Sunday, March 17, 2024

There Aint No Stability Clause

This article is part of my 2024 Tasmanian state election coverage; main page includes a link to effective voting guide and candidate guides and other articles.

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I feel somehow responsible, but it is probably coincidence. A few days ago I decided to put a bit of low-level Hung Parliament Club propaganda back in its box by explaining why I do not support four year fixed terms for Tasmania.  Among other things they infringe undesirably on the Premier's ability to seek a fresh mandate when the Parliament goes pearshaped.  I explained at the bottom why I do not consider New Zealand style party hopping laws to be an alternative solution.  Days later, along comes the government with a policy for ... New Zealand style party hopping laws.  What hell is this?  

For those who came in late, we are here in part because the former Gutwein Liberal Government preselected one Lara Alexander to run as a candidate for Bass in 2021.  She wasn't seen in the campaign except for her campaign manager complaining that she was being muzzled.  She got next to no votes but was later elected on a recount.  It has subsequently transpired that Alexander is a very odd politician - in particular her talent for inscrutable and apparently self-contradictory comments about confidence in government.  Had the Liberals allowed her to speak for herself before nominations closed this would probably have been obvious within minutes and they could have disendorsed her and picked somebody else.  But they didn't.  We are also here because - for some reason that has never been explained though I've wondered if it was anything to do with this - the Government later decided to make a former TV presenter Primary Industries minister instead of a career farmer, and the latter started or continued accumulating grudges.  

This is not the first time the Liberals have had unity problems - in the previous term Sue Hickey nabbed the Speakership against her party's nominee Rene Hidding and then voted against party policy on gender birth certificate reforms and mandatory sentencing.  However Hickey remained a Liberal until she was disendorsed, precipitating the 2021 election.

Another party-hopping incident involved Madeleine Ogilvie, who lost her seat as a Labor MP in 2018, was later elected on a Labor recount, but chose to sit as an independent.  (She later joined the Liberals and won the crucial final seat for them in the 2021 election.)  So Tasmania has had four party-hops in the last two parliaments, five if you count David O'Byrne who left the parliamentary Labor Party ahead of a likely expulsion from the PLP on grounds unrelated to voting behaviour.  

One might think from this that party-hopping was a common problem in Tasmania.  But it's not.  Ogilvie declining to sit as a Labor MP was the first lower house case of it since a short-lived and inconsequential defection by Geoff Davis in 1987, and before that the more significant Lowe/Willey defections in 1981.  Also in that time while there were sporadic cases of MPs voting against their party on the floor on particular issues, there was no MP I recall doing it with any regularity until Hickey came along.  

The Proposal

The Liberals' proposal includes the following detail.  They have attempted to avoid the problems I outlined in my fixed-terms article (that such laws are either toothless or give too much power to parties to expel their own MPs from the parliament) but my view is that this is impossible to define:

“Our proposed amendment will mean that if a person is elected as a member of one party, and then chooses to become an independent, or join another political party during the term of the Parliament, they will be required to forfeit their seat.

“We will consult closely with legal, Parliamentary and constitutional experts to ensure that this new Stability Clause, which may also require enabling amendments to other legislation including the Electoral Act, is drafted and implemented in a way which is practical, workable, and consistent with the principles of representative democracy.

“This includes giving consideration to removing from the Parliament MPs who may seek to “game” the Stability Clause by refusing to quit their party despite acting consistently contrary to that Party’s position; as well as providing safeguards to ensure that MPs are not ejected from their Party, and therefore the Parliament, without just cause. This could, for example, include the provision of a 75 per cent “super majority”."

The supermajority rule (similar to NZ where there is a two-thirds rule) would mean that only parties with party status (four MPs or more) would have access to the rule.  

There is a saying that hard cases make bad law.  While this proposal might seem like a sensible response to the defections of Tucker and Alexander, for which said MPs had absolutely no voter mandate, it creates bad outcomes when applied to past defections that were justified.

In 1979 Labor Premier Doug Lowe was elected with among the greatest personal mandates in Tasmanian electoral history.  His government won 54.3% of the vote and 20 of the 35 seats, though one was lost in a subsequent by-election caused by spending cap infringements.  Lowe himself recorded the highest percentage vote in Tasmanian history, albeit assisted by drawing on top of the ALP column in the pre-rotation days.  Clearly Tasmanians voted for a Labor government with Lowe at its helm.

During the subsequent term Lowe lost the confidence of his party over his handling of the Franklin Dam dispute, with one flashpoint being Lowe's desire to include a formal "No Dams" option on a "referendum" (Tasmanian for plebiscite) called on the issue.  Labor MPs insisted that this not be allowed thereby disenfranchising Tasmanians who were opposed to dams in the south-west.   Soon after Lowe was removed as leader and replaced with Harry Holgate.

Lowe responded by quitting the party and moving to the crossbench with another Labor MP, Mary Willey, depriving the government of a majority.  After a lengthy and widely detested prorogation that saw Holgate record approval ratings as low as 6%, the doomed government called an election.  The people had their say and had an opportunity to return Labor sans Lowe if they wanted to.  Instead, Robin Gray's Liberals were elected.

Under the current Liberals' proposal, Doug Lowe would not have been able to resign from his party without his seat becoming vacant.  Tasmania could have been stuck with the Holgate Government for 18 months!

Can they do this?

A widespread response to the proposal has been "that's unconstitutional".  But in Tasmania the Constitution is the Constution Act - it is what legislation passed by both Houses of Parliament makes it.  Except where those powers are removed, Australian Parliaments have expulsion powers that are drawn from common law, but it is very doubtful whether the common law power would include expulsion for bucking party policy.  There would have to be an amendment to the Constitution Act specifically (and any serious amendment to the Tasmanian Constitution is a potential can of worms).  Whether there would be any way to invalidate such an amendment based on the federal constitution is outside my experience, and I will note any useful comments.  It might depend on what exactly the amendment said; Prof Gabrielle Appeleby describes the matter as untested.

