Parliament is now up till August and so it is now a fairly safe bet to assume there will not be a double dissolution and that only half the Senate is up for re-election at the next election.Technically, the Constitution does not permit a double dissolution after November 4. Even so a trigger is needed in the form of the Senate twice rejecting (or failing to pass) legislation twice passed by the House with a three month gap.
It is unlikely the Government would want to use existing blocked taxes as the trigger and there is not enough time to set up a new one. How does a half-Senate election suit the major players?
It should favour the Labor Party; be fairly neutral for the Coalition and not be kind to the Democrats.
The reason for this is that the senators up for re-election are those that were elected in 1990. In that election Labor did very badly. In the House it got a lower two-party preferred vote than the coalition but retained government by concentrating on marginal seats. In the Senate it did worse, gaining only 13 of the 36 seats available. (see table)
(For the purposes of the tables I have ignored the four Territory senators as each major party always gets two each.) So Labor is defending a very poor 1990 result. It should do better and pick up seats.
The Democrats, on the other hand, are defending a very good result in 1990. You will recall that was the year everyone was browned off with the major parties. Richo ran around the place saying even if you are voting Green or Democrats, please give us your second preference.
That was a good tactic for the Reps, but did not work in Senate because the first preference for the Senate resided with the Greens and the Democrats and translated into seats _ five Democrats and one Green to be precise _ one in every state. The table shows what happens when the Democrat vote collapses as it did in 1993. It got only two Senate seats.
It is likely, though, that the Democrats will do better than 1993; that was a troubled time for the Democrats with leadership changes and the like. Cheryl Kernot, on the other hand, is the acceptable face of minor-party politics. None the less, they will be pushing to do as well as in 1990 so are likely to lose seats, presumably to Labor.
The Coalition is defending a moderate result in 1990; the same result it got in 1993. But it still has to pick up three more seats without losing any to get a Senate majority. This is very unlikely because it would mean getting four of the six seats in three states. Getting a fourth seat in an election for six senators is no easy task.
In 1993 the Liberals got 48.4 per cent of the first preference vote in Western Australia and did not capture the fourth seat. Labor got 46.9 per cent in NSW and did not get the fourth seat.
It is unusual for either major party to get a first-preference result in the high 40s in the Senate because the minor-party vote is higher in the Senate than in the Reps because voters know they have a chance of being elected.
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 and half 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 no party will get four Senate seats in any state. The Coalition will therefore miss out on a majority.
The best it can hope for is three in each state, making 18. Adding its 17 existing seats and Brian Harradine it gets 36 seats, plus its two Territory seats.
In the event of a Coalition victory in the House, this would give it a blocking vote in the Senate for any Labor legislative initiative or embarrassing motion or inquiry, but to get its own legislation through it would need Democrat or Green support. Moreover, Harradine is unlikely to support wholesale industrial relations reform _ a key part of the Coalition platform.
A further watching point is whether disaffection with the Liberals in Western Australia results in a vote fall-off. But they could lose as much as 6 per cent a still get three seats.
The fate of the Democrats will be interesting. It will almost certainly lose its Tasmanian seat (Robert Bell) to Green candidate Bob Brown. Kernot should get re-elected and so should John Coulter in the Democrats’ strongest state, South Australia.
However, the vote polarised in Victoria and NSW in 1993, squeezing out the minor parties. It may do so again. If so the majors will get one each. At best the Democrats will have six seats; at worst four.
Of more import to the Democrats is not the absolute number (though it needs five for party status), but whether the state of the other parties and Greens give them the sole balance of power.
This is unlikely. The Greens will have two seats (Brown and Dee Margetts, whose term does not expire until 1999), even if Christabel Chamarette does not retain her seat in the West. That is a distinct possibility. The Greens got only 5.5 per cent in the West in 1993. This time some disaffected Liberal vote might give the Democrats the last seat.
In summary, though, the likelihood is that the Greens, Democrats and Brian Harradine will share the balance of power in the Senate _ working it in various combinations _ whoever is in government.
If the coalition wins government, it can expect the Labor Party to have a long memory when it comes to using Senate numbers in a disruptive way.