There’s been a bit of coverage of the Republican primaries in the news lately, the latest being South Carolina. Brad Friedman has been writing for a long time on the shortcomings of voting systems, particularly electronic voting, used in various elections in the US and this includes primaries. His calls the system in South Carolina `100% “faith-based” voting’ since there is no way of verifying the results, and a long history of problems with voting. Read his article on the primaries so far here, and keep it mind if anyone advocates electronic voting here in Australia.
Category Archives: Politics
The End of the Line screening again
Next week there is another screening of the documentary The End of the Line at the Mercury Cinema. It is being presented by the Adelaide branch of the Greens SA. The issues covered are particularly relevant to the campaign for Marine Parks in SA, see Greens MP Mark Parnell’s site, or the Wilderness Society, whose campaign manager Peter Owen will be available to answer questions after the screening.
From the filmmaker’s website:
The End of the Line, the first major feature documentary film revealing the impact of overfishing on our oceans, had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in the World Cinema Documentary Competition. Sundance took place in Park City, Utah, January 15-25, 2009.
In the film we see firsthand the effects of our global love affair with fish as food.
It examines the imminent extinction of bluefin tuna, brought on by increasing western demand for sushi; the impact on marine life resulting in huge overpopulation of jellyfish; and the profound implications of a future world with no fish that would bring certain mass starvation.
Filmed over two years, The End of the Line follows the investigative reporter Charles Clover as he confronts politicians and celebrity restaurateurs, who exhibit little regard for the damage they are doing to the oceans.
One of his allies is the former tuna farmer turned whistleblower Roberto Mielgo – on the trail of those destroying the world’s magnificent bluefin tuna population.
Filmed across the world – from the Straits of Gibraltar to the coasts of Senegal and Alaska to the Tokyo fish market – featuring top scientists, indigenous fishermen and fisheries enforcement officials, The End of the Line is a wake-up call to the world.
Helped enormously by a wonderfully rich score, The End of the Line presents its arguments cogently and without hysteria – but alarmingly. Clearly, apart from plain bureaucratic stupidity, money (ie greed) is what’s at the end of the line; a small number of operators are making multi million dollar harvests. And no-one is saying stop, except perhaps those who made this film. But there is a glimmer of hope …
“The End of the Line,” directed by Rupert Murray, based on a book by Charles Clover, is constructed from interviews with many experts, a good deal of historical footage, and much incredible footage from under the sea, including breathtaking vistas of sea preserves, where the diversity of species can be seen to grow annually. We once thought of the sea as limitless bounty. I think I may even have heard that in school. But those fantasies are over.
[youtube QWB8KJ1aIJ4]
Politics in the Pub
This Wednesday at the Metro
The A-Z of Smearing the Greens
In the Age/SMH today Paul Sheehan has a ridiculous piece attacking the Greens. His starting point is that the Greens are a fraud because Adam Bandt’s first bill is about same sex marriage, not the environment. Nevermind that this has always been an issue for the Greens, Sheehan chooses to pretend that the Greens actually never talk about anything apart from the environment (despite the fact that he points out various other issues where he disagrees with the Greens in the rest of the piece). The Greens have a wide range of policies available on their website, advertised in printed materials they produce, written into their charter , and various Greens MPs around the country have worked on a wide variety of issues. Sheehan’s piece only goes downhill after starting with this preposterous straw-man. He continues with an A-Z of why the Greens are a fraud.
Greens vote in the Victorian Election
On the count so far the results are a rather disappointing, overall the vote hasn’t changed much since the last state election, but after getting great results in Victoria in the recent federal election this could be seen even as a bit of a step backwards. Being in South Australia I’m not going to pretend that I’m any sort of expert on Victorian politics, so what follows is mostly speculation from an interested outsider.
