Labor may rue the day it did not do a deal with the Coalition on resolving deadlocks between the Senate and the House of Representatives.
On current polling Labor is likely to win the next election. Most of the attention has been on the House of Representatives. But if Labor wins, again on current polling, it will face a hostile Senate. It is likely to face a Senate in which the more inflexible Greens – not the Democrats — have the balance of power. And if the Coalition wins it is likely to face the same prospect.
In the present Senate, the two Green senators have little power as a voting block. Whether they side with either the Coalition or with Labor they still do not form a majority for passing or blocking resolutions without the addition of some Democrats or independents.
The Democrats, on the other hand, can pass or block if they side with the Coalition.
After the next election, this is likely to change. The Greens will be calling the shots.
Putting aside the (remote) possibility of a double dissolution, recent polling suggests the Democrats will lose their pivotal position. True, the Government can cobble a majority with just the four independents, but the bulk of legislation passed in the face of Labor opposition in the present Parliament has gone through with the help of the Democrats.
The Democrats have seven senators. In the next half-Senate election, three of them are up for re-election: Aden Ridgeway in NSW, John Cherry in Queensland and Brian Greig in Western Australia. So is former Democrat Meg Lees in South Australia. On current polling, at the next election the three Democrats and Lees would all lose, leaving just four democrats: leader Andrew Bartlett in Queensland, Lyn Alison in Victoria, Natasha Stott-Despoja in South Australia and Andrew Murray in Western Australia.
The Greens are in a more fortunate position. Neither of their two senators, Bob Brown in Tasmania and Kerry Nettle in NSW, comes up for election. For the Greens, in effect, the whole of Australia is virgin territory.
The most recent Newspoll has Democrat support at just 1 per cent against 5.5 per cent at the last election. Green support is at 6 per cent against 5 per cent at the last election. The minor parties usually do better in the Senate than the House of Representatives, so you would expect these figures to be higher. A primary vote of as little as 6 per cent can secure a seat with preferences.
When you combine those polling figures with the fact that the lesser known Democrats are up for re-election, the likelihood is that the Greens will take all four of those Democrat-Lees seats. And they are likely to get a seat in both Tasmania and Victoria as well. So it would not be surprising to see up to eight Greens in the Senate after July 1, 2005, when the new senators take their seats after the next election.
Two independents come up for re-election in Tasmania: Shayne Murphy and the timeless Brian Harradine. Murphy was elected as a Labor candidate and turned independent. His seat is likely to revert to Labor. Harradine would most likely be re-elected if he stood, otherwise his seat would go to the Liberals.
One Nation’s Len Harris comes up for re-election in Queensland. One Nation is not on the polling radar. His seat is likely to revert to the Coalition.
The power of the Greens will depend somewhat on how the major parties fare.
The Coalition has 35 senators in total in the Senate. In this half-Senate election it will be defending three Senate seats in each of South Australia, Victoria and Western Australia and two in each of the other states . Even the Coalition lost a seat in all states where it is defending three seats, the upshot would be that the Greens and the Coalition could still form a majority in the Senate to block legislation (38 votes) or propose their own inquiries and other motions that can embarrass governments (39 votes). The Greens and Coalition sound like an impossible combination, but in the opportunistic battle against a Labor Government they might often combine.
Labor has 29 seats, 30 if you count the likely reversion of Murphy’s Tasmanian seat. It is defending three seats in both Victoria and NSW. If Labor picked up another seat in one of the other states, the Greens would be in the box seat. The Greens could deliver a majority to Labor – at a price. That price is usually total conformity with the Green view of the world.
The Democrats would become irrelevant and face extinction at the 2007 election.
In the meantime, Labor would have to deal with a hostile Senate. The only way to break the deadlock would be a double dissolution which at least in the short term delivers more power to the minor parties, so is self-defeating.
Labor should have paid more attention to the reform proposals. Prime Minister John Howard’s idea of having a joint sitting to break inter-house deadlocks without an intervening election had major difficulties. It delivered too much power to the Government. But Labor should have looked at other options, such as a proposal floated in this space some years ago which was similar to some options put more recently by former Labor Attorney-General Michael Lavarch. Those options were to do away with a double dissolution in which the whole Senate went to the polls and instead allowed a re-elected Government to put previously rejected legislation to a joint sitting straight after an ordinary House-plus-half-Senate election.
When Labor looked like having no hope of winning, it was not interested in any Senate reform that might help the Government. But now it has a chance of winning, the Coalition is likely to go cold on any plan that might make its ride in government any easier.
The Greens must be looking forward to July 1, 2005, when their new senators take their seats.