My main concern here is whether the expulsion provision would be automatic based on a 75% majority of party MPs (which is way too much power for parties to exercise over minor internal dissents, effectively negating the voters' ability to shape their own parties) or whether there would be an additional test.  If the latter, what on earth does "acting consistently contrary to that party’s position" mean?  Would Sue Hickey prior to her quitting the party qualify?  On the surface no, she only intermittently did so, albeit to a more significant degree than other occasional floor-crossers.  In the current New Zealand legislation the party must say that the expelled member is distorting and is likely to continue to distort proportionality, but there is no explicit test for whether that statement is true.  (This also raises the prospect of a party that wanted to get rid of an MP elected with them trying to bait that MP with insuting motions so the party could honestly claim the MP was distorting proportionality.)

Because of the vagueness in the government's proposal, in my view voters are entitled to assume the worst.  They are entitled to assume, until it is specifically ruled out by commitment to a specific provision, that the government could legislate to allow a party to define "acting consistently contrary" for themselves and to expel a member who was actually voting loyally but who the party for whatever reason did not like.  

However if the legislation did provide an additional trigger then that opens up other problems - because either the trigger must be defined in terms of behaviour like voting on the floor (which will always be gameable by finding other ways to disrupt) or the trigger will be defined in terms that are justiciable.  And we cannot have a court deciding whether an MP's rebellion is sufficiently severe for them to be booted, since that gives courts subjective power over political careers and is a breach of separation of powers.

The Government would need the consent of the Legislative Council to pass such laws.  At present it and Labor have a combined majority, so in theory Labor might be wedged into going along, but this seems unlikely.  It is also not clear if the majors will have a combined majority after May's elections.

What About David O'Byrne?

The O'Byrne situation is an important test case for two reasons.  Firstly O'Byrne quit the Parliamentary Labor Party, before he could be pushed, but did not quit the broader Labor Party.  Secondly there was no problem with his voting behaviour; rather, revelations of an incident from before his parliamentary career had made him unpalatable to the majority of the PLP. (Or perhaps been used as a pretext to declare him so).

Assuming the legislation was defined in terms of parliamentary parties and a 75% rule with no extra triggers, this would mean the Labor Party could simply have expelled O'Byrne from parliament without any obligation to provide him with natural justice concerning just how bad his pre-political conduct had been and whether it was seat-forfeit material.  O'Byrne in this case admitted his behaviour "did not meet the standards I would expect of myself" but in theory expulsion could be weaponised against a candidate who had admitted nothing.  Do we want the courts wading into internal party affairs, investigations and private lives to decide whether or not somebody can be expelled from parliament?

How to reduce party hopping

Given that party-hopping has been a non-thing for so long before the recent spate of it, here are some ways parties can reduce the risks instead of resorting to such desperate fixes:

1. Vet candidates properly 

2. Don't preselect candidates who are flight risks (religious extremism, grudges, weird Shoppie tendencies or membership of the Sky News ecosphere are all warning signs here)

3. Don't muzzle candidates before nominations close.  Give them some time to speak on the campaign trail so that unsuitables you might have missed will give themselves away in time to replace them

4. Listen to all your MPs and the voters and consider their skills.  The Liberals brought the Hickey situation on themselves by assuming a recent Lord Mayor with strong business experience would love to just be a backbencher, even though the same party in the past had put male outside talents straight into the ministry.

5. If all else fails, you can call an election.

The Problems Of Waka-Jumping Law

Guy Barnett has cited NZ's proportional representation system as a similar case to ours.  But NZ's system is essentially a party-list system with a local representation component tacked on.  That's because New Zealand tried to answer the question "how do you get proportional representation and local representation together in a single house?" without finding the correct answer, which is "a single house is dangerous and stupid."   An MP's mandate in New Zealand derives from party preselection only; a loyal voter for a specific party has no say in which individual MPs will represent the party in the parliament.  Beyond being also vaguely proportional, New Zealand's electoral system is a hodgepodge of crud compared to ours, and we should not be importing anything from it at all.  (Also, while NZ attempts to secure proportionality nationwide, Tasmania's system is based on proportional representation of each electorate.)

Another notable difference is that some NZ MPs are elected directly to vacancies that are filled by by-elections.  This means they have the opportunity to defend their waka-jumping at a by-election and retain their seat.  Tasmania has no such recourse.

Waka-jumping law in New Zealand - a hobby horse of Winston Peters - started in 2001, expiring in 2005, and was reinstated in 2018.  It has not gone smoothly.  The 2001 version encountered issues when it came to how to deal with party formations changing, but more significantly its sole successful usage that actually got rid of an MP for good took 11 months.  That's more time than the eternity Jeremy Rockliff took to call an election after the defections of Tucker and Alexander! Far from being a recipe for stability that would create an explosive situation: a loose-cannon independent fighting to delay or stave off expulsion, with an incentive to get as much oxygen as possible in the meantime.  

The new waka-jumping law created a farce in 2023 when Meka Whaitiri quit Labour to sit as an independent but provided notice in a form sufficient for the Speaker to treat her as an independent for parliamentary purposes but not sufficient to constitute a resignation for waka-jumping law purposes.

Insert Here Majority Government

A particularly hopeless line was the Premier's claim that “This new Stability Clause makes it certain that if Tasmanians vote for a majority Rockliff Liberal Government this Saturday, they will get a majority Rockliff Liberal Government.”  

Tasmanians voted for a majority Gutwein Liberal Government in 2021.  They got a majority Gutwein Liberal Government too ... for eleven months and seven days!  Then Peter Gutwein resigned.  His own party now dishonours Gutwein's legacy by preselecting at least one candidate who maintains that Tasmania at the time was an autocratic tyranny where the government was not in charge and the people were asleep.  This is no isolated example; seven of the last twelve Tasmanian majority governments have had a mid-term change of Premier.  

If this nonsense is passed, it will be easier not harder for the conservative flank of the party to remove Rockliff and replace him with Michael Ferguson or Eric Abetz.  The reason for this is that there will be no disincentive to doing so no matter how horribly it is done, because Rockliff will not have any recourse.  Lowe's behaviour in defecting to the crossbench fired a warning shot against spilling future Premiers, and no Tasmanian Premier has been openly removed by a party spill or even formally challenged for the leadership since (though some doubtless quit under pressure). But under the proposed Stability Clause if Rockliff was rolled and wanted to sit as an indie, doing so would trigger his expulsion, and his place would be filled by another Liberal on a recount.