Where the Greens are concerned there has been a lot of focus in the coverage on the failure to pickup any of the four inner city seats that were rated as a chance. I think it is a bit weird that the major narrative about the Greens in the press is that they failed to pick up these seats, when a couple of weeks ago the big news in the press was that the Greens couldn’t win them because they were being preferenced last by the Liberals. So if the story then was that these seats were no longer winnable, why is the story now that it is a big shock that the they weren’t won? With Liberal prefences the Greens would have won some of these seats, as expected, so I don’t think the failure to win these is a sign of a Greens failure. As an aside, another issue brought up here is that the Greens failed in preference negotiations, but as mentioned in an earlier post I don’t really buy that. It’s worth remembering that the Liberals preferences didn’t end up with the Greens in the past because of a deal, it was because they chose to preference Labor last. I don’t see much the Greens could have realistically offered the Liberals to get these preferences since I can’t see the Greens giving the Liberals preferences in return. It was never really a matter of who the Liberals liked better, it was them having to decide who they disliked the most.
So even though I don’t view the failure to win those inner city seats as a much of an overall measure of failure in the light of the preference issue, the election still was not great for the Greens. On the radio I heard the question a couple of times “has the Greens bubble burst?” to which the obvious answer is no. Their vote didn’t collapse by any means, it just failed to increase further. As a result it looks like the situation in the upper house may be unchanged, so the three incumbents stay but there are no new Greens MPs. Of course it’s early days for the upper house and this is not finalised (either way).
So what happened? I think the biggest factor is that there is a big swing on for a change of government. When people want to change Government they vote for the major parties. There are lots of big swings to the coalition, and the Greens vote is steady or only slightly up or down in many seats with these big swings. This situation also means that Labor voters tempted to vote Green may stick with Labor to try to keep them in Government (which, if you assume that Greens with balance of power would form Government with Labor, isn’t at all necessary).
There were a couple of other factors that come to mind
- The big stories about the Liberal prefences destroying the Greens’ chances might have left people thinking that they were no longer worth voting for.
- The disendorsement of a candidate in the last week didn’t help the Greens image. Not that I’m saying it was necessarily a mistake, I don’t know enough to give an opinion either way.
- In some electorates the Greens lost out quite a bit to independents, so in these cases it appears to be about local issues.
There is some good news for the Greens, there are a number of booths around the place where the Greens got considerable swings to them. I don’t know enough about them to speculate why this is, but I will note that mostly they are around the same area (Western Suburbs) so it looks to be a general trend in this area rather than something specific to the particular seats or candidates. I’m not sure how much this is translating to the Western Metro upperhouse seat, the ABC still have it as a very close call as to whether the Greens will retain it, but once again it’s early to call those.
One other big unknown at this point (which has been raised by The Greens’ Greg Barber) is that there is a huge number of prepoll, absentee & postal votes. Of course these don’t necessarily favour the Greens, but it does mean there are lots more votes to be counted and the situation may change somewhat (not that I see these turning around any of the inner city seats, but it might affect the upper house results, and the overall figures of swings).
At a personal level, it’s disappointing that the Greens aren’t looking like winning a spot in Western Victoria, last time Marcus Ward would have been elected if the ALP had preferenced him above the DLP. This time they did, but it doesn’t look like he’ll get in. The personal aspect is that I spent the day handing out how-to-votes in that electorate. I should throw in a thanks to my fellow SA Greens who also put in an effort to help our Victorian friends (especially those who helped get things organised and got us there & back), also thanks to the fantastic Greens supporters in Natimuk (what a great place! In an electorate with about 5% vote for the Greens, this is a town with about 15% voting Green) who generously provided accommodation for us (it’s a shame some of us couldn’t stay longer), and also thanks to the volunteers for all the other parties for their pleasant company & friendly conversations throughout the rainy day at Horsham North .
