Labor appears to be holding a threat to the Government over a double dissolution.
This came out in the weekend banter between Opposition Industrial Relations spokesman Bob McMullan and the Minister for Industrial Relations, Peter Reith.
The threat is the Hanson factor and it may give Labor more resolve to block things than we have seen recently with the back-flip by Kim Beazley with the work-for-the-dole scheme.
It is an oddity that the Hanson factor has become more effective for Labor at the time as her support is falling. The explanation lies in Senate voting patterns and the most recent opinion poll.
The latest Morgan poll, details of which come out tomorrow (WED), reveals primary voter support for Hanson’s One Nation Party has fallen to 8 per cent, down from 13.5 in mid-May and 11 in mid-June.
The difference is critical. It now seems clear that One Nation will find it virtually impossible to win a Senate seat in an ordinary half-Senate election. At the last half-Senate election the lowest primary vote to result in a seat was 8.7 per cent by the Greens’ Bob Brown in Tasmania, and he required a heavy subsidy of Democrat preferences to get across the line. And he, like Hanson, had a high personal recognition factor.
Typically, you need 9.5 per cent of the primary vote to get the last Senate seat in a half-Senate election. To (ital) guarantee (end ital) one of the six seats at a half-Senate election you need 14.3 per cent (one-seventh of the vote plus one).
At a double dissolution, however, when 12 senators are elected from each state, you need only 7.7 per cent (one 13th plus one) to guarantee a seat and perhaps as little as 5.5 per cent of the primary vote to get the last seat.
So the One Nation party is at a critical mass. At a double dissolution it could expect perhaps as much as one seat per state. At a half-Senate election it could expect no seats at all.
This must affect Government thinking on whether it should have a double dissolution and Labor’s thinking on whether it can afford to block any legislation twice in order to give the Government a constitutional trigger to base the double dissolution on.
It seemed apparent that Beazley did not want to fight a double dissolution election (or indeed any election) on opposing work-for-the-dole; the electorate likes the idea.
At the weekend, however, McMullan, said indicated Labor would have more resolve over unfair dismissal and that it would oppose the plan to exempt all small business from the provisions. He said he was calling the Government’s bluff.
“”It is hard to imagine the Government could actually justify calling an election and double Pauline Hanson’s chances of getting senators elected,” he said.
In fact McMullan understated the position. He does not understand probability theory, or at least doesn’t express it well. If you halve the quota needed to get a Senate seat, it does not follow that you double the chance of getting a seat.
As we have seen by the opinion poll and voting figures, it is not merely doubling Hanson’s chances, rather it is taking them from virtually nothing to an almost certainty. You are giving her several thousandfold more chances of getting senators elected.
However, that assumes uniform voting patterns and her 8 per cent holding out till an election, neither of which is certain. We will not get a state-by-state break up of the Hanson vote until Wednesday, but it is likely to be uneven.
Even so, One Nation appears at a critical support level, falling just below the level minor parties got seats at the last half-Senate election and well within the level that minor parties could expect to get seats in a double dissolution.
But this does not deter Reith from huffing and puffing about a double dissolution if Labor does not pass his small-business exception. It is nonsense, really. Surely, if the Government were to risk a double dissolution it may as well do it for a sheep as a lamb and have a folio of critical legislation ready for a joint sitting after a double dissolution. But it is a bit late for that, as Reith would well know. Early on, he took the path of compromise with the Democrats in the Senate rather than confrontation. He preferred some industrial-relations reform now to blocked reform awaiting a double dissolution and a joint sitting later.
His timing is out. Earlier, the Government had goodwill especially after Port Arthur and some show of getting better result in Senate; now it has less goodwill and a very dangerous Hanson factor that makes a double dissolution that much more difficult.
Incidentally, it may be that in a double dissolution, One Nation takes its seats from the Greens and Democrats rather than the Coalition because in the fight for the last seat in a proportional system the spoils can flop to the extreme. Witness the last seat in Brindabella in the ACT election which came down to a fight between a Green and Christian populist right Paul Osborne.
That said, however dear the small-business exemption is to Reith, it seems unlikely it will risk a double dissolution on it while polls put One Nation on the cusp on winning seats.