This proposal therefore has the potential to greenlight a new phase of coup culture in the Tasmanian Parliament.  It is also a potential gateway drug to fixed terms and the increased power they give to the more demanding crossbenchers in a hung parliament, since passing it would remove what I have advanced as the best argument for not having fixed terms in the first place.   

Stability Clause?  Hardly.  It would make more sense to add Santa Claus to our Constitution Act than this.

Update Monday: O'Byrne Enlisted

In another presser Guy Barnett has sought to enlist David O'Byrne as a supporter of the concept underlying the party hopping ban based on O'Byrne's comments in The Australian.  But all O'Byrne said was that if elected as an independent he would have a contract to vote independently (so presumably wouldn't be rejoining Labor in the parliamentary term).  That didn't entail any support for the Liberals' proposal to enforce a ban on party-hopping, and indeed had the ban existed in the form stated by Barnett today, O'Byrne would have been expelled from Parliament in the aftermath of being kicked out of the PLP in August 2021.  

O'Byrne's responsed to this with "You really are desperate in these last few days aren’t you, stop making stuff up" and after the Liberal social media account said "Direct quote David." he followed up with "You have gone from being desperate to not very clever. You are deliberately confusing two very different principles. Give it a rest".

Also see

My interview with ABC (at 1:04)

Politician Overboard (PDF): 2002-3 APH paper taking a dim view of party-hopping law proposals

Saturday, March 16, 2024

Ipswich West and Inala Live

Ipswich West (ALP 14.4% - resignation of Jim Madden (ALP)

   Labor loses seat with 2PP swing of around 18%

Inala (ALP 28.2% - resignation of Annastacia Palaszczuk (ALP)

   Labor retains with 2PP swing in low 20%s.

Comments scrolling to top - refresh every 15 mins or so during counting for new comments

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11:30 End of night wrap: Although the ABC haven't called this seat yet for some reason, I want to make it clear there is no coming back for Labor in Ipswich West and why I called it hours ago.  They are currently over 1300 behind on 2PP counted votes, but adding in primary votes yet to be added that jumps out to over 1500, and it will probably be more (or at least not substantially less) after preferences.  And then, apart from the pretty standard Yamanto booth that has not reported yet (assuming it will do so) there are only about 3000 postals to come and there would have to be a swing to Labor on them, which there will not be (though they may not swing nearly as badly as the booths).  There is nothing in the booth counts to suggest any errors either.   [UPDATE 12:00 Many postals have now been added and have been similar to the booth swing.]

I expected both of these to go over the historic swing averages (in the case of Inala as adjusted for a Premier retirement) but they have done so by close to 10%.  They are reminiscent of the famous Stafford and Redcliffe beltings suffered by the Newman government on the way to the enormous swing against it in 2015.  I am not expecting the Miles Labor government to suffer anything like so large a swing at this year's election but I have for a long time been expecting Labor to lose in October and to probably do so decisively (but it might yet be close).  This is simply what is to be expected given that it will be a nearly ten year old government that is the same party as the party in power federally.  

Aside from the LNP, tonight's other winner is Legalise Cannabis who have again done very well in a by-election, including beating One Nation in a seat where One Nation was finishing second at a general election as recently as 2017.    

Thursday, March 14, 2024

Why I Don't Support Fixed Four Year Terms For Tasmania

This is part of my 2024 Tasmanian state election coverage (link to main page here including link to effective voting advice), but is also a standalone article.

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The last two Tasmanian Parliaments have ended early.  The 2018-2021 parliament ended ten months early after independent-minded Liberal Sue Hickey was disendorsed and quit the party, and then-Premier Peter Gutwein argued the loss of the Liberals' majority meant an election was desirable.  The 2021-2024 parliament has ended thirteen and a half months early following trouble for the Rockliff Government with two backbenchers who moved to the crossbench in May 2022.  Tasmania is the only state that has not moved to fixed-term elections, but there had not been a seriously early election before these two since 1998, and there is a widespread lack of understanding about the historic conventions under which the Governor considers requests for an early election.   (A note that Tasmania's upper house does have fixed terms, but with elections on a rotating basis.)

I covered many of the misconceptions about calling an early election in 2021, and 2024 has seen a lower-level repeat of many of the same incorrect claims.  A Premier who holds the confidence of the House based on votes that have been cast on the floor - whether or not that looks likely to remain the case - is well entitled by precedent to be granted an early election in order to seek a fresh mandate based on newly arising issues or policies, because the workability of the Parliament is in question or for many other reasons.  It is not even clear that a Premier who is well into their term needs much of a reason at all.  The spurious idea that the Premier should test their support on the Parliament's floor before seeking an election has also been doing the rounds again - this confuses what happens at the start of a Parliament to the end.  

Together with this I'm starting to see a few calls to make early elections less likely by moving to fixed four year terms, a position that has been floated several times in the past, and I've been asked what I think about this.  The Field Government introduced a fixed-terms Bill in 1990 but it never got past the second reading stage.  In 1992 the then Groom Government passed a fixed-term Act for just their first term in office (it lapsed thereafter).  In 2008 there was at one stage in principle agreement from Labor, Liberal and the Greens to move to fixed terms, but there was soon a change of Premier from Paul Lennon to David Bartlett and the then Labor government never introduced the foreshadowed legislation.  (The Liberals introduced Bills in 2006 and 2008 and the Greens in 2005 and 2008).  

In my view, Tasmania should not move to fixed terms for the Assembly and the circumstances under which the last two elections were called - especially the most recent - show exactly why we should not.

The advantages of fixed terms are obvious enough.  The dates of elections are known years in advance, barring exceptional cases. This is good for business and investor planning and also good for those of us who work on elections and have to plan our lives around them.  Fixed terms also mean that a Premier does not have the advantage of being able to call an election at an opportune time in the term (for instance while benefiting from a crisis, or while the Opposition is in disarray).  And fixed terms mean that it's easier to manage the implementation of laws that require a leadup (like the government's electoral law amendments passed late last year), and also to manage the committee processes of Parliament.  It's also easier for MPs to arrange their constituency affairs, and it reduces the potential for Governors to have to exercise discretion.

