It’s finally over, and the outcome (if it holds) looks like the best possible. If it’s true that a country gets the government it deserves, we must all have been doing a lot of good deeds lately. Despite the efforts of both major parties to force us into a choice between focus-grouped piles of bribes and banality, we appear set for parliamentary reform, and a serious approach to climate change, tax reform and broadband policy[1].
fn1. Trying to watch the Windsor-Oakeshott press conference online was an object lesson in the inadequacies of our existing networks.
John Quiggin 
Yes, the video feed was terrible – I switched over to the online radio feed…
The ABC online radio feeds were full, too, so I had to just watch twitter.
Katter has a different sort of electorate and has responded on those terms. The others live in growth centres, want education and social infrastructure taken care of and want to leave a thoughtful legacy for the next generation.
By crikey, Labor had better pull its finger out and stop beleiving it is entitled to be in government simply because it wears a tag with,”labor” written on it.
Enough of this inward/backward lookingness that afflicts this country, how about labor adopts someof the “vison” of the more intelligent indies?
Yes, it does look like a remarkably good outcome. The LNP has been captured by it’s hard right base, and they will not accept this. Entertainment is guaranteed as their bile and vitriol contrasts with the Government trying to look all statesmanlike and measured.
Viva REFORM!
Yes, this is close to as good a result as any for which we might reasonably have hoped, given the system constraints. Neither side warranted support, both sides lost and the public won. We may now get the government we hoped we’d get in 2007 and finally begin to extinguish the Howard legacy.
Pr Q said:
The outcome is perverse, but not necessarily perverted.
The electoral polity shifted nearly 3% to the Right in 2PP terms. That is a fairly sizeable swing by historic standards. And the L/NP have actually won the 2PP vote.
Yet governmental policy is likely to swing signficantly to the Left, at least compared to the most recent incarnations, based on pork-barrelling to focus-grouped marginal electorates.
This counter-intuitive outcome was achived by the closeness of the result which forced the ALP to make liberal concessions to independent minded representatives in both town & country – thereby actually being more representative of the nation as a whole.
I doubt whether the sky will fall in if the ALP has to make more deals of this kind in order to maintain its grip on office. I predict that this “independent moment” will promote the popularity of independent politicians and break-away parties.
I also predict that the ALP will have to make some policy concessions to the Browns on the land in order to get through more policy achievements for the Greens in the city.
Which is not a bad thing, on the whole.
@Jack Strocchi
I think it’s more subtle than that. We have a centre-right ALP and a fairly-right LNP as what counts in the 2PP numbers. But a great number of people voted for a genuinely left wing party, the Greens, more than have voted for such a party of the left since the 1970s when the ALP stopped having any left-wing leanings. So, sure, there was a swing to the right, but also a swing to the left for a lot of people, dejected with the ALP.
There was a very nice letter in Crikey week before last. I hope I’m not breaking copyright, including it below. A beautiful summary:
—
Sean Hosking writes: Re. Yesterday’s Editorial . There was a lot of unexpected things to take out of the election and one of them was just how badly, in attempting to decimate the last vestiges of progressive politics in the Labor Party, the big end of town and their media mouthpieces had screwed up.
The Labor Party, ever since the early 80s, has been largely compliant in regard to the neo-liberal reform agenda at the cost of much of its core historical political mission. Gillard’s brief stint represented the low point of Labor’s descent into political nihilism, reactionary and right wing, not by dint of conviction, but because the dictates of “real politic”, as represented by talk back radio, the editorial of the Australian, corporate lobbyists and “what’s in it for me” outer suburban aspirationals necessitated it.
So harassed and bombarded by the media arms of the ideological right and infected with the tactical gibberish of Arbib, Bitar and co, the Labor party had lost any real capacity to argue a point on the basis of solid reasoning, principle, conviction and common sense.
Look no further than Rudd’s painful focus group tested apologies for his government’s “screw ups” in the wake of the stimulus spending which broke every fundamental rule of leadership, yet no doubt looked like political gold when drafted up by Arbib, complete with the latest political marketing buzzwords and tactical blather.
