Australian minnow socialist parties give the left the mandate to govern!

The Australian election over the weekend has dealt a hung parliament with neither Labor or Liberals (ie Tories) with a overall majority.

Straight away the Tories started screaming that because they won the most number of seats and the highest number of primary votes they should be the government. This is constitutionally a lot of bullshit and is based on some self serving mathematics.

Under a Westminster style parliament government formation is based on gaining a majority in the House of Representatives. If Tony Abbott cannot gain the support of 76 MPs in a house with 150 seats he cannot be Prime Minister. Projected results expected to give Tony Abbott one or two more seats than Labor. Yet if the centre-left can combine the support of the Greens and a few independents they will be able to form a legitimate government.

The inescapable fact is that no party won the election. While there was a 4.87% swing against Labour, the party led by Tony Abbott only gained 0.63%. Hardly a strong mandate to be Prime Minister. The Greens gained by far the largest positive swing of all the parties, gaining 3.63%. While the election of the first Green MP in the lower house is to be celebrated, the inescapable fact is that the Greens were robbed by an electoral system that is fundamentally broken. With 11.42% of the primary vote the Greens would have won 17 seats under proportional representation. It is a small consulation that the Greens hold the balance of power in the upper house (the Senate).

Back to Abbott's dodgy maths. Abbott is attempting to claim a mandate because the Liberals and the parties that normally support the Liberals gained more votes than Labor on its own. Of course its is fundamentally ridiculous in this situation to compare a coalition of parties on the right and not also add the Green vote to the centre left.

If we add the Labor total of 38.51% to the Greens 11.42% we get a figure stupidly short of a majority - 49.93%. Rather amusingly, it is the stupidly small Socialist parties that push the centre left over 50% and give the left the mandate on a first preference basis. These are the Socialist Alliance and the Socialist Equity Party, on 0.07% and 0.09% respectively!

Hence my tongue in cheek title :)

The Labor party won the popular vote, on a two party preferred basis, with 50.67% of the vote, compared to the Liberal share of 49.33%.

Over on Red Alert, Chris Hipkins wonders about the public reaction in the situation where the government ends up being led by the smaller of the two major parties. This could happen in Australia as a result of this election, and is even more likely to occur in New Zealand given we have a proportional electoral system.

The public reaction will only be a problem if the born to rule screaming from the Tories is given the oxygen it does not deserve. What it represents is a demand for single party rule on the basis they failed to gain the support of a majority of the population, just as the Tories used to demand their right to rule under First Past the Post when over 60% of the population did not vote for them.

Despite it being constitutionally improper and fundamentally undemocratic Tory friendly commentators in Australia on Saturday night started the screaming - 'our party won the most seats'. They were just following the lead of the UK Conservatives who attempted the same swindle in the aftermath of a hung parliament in the UK earlier this year.

In the case where the smaller of the two main parties gains a majority in the house by forming a support arrangement/coalition with a minor party, in my view the left needs to welcome this as a result representative of the wishes of a larger number of voters.

I look forward to the day the National party in New Zealand is stranded on 55 seats, and Labour forms a government with say 49 MPs and support from the Greens and other parties providing 12 or so seats. Let the Tories scream away - it will be a day to celebrate as our proportional electoral culture matures once again, and the FFP mindset of the dinosaurs finally gives up for dust.

PS: Of course there is an argument that the policies of the Australian Labor party are essentially those of a centre-right party, and it is true that many Labor MPs would have more in common with the Liberals than they do with the Greens or the real social democratic left. A grand coalition of the major parties is not going to happen - the aim of my post was to highlight Abbott's dodgy maths and willful constitutional ignorance.

PPS: The percentages may change over the next few days!

Big Business wants First Past the Post to Privatise

Last Saturday the NZ Herald published a column by deputy editor Fran O'Sullivan which revealed that Cabinet was to begin discussions on a public referendum on Mixed Member Proportional(MMP) this week. O'Sullivan makes it clear she supports First Past the Post as an electoral system, if in a runoff against MMP.

O'Sullivan also stated a referendum on MMP is "clearly unfinished business for many Kiwis". Its interesting she used Roger Douglas' turn of phase here, as when she mentions Kiwis she means the section of the business community who genuinely believe the country should be run for their benefit foremost, and ask the rest of us to believe in the trickle down theory. O'Sullivan concludes:
"Fighting the next election on an electoral system - even First Past the Post - which gave more power to the major party to implement sensible policies would do more to even the gap with Australia than endless horsetrading."

Horsetrading, in this context means that annoying thing called democracy - ie the thing we did not have when the Labour Government of 1984-1990 and National Government of 1990-96 used cabinet majorities to push through far right neo-liberal 'reforms'. Funnily enough the gap with Australia became significantly wider in these twelve years. Not that the new right would ever be intellectually honest enough to admit it might have been a combination of their chosen polices and the method of their execution.

In a later interview with Larry Williams on NewsTalk ZB (hat tip Frog), O'Sullivan described what she meant by 'sensible policies', explaining what MMP had stopped for the last decade or so.
"…various single issue or smaller parties will be able to point to wins they have had through [their] influence on the major parties that happens to be in power. But there are also some big things that aren’t happening – there are things from a business perspective. No-one can talk about privatisation… "

So there you have it - the sponger side of business community wants a return to First Past the Post in order to restart the privatisation agenda. The business community do not believe they can convince over 50% of New Zealanders to adopt their chosen policies based on a system where votes are of equal value.

