More on Australia's federal election, with info gleaned from the papers. The
ABC's election Web site has heaps of useful info, including
Antony Green's Election Guide which explains how it all works.
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More grim possibilities if the government controls the Senate, suggested by the
Sydney Morning Herald:
- An end to compulsory student unionism. The Libs have been trying to accomplish this since I was at uni. This would mean an end to cheap services on campus (the "union" is not a trade union, just a way of having discounted food, entertainment etc) but I think it's really meant to silence politically active student unions.
- Changing the "migration zone" to exclude another thousand islands, preventing asylum seekers applying for refugee status there and allowing them to be immediately deported. (I often believe the govt's goal is to accept as few refugees as possible, through any means, from silly technicalities like this, to a strict, miniscule quota, to brutalising torture victims by trapping them in detention centres.)
Slender hope may be taken from government denials that they'll run amuck. In the SMH Finance Minister Nick Minchin quoted an old headache remedy ad: "I think everyone should have a cup of tea, a Bex and a good like down about what might happen in the Senate." The Herald also quoted an unnamed government source: "We have to be very careful. We have to take the community with us, otherwise the reform agenda will become unstuck."
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My party, the Australian Democrats, took an absolute pasting in the election. Our primary vote (that is, people voting 1 for us on their House of Representatives ballot) dropped to 2%, a loss of almost 4%. The Senate vote is really more important - that's where we do our best work - but we have almost certainly the three Senators whose seats were up for re-election (Aden Ridgeway in NSW, John Cheery in QLD, Brian Greig in WA), leaving just four Dems when the new Senate term begins in July next year. Our fellow progressive party the Greens did far better than the Democrats, inching up their vote a few percent in both the House and the Senate. We probably won't have the final Senate results until some time next week.
The Dems' leader, Senator Andrew Bartlett, explained the preference deal with the religious right minor party Family First to the Sydney Morning Herald: the main reason was to try and steer preferences away from the Liberals, to prevent them getting control of the Senate. That didn't work, but Dems preferences may have helped elect one or more Family First Senators. *bangs head on desk* There's something ironic about losing Aden Ridgeway, the only Indigenous member of Parliament, and gaining FF's leader Andrea Mason, also an Australian Aboriginal. (FF don't seem to have a policy on Reconciliation and their Indigenous policy is meaningless corporatespeak.) [ETA: A good sign - Mason was heard on ABC radio this week saying FF strongly believed in the need for an apology to the stolen generations (that is, Aboriginal children forcibly removed from their parents.)]
Family First are a very new party with (to my eyes) an odd mixture of policies. They're against gay marriage and for the presumption of joint custody; but they're also opposed to mandatory detention of asylum seekers, and against the full privatisation of Telstra, which the government has wanted for ages. If they hold the balance of power it'll be interested to see what they can force the government to give them in return for their vote. (The Australian suggested that the government might try to get "independently minded" Democrats Senator Andrew Murray to vote with them on Telstra. I can't decide whether that alarms me or gives me hope we might have a small amount of leverage too.)
Political satirist Dominic Knight of
The Chaser cruelly mocked the Dems' disaster, but also said "Joni Mitchell once said you don't know what you've got till it's gone, and that will probably be true of the Democrats when they all go at the next election. It is hard to see Family First adding much moderation to the Coalition's policies, as the Democrats did with the GST." (He also hilariously described FF's attempts to distance itself from its religious basis - FF "smashed St Peter's record for denying Jesus over the course of the campaign". (We only managed to catch the final episode of
The Chaser Decides, but I laughed so hard I almost asphyxiated.)
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Some interesting comments on the governments' very successful TV ads also in the SMH, which pointed out that in a compulsory voting system, uninterested voters get their political info only from advertising. (Mr Howard bombarded Bennelong with glossy brochures.) Particularly interesting was the scare campaign on interest rates:
The ads said "L-plate Latham" had presided over a "giant stuff-up" at the [Liverpool City Council] when he was mayor and asked how he could manage an $800 billion economy.
In fact, Liverpool Council went into bankruptcy well after Mr Latham left and many of the lurid headlines featured in the ads were reports in local newspapers based on unsubstantiated claims by disgruntled council members.The Australian mentioned exit polls showing that 45% of people who voted for the Libs said interest rates were the reason.
(At Putney Primary on the day of the election there were "L-plate Latham" banners on every spare inch of fence. Twice I saw dogs urinate on them to my mild amusement.)
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