Labor got a swing towards it in the ACT in Saturday’s federal election.
If its primary vote last Saturday translates to the election for the ACT Legislative Assembly this Saturday, Stanhope Labor could expect majority government with 10 of 17 seats.
But it ain’t gunna happen, for several reasons.
First, a lot of Canberrans vote for federal Labor for the purely selfish reason that they a federal public servants whose power and pay, they think, is improved by a federal Labor Government. But when it comes to local government get as fretful as the rest of Australia, especially over rates – the local equivalent of interest rates.
Secondly, in the ACT we have multi-member electorates: five members in the Belconnen-based Ginninderrra; five in the Tuggeranong-based seat of Brindabella and seven in the central seat of Molonglo. So we have a name-recognition factor plus a “my-local-member-helped-me” factor. It means quite a few people will have both Labor and Liberal candidates in their first five or seven preferences. In Molonglo in 2001, 8 per cent of the preferences of the first excluded Liberal went to Labor.
In fact, voters should treat the 1 to 5 votes (or the 1 to 7 votes in Molonglo) not as preferences at all, but rather as five or seven primary votes. Because if you first five or seven candidates do not get up, only your subsequent preferences will matter at the end of the count.
If, for example, you put 1 to 7 against the seven candidates in the Liberal column, your vote will exhaust and you will get no say in whether a Green, Independent or Labor candidate gets the last seat. Sure your vote is valid but you are only doing half the job.
In 2001 the wasted (or exhausted vote) was 16 per cent in Ginninderra and somewhat less in the other electorates.
Thirdly, the Green factor. In the past three elections there was no tight preference flows between the Democrats and the Greens. The leakage was awesome, allowing the religious right to get seats. (Incidentally the Democrats have still not learnt; witness the folly in the Senate seat in Victoria). So the Greens and the Democrats have never totalled more than two of the 17 seats in the ACT Parliament.
But this election the Democrats have disappeared in a bungy jump. Their vote in the ACT last Saturday was little more than a barbecue of members, friends and invited guests.
So the Greens have left-field on their own. On Saturday they got 10.5 percent in the Reps and 16.4 percent in the Senate. The Green vote, unlike the Labor vote, will translate to the ACT vote on Saturday – a primary vote of, say, around 12 per cent. In the House of Representatives these votes would spill on preferences. Not in the multi-member ACT system. They hold fast. Bingo. That is one Green seat in each electorate. And there is no-one around to take it from them: no Democrats, no Sing-Song Christians, no Michael Moore, no Residents’ Rally.
I am not being pro-Green, here. Nor am I trying to be an electoral clairvoyant. Rather I want to explain how the electoral system works so people don’t wake up on Sunday morning and say, Gosh, how did that happen? Why didn’t the media explain it?
In the just-gone federal election, in order to explain how the major parties had stitched up the territory senators, I wrote a couple of weeks ago: “It means that despite all the preference deals between the Greens, Labor and others, the Liberals’ Gary Humphries will win the second ACT Senate seat despite all the carry-on about the Greens’ Kerrie Tucker being a strong challenger. She has no hope. The major parties rigged it so they would get one territory seat each forever. Goodnight.”
In the ACT election the Greens are looking at one seat in each electorate even though their candidates are unknown, now Kerrie Tucker is gone (and to her credit she made a Quixotic good fist of it in the Senate challenge).
The major parties are in all sorts of trouble. In Molonglo, the Liberals’ Gary Humphries got the call upstairs; Greg Cornwell retired; and Helen Cross had a huge falling out and became an Independent. Jacqui Burke who got Humphries’ seat on countback is the Liberals’ only sitting MLA in Molonglo. It is difficult to see them retaining three seats.
Labor’s Ted Quinlan had done a very good job in imposing some fiscal discipline on his party but Family Support Minister Katy Gallagher only just weathered storm over neglected of mandatory reporting of suspected child abuse of children by government workers. I suspect her candour at the time and general decency will prevent her from being bundled out.
Planning and Health Minister Simon Corbell is in huge trouble. It is not his personal fault; it is just that Chief Minister Jon Stanhope gave him the poison chalice of the planning ministry. Corbell is detested by many Gungahlin residents (part of the Molonglo electorate) for delaying their precious freeway to work and then cutting it to just one carriageway. The thing will be a traffic-jam fisaco from Day 1. But he is also detested by the inner-north greenie trendies who have had their precious bird-watching O’Connor Ridge felled by the chain saws. He was always in a lose-lose position. And in the inner south every developer whose McMansion was restained by a few square metres by our ever-compromising planning bureaucrats will blame Corbell while every existing resident whose amenity has been clear-felled and over-shadowed by the McMansion builders will also blame Corbell.
Added to this, every delayed elective surgery will be blamed on him personally while every medical success will be hailed as another example of caring nursing staff and medical professionalism.
Corbell may get over the line on name recognition, but you would have to say the chances of Labor getting four seats in Molonglo (50 per cent after preferences) is a fairly big ask.
In Ginninderra, Labor candidates (especially Stanhope) should do well on the primary vote. They got 43 per cent last time and got two seats. But even if they get in the high 40s this time, they will still get only two seats because the rusted on Liberal vote of around 30 per cent (see Gary Humphries vote in the Senate) gives the Liberals two seats and the Green vote gives the Greens the fifth.
The pattern is similar in Brindabella. Last time Labor’s Karin MacDonald squeaked a third seat ahead of the Democrats. They are most unlikely to squeak that third seat this time from the Greens. Karin Who? I hear you ask. At least the blue-blazer-with-silver-buttons-and-grey-trousers John Hargreaves wears out a bit of shoe leather at Tuggeranong shopping centres. Labor’s chance of a third seat in Brindabella seem even grimmer because the popular Labor MLA Bill Wood is retiring and some bushfire resentment over slow planning processes remains.
So we are likely to see a reverse of the position when Kate Carnell led the Liberals. Both major parties get two seats each in the five-member electorates (even though this time Labor might get 10 percentage points more vote than the Liberals) and Labor getting three in Molonglo against two for the Liberals.
This is difficulty with five-member electorates: two seats is easy; three is very difficult indeed and each major party can get two seats (equal seats) even though there is as much as 10 percentage points different in their vote. Seven-member seats usually return a more balanced number of seats with the leader of the major parties getting three and the lesser of the majors getting two.
In Molonglo, three Labor, two Liberal and a Green are inevitable, leaving the seventh seat up for grabs. It’s anyone’s guess. There has been no significant polling as a guide. Independent Ken Helm is in with a chance: sensible, middle of the road, well-known wine maker, sensitive to business but small-l liberal socially. Liberal expellee Helen Cross is still in with a chance, but business has been worried about some of her stands and she has attracted a lot of aminosity among MLAs from all sides. On the other hand, she has earned a lot of admiration from asbestos victims for her proposals to ensure that people selling houses will have to have an asbestos audit.
It is possible that Labor might gain and fourth, the Liberals and third or the Greens a second, but unlikely.
In short, do not be surprised if, under the Hare-Clark system (good but not perfect), Stanhope Labor gets an increase in its vote but comes out with fewer seats: seven against its current eight. And six for the Libs, three for the Greens and the last seat in Molonglo anyone’s guess. Ken Helm, no doubt, will raise a glass if it is he.