Still Labor’s acquiescence has never really been quite enough for the ideological right and in particular the News Limited cable. If only they had known when to stop. Despite Labor’s bankruptcy as a party of the moderate left, by dint of not being the coalition, it still constituted a very effective means of harvesting lazy left wing votes and basically null and voiding them. A party that is nominally “left wing” and yet who are in reality pursuing a stringently right wing agenda is tactically manor from heaven. A Trojan horse for corporate interests.
But ideologues by their very nature are not capable of restraint. They’re not playing a pragmatic tactical game, they’re pursing a total horizon of domination in much the same way that religious zealots are pursuing a homogenous utopia. They want everything, not just almost everything.
In effectively neutering the Labor Party, harassing it to abandon any semblance of principle, vision and conviction (whether it be the ETS or the mining tax) and leaving it in the inept hands of the numbers men, the ideological right thereby made the bankruptcy of Labor clear to even the most tolerant of “progressive” voters.
In doing so they forced a whole raft of moderate left leaning votes that would otherwise have been parked ineffectually with Labor straight into the genuinely left wing hands of the greens.
So for all their denigration of the left, they’ve succeeded in giving Australian a genuine left wing political voice which is going to create real havoc with their “reform” agenda in the senate, and possibly in the house of reps. Well done.
—
Spot on.
This episode also illustrates another counter-intuitive aspect of (post-)modern politics, namely the cross-wired political switch. Which sometimes overlaps the Machiavellian principle (ends justifies means) and the “law of unintended consequences” or “ironies of history”.
That is the tendency of politicians of a pronounced notional ideological persuasion to promote policies that would normally alienate their base, because their base has sizeable loyalty to the person themselves andtrusts them to not give too much to opposed interests.
In the current case, rural regional politicians, in largely L/NP-tending electorates, are pleased to tarry with the ALP because they know that the ALP will be pay a higher price to bribe its notional enemies.
Nixon could go to China make strategic deals with PRC (and Reagan could propose a zero-option to USSR) because their base knew that these two were not communist dupes or airy-fairy, touchy-feely, lovey-dovey peaceniks.
Likewise, Keating could promote economic liberalisation because his base believed that he was at heart not a lick-spittle of the bourgeois.
Howard was a master of this political ju-jitsu. He could promote high immigration because his base knew he was not a tool of the ethnic lobby. He got away with gun control because most people “know” that he emotionally sympathises with shooters.
There is also a material interest in this process, because one’s enemies will normally be prepared to pay for what ones allies will expect be done free out of love. Thus Wall Street normally gives more campaign donations to the DEMs because it can afford to take the REPs for granted. To put it crudely, the DEMs are whores who must be paid to turn political tricks whilst the REPs are sluts who give it away for free.
Of course the Liberals have taken the bush for granted for a generation, which is why Nationals split from the coalition to become independent. Poetic justice!
So the lesson of the new politics is: it pays to betray ones base! Long live Machiavelli, who would not be surprised one little bit at this “miracle”.
@Peter Evans
Yes Peter, that’s a very good letter.
Got a link please?
Jack Strocchi @ #8 said:
And no sooner said than done.
Labor’s $9.9bn deal for regional Australia.
I guess the regional independents were prepared to allow the mining tax to stay so long as the proceeds were spent on the bush. All in all that seems like a fair result.
Peter Evans @ #7
I
You are being too subtle. Its true that there was a localised swing to the Left, but that was a polarising tendency within the broad Left. Thus after the Rudd fiasco a large swag of inner-city pinko ALP voters decided to go the whole way and vote watermelon GREEN.
However this Left-wing polarisation did NOT was not indicative of an overall swing towards the Left. Quite the opposite, the country as a whole swung substantially to the Right – remember the L/NP fielded a fairly conservative front bench.
The ALP had no one to blame but itself for losing this election. Mainly due to diverse state reactions to ALP policy and political bungles.
Most of all the ALP lost it in QLD which strongly rejected the mining tax. Alot of real estate developer lost a packet on the Gold Coast so the Sunshine state is not feeling in a generous mood towards Canberra. The anti-ALP swing in QLD pre-dated and indeed caused the dumping of Rudd. No doubt about that, the polls chronology does not lie.
And of course the continuing degenerate farce of NSW state ALP finally blew-back towards the federal ALP. My guess is that public exasperation at the deplorable and over-priced public infrastructure finally caused NSW voters to spit the dummy. This may explain the anti-immigrant tendency in marginal electorates – voters can’t see the point of drawing in hundreds of thousands more people into already over-crowded trains, roads, schools & hospitals.