Given these substantial advantages, why would I not support fixed terms for Tasmania?  The main reason that I do not support them is that I am concerned that fixed terms would lumber Tasmania with parliaments that lack a mandate for what they are doing, because of defections.  I think this matters far more than any of the advantages, because democracy is the ultimate value and the other factors are side-benefits.  If a Parliament has ceased to reflect the last election and the Premier wishes to seek a new mandate, I say let the people decide.  

The situation that developed prior to the calling of the current election is a case in point.  Ex-Liberal independents John Tucker and Lara Alexander had made explicit threats and very ambiguous comments, respectively, concerning whether the government would retain their confidence under certain circumstances.  However, no no confidence motion had been passed, and Tucker's threats had been withdrawn (albeit following a meeting with disputed outcomes).  The Liberal Party had been elected in majority with candidates running on a platform to which majority government was crucial.  But because of the defections, the parliament had ceased to represent the will of the electors - those who voted for or gave critical preferences to John Tucker or Lara Alexander would mostly not have done so if they had known that these candidates would defect if elected.  

Supposing that Tasmania had had fixed term laws, what escape would have been possible from the charade of this parliament with its balance of power altered by defections?  If the independents continued playing no-confidence chicken but never actually brought down the government, it would simply have to continue in a chamber that passed votes against the originally elected government's wishes  - unless a Labor government took over.  A Labor government would have been doubly illegitimate in terms of Labor having also run on a theme of avoiding minority government in 2021.  

To the extent that fixed term laws might have allowed an escape hatch (like the government voting no confidence in itself, or the parliament passing a law to allow an election anyway) it would have been a similar purpose-defeating farce to the UK Fixed Term Parliaments Act.  Supposed five year fixed terms in the UK were avoided by a parliamentary vote after two years in 2017, and then by a new Bill passable by simple majority in 2019; the Act was later rescinded. 

Another important Tasmanian example was the 1956 defection of Carrol Bramich.  At the time Tasmania had 30 seats and there was a requirement that in the case of a 15-15 result the party with the lower popular vote would provide the Speaker enabling the popular vote winner (in that case Labor) to govern.  Bramich defected from Labor to the Liberals giving the Liberals a 16-14 majority in the parliament and a 15-14 floor majority.  The Liberals passed a censure motion against the government.  Premier Cosgrove was able to obtain a dissolution based on a Liberal government being not what voters had wanted at the previous election.  Under any of the fixed-term parliament models I have seen the Bramich defection would have resulted in a Liberal government that the voters had not supported governing without any mandate for three and a half years of the government's then five-year term.  

The Tasmanian commentariat includes a fairly large groupthink-prone faction, mostly left-leaning, that I call Hung Parliament Club, which considers minority government to be both unproblematically good and perpetually likely.  (In contrast, I think that past minority governments in Tasmania have had both good and bad points and that there is no simple overall answer to which form of government is best for the state.)  Hung Parliament Club types hold that when a Premier who is having issues with the Parliament requests an early election, the Premier is trampling on the will of the Parliament which should be supreme.  But the Parliament should only be supreme to the extent that it remains a reflection of the voice of the voters.  An illegitimate balance of numbers created through defections is a rogue Parliament that has nothing to do with representative democracy in a system that in practice strongly features party endorsements and party-based policy campaigning.  

Whatever his reasons for doing it, Jeremy Rockliff's decision to put what was becoming a significantly rogue Parliament out of its misery so the voters could decide the Parliament's future was correct and good for democracy.  If (as polling strongly suggests if anywhere near accurate) the voters now give neither major party a majority, that will be a genuine minority parliament that has been chosen by the people.  It puzzles me that many of those who argue that "power sharing parliaments" are more democratic would go in to bat for the parliament of the last several months, which does not reflect the democratic will of the voters of 2021 that there be a majority Liberal government.  (I add that in any other state that will of the voters would have resulted in a massive Liberal majority, and that there is no evidence that the lopsided 2021 result had anything to do with bandwagon effects.)  

Even if there had not been defections to the crossbench, an early election would still have had some merit in this very particular case.  The Liberal Government's re-election campaign in 2021 was strongly centred around the image of one of Australia's most popular Premiers of all time and his government's responses to a public health emergency (and yes it was an emergency even if the same party now preselects at least one candidate who claims otherwise).  Come 2024 the Premier is different and the issues mix is different, in particular the contentious Macquarie Point stadium proposal.  I think it would have been reasonable for the Premier in this situation to seek a mandate for himself and his new policies.

It's probably no accident that those who support fixed-term parliaments tend to support Greens or left/centre independents (and I say this as one who has voted for plenty of the latter and from time to time the former).  The harder it is for a minority government to obtain a new election when it finds the parliament insufferable, the more power the crossbench has.  

Other States Are Different

Yes, other states all have fixed terms - and it's a nuisance as well as an advantage sometimes because federal governments can have their options limited by the fixed timing of state elections, and close federal and state elections sometimes affect voter understanding and the informal voting rate.  However, there are significant differences between Tasmania and the other states in terms of the strength of the arguments for fixed terms. While these differences were probably not that relevant to how the other states got fixed terms in the first place, I think they're very relevant to why Tasmania shouldn't have them.  

Firstly, all the other states have single-seat electoral systems and larger parliaments.  While results where a single MP defecting could change the government do happen in other states, they are relatively rare.  In contrast, there have been seven cases in the past 18 Tasmanian elections in which either the very formation of government or the support that the government relied upon, was determined by a single seat.  (In 1996 for instance one more Liberal seat would have given Bruce Goodluck a share of the balance of power with the Greens.)  There have been only a few governments in this time that could have survived a two-MP defection with their numbers and structure intact.  

Then, there are the different structures of the upper houses.  In four states, state elections habitually coincide with upper house elections (for half the upper house in NSW and SA and the whole in Victoria and WA).  In Queensland (and also in the Territories, although the ACT shares Tasmania's electoral system) there is no upper house.  The advantage for incumbents in calling early elections at the right time in all these states would be much greater because far more control over each state's legislative process is at stake.  In Tasmania, the calling of an early election has no effect on the upper house, so if a government does have to go at an opportune time and voters judge its decision to do so too kindly, there is still the upper chamber to review its efforts.  And I also think the opportunistic-timing advantage argument is overrated anyway.  Voters around the country quite often threw out governments that went early without any sensible reason.  If a government goes early and is re-elected strongly in spite of voter suspicion of early elections, I say good luck to it.  

