The 2022 Federal Election which has seen an Albanese Labor Government installed, was both entirely predictable and very much needed salve for a long-suffering electorate which has endured possibly the worst government in the nation's history. During the last three years we had a Prime Minister who ran away to Hawaii while the biggest bushfire in the history of the world raged and then did literally nothing about the recovery effort, he refused to act on repeated demands for an anti-corruption commission, excused rape both inside the parliament building and historical cases by the members of his own party, in addition to running so many barrels of pork that they ran out of barrels.
Quite simply, the Morrison Government had to go. This long period of Liberal Government which started with Tony Abbott, who was then knifed by Malcolm Turnbull, who was then in turn knifed by Peter Dutton but who couldn't make the landing stick, finally settled upon Scott Morrison as a triage Prime Minister who wasn't so much asleep at the wheel as never behind the wheel in the first place.
Before I look at what the election result actually means, the biggest take-home from the election is that preferential voting is one of the most vital and important inventions in Australian electoral history. An article in Monday's Australian by one of their spokesborgs (and which I shall not link to because I do not want News Corp to get the ad revenue) states that the Labor Party has no mandate to govern because they only got 31% of 1st preference votes. This quietly and dishonestly hides the fact that the political football team that they cheer for, only got 34% of 1st preference votes and even less when you consider that the Liberal Party never rules in its own right but is in coalition with the National Party, the Queensland LNP (which is actually the remnant of the old Queensland National Party) and the Country Liberals in the Northern Territory. Using their own logic, that would mean that 64% of the electorate also thinks that the coalition has no mandate to govern.
What preferential voting does is excellent for two very very important reasons:
1 - Preferential Voting signals to both the parties and the public at large, what kind of government that the electorate wants. Preferential Voting allows a voter in the ballot box to vote for the raft of policies and people that they would like to make the laws which will be in place. In a democracy, and indeed in any situation, knowing what people want is important.
2 - Preferential Voting allows the mechanism for people to say what they will consent to. The issue of consent, was one the Morrison Government did its level best to supress. It makes sense that a government which was very much devoid of conscience and which proved to be repeatedly morally bankrupt, would finally be removed when the electorate no longer gave its consent to being trated like that.
That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, - That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government.
- US Declaration of Independence, 4th July 1776
The consent of the governed is a different concept to the will of the people. The will of the people is what the people want or do not want. The concept of the consent of the governed contains the idea that all of the offices of government are ultimately owned by the people in commonwealth and that the right to operate the machinery and assets of government, is owned by and should in fact be held by the people in commonwealth. The person of The Crown is corporation sole, where the shareholders who own a share by virtue of being citizens of the commonwealth also hold voting rights in a general meeting. The CEO, the board, and the executive officers are only servants of the people in commonwealth and should justly be recalled and/or expelled from the offices that they hold when consent is withdrawn.
The only way that you arrive at asking the electorate at large as to who they will consent to governing them, is by asking everyone. For this reason, compulsory voting as one of only a few duties that the citizens of the nation have towards each other, is an essential component of this. How do you get the consent of the governed unless you ask everyone?
Also, the House of Representatives is a representative parliament. Every single member who is elected to the House of Representatives gets there because they have the consent (maybe begrudgingly) of at least 50% + 1 of the voters in their electorate.
Work through the logic of this in both directions.
If I can not have have Alice, then I will have Bob. If I can not have have Bob, then I will have Chloe. If I can not have have Chloe, then my preferences are expressed until we arrive at some Norman.
I absolutely hate Zack but I will accept Yvonne slightly more. I still hate Yvonne but I will accept Xavier slightly more. I still hate Xavier but my preferences are expressed until we arrive at some Norman.
Preferential Voting can be counted in both directions; from the top down to see who the public likes the most and from the bottom up to find out who will be begrudgingly acceptable.
None of this information is available to anyone with a first past the post system. If we have the Division of West Banana where first preferences are thus:
24 - BURN ALL THE ANIMALS
23 - We Love Kitties
22 - We Love Puppies
21 - We Love Bunnies
10 - We like Hamsters
With a first past the post system, we have elected a policy of BURNING all the animals despite it being unacceptable to more than 75% of the people of West Banana. This is not remotely sensible.
Given that preferential voting is more vital as an instrument of consent than it would first appear, what do the results of the election actually tell us? Labor having a possible majority of seats, tells us that the electorate consents to a Labor Government. As the 151 electorates are as equal in size as is feasibly possible, with not a lot of variation of over and under egging the pudding, then that level of consent has been achieved on a nationwide basis.