@ Jack Strocchi (10).
Spending on basic infrastructure in regional Australia is long overdue.
Even as an inner-city dweller (in Queensland), I would rather see governments spend a few million dollars upgrading a road or rail link somewhere west of Toowoomba or north of Noosa than on another un-necessary road or footbridge in Brisbane.
And I would rather see the Federal government spend money to make life more bearable in the wilds of South Australia, Western Australia or the NT than chucking it into central or western Sydney.
Alot of public money goes into Sydney. But it does not get spent on anything recognisably in the public interest.
@ Roy Wilke (12)
I would rather see governments save the money than on another un-necessary road or footbridge in Brisbane.
I see the need for stimulus spending, but it needs to satisfy a real need.
As for spending money in the bush, we have better infrastructure in the city because we live in cities. Our society is able to afford this because of economies of scale (or is it scope). And that is why 90% of the population lives in cities
We do not yet know who won the 2PP and will not know for some weeks. The current figure posted by the AEC excludes any electorate where the the two major parties did not run first and second. I do not know why we are repeatedly told that the Coalition won the 2PP.
Jack Strochi #11 – I see you are writing out of the old paradigm. In many ways I have enjoyed the last 2 weeks because of the politeness of the discourse. As Rob Oakshott said – it can’t last. The mining tax was fought by the mining companies who will now have to pay a fairer share.
@paul walter
Paul Walter, Moshie…my friends. The best result we could hope for??.
The lesser of two evils. I watched Windsor’s speech in my office today – all stopped to watch. People said “why cant all our politicians speak like this?” It was truly great speech.
Why indeed not? Methinks its because the dreadful media reduces them to soundbites , game show participants and boat people arguments. Shame about Katter but he has himself to think about, obviously.
As to spending on infrastructure – Obama is starting that again in the US. Repairs and maintenance – roads and railways.
Abbott loses that window of opportunity he currently has when Fielding leaves the senate next year.
Methinks the fascist press will give the Gillard minority government a rough ride until then: after that it doesn’t matter so much, for a few years.
Actually as this link shows the percentage swing to The Greens was more than four times what the swing to the coalition was. Most ALP votes were lost to the left rather than the xenophobic, parochial and ignorant cockie right.
It does look like there should be some good outcomes to come out of this arrangement, but it also seems certain that the road ahead is very difficult. Labor will need to break bread with both the Greens and the independents on policy, whilst nevertheless being mindful of the fact that it so very nearly lost government to one of the most conservative oppositions in living memory.
Although it is the discombobulated product that came out at the end, and may result in some worthwhile outcomes, I don’t think that anything like a majority of people really wanted the likes of the Greens, Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott to wield so much power when they cast their votes at the ballot box.
Alice, think positive for Bob Katter is still part of the equation and just needs to work with people rather than threaten to bring down a government. Katter will do well for country folks as will Windsor and Oakeshott. The only losers have been the Coalition.
@Fran Barlow
its obvious you have half a brain
Sorry Alice for stuffing up my last post as I really meant to say ‘the only losers have been the Coalition & Libertarians’.
Which is at least half a brain better than you, Svenk.
At least Fran discusses the issues rather than indulging in infantile name calling, because she has quite a lot, one suspects, more wit and brains than others here.
Guy almost invites an argument from me as to the suitability of the indies and greens as parliamentary material, when you think of the drones and zombies the major party factions have thrown up as alternatives over recent times.
“Moribund: does not even begin to describe some of these
How many seats out of 150 do the Independents and the Greens have, Guy? If this gives them disproportionate power isn’t this because the holders of the massive majority of seats are locked into a dysfunctional modus operandi?
@fred
Sorry, it’s pay-walled. From the newsletter August 25.
@svenk
Why thanks! Like the moon though, some people miss the other half at the back.
Fran Barlow @ #18 said:
Your link showed the GREENs primary vote swing was four times larger than the L/NP’s, but off a six times smaller base. This invalidates apples-to-apples comparisons.
Australian elections are, quite sensibly, based on preferential votes which more accurately weight voter sentiment. Most ALP votes were lost to the Left, but nonetheless the L/NP achieved nearly a 3% national 2PP swing.