In 1993 the Anti-MMP campaign was headed by Telecom Chairman Peter Shirtcliffe who bankrolled the misnamed Campaign for Better Government (CBG) along with other big business backers. I really hope some of the 1993 advertising is replayed and replayed - as it will completely do in Shirtcliffe's crediability. In 1993 CBG warned MMP would put our future at risk alongside the chorus of crying babies - yes really - see here. Now it can be seen for the scaremongering nonsense it is, as well as a dummy run for the National party's Hollow Men campaign of 2005.

Fran O'Sullivan quickly responded to Frog's post. She clarified that she only became aware of the forthcoming cabinet discussions following a question raised by a participant at business breakfast meet in Auckland. In second comment O'Sullivan said:
"To clarify – Personally I favour either FPP or STV – I do not like a system where the party vote delivers half the MPs. Would prefer to tick a candidate."

Yet there is only one system that will deliver the 'unfinished business' of privatisation that Fran champions above - a rotten borough system* known as First Past the Post. This impression is also reinforced by Fran's endorsement of Shirtcliffe's timetable for a referendum - a single referendum held in 2010, and applied at the 2011 election. O'Sullivan says "Frankly, Key should adopt Shirtcliffe's timetable. If past polling is anything to go by, many Kiwis would vote MMP down if given the chance". Clearly Shirtcliffe can't wait, and sees an opportunity to remove MMP by doing it quickly - this was also the strategy of Roger Douglas to avoid the interference of democracy.

That said, on this occasion I am prepared to give Fran the benefit of the doubt. I note she sometimes uses her columns to channel the views of others, and sometimes this can give the strong impression these are the views she also supports. Yet if Fran was being a complete partisan hack it is likely she would have downplayed the reemergence of Peter Shirtcliffe and not raised the "fundamental issue of fairness" raised by the differing treatment of Act and NZFirst at the last election, where Act remained in parliament despite receiving around 10,000 less votes than NZ First.

I would suggest people look at the campaign to keep meaningful proportional representation in New Zealand as a long game. Having journalists write stories about 'the other side' can at times be useful, as well as adding to the debate in a useful way. If Fran found out more about who was funding the anti-MMP campaign - this would be worth a few hail Mary's would it not?

* I am defining rotten borough in this context to mean any system where a vote is not necessarily of near equal worth. John Key's preferred option of Supplementary member is just a rotten borough with a thin layer of icing designed to cover up the rottenness.

PS: Fran in case I have your attention I would appreciate it if the next time you wrote one of your fawning columns about the 'benefits' of free trade with the USA you would also mention the potential costs. This comes from a solid source, the US Trade Representative's publication 'Foreign Trade Barriers', but the majority of pro-free trade business journalists either don't know, or perhaps more likely don't want to know such a document exists - if the risk is Kiwis paying more for their medications surely the public deserve better than journalists who stick their fingers in their ears and chant 'see no evil'.

Blair's re-election under FPP and some NZ comparisions

On Friday I watched BBC World for almost 7 hours straight. Home from work with a flu, I wasn't capable of doing much else. Luckily there was an election to watch. Overall I thought the BBC coverage of the UK election was excellent, my only gripe being the almost complete lack of coverage for the smaller parties (listing number of seats won as 'others' does not tell you much)

With thousands of the British left deserting Tony Blair for the Liberal Democrats over issues such as the Iraq war and 'top-up' fees, there was a danger the perverse electoral system known as First Past the Post (FPP) would split the anti-tory vote.

Through 7 hours there were many panellists commenting on the results as they came in. I found one recurring theme very interesting - the faults of the UK FPP electoral system. Both the presenters and 'commentators' felt the need to explain the vacancies of FPP to 'international viewers', remarking on how unusual it was for a European country like the UK not to have a form of proportional representation, where parties like the Liberal Democrats would gain a share of seats that reflected their level of popular support. I felt a great sense of deja vu - it reminded me of similar discussions in New Zealand on election night 1993, our last FPP election.

One BBC commentator pointed out that while many of the British people did not regard George Bush as a legitimate president in 2000 on the basis he did not win the popular vote, they did not seem to realise a similarly undemocratic result could also occur in their own backyard. This is exactly what happened in FPP elections in New Zealand in 1978 and 1981, where a National government was re-elected with a majority of seats, despite the fact the Labour party actually gained more votes.

Tony Blair has been re-elected with the lowest popular support (35.2%) of any government in UK history, yet Labour has gained 55.1% of the total seats. Over 64% of British voters wanted somebody else, with 32.3% supporting the Conservatives, 22% the Lib Dems and 10.4% supporting other parties.

In 1993 National kept the NZ government benches despite only gaining the support of 35.1% of New Zealand voters (gained 50 seats), a record low for NZ. The left vote was split between Labour (34.7%, 45 seats) and the Alliance (18.2%, two seats), a legacy of the forth Labour government's far right economic policy, including large scale privatisation and introduction of tuition fees. In 1993 NZ Labour was still led by a right winger (Mike Moore) and included right-wing MPs in its caucus (Prebble). Likewise, the split of the UK left vote in 2005 can be squarely blamed on the Blairites. Invading Iraq, removing civil liberties, allowing universities to set tuition fees and privatisation of public services ought to have undermined UK Labour's traditional support. Thankfully for democracy, it did.

Hopefully for democracy the emergence of genuine three party politics in the UK will demonstrate the need for electoral reform, as greater support for 'third' parties did in NZ from 1978 onwards. Once FPP may have looked like an innovation in democracy, now it's just a dinosaur.