Party-Hopping Laws Are Not The Answer

In response to my view that defections are a critical reason not to have fixed terms I am sometimes told that we should have fixed terms but ban defections via laws that entail that anyone who quits their party loses their seat.  New Zealand's on and off waka-jumping laws are often cited as an example.  I believe that party-hopping laws, depending on how they are written, would be either too useless or too dangerous in our system.  The key issue for such laws is whether or not they permit a rebel MP who wishes to notionally remain within their party to be kicked out of the parliament if they are expelled from their party.  If the answer is no, then there is nothing to stop a rebel MP from, for instance, claiming to be still a Liberal while continuing to vote against a Liberal government on legislation or even confidence and supply.  If the answer is yes then parties develop supreme power over their own incumbents' careers, which is grossly inappropriate in a state where voters choose which candidates will represent the parties that they vote for.  A party machine that did not like an individual MP who belonged to a party could expel them from the party, causing them to lose their seat, which the party would get back on a recount.  

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There is a separate debate regarding fixed terms for federal parliament that I may cover in a separate article should a serious proposal develop.  There is currently more debate about four-year federal terms, to which I'm totally opposed if they result in eight-year Senate terms.  I am also cautious about the proposal last rejected in 1988 (four-year unfixed terms with every election a double dissolution) though I think I'd be less so if the malapportionment of the Senate could ever be fixed.  I completely reject the Prime Minister's claim that the defeat in 1988 was caused by "misinformation" (of course there was some as there always is, but there were weighty arguments against it too in terms of it being a power grab by the lower house that would alter the balance of our system.)

Tuesday, March 12, 2024

uComms: Labor Just 23: How Much Stock Should We Put In This?

This article is part of my 2024 Tasmanian election coverage - link to main page including links to electorate guides and effective voting advice.

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uComms (Australia Institute) Liberal 37.1 Labor 23 Green 13.7 JLN 8.5 IND 12.8 others 5.0
Seat estimate if poll was accurate Lib 14 ALP 10 Green 4 JLN 2-3 IND 4-5
Poll should be treated with caution.

Today saw the the release of the third Tasmanian campaign poll by an established and identified pollster, this one being a uComms for the left-wing Australia Institute.

From the outset I should note some usual cautions.  uComms polls by automated phone polling (formerly all robopolling, lately a mix of SMS and voice robopolling).  The poll employs very primitive weighting (age, gender and location only, with no attempt to weight by any indicator of political engagement such as education).  At the 2021 election an Australia Institute uComms poll which I disputed at the time (What's This Then?  Commissioned Poll Claims Liberals In Trouble) was hopelessly inaccurate, underestimating the Liberals by over 7% and overestimating Labor by nearly 4 and independents by nearly 5.  There was never any attempt to explain why this poll got it so wrong.  

Tuesday, March 5, 2024

Redbridge Says It's A Multi-Party Mess As Voters Flee Liberals

This article is part of my 2024 Tasmanian election coverage - link to main page including links to electorate guides and effective voting advice


Redbridge Lib 33 ALP 29 Green 14 JLN 10 IND/Other 14
My estimate 13-14 Liberal 10-12 ALP 4-5 Green 2-3 JLN 2-6 IND

The second Tasmanian campaign poll by an established and known pollster is out, with Victorian-centred outfit Redbridge releasing its first ever public poll of Tasmanian voting intention.  The sample size is smallish (753 voters) and the sample is spread out over two weeks (Feb 14-28).  

They have also released these combined breakdowns: Bass/Braddon/Lyons Liberal 35 Labor 27 Green 11 JLN 14 Other 14, Clark/Franklin Liberal 30 Labor 31 Greens 18 JLN 4 (ie 8 in Franklin as not running in Clark) Other 17

There is more to come on this poll, including one of the most amusing crosstabs you will ever see, but for now just a quick note on the voting intention numbers.  The Redbridge numbers are significantly worse for the Liberals than both the EMRS public poll and the huge-sample mystery poll of unknown veracity and quality, and very similar to the YouGov poll from January, except that they have treated the Lambie and IND/others votes more normally.  (They've only listed parties in seats they are running in.)

Redbridge have released a seat estimate of 12 Liberal 11 Labor 6 Green 3 JLN 3 Independent based on modelling off mini-samples.  I would expect off these state primaries (based on testing them against my model of the recent EMRS breakdowns) that the Greens would not do quite so well; six seats off 14% would be very lucky.   I got estimates of 13-14 Liberal, 10-12 ALP, 4-5 Green, 2-3 JLN and 2-6 IND for these numbers.  

A couple of notes regarding my estimates.  Firstly JLN could be very vulnerable to leakage because they have not run clear lead candidates and some of their votes will be for people who know and like one of their candidates but not others.  A single Independent starting 2% or even more behind a JLN ticket could very well run them down.  JLN will also be at risk of losing votes to unintended informal voting, though I estimate the extra impact of that on them will be about 0.2% per seat.  

Secondly it's often difficult to convert projected Independent/other votes to seats because the missing piece of the puzzle is how concentrated is that vote in one or two lead candidates.  That's why I am often getting broad-range estimates like 2-6 Independent seats in my models.

If this poll were accurate, the Liberals would be the largest party but would need to work with either several independents or a mix of independents and JLN to govern, they could end up with their own "coalition [sic] of chaos".  Labor would be unlikely to have a path to government that did not go through the Greens.  It would be quite a fascinating parliament.

Redbridge is still a relatively new poll on the public polling scene, albeit one with decent results overall so far.  Its findings are sometimes quirky.  EMRS has a long and good track record here and a larger sample size.  Nonetheless this is an interesting polling data point to add.  

The AFR report refers to claimed internal Liberal polling, but that is in fact the EMRS public poll.

The AFR article also features more baffling Jacqui Lambie pronouncements (albeit some paraphrased) including that her candidates are 'all political cleanskins' (yeah right one was a Tory mayor in England) and 'have been forced to rule out making a play for the ministry within their first 12 months' (how?).  We also get “But we have told them that we don’t do preference deals. We want voters to number all three boxes with Lambie candidates,” Er, nobody does preference deals in Hare-Clark and the voters have to number at least seven.  (By the way this is not the first time JLN have contested, they also did in 2018).  