Automatic Pay Rises for State MPs
There was recently a story on Adelaide Now titled “State MPs chasing $40,000 pay rise”. The headline is a little misleading, but clearly did the job in attracting lots of outraged commenters. The gist of it, and the full story below is quite accurate though. The misleading part is “chasing” since the whole point is that they don’t actually have to anything! The pay of SA MPs is indexed to that of federal backbenchers, so there is no need for SA politicians do the ever unpopular “voting themselves a payrise”, they just get it without doing anything. This has been the case for some time, but there’s an extra ingredient now. There’s a plan at the federal level (which is not necessarily certain to be implemented at this stage) to incorporate various allowances directly into the pay for MPs. This means they get a one off, large pay increase, but traded off against the loss of various perks. The problem is that the result for SA would be the big increase but with no corresponding trade off (and none really possible since State MPs don’t have comparable allowances). Now to be fair to the parliament, this has not happened at the federal level, so they may well have decided to do something about this, or they may have kept quiet and taken the pay rise – we don’t know – but I am glad that the local press is onto it. What is disappointing (but not so surprising for the Murdoch press) is that while they talk about “independents” being against it, and quote Bob Such in particular, they completely fail to acknowledge that Greens MLC Mark Parnell has been trying to do away with the automatic pay rises for years, but his bills have never been supported by the major parties. You can see the bills, and various press on the issue at his website here. The last time it came up, about a year ago, it was reported on the ABC.
Victorian Election Preferences
Big news today is that the Liberals are preferencing The Greens last in the Victorian election in a couple of weeks. I think that some of the commentary on this has been pretty ordinary so I’d like to make a few points.
Firstly, why are there preference deals in the first place
I wrote quite a bit about preferences before the federal election, but there’s always a lot of confusion over them so I think it’s best to start by reiterating the basics. Parties have to submit preference tickets. This is not a result of a desire to do undemocratic backroom deals, it is something they have to do. The fact that they have to do it is not a consequence of having preferential voting. Preferential voting is a good thing and is in many ways more democratic than other options. The need for preference tickets is a result of above the line voting in the upper house. This allows voters to vote just for a party rather than a number of candidates, so the parties have to submit tickets so that it is known how to allocate preferences for above the line votes. Of course parties could just do this without dealing with each other, so preference deals are not a necessary consequence of prefence tickets. Deals often involve preferences in the lower house as well, but preferences there are quite different. In the lower house preferences are allocated according to how the voter writes the preferences on the ballot paper, the parties have influence only through handing out how to vote (HTV) cards. I think it would be good to get rid of HTVs but clearly the major parties see an advantage in keeping them.
What are the likely effects of the Liberals preferencing the Greens last?
There are four inner city seats (Melbourne, Richmond, Brunswick, Northcote) which are pretty certain to come down to a two party preferred (2PP) vote between Labor and the Greens, rather than Labor and Liberal as in most seats. If neither gets over 50% of the primary then the winner will be determined by the preferences of Liberal voters. While not all voters follow how to vote cards, generally Liberal voters follow the recommendations to a fairly large extent (Update: according to this article, inner city Melbourne Liberal voters do not necessarily follow HTV’s so much), so who they decide to preference can potentially decide those seats. Thus the result of their decision is to make these much harder for the Greens to win. It is not impossible though, in the federal election the Greens vote in the federal seat of Melbourne was very close to the Labor primary vote, if the Greens can win the primary vote there could be enough “leakage” of preferences (meaning Liberal voters who decide to prefence the Greens rather than follow the HTVs) for the Greens to still win. On the other hand if the Greens had been preferenced before Labor then they would have been strong favourites for Melbourne and Richmond, and in with a chance in the others (and maybe even some additional seats).
What does this mean about the Liberals?
Not a lot. I think this must have been a tough decision for them, in the past they always preferenced Labor last, which was a safe option if nobody else was in with a chance, but with Adam Bandt winning Melbourne with the help of Liberal preferences the game has changed. The Liberals have to preference someone last, while in most ways they are politically closer to Labor, there is also the factor that Labor are their real rivals for Government. In a way there is no good decision for them, and I wouldn’t read too much into whichever way they decided to go, but it seemed inevitable that at some point they would preference Labor ahead of the Greens.