So the Broad Left polarised towards towards the Far Left whilst the mainstream shifted significantly towards the Centre-Right. The election was not, overall, a ringing endorsement of Left-wing parties.
The media-academia-blogging complex does not seem interested in registering these facts. But anyone who refers to half of the country as “the xenophobic, parochial and ignorant cockie right” is always going to face an uphill battle against unpalatable facts.
I was enjoying the absence of an executive government. Why did it have to end?
Jack said:
Amusing in its irony. The entire 0.6% swing to the Libs (less than the swing to informal), or thereabouts was an appeal to this above the usual tribalist voting, and this is the unpalatable fact you’re fighting not to register.
Have I missed something or is Jack Strocchi’s comment @#28 truly innumerate and clueless. The swing figures from the AEC are percentages of total national vote so they do compare apples to apples and they seem to clearly demonstrate the green swing (+3.96%) at more than 5 times the Coalition swing (+0.73%). The size of the base is irrelevant, it’s not a percentage of the base. Is Jack Strocchi completely deluded or is this just the standard right wing tactic of loudly, aggressively and repetitively declaring black is white no matter how obvious the lie is?
@Peter Evans
Yep, I switched to the Greens (eventually) after building frustration at the taking the low ball estimates to Copenhagen, the watering down of an ETS/CPRS system into a tokenist piece of malarkey, and the failure to take a double dissolution to the electorate when the CPRS – after Minchin gave the red hot poker to Turnbull – was deferred several years, by the very man that had said it was “the greatest moral challenge of our times”. Julia Gillard hardly added to the situation, what with the people’s court or whatever it was.
Now for the fun part: watching Turnbull attempt to skewer Abbott with a red hot poker someone left to him…
Fran Barlow @ #30 said:
This is half-baked infantile Left-liberalism. The swing the L/NP had nothing at all to do with “the usual tribalist voting”. it had everything to do with the ALP harming the perceived interests of voters in certain states.
The pro-L/NP swing occurred at specific time and places – toward the middle of the year, after the mining tax was announced. It was focused in QLD & WA which would be adversely affected by the tax.
And in NSW which was adversely affected by an inept and corrupt NSW state government, whose infrastructure was completely over-loaded by the massive influx of immigration over the past few years. You can call this “xenophobic” if it makes you feel virtuous, most people call it common sense.
And the relevant swing is 2PP, not primary. In AUS psephology we weight, rather than just count. By that yard-stick the L/NP swing was nearly 3%, which is quite a healthy result.
Had Rudd not blundered in the execution and promotion of the mining tax he would still be leader of the ALP and the ALP would be in majority government.
Those are facts, get your head around them for a change.
@Ian Milliss
Jack is just toying with us, probably because of the Labor victory. Or, more properly, the Labor/Greens/Oakeshotte/Windsor victory.
If it lasts more than a few months I will be mightily impressed with the Labor coalition’s staying power.
sorry, I screwed up the formatting but I’m sure you get what I mean.
Ian Millis @ #31 said:
YOu have not missed something. I did, my mistake. The percentage increases are taken off national, rather than partisan, voting bases. I misread the table, plead late night, preparing lesson plans yada yada yada.
So the pinko Left of the ALP swung to the GREENs after Rudd flubbed the CPRS. That is a movement within the Left, not a movement of the whole nation from the Right to the Left.
And of course the size of the primary vote is irrelevant in our preferential electoral system. What counts is the weighting, not first counting, of the votes. In this case, given the turn-around of votes to the L/NP in WA, QLD and NSW, the weight of electoral support wound up shifting the country’s political centre of gravity nearly 3% to the Right.
Innumeracy and cluelessness would appear to be rampant amongst Left-wingers like Barlow & Millis if they refuse to accept these primordial facts.
PS I am not a “Right-winger” or any kind of winger. Just checking the facts and correcting errrors including my own.
Jack Strocchi, are you absolutely sure that the high informal vote didn’t affect Labor or was it just another aberration?
John, I just finished reading a good piece by Josette Dunn entitled “Package a ‘good start’ for rural Australia” much of what is written is coming from the heart rather than the bulldust we have been hearing.