Full report

The full report is here.  The most hilarious crosstab (albeit based on only about 75 intending JLN voters is that 40% of intending Jacqui Lambie Network voters (more than any other party bar the Greens) say policies will be a major factor affecting their vote.  JLN has been attracting much criticism for being just about a policy-free zone.  

Sunday, March 3, 2024

How To Best Use Your Vote In The 2024 Tasmanian Election

This piece is part of my Tasmanian 2024 election coverage - link to main guide page including links to my electorate guides and other articles.  

This piece is written to explain to voters how to vote in the 2024 Tasmanian election so their vote will be most powerful.  It is not written for those who just want to do the bare minimum - if you just want to vote as quickly as possible and don't care how effective your vote is then this guide is not for you.  It is for those who care about voting as effectively as possible and are willing to put some time into understanding how to do so.  

Please feel free to share or forward this guide or use points from it to educate confused voters.  Just make sure you've understood those points first!  I may edit in more sections later.

Please do not ask me what is the most effective way to vote for a specific party or candidate as opposed to in general terms.

Oh, and one other thing.  Some people really agonise about their votes, spend many hours over them and get deeply worried about doing the wrong thing.  Voting well is worth effort, but it's not worth that.  The chance that your vote will actually change the outcome is low.  

Effective Voting Matters!

I'll give a recent example of why effective voting matters.  In 2021 the final seat in Clark finished with 10145 votes for Liberal Madeleine Ogilvie, 9970 votes for independent Kristie Johnston and 8716 votes for independent Sue Hickey.  As there were no more candidates to exclude at this point Hickey finished sixth while Ogilvie and Johnston took the last two seats.  Had the two independents had 1606 more votes in the right combination, Ogilvie would have lost instead, and the Liberals would not have won a majority.  But during the count, 2701 votes had been transferred from Labor and Green candidates to "exhaust".  All these were voters who did not number any of Ogilvie, Johnston and Hickey.  Many would have voted 1-5 for Labor and Green candidates (mostly Labor) and then stopped.  There were enough votes that left the system because voters stopped numbering that the outcome could have been different.

That's not to say it would have been had everyone kept numbering - the voters would have had to somehow sense that Hickey needed preferences more than Johnston, or else the flow to the two independents would have had to be extremely strong (which wouldn't happen).  But it is possible for voters who choose to stop numbering to cause the election of parties they would not want to win.  And this year with the lower quota and the broader spread of voters, it's probably more of a risk than last time.   

Some of these voters would have stopped because they didn't care about other candidates - but I suspect most really would have had a preference.  Most of those stopping most likely stopped because they didn't realise they had the potential to do more with their vote, or because they couldn't be bothered.  

There Is No Above The Line / Below The Line

Tasmania does not have above the line party boxes in state elections.  All voters vote for individual candidates and decide how many preferences (if any) to give beyond the required seven, and which parties or candidates if any to give their preferences to.  There are no how to vote cards.  Your most preferred party may recommend you put its candidates in a particular order but you don't have to follow that.  While a lot of voters will vote 1-7 all for the same party, plenty of voters vote across party lines for a mix of different candidates.  

Your Party Doesn't Direct Preferences

If you vote 1 to 7 for a party and stop, your party does not decide what your vote does next once all your party's candidates have either won or lost.  At this point your vote plays no further role in the election.  Your vote can only even potentially play a role between other parties if you make it do so.  The same applies if you vote for seven candidates across party lines, or for seven independent-ish candidates.  Your vote can only do the work you tell it to do.  

There Is No Party Ticket 

Unlike the Senate, candidates do not appear in a specific order on the ballot; the parties appear in a specific order for each seat but the candidates within each party's column are rotated.  There is therefore no number 1 Liberal or Labor candidate in each seat.  The Greens put out recommended how to vote orders but these are only a recommendation and the voter can just as easily put the candidates in their own preferred order.  

You Cannot Waste Your Vote! (Sort-Of)

The idea that voting for minor parties or independents that won't get in or form government is a "wasted vote" is an evil and pervasive myth smuggled in from bad voting systems where it's actually true (like first past the post).  Some major party supporters spread this myth, including in Hare-Clark, to try to scare voters off voting for anyone else.   In Tasmanian elections if you vote for a candidate who is not elected, your vote flows at full value to the next on your list and so on.  You can't waste your primary vote except by not casting a formal vote - but you can waste your preferencing power by stopping early.  If your vote only numbers a limited number of candidates then once all those are excluded or elected, your vote might hit the exhaust pile and be a spectator for all the remaining choices.  If the candidate you like the most is from a minor party or is an independent, ignore anyone who tells you voting for that person is a "wasted vote".  They're wrong.

Make Sure Your Vote Counts - No Mistakes In First 7

A vote must include at least the numbers 1 through 7 without mistake because our politicians are not committed to protecting voters from losing their votes as a result of unintended errors. Do not use ticks or crosses.  If you number six boxes and think you just can't find a seventh candidate and stop, your vote won't count at all.  If you're one of those people who starts at the top then goes to the bottom to number all the boxes and works up, and you accidentally end up with two 6s, that will not count either.  When you have finished your vote check carefully to make sure you have the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 each once and once only.  (Also check that you have not doubled or omitted any later numbers, but that's less critical, as if you have your vote will still count up to the point of the mistake.)  If you make a mistake while voting at a booth you can ask for another ballot paper.  

Voters for parties like Jacqui Lambie Network and Shooters Fishers and Farmers should be especially careful here.  If you vote 1-3 for JLN and stop, your vote will not be counted.  

The Gold Standard - Number Every Box

The most effective way to vote is to number every box.  That means that your vote has explained where you stand on every possible choice between two candidates and there is no way that your vote can ever leave the count while there are still choices to be made.  

But doesn't this help candidates you dislike?  This is a common myth about the system.  By numbering all the way through, if you've numbered a candidate you dislike and your vote reaches them, it can only help beat candidates you dislike even more!  The reason for this is that every candidate you put above the mildly disliked candidate must have already won or lost before your vote can get there.  If your vote reaches that point then one of the candidates you dislike is going to win no matter what you do.  You may as well make it the more bearable one and use your vote to speak for the lesser evil. 

In terms of the primary election you can stop when you've numbered every box but one, and it makes no difference.  But because of a weird quirk in the recount system, numbering every box could help your vote to have a say in a recount for your worst enemy's seat!  

Numbering every box takes some preparation - it is best to plan your vote before you go to the booth,  There are sometimes automatic tools to help with this and if I see any I'll link to them here.  

The Silver Standard - Number Everyone You Can Stand

If you don't want to number every box then a lower-effort alternative that is still better than numbering 1-7 and stopping is to number all the candidates/parties who you think are good or on balance OK and that you have some idea about. That at least means your vote will never leave the count while candidates or parties who you think are at least so-so are still fighting with the baddies.  

I Don't Care Who Wins But I Want Someone To Lose!

Then number all the boxes and put that party and/or person last.  You may also find the strategic voting section interesting in this case. You can never help a candidate to win by putting them last.

Minor Exceptions

An exception to the gold standard is if you reach a point where of the candidates you have not numbered, your response to any choice between them is that you absolutely do not care.  If you get to that point, and you've numbered at least 7, it's safe to stop. (That said I would keep going and randomise my remaining preferences at this point, for potential recount reasons.)

Another one is if you slightly prefer one party to another but are so disappointed with the first party that you want to send it a message by not preferencing it, in the hope it fights harder for your preference next time.  In that case you can also stop (if you've numbered at least 7 boxes), but in this case you should tell the first party that that's your view (anonymously if you prefer); otherwise they will have no idea you felt that way.

Who Are These People?

Numbering every box is hard work - who are all these people?  I write guides about elections and even I know nothing about lots of them!  If you've never heard of a candidate and they're not running for a party that you like, I'd recommend putting them between the candidates you dislike slightly and those you're sure you cannot stand.  Even if they're running for a party you like, it may be worth doing some research because sometimes parties preselect candidates they shouldn't.  Ultimately it is up to the candidates to make themselves known to you.  If they haven't done that, you are entitled to mark them down.  

What Is Group B, Group G and So On?

Some independent candidates have registered their own columns so they stand out on the ballot paper, while others are just listed in the ungrouped column on the far right.  In this year's election both these kinds of candidates have the same status, it's just that some of them have lodged 100 signatures to stand out more.  If a candidate is a party candidate you will see their party name. (Oh and if a group has "Network" in its name, it's still a party.)  The group letter names for some independents just refer to their position on the ballot paper; the "Group H" independents in various electorates are not connected to each other just because they have the same group letter.  

How Does Your Vote Work?  Why Your Number 1 Matters

This is not the place for a full account of how Hare-Clark voting works, there's one here.  There's a common misconception that when you vote for seven candidates the order doesn't matter much because your vote will help them all.  In fact, that's often not true and your vote only helps one candidate at a time, and helps them in the order you put them in.  Who you vote 1 for can be very important.  If your number 1 candidate is excluded then your vote flows on to the next candidate who is still fighting for a spot at that stage at full value.  If your number 1 candidate is elected straightaway with over 12.5% of the vote in their own right, part of your vote's value is used on helping them to win, and part flows on to other candidates you have numbered.  If your number 1 candidate doesn't win off the first ballot but never gets excluded, then all your vote's value goes to helping your number 1 candidate either eventually win or at least try to (if they finish eighth).  For this reason it's not just who you choose as your first seven that matters, but also the order that you put them in.

That ends the main part of this article, and the rest is something specialised I threw in because ... people do ask. 

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Special Sealed Section: Strategic Voting (Advanced Players Only!)

This section is an optional extra and is rated Wonk Factor 4/5.  If you read it and are not sure you understood it, pretend you never read it and certainly don't try explaining it to anyone else! 

Most voting systems are prone to tactical voting of some kind; indeed, in some it's necessary.  Under the first-past-the-post system in the UK it is often necessary for voters to vote tactically for their second or third preference party to ensure their vote isn't "wasted".  In the 2022 federal election, some left-wing voters voted 1 for teal independents because they were more likely to win from second than Labor or the Greens were.  Our preferential systems are much fairer than first-past-the-post, of course, but there are still ways of voting that can make your vote less than optimally powerful, and ways to get around that if you want.  

In this case I am not arguing that voters should vote tactically - I'm just explaining how they can do it if they want to.  The ethical decision involved (since voting tactically effectively reduces the value of other voters' votes) is up to them.  There's also a problem with tactical voting in that if everyone did it it would stop working and create bizarre outcomes.  (But no one should let that alone stop them, because that will not actually happen.  Immanuel Kant was wrong about everything.)

The scope for tactical voting in Hare-Clark is mainly around quotas and the way the system lets votes get stuck.  One simple principle of effective tactical voting for those who want to do it is to not vote 1 for any candidate who you know or strongly suspect will be elected straightaway.  

Suppose I am weighing up between these three candidates, whose surnames indicate their voting prospects: Morgan Megastar, Nico Nohoper and Lee Lineball.  And I decide they are my equal favourites.  Morgan always polls a bucketload of votes and will probably be elected in their own right, or at least will surely win.  Lee might get in off the first count, on a good day, but I don't really know if they'll win at all, and Nico has run in 17 elections and got two deposits back but I like them anyway.  Now in this situation I will vote 1 Nico 2 Lee 3 Morgan (and on and on to 35).  

Why?  Because I know Morgan doesn't need my #1 vote.  If they get it and they're elected at the first count, the value of their excess votes is one vote greater, but that vote won't all be mine.  A part of the value of my vote stays with them and the rest of it flows on to other candidates, but I've also slightly increased the value of all their other votes to make up the difference.  And these could be votes cast by Hung Parliament Club op-ed writers or other witless philistines. I'd rather have my vote flow on at full value!  Also, Morgan might not quite get quota on the first count, and in that case my vote never goes anywhere else, and I might be boosting whatever vote detritus does put them across the line (shudder!) There is even an extremely rare scenario here where by voting 1 for Morgan I could boost the votes of Lee's key opponents to the point that it actually harms Lee.

