Every electiontide, boring commentators and analysts say things like, “”This is the most important election since the war.” Or this is the most important election since 1949, or whatever.
Importance is more a mantle for historians to bestow than for journalists to predict. Obviously, an election is likely to be important if there is a change of government and if the new government takes a machete to the existing jungle, carving a new way forward.
In that respect 1949 and 1972 were important, whereas the changes of government in 1975 and 1983 much less so.
That said, forgive me for making the pompous prediction that the next Senate election is likely to be the most important since the Whitlam period 20 years ago.
If the Coalition wins in the Reps, Australia, as in 1972, will have a radical reformist government determined to push its legislation through. As in 1972, the Government might not have a majority in the Senate. In the Whitlam period this resulted in an election within 17 months and another within a further 19 months.
So if the Coalition win the Reps but does not get a majority in the Senate, we can expect some political turbulence. Indeed, John Howard has promised as much. He says that if his industrial-relations package is not passed by the Senate there will be a double dissolution. As Gough Whitlam found out in 1974, that is no guarantee of a Senate majority, even if you win the Reps.
Like Whitlam with his Democratic Labor Party opponents in the early 70s, the Coalition faces a minor party (the Democrats) that aligns more often that not with its opponents. Moreover, the Democrats, like the Democratic Labor Party, is intractably opposed to significant parts of the radical party’s platform. This time round, the Democrats are opposed to the Coalition’s plan to impose the GST on foodstuffs and its plans to put development before the environment. Whether they will take that opposition to the extreme that the DLP did in 1975 by blocking Supply is another matter.
None the less, some of the ingredients of instability are more than hypothetical items in the parliamentary cookbook; they are on the kitchen bench.
So what chance does the Coalition have of winning the Reps and losing the Senate? I’d says that prospect is fairly likely. There are several factors in Senate elections that help make their outcome different from the Reps. The senators up for election were elected six years before. Half the senators sit tight (no pun intended). These result in the Senate reflecting opinion of a previous time. Further, the Senate is elected by proportional representation which means minor parties and independents always gets seats whereas they rarely get Reps seats. Each seat in the Reps has a roughly equal number of electors _ 70,000 whereas senators represent unequal number of voters from 42,000 in Tasmania to 477,000 in NSW. A party winning the Reps on the strength of its popularity in NSW might thus not win the Senate because it is detested by Tasmanians.
In short, a party with more than half the seats in the Reps might get fewer than half the Senate seats even with the same percentage vote. The 1990 election was a good example. In the Reps, Labor got 39.4 per cent of the vote and 53 per cent of the seats. In the Senate it got 38.4 per cent of the votes and 38 per cent of the non-territory seats. I’ll leave out the self-cancelling territory senators for the rest of this argument because each territory routinely elects one Labor and one Coalition senator.
In next year’s election, senators elected in 1987 will come up for re-election. Those elected in 1990 will sit tight.
Remember the 1987 election? That was a double dissolution, which meant the whole of the Senate was elected. Those that came in the bottom half of the poll in their state got the three-year term and went up for election in 1990. Those that came in the top half of the poll in their state got the six-year term and come up for re-election next year.
The 1987 election was held before the recession, when the environment was a big issue. Thus three Democrats elected as long-term senators then come up for election. Also, the Nationals were still very strong in Queensland in 1987. So in Queensland four Coalition candidates came in the top half and are up now for re-election.
The green and National vote has waned. The Coalition will be very hard pushed to get its four re-elected in Queensland. The Democrats, too, might find it hard going to retain the three Senate places up for re-election _ one each in South Australia (Janine Haines has gone), Victoria (Don Chipp is but a memory) and NSW. And what about the unseemly leadership brawls?
The 1987 election saw a fairly good result for Labor and a not-so-good one for the Coalition. The result in 1993 is that 17 Labor senators find themselves up for re-election whereas only 15 Coalition ones are. Meanwhile, only 13 Labor senators sit tight, whereas 17 Coalition ones do. (see tables). This is a distinct advantage for the Coalition.
To get a workable majority the Coalition needs to gain four seats. It needs to convert its 15 senators up for re-election into 19. These 19 added to its 17 who are staying plus the conservative independent Brian Harradine who will get re-elected in Tasmania will give it 37. Add two territory senators and you have 39 _ majority in the 76-member Senate. A mere 38 is not enough, because a tied vote is resolved in the negative. The President of the Senate is entitled to vote as any other senator. Thirty-eight, therefore, is enough to block Opposition initiatives but not enough to guarantee legislation and Supply goes through.
Can the Coalition gain four seats?
It could win an extra seat in each of NSW, Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania where it only has two senators up for election. (see table.) It could maintain its Western Australian three, but to get across the line it would need to retain all four Queensland seats or pick up a fourth seat in another state.
Getting a fourth seat is no easy task.
In 1990 the Coalition got 41 per cent in Victoria and Western Australia which sounded in three seats. Its fourth candidate in each case was a long way back.
A quota is 14.3 per cent, so 43 per cent will guarantee three seats. To get a fourth seat, the Coalition would need its full three quotas and at least an extra half a quota, totalling 51 per cent and the Labor Party would have to get less than 35 per cent of the vote (that is, less than 2{ quotas) and the remaining 14 to 15 per cent of the vote would have to be split among at least three candidates no one of which getting more than half of it. Those conditions are a fairly tall order, but cannot be entirely ruled out.
The most likely event is that the Coalition will miss out on a majority.
That will put the Democrats, Labor in a quandary. Do they reject the key elements of the Coalition’s policy: the GST and Jobsback (pollyspeak for an industrial-relations policy)?
John Howard says he is determined on a double dissolution if they do. Some analysts say Labor will allow them through so the Coalition would be hoist on its own petard, setting up a Labor win in 1996. But parts of the Labor party have too much ideology to be this Machiavellian.
On the Democrat side, simple self-preservation might be enough to convince them to let the policy through.
The Democrats are a pretty sick tribe these days. Opinion polls show they will lose a Victorian seat and probably a NSW seat at the next half-Senate election. Democrat support in Victoria is down to 4 per cent and in NSW 7 per cent. They would, however, easily retain their South Australian seat.
In a double dissolution, polling shows they would get one in South Australia and one in NSW. They might get a second in South Australia. But they are not polling well enough in the other states to be assured a seat. In both Western Australia and Tasmania their vote is split with the greens and other independents. The way the last seat goes in these states is anyone’s guess. In any event the Democrats are facing a cut from a peak of eight senators after the 1990 election to six or seven after the next election and if there is a double dissolution down to two at worst and four at most.
With that sort of prospect the Coalition might goad the Democrats into an act of self-destruction by refusing any compromise on the GST and Jobsback. The Democrats could go the way of the DLP, and for similar reasons.
Labor on the other hand would be better off after a double dissolution. It would be cashing in its poor 1990 result when it got only two senators per state and three in NSW.
But it would not be as well off at the Coalition, which might sense a chance of a Senate majority as well as getting its key legislation through in a joint sitting.
With 12 senators up for election the quota is 7.7 per cent for each seat, so it needs 46.2 per cent (six times 7.7) to get a guaranteed half of the Senate seats. With luck it can get that with five full quotas and half of the sixth quota, which is a more realistic 42.3 per cent.
In short, don’t be surprised if we have an election in April or May next year followed by another one in November or December.