However within that first preference count, a highly complex story emerges upon closer inspection.
The rise of the teal independents and the greens in the inner cities of Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, tells us that there is a level of income and assets which people reach where they can no longer be swayed, merely by their own selfish interests. At some point, it is hard to satisfy people's material wants if they already have everything that they could want and need.
This says that the election of the teal independents is an expression by mostly richest people in society is on the basis of some other desire. Whether that's a rejection of the cruelty exacted by the government over the last nine years, or progressive people who now feel that they have the luxury and permission to be heard, or maybe an expression that the Liberal Party which has been following the directives of the enmeshed media has driven itself too far to the economic right and the authoritarian north and they don't like it.
The Liberal Party aught to listen to the people that have told it, in very strong terms, that something needs to change. As this result is unlike anything that I have seen in my lifetime, then that also says that the status quo can hold no longer. The electorate has changed since the Liberal Party decided that it wanted to mould itself into the party of Howard. This result is as monumental and as stark as in 1972 when the electorate told the Liberal Party that it had changed since it started as party of Menzies.
The fact that the Labor Party has now achieved its lowest 1st Preference vote since the invention of preferential voting in 1921, aught to tell the Labor Party that the electorate has changed. Admittedly the labour movement has been knobbled over the last 20 years and a cynical Royal Commission into the unions found nothing of import but the question has to be asked of what kind of relevance that unions have.
Both of the majors should be on notice that not only has the electorate changed but that half of the electorate are women. This should have been reasonably apparent for at least a century but I am convinced that this is not the case. One of the unexpected moral victors of this election was former Prime Minister Julia Gillard. When she was elected as Prime Minister in 2010, the share of first preference votes by the major parties was 81%. Today in 2022 it is only 68% and it has been on the slide for four election cycles. Again, women in particular feel perhaps for the first time that they have the luxury and permission to be heard.
It is telling that the United Australia Party despite running candidates in every electorate and spending more than $100m, did no better than the Legalise Cannabis Party. That says that the people of Australia aren't as easily hoodwinked as maybe once thought. Even despite a very very vocal minority of upside-down flag wavers, Australians appear to understand that temporary freedom of movement curtailed, was worth it to keep the most vulnerable people alive. Yelling "Freedom, Freedom, Freedom" makes about as much sense as yelling "Flavour, Flavour, Flavour. Maggi. Maggi. Maggi!"
The UAP and One Nation, did no better than 5% of first preference votes each. Together they make up about 10% of the electorate; which says that craziness and wingnuttery although vocal, are not large enough to make that much of an impact on policy. In contrast, the Greens who also scored about 10% of first preferences, will perhaps send as many as 4 MPs to the House of Reps and maybe be part of a significant wedge in the Senate which holds the balance of power.
On that note it should be said that the balance of power can only exist in the light of the rest of the parliament. The notion that there even is a balance of power is a consequence of political parties forming to try and win power but there is zero mention of political parties in the Constitution, nor is there any mention of the Prime Minister for that matter.
This election should tell the parties is that the people of Australia can and will elect members which reflect what they look like. This will be the most diverse parliament in terms of family background and culture and Anthony Albanese will in fact be the first Prime Minister who does not have an Anglo-Celtic name. There will be people from a massive number of backgrounds; including first peoples in both the House and Senate. The incoming Albanese Labor Government should itself reflect on the fact that even a former Premier of NSW can not be merely parachuted into a seat, if the people of that electorate will not consent to that. Dai Le as a independent for the seat of Fowler, has excellently reminded us that all politics are national and that all politics are also local. If you walk around Fairfield, you will find a different looking community to the people of Mosman.
The other thing that the people have told the parliament, is that the people of Australia want to address the existential issues of climate change and what the response to that looks like, the issue relating to finally addressing justice for and with first peoples and what kind of constitutional response that might demand, as well as the more nebulous question of what a fairer society looks like. That last note is a broad demographic issue; which is being made acute in the aftermath of nearly three decades of deliberate policy to reengineer where the rewards of society flow.
I am glad that this election cycle is over. I am glad that the Morrison Government is over. My grand wish would be that the Liberal Party never achieves government again until 2122 but even then that will be too soon. It is going to take several generations to flush out this amount of poison.
No comments:
Post a Comment