So I vote 1 for Nico Nohoper.  A few counts in Nico will be excluded, again, by this stage Morgan is already over the line, or will be soon, and now my vote flows at full value to Lee who may need it.  And if Lee eventually gets eliminated, it will flow on at full value to #4, and so on.   I do this sort of thing a lot - among my top five or six candidates I will often put them in order from least promising to most, so that my vote will hang around a while and might even be able to flow on past those candidates at full value.  But it takes a lot of knowledge of who is likely to poll well to pull it off.  

One can get carried away with this idea and try to thread the needle in an order one doesn't support (eg candidates one dislikes above candidates one likes) to try to get one's vote still on the table at full value at #30 in Franklin trying to defeat You Know Who.  I call this "quota running" and I really don't recommend it, as it's too easy to fail to predict something that happens in the count and wind up with your vote doing something that you don't want.  Most likely your vote will never get that far anyway.  

And there's another thing worth knowing here.  Suppose I'm tossing up at some point between two similar candidates who I think will both be borderline contenders, but I really do not have a view between them.  This could happen if I was a major party voter, but it could also be two leading indies.  Now in this case I could go for the one I think will poll less well.  Why?  Because this increases the chance that both of them stay in the count and can both beat a single candidate from some other force (aka the Ginninderra Effect).

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Making Seats "Marginal" At By-Elections Is Meaningless

Last night saw the Labor government get the good end of the stick in the Dunkley by-election, easily retaining a seat that was precariously above the long-term average swing for government vacancy by-elections.  It's no disaster for the Liberals who have got a modest swing with some mitigating factors but they (especially Jane Hume) were out in force last night spinning the outcome as a triumph.  Together with the usual nonsense about first-term governments not in recent decades losing seats and governments not losing by-elections caused by deaths (both based on trivially small sample sizes) I heard a lot about how they had turned Dunkley marginal and they were coming for the seat.

Marginal seat status where a seat is retained is determined by general election results not by-elections (so Dunkley is no more a marginal seat than it was before), but this made me wonder, does getting a seat inside the marginal range at a by-election predict anything at all?  I've found that such seats have historically almost always been retained by the government at the next election, although on average the election-to-election swing has been worse than the national average in such cases.  The idea that the Liberals have put Dunkley in serious danger next time with a swing that is not even bog-average for a government vacancy by-election has no basis.  

Saturday, March 2, 2024

Dunkley By-Election Live

DUNKLEY (ALP, Vic 6.27%)
Jodie Belyea (ALP) vs Nathan Conroy (Lib) and others
By-election caused by death of Peta Murphy (ALP)
CALLED 8:42 pm Labor retain

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Updates appear here, scrolling to the top.  When counting is underway refresh every 10-15 mins for new comments.  

Thursday: Labor is now very close to winning the postal count and the 2PP is now 52.71; it is likely to finish between that number and 53.  The Australian published an incorrect article today referring to a 10% drop in turnout; the count does not finish until all postals that can be admitted are received 13 days after polling day.  The turnout is currently 83.5% and there should be about 1% or so to come; the turnout decline will be smaller than at least 16 of the last 20 by-elections, potentially 18.  Media should not publish turnout doomery articles without consulting with the AEC or someone who has a clue.  

Tuesday: With vote totals unlikely to change by even 1% from here it's worth noting an outstanding performance by the uComms seat poll.  I've been critical of poor results from this pollster recently (especially Tasmania 2021) but this one is remarkably good by seat poll standards especially. uComms' numbers with undecided redistributed are below with the actual current numbers in brackets:

ALP 40.1 (41.1)
Lib 39.3 (39.3)
Grn 8.2 (6.3)
LTN 1.6 (2.5)
Ind/Other 10.8 (10.8)

2PP 52 (52.6)

n=626.

Tuesday: Postals are doing next to nothing now, the 2PP is 52.63 and won't change much from there.

Sunday: There has been a correction in Labor's favour in the Langwarrin booth, taking them up to 52.7.   I have written an article regarding Liberal claims that making this seat "marginal" is meaningful.  History says otherwise.  

10:36 Late night wrap: the loser is ... Advance!  The Carrum Downs PPVC just came in leaving Labor on 52.5, which after perhaps 11,000 remaining postals might make it down to 52 though I would suspect not.  This is a good night for Labor; they've retained a very loseable seat with a swing below the average swing for government vacancies (which is around 6% since Federation).   But for the Coalition it isn't terrible.  The biggest losers here are Advance, who spent heavily on Willie Horton tactics to zero visible effect.  They thereby proved that credit given to their inane behaviour for the Voice result was spurious; the Yes23 campaign defeated itself.  There is a question mark over whether the Liberals have established outer suburbia as a path to victory (if they can't win Dunkley in a by-election, why should they win it in a general?) though the answer may be different outside Victoria.  Labor are right that it is great for them that their primary vote is intact; the final preference flows will be of interest as they do appear underwhelming.   Overall, this is another one of those by-elections like Fadden where one side should be clearly the happier but we can pretty much go back to sleep.  

Friday, March 1, 2024

Mystery Poll: Why Are We Still Playing This Game?

(This is part of my 2024 Tasmanian election coverage.  For main page with links to all other pages go here.)

Today's Mercury carried a front-page report of a "phone poll" of Tasmania with a massive sample size of 4000 voters.  Unfortunately the newspaper report did not state who the poll was done by or for, making it impossible to immediately assess how useful it was.  I have been told (officially unconfirmed) that it is for the Tasmanian Hospitality Association and do not yet know the pollster, though the large sample size is most often seen with automated polls like uComms.  (I should also add that Community Engagement was reported in the field by some people early in the campaign, but the issues questions I was told about were different.)

Anyway, at the risk of sounding like a broken record or even more like a polling analyst with severe frustration management issues, it should be required by law for all media reports of polling to state the pollster and the commissioning source.  (Or if not known, all details should be published as this often makes the poll easy to identify).  Media frequently express frustration with governments that are not being transparent.  They must lead the way by reporting basic polling details better and refusing to allow sources to supply polls on the condition that the pollster should not be named.   This is especially so when they run Your Right To Know campaigns.   As for sources who try to prevent media from publishing the details of polls they supply, those should be classified as "juvenile career criminals". 

For what it's worth, this looks like neutral polling by someone who actually wants to know the answer, and not a loaded poll released for political purposes.  That doesn't mean it's necessarily good in quality terms, but it's worth checking out especially if we get clearer details.