. Their sole other candidate got just 2.9%.

The overal result was Labor 51, the now merged Liberal Nationals 34 and Independents 4.

Other victories

Between 1998 and 2001 One Nation also won seats in the federal Senate and the state upper houses in New South Wales and Western Australia (Queensland doesn't have an upper house); however these are all elected by Single Transferable Vote. For what it's worth all their NSW and WA elected members left the party as well, with the NSW branch going solo and losing its sole elected member as well. Yet another breakaway party was formed by two WA members, called the New Country Party.

So overall what do these results tell us about AV and extremists? Well Pauline Hanson's defeat in 1998 despite getting the most first preferences is easy to zoom in on as she was the party leader and in the federal parliament; however it's worth remembering that it was under compulsory preferencing and she would have had a stronger chance under the optional system the UK is being offered. On the other hand One Nation had 16 victories in Queensland under optional the very system the UK will vote on; the crude FPTP comparison would have given them 12. If anything that suggests optional AV was marginally in their favour.

It's also clear that other parties declaring One Nation to be pariahs did not mean every single other voter followed those parties. And whatever voting system is used this alone will not decide the fate of extremist parties; it's how the political mainstream responds to voters' concerns that has the greatest effect, along with the propensity of small parties to disintegrate into squabbling fractions.

The BNP may have decided to oppose AV but the above figures show that a far right party has done better under AV than it likely would have under FPTP. Nick Griffin may well have miscalculated.

Who will listen to violent mobs?

In previous years I've been on a number of demonstrations about tuition fees and higher education funding. I can say hand on heart that we never took part in violent attacks on anywhere, and I have always been quick to condemn those who tried to divert the march in a ridiculous attempt to start the revolution and achieved nothing but destroying good will amongst the police.

(There's a lot of nonsense talked about the police but whenever demonstrations were being planned, whether in London or back in Canterbury, we found the police were actually quite sympathetic to the cause. This helped planning no end and undoubtedly increased the impact of the demonstration.)

This week's demonstration by the National Union of Students started well but got sidetracked by the atrocious scenes at Millbank. Anyone who thinks that violence is going to advance their cause one iota is seriously deluded.

There's a good post, Labour Uncut: The old cancer at the heart of the student riot, by Luke Akehurst about the problems the demonstrations have had in the past and the mentality of the far left extremists who have hijacked them. My favourite passage is this one:

They have to recruit. It's so unpleasant being a Trot – even more endless meetings than being a Labour activist, and you have to sell newspapers, and you have to split off and start a new party every time you disagree with the edicts of the central committee – that they need hundreds of new naive recruits each year to replace the ones they burn out and discard like political fag ends. What better place to find such recruits than on a demo attended by loads of young people who are passionate about politics? They can sidle up to them and tell them the big picture, the heavy stuff about the inevitable overthrow of capitalism – an enticing dream if you are an idealistic kid. Just sell these papers and nirvana is just around the corner They charmingly refer to the new recruits as "fodder" as in cannon fodder. One or two might be unlucky enough not to drop out and to get sucked into life as an otherwise unemployable full-time revolutionary "cadre".

Groups like the Revolutionary People's Popular Purified Revisionist Orthodox Socialist Communist Marxist Leninist Stalinist Trotskyist Maoist Are-You-Still-Following-Usist Workers' Front of Purley (sorry but Tooting has changed too much in the last three decades for that to still work) and other such fractions have achieved very little other than generating some business for glaziers. But they have also wrought fear and destruction, with many innocent people caught in the midst of this (Millbank contains many businesses and organisations, not just the Conservative Central Office).

Condemnation of these actions is insufficient for the NUS - the leadership must do everything it can to root up such militants, including expelling any and all officers who took part in the violence.

How to deny extremists publicity

If Geert Wilders had been allowed to enter the UK and show this film of his, hardly anyone would have battered an eyelid. Instead by denying him entry, the government has given him huge levels of publicity, turned him into a martyr for extremists and sent many people to watch his filth.

Here in the UK we seem to take a similar attitude to the British National Party and others. Time and time again we just give them publicity, reinforce their claim to be "the party with the answers the political establishment doesn't want You to hear" and make them ever more attractive to the politically alienated. As I blogged before in Time to end No Platform?, I think these methods are no longer working and can, if anything, be counter productive.

Instead let's provide constructive alternatives, stop providing favourable publicity and allow the extremism to wither and die. Freedom of speech is the freedom to say what you like. It does not mean anyone has to listen to you.

The rise of the British National Party

Adele is rejoicing that in some areas the British National Party is in electoral decline but today a report suggests one in four voters say they "might vote" for the party. It's also shocking to remember that the BNP came very close to getting elected to the Greater London Assembly in 2004 - had it not been for the rule requiring parties to get at least 5% of the vote (and as it was they were only about six thousand votes short of crossing that threhold) they would have received one top-up list member. It was the only time that the fruitcake has done the world any good.

All the main parties have tried to expose the dangers of voting BNP but I'm increasingly of the view that the standing methods are a flawed strategy. At the moment the standing of politics, especially "establishment" political parties, is incredibly low and these attacks just play into the BNP's claims to be an anti-establishment party with a message the political classes don't want to hear. Some believe that the BNP should be "starved of the oxygen of publicity" and that "No Platform" policies should be erected. I used to be inclined towards such a course but now I feel that all this does is to play into the BNP's hands by allowing them to portray themselves as martyrs. It would be much better to confront the BNP output head on and expose it as nothing more than incoherent hate driven lies. Many BNP activists and candidates have criminal convictions and few are able to express themselves coherently. Rather than throwing them a golden opportunity by pushing them to the margins where they can seek the support of those alienated from politics, it would be better to take them on directly.

Furthermore the mainstream parties need to do a lot more to tackle the issues that the BNP thrive on. And this is far from just issues relating to immigration, asylum and a multi-cultural society. Whether it's corruption in politics, a failure to maintain the streets, rising crime and so forth, the mainstream parties need to both have answers and take them directly to the people. It's in no way as easy as this paragraph may seem, but only by tackling and removing these sources of tinder will the BNP flames be extinguished. Also political parties and activists need to stop devaluing terms. Both "racist" and "extreme right wing" are bandied around for not only the BNP but other parties as well, to the point that they lose all value when trying to get a message across. (It's also a rather dubious claim - many of their policies are heavily statist.)

Rather than just creating yet further divides between the concerns of the people and politicians, pushing yet more towards a party of self-proclaimed "anti-politicians", let's stop dividing the nation and instead unite it. The disease in our politics is not the BNP's successes. It is the circumstances that lead to the BNP's successes.