This time three years ago excitement was generated by a high-profile challenge to ACT Liberal Senator Margaret Reid. Former National Farmers Federation chief Rick Farley was nominated by the Australian Democrats to run for the ACT Senate seat.
He did not make it, despite much commentary that the detestation of the Liberals and absentee Prime Minister John Howard in Canberra would cause Senator Reid grief.
Now high-profile wine-maker and former Yass Mayor Ken Helm is making as similar challenge, but as an independent.
It is a bit sad really, neither Farley nor Helm understand how comprehensively the major parties stitched by the two Senate seats in the two mainland territories. It was to be one each from each territory, forever, full stop.
When the territories got senators 25 years ago, the major parties worked a system that ensures it. Instead of having senators with fixed six-year terms, as in the states, the territory senators have terms equivalent of one term of the House of Representatives. So both senators come up for election each time – not every second time as with state senators. It means a major party needs only 33.3 per cent of the vote AFTER preferences to get a seat. So they get one seat each. Usually, the major parties get more than 33.3 per cent of first preferences.
The big run by Farley did not get close in 1998. He got 16.7 per cent of the vote. Reid got 31.2 per cent (or 0.93 of a quota), needing just a trickle of preferences to put her over the line. It was much the same in 1983 when anti-Liberal feeling in Canberra was high after the grim Fraser years. Reid got 31.7 per cent of the vote, needing just a handful of preferences to win.
I say it is sad because I think Helm will do quite well, maybe better than Farley, even without Farley’s party support which is useful for money and volunteers to hand out how-to-vote-cards. On that sort of result, it would have put Helm into the ACT Legislative Assembly which is having an election around the same time as the Federal election. And Helm is the sort of person we could do with in the Assembly – successful at running a significant business with some governmental experience. His lack of interest it is understandable, but it highlights the Catch 22 in ACT politics – we will not attract good candidates until the place has a higher standard of candidate and occupant.
That said, Helm’s Senate candidature will probably help continue a steady trend away from the major parties. Voters are disillusioned with both of them, and the figures show it. If the trend continues, there will be a chaos-theory upsetting of the applecart in a couple of elections’ time with lots of independents and minor-party getting elected.
Let’s look at the trend. In 1993, Labor got 43.5 per cent of the vote. In 1996 it fell to 36.1 per cent, or 7.4 per cent. Where did that 7.4 per cent go? Not to the Coalition. Its vote hardly moved up at all – less than half a per cent. So forget about “”swings” and the “”two-party preferred vote” which portrays a misleading picture of the vote swinging from one major party to the other. Far it is dribbling out to minor parties and independents in sullen disillusionment.
Come to 1998. The Coalition lost 2.5 per cent of its vote. Did Labor pick it up? No. Labor got less than half of the loss. Labor, within a whisker of government and a higher two-party preferred vote than the Coalition, got just 40.1 per cent of the first-preference vote, compared to a higher first-preference vote of 42.8 per cent by the clouted Whitlam Labor Party in 1975.
More recently, in the Ashton by-election in July the Libs lost nearly 8 per cent, but Labor got none of it. In fact, Labor lost, too – 1.5 percentage points of its already pitiful 38 per cent of the vote.
In the ACT Senate race, Reid lost nearly 8 percentage points of her vote (about 20 per cent or one in five of her 1996 voters). But Labor got none of them. Not one. Labor’s vote fell, too.
And in this month’s NSW by-election in the seat of Auburn, Labor lost 13 percentage points of its 60 per cent. But the Libs could only manage to pick up 2.3 per cent.
The voters are showing a persistent revulsion for the major parties. They are not longer rusted on.
But the major parties are saved by the single-member system. Together they can get virtually 100 per cent of the seats with about 80 per cent of the vote. But as the total leakage from the two major parties percentage approaches 25 per cent – it was about 15 in 1996 and 20 in 1998 – in quite a few seats it will result in independents and minors beating one of the majors, collecting its preferences and getting elected.
The ACT Senate race with just two seats is similar to the Reps – rigged for the major parties. It may be a little early for the revulsion against the majors to elect Helm, but the trend towards a bigger non-major-party vote is there.