BBefore Paul Keating took the leadership 14 months ago, a Liberal drover’s dog could have won the election. The Coalition was miles ahead. Fightback had been well-received because the Hawke Government was too tired or uninspired to tell people about the 15 per cent GST. And Jeff Kennett had not legislated away leave loadings
It was not a case of üif the Coalition would put its program into effect, but how quickly. Then, the Coalition’s spokesman on industrial relations, John Howard, spoke of not tolerating any nonsense over his industrial-relations revolution. If the Senate blocked it there would be a double dissolution within six months. Then the Coalition would have a majority in both Houses, and Fightback in all its purity would be enacted.
There’s no more of that talk. Dr Hewson lost his political virginity with Fightback Mark II and enjoyed it so much he has had another go with the special deal for the five sugar seats. Though the IR policy has not been perforated, there is no more talk of protecting its purity with a double dissolution.
None the less, the underlying difficulty will not go away just because no-one is talking about it: the Coalition is extremely unlikely to win in the Senate. This is because its starting blocks are not on the same line as in the Reps.
There are several factors in Senate elections that help make their outcome different from the Reps. For a start, only half the Senate is up for election. Those senators up for election were elected six years before, so they reflect a different electoral environment than their Rep colleagues.
Secondly, the Senate is elected by proportional representation which means minor parties and independents always get seats whereas they rarely get Reps seats. Thirdly, senators are state-based. With 12 senators from each state, the biggest vote does not necessarily translate into the most seats. Each seat in the Reps has a roughly equal number of electors _ 70,000; whereas senators represent unequal number of voters, from 42,000 in Tasmania to 477,000 in NSW. A party winning the Reps on the strength of its popularity in NSW might thus not win the Senate because it is detested by Tasmanians.
In short, a party with more than half the seats in the Reps might get fewer than half the Senate seats even with the same percentage vote. The 1990 election was a good example. In the Reps, Labor got 39.4 per cent of the primary vote and 53 per cent of the seats. In the Senate it got 38.4 per cent of the primary vote and 38 per cent of the non-territory seats. I’ll leave out the self-cancelling territory senators for the rest of this argument because each territory routinely elects one Labor and one Coalition senator.
In this 1993 election, senators elected in 1987 will come up for re-election. Those elected in 1990 will stay put.
The 1987 election was a double dissolution, which meant the whole of the Senate was elected. Those that came in the bottom half of the poll in their state got the three-year term and went up for election in 1990. Those that came in the top half of the poll in their state got the six-year term and come up for re-election on March 13.
The 1987 election was held before the recession, when the environment was a big issue. Thus three Democrats elected as long-term senators in 1987 come up for election on March 13. Also, the Nationals were still very strong in Queensland in 1987 because of the Joh-for-Canberra idiocy. So in Queensland four Coalition candidates came in the top half. These four are up for re-election on March 13.
However, the green and National vote has waned since 1987. The Coalition will be very hard pushed to get its four re-elected in Queensland. The Democrats, too, might find it hard going to retain the three Senate places up for re-election _ one each in South Australia (Janine Haines has gone), Victoria (Don Chipp is but a memory) and NSW. And despite John Coulter’s quietly reasonable image, the unseemly leadership brawl among the Democrats are still in recent memory.
The 1987 election was a fairly even result. None the less on March 13, 17 Labor senators find themselves up for re-election whereas only 15 Coalition ones are. Meanwhile, only 13 Labor senators stay put, whereas 17 Coalition ones do. (see tables). This is a distinct advantage for the Coalition, but it is not enough.
To get a workable majority the Coalition needs to gain four seats. It needs to convert its 15 senators up for re-election into 19. (These 19 added to its 17 who are staying plus the conservative independent Brian Harradine who will get re-elected in Tasmania will give it 37. Add two territory senators and you have 39 _ a majority in the 76-member Senate.)
Can the Coalition gain those four seats?
It could win an extra seat in each of NSW, Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania where it only has two senators up for election. (see table.) It could maintain its Western Australian three, but to get across the line it would need to retain all four Queensland seats or pick up a fourth seat in another state.
Getting a fourth seat in an election for six senators is no easy task.
In 1990 the Coalition got 41 per cent in Victoria and Western Australia which sounded in three seats. Its fourth candidate in each case was a long way back.
A quota is 14.3 per cent, so 43 per cent will guarantee three seats. To get a fourth seat, the Coalition would need the follow three conditions to be satisfied:
1. A primary vote of a full three quotas and at least a quarter of a fourth quota (that is 46 per cent of the vote).
2. The Labor Party would have to get less than 2{ quotas (that is less than 35 per cent of the vote). And
3. The remaining 19 per cent or so of the vote would have to be split among at least four candidates with no one of them getting more than a third of it.
Those conditions are a fairly tall order, but cannot be entirely ruled out.
The most likely event is that the Coalition will miss out on a majority.
That will put the Democrats and Labor in a quandary. Do they reject the key elements of the Coalition’s policy: the GST, Jobsback and privatisation?
The Prime Minister, Paul Keating, in a typically flamboyant ruse said Labor would support a GST if the Coalition won. This was first a scare tactic in the lead up to the election, but also in the event of a Coalition victory would also help Labor avoid a hypocritical blocking of a money Bill in the Senate and might provide useful campaign ammunition in 1996 when the horror of the tax is fully known, though one could not imagine Labor repealing it.
The Jobsback IR policy is different. Labor and to a lesser extent the Democrats could get good mileage out of frustrating it. As the events in Victoria have showed, IR is not as easy an issue to mount a double-dissolution campaign on as John Howard imagined 18 months ago.
On the Democrat side, simple self-preservation might be enough to convince them to let the policy through.
The Democrats are a pretty sick tribe these days. Opinion polls show they will lose a Victorian seat and probably a NSW seat on March 13. In a subsequent double dissolution, polling shows they would get one in South Australia and one in NSW. They might get a second in South Australia. But they are not polling well enough in the other states to be assured a seat. In both Western Australia and Tasmania their vote is split with the greens and other independents. The way the last seat goes in these states is anyone’s guess. In any event, the Democrats are facing a cut from a peak of eight senators after the 1990 election to six or seven after march 13. But if there were a subsequent double dissolution they might go down to two at worst and four at most.
What cannot be ruled out is a substantial or comfortable Coalition win in the Reps. If that happened we would see a return of all the confident brash talk of forcing Jobsback through even if it takes a double dissolution. In that event the Coalition might goad the Democrats into an act of self-destruction by refusing any compromise on the GST and Jobsback. The Democrats could go the way of the DLP, and for similar reasons.
Labor on the other hand would be better off after a double dissolution. It would be cashing in its poor 1990 result when it got only two senators per state and three in NSW.
Whatever the prospects of Labor and the Democrats, two things are for sure: the Coalition cannot win a Senate majority on March 13, but they could (if they play their politics well) win a majority in a subsequent double dissolution.
This prospect will ensure that if the Coalition wins, we can expect the Senate to figure prominently in the ensuing interesting times.