Does this mean the Greens stuffed up the preference negotiations?
I don’t think so. The majority of Greens supporters don’t want them preferencing the Liberals, if they made a deal to do so in return for Liberal prefences then I think it would have backfired badly, they may have won those inner city seats but with a high long-term cost, and what’s more it could even have seen voters in those seats deserting them for Labor. There’s not a lot the Greens could have realistically offered the Liberals, and I think it was a matter of just hoping for a favourable result since the Liberals had good reasons for going either way. While this decision now frees up Labor to devote more resources to marginal Lab/Lib seats, it also counters a potential attack on the Libs as being pro-Green if they didn’t preference them last, preference deals are always good fodder for propaganda attacks (I think there’s a bit of a feedback loop in that they can be used for propaganda since people don’t understand them, and people don’t understand them because they are used for propaganda which confused the issue.)
One of the more ridiculous ideas I’ve seen out there is that the Greens somehow owe the Liberals for helping them to win Melbourne, or even that the Greens were unprincipled for accepting Liberal preferences! I’m not quite sure how they are supposed to not accept them. The Liberals chose to hand out how to votes preferencing the Greens over Labor, and most of their voters decided to do so – the Greens had no say in it whatsoever.
Why do the Greens target Labor seats anyway?
They don’t. One example of the Greens having a good go at a Liberal held seat was the Mayo by-election in SA when Alexander Downer retired. The Greens now contest every seat at every state and federal election. Like all parties there is obviously more effort put into winnable seats, and these happen to be Labor at this stage, though there are some Green/Lib 2PP seats developing they are still a fair way off being winnable. What’s more it’s not just a bout strategic decisions. The Greens depend largely on the efforts of volunteers, and so they inevitably have more activity in areas where they have lots of members and hence lots of volunteers, i.e. inner city seats held by Labor.
So what now for Greens supporters?
Get out there and volunteer. Contact your local branch and see what you can do to help. A win in a lower house seat is still not impossible, but also don’t forget the upper house! The Greens have a good chance at getting the balance of power there.
ABC Bias
The readers’ comments are well worth a read.
Election Follow Up #3
All the seats seem to be decided, Corangamite went to Labor, Brisbane and Hasluck to Liberals. This gives Coalition 73 / Labor 72, unless you don’t count Tony Crook for the Coalition in which case it’s 72 all. Even if you give the coalition one more seat it doesn’t necessarily mean that they have to form Govt since Adam Bandt is definitely not supporting them, and Wilkie seems unlikely to do so, whereas the ex-Nat indies seem to get on OK with the ALP. Could go either way. Tony Abbott has agreed to treasury costings now so will be interesting to see how that pans out – did he really have something to hide.
Other news –
- The ALP are making accusations of vote tampering in Boothby, a seat they lost by about 1000 votes. Details aren’t too clear at this stage.
- Steve Fielding made a bit of a desperate attempt to appear relevant by threatening to block supply if Labor forms government. A couple of problems with this – Tony Abbott said that the Libs won’t block supply, and Bob Brown pointed out that by the time the next budget needs to be voted on there’ll be a new senate anyway. Here’s Steve being a queue jumper:
[youtube jXjHNrP0BzA]
Election Follow Up #2
Big news tonight is that the Independents presented a list of demands and Labor’s response seems to be much more satisfactory to them than the coalition’s.
Read the details at the following places:
The main issue is that Abbott is still refusing to have policy costings looked at by Treasury. It’s interesting that on this and other issues the independents are holding the major parties up to the sort of scrutiny that the press largely failed to (when they were too busy on trivialities and horse-race style coverage).
Also, the latest on counts is that Denison looks to be solid for Andrew Wilkie, and Hasluck, Corangamite and Brisbane are still in the balance. Based on some of the links above the choice of Government might be determined regardless of the outcomes in these seats anyway.