{"id":10654,"date":"2013-10-18T22:11:57","date_gmt":"2013-10-18T11:11:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nofibs.com.au\/?p=10654"},"modified":"2022-05-02T00:37:23","modified_gmt":"2022-05-01T14:37:23","slug":"roo-poo-whos-senate-zoo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/roo-poo-whos-senate-zoo\/","title":{"rendered":"Roo Poo and Who\u2019s Who in the Senate Zoo"},"content":{"rendered":"[clear]\n
\"ac-united-main-20131011062608598225-620x349\"

Clive Palmer with Ricky Muir. Photo: Jacky Ghossein<\/p><\/div>\n

By\u00a0Sarah Capper<\/a><\/p>\n

18 October 2013<\/p>\n

It was perhaps the moment in which I found myself googling \u201cRicky Muir\u201d + \u201cpoo<\/a>\u201d that served as the final straw in realising the need for Senate reform.<\/p>\n

Not that I needed much convincing \u2013 the new Senator-elect from Victoria from the\u00a0Palmer United Palmer\u00a0Motoring Enthusiasts Party is just one of several fresh faces in the who\u2019s new in the Upper House zoo.<\/p>\n

Anyone who managed to successfully complete their below-the-line Senate ticket form in last month\u2019s federal election deserves a round of applause [pats back]. Voting below the line is always preferable (pun intended) no matter how painstaking, as even the most \u201cethical\u201d (ahem, cough, splutter) parties are still driven by self-interest when it comes to backroom Senate preference deals.<\/p>\n

And boy are there some deals to be had, given the increasing plethora of candidates and parties to choose from. This is physically on display with the actual form handed (or more likely rolled) out to voters which ABC election analyst Antony Green simply likens it to a \u201ctablecloth<\/a>\u201d.<\/p>\n

This year\u2019s Senate tablecloth canvassed candidates aplenty \u2013 from major party reps, to minor party reps, to independents and a myriad of inter-galactic micro party representatives in between.\u00a0 Oh for the days of ye olde micro parties! \u2013 when it was \u201cjust\u201d the not-so-harmless Shooters and the Fisherperson\u2019s on one end of the scale, and the occasional Wilderness (be kind to the fish) friendly crew on the other.<\/p>\n

Slowly, over time, the Senate ticket has grown and grown and grown, and now includes a bunch of bizarre right-wing-religious-teeny-tiny-tea-party-esque groups, some which have deceptively adopted or bandied about the word \u201cFamily\u201d (eg. there\u2019s nothing family-like in hating homosexuals), or single-issue\/agenda parties (like the Australian Sports Party, Julian Assange\u2019s Wikileaks Party, and even the Pirate Party (yep, you read correctly. Harr-harrrrrr)).<\/p>\n

In NSW alone, a record 110 candidates contested the Senate. Even ABC Radio National Breakfast host (and the incredibly politically savvy)\u00a0Fran Kelly<\/a>\u00a0has said that she found the process of voting below-the-line complicated. While only two per cent of voters took up this below-the-line fill-in-the-entire-tablecloth \u201cchallenge\u201d, if Fran Kelly struggled with the task, you can imagine how the \u2018average joe\u2019 coped.<\/p>\n

Even though this is an above-the-line example, senate form confusion was no better demonstrated than in NSW, where \u2018Liberal Democrat\u2019 candidate David Leyonhjelm picked up a Senate seat with voters reporting confusion in thinking they were voting for the Liberal Party (note, there aren\u2019t any reports of any confusion with the Australian Democrats). As Tim Colebatch reported for Fairfax<\/a>,\u201cHundreds of thousands of voters saw the size of the ballot paper, saw the word \u201dLiberal\u201d in the first box, and just put a 1 against it. The LDP won 434,002 votes, or 9.5 per cent \u2013 50 times the vote it won in 2007 before it adopted the name \u2018Liberal Democrats<\/em>\u2019.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0Leyonhjelm was also particularly lucky in securing the first column on the left hand side of the ballot paper.<\/p>\n

The Senate ballot paper was so physically long in some states due to the number of candidates, that it didn\u2019t actually fit in the AEC voting boxes. The length of Senate papers in Victoria were 1.02 metres! And with so many candidates, this was the first election in which\u00a0magnifying sheets were available at polling booths<\/a>\u00a0for the small font size of candidate names squeezed onto the ballot paper.<\/p>\n

On the ABC\u2019s website, Antony Green recently referred back to a 1997 article in which he \u201cprophetically\u201d wrote<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe result of the election could be determined by voters incapable of reading the ballot paper, unable to manipulate a ballot paper one metre square, or simply bewildered and unable to find the party they want to vote for.\u201d<\/p>\n

His 1999 article on the NSW Legislative Council election<\/a> could just as easily have been applied to September\u2019s federal Senate election:<\/p>\n

\u201cVoters will be faced with a farcical ballot paper stacked with stalking-horse parties, the final result owing more to shady backroom deals and the random chance of the draw for ballot positions. The state\u2019s political balance of power may well fall to a bunch of ragtag political fringe dwellers.\u201d<\/p>\n

So how did we get here? To appreciate this, it\u2019s worth casting an eye back along the potted (and pot-holed) road of Senate history.<\/p>\n

Senate 101<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Australian federal Senate or \u2018Upper House\u2019 was created with Federation and the development of Australia\u2019s Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act (1900). According to the parliamentary library, the Australian Senate \u201cis generally considered to be, apart from the Senate of the United States of America, the most powerful legislative upper chamber in the world\u201d (\u2018The Origins of the Senate\u2019<\/a>, Parliament of Australia, Library).<\/p>\n

A hybrid creation of the Westminster system, it imitates the United States Senate with all Australian states issued with the same amount of senators, regardless of significant population discrepancies. This in itself has been subject to criticism over the years, one of the most blistering coming but-of-course from former Prime Minister Paul Keating, who referred to the \u201cunrepresentative swill\u201d of the Upper House.<\/p>\n

Swill aside, the Australian Senate is a powerful entity, known as the \u2018House of Review\u2019, serving as the counterpart to the House of Representatives. Legislation simply cannot be passed without the support of it. Bills can be introduced in the Senate, bar ones concerning public expenditure or taxation. As former Australian Democrats leader Don Chipