In the Senate, it is very unlikely that the Coalition can get a majority. More likely, Labor will pick up a little. The Senate election is also unlikely to be kind to the Democrats.
This is because of numbers, quotas and history rather than what might happen in the campaign or the merits of policies.
These 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.
The normal pattern is that senators have a six-year term, with half of them being elected every three years. So those 36 senators who were elected in 1993 stay put and the 36 senators who were elected in 1990 face the electors … six in each state.
The four territory senators are elected differently. Each has a maximum three-year term and is elected at the same time as the House of Representatives. Invariably the ACT and Northern Territory elect one senator from each of the major party. The major parties only need 33 per cent of the vote to ensure this and they always be expected to get it. In the ACT that will be Labor’s Kate Lundy and the Liberals’ Margaret Reid.
For the rest of this article we will ignore the territory senators.
In the 1990 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. Labor got a lower first-preference result than in 1975 and only got government on preferences of minor parties.
In the Senate, however, a lot of the preferences of minor party votes never get distributed because they are used to elect minor-party candidates.
In 1990, it meant Labor’s Senate result was appalling. It got only 13 of the 36 seats available. (see table)
So Labor is defending a very poor 1990 result. It should therefore do better and pick up seats.
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 minor-party candidates 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 (who has a union background) 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.
Unlike Labor and the Coalition, the Democrats, are defending a very good result in 1990. You will recall that was the year everyone was browned off with the major parties. Labor numbers man Graham Richardson 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 in 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 Democrats are likely to lose a seat in Tasmania (Robert Bell) to high profile Green candidate Bob Brown. However, it is possible they could pick up a seat in Western Australia, at the expense of the Greens’ Christabel Chamarette.
Kernot should get re-elected in Queensland and the Democrats should get a seat in its 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 in those seats. 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.
However, 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.