Preferential voting does not involve any ‘weighting’ of votes. If your vote cannot be counted for your candidate it transfers, at the same value, to your next available preference. End of story, trying to discount the primary vote is as inaccurate as the Liberal claim to have won the election by receiving more primary votes than Labor. Moreover the AEC quotes the national swing on the 2PP as 2.71%. That is somewhat less than the much more exciting figure of 3% and is likely to reduce as the independent and greens eats are returned to the 2PP count.
Australia has a record of swinging against first term governments. In 1998 the national swing against the Coalition was 4.6%. In 1984 the swing against Labor was 2%. 2.71% is simply not a historically large swing against a first term government.
@Jack Strocchi
The 2PP figure is not relevant in a multiparty scenario – particularly when the swing is to a third tendency.
If the swing was to the right – Oakeshotte and Windsor would have supported the Right.
But given the shocks of GFC, climate change, overpopulation, and greedy mining magnates trying to retain their returns, profits and super profits, many Australians appear to be looking for a watermelon solution.
The electorate has been very smart.
Oakeshott and Windsor are true democrats. Hopefully their electorates will boil them alive at the next poll.
From the AEC website.
Lyne
Oakeshott (Independent) – 40,066 votes
Gillespie (Nationals) – 29,217 votes
Frederick (Labor) – 11,456 votes
Oxenford (Greens) – 3,645 votes
New England
Tony Windsor (Independent) – 56,317 votes
Tim Coates (Nationals) – 22,965 votes
Greg Smith (Country Labour) – 7,396 votes
Pat Schultz (Greens) – 3,244 votes
Wouldn’t it be an accurate summary of this result to say that despite a somewhat unpopular Labour government, the coalition really failed to make up much at all, ie, 0.6%. They improved their vote in two states with extremely unpopular labour state government but were neutral or negative elsewhere. Labour lost a protest or a shift to the Greens, Mr Informal did well and the minor parties also picked up a bit of a protest vote.
Despite the current trumpeting of Abbott’s wonderful near success, he failed big time. According to a cartoon I saw, Gillard’s main attribute for most people is not being Tony Abbott. That seems to sum it up for me. The Liberal Party should ditch him. And do a bit of policy revision. Oppositional policies like climate change denialism – that appeal to the looney right who were always going to vote for you anyway – have to go. Next election Gillard will have settled in, and there won’t be Labour governments in Queensland and NSW.
Lyne 2 Candidate Preferred
OAKESHOTT, Robert Independent 53,298 62.73 0.00 +62.73
GILLESPIE, David The Nationals 31,672 37.27 0.00 +37.27
New England 2 Candidate Preferred
COATES, Tim The Nationals 25,990 28.55 25.59 +2.96
WINDSOR, Tony Independent 65,032 71.45 74.41 -2.96
The Coalition had its chance to contest these seats. It lost. Windsor did not need preferences. Oakeshoot was elected on Labor and Green preferences.
Just being a little pedantic, wasn’t the swing to the Coalition about 1.52 percentage points, as one has to add Libs, Nats, Lib Nats of Qld & CountryLP of NT? This compares with 3.96 for Greens.
And do we know that all the Green votes were ex-ALP? Evidence?
Why “hopefully”? If the voters of New England return Windsor again, would that make them undemocratic?
JQ said, “we appear set for parliamentary reform, and a serious approach to climate change, tax reform and broadband policy.”
I wish I could believe it. Parliamentary reform will be cosmetic at best. There will be no approach to dealing with climate change, the coal lobby will see to that. Tax reform will be a non starter as vested corporate interests continue to get to set their own effective tax rates by controlling the government via donations and lobby pressure. The broadband rollout might happen… slowly.
Democratic government is in corporate capitalist straight jacket and can and will do nothing that is not sanctioned by the power of corporate capital.
But I bet the problem wasn’t between your home and the exchange.
@hc
If you look at the data from the the independents seats post election, in all three cases, of the people who preferenced the independent higher than the LNP or ALP candidate, more of them then preferenced the ALP candidate higher than the LNP candidate. If you factor in those who preference the LNP above the independent, sure, more of the voters wanted LNP than ALP, but not of those that preferenced the independent higher. And this is with the ALP running dead in all three seats (which they will continue to do).
It is not a foregone conclusion that the independents are going to do badly at all next time around. And you only have to look at the examples of Mack and Andren to see very popular progressive, enlightened, candidates can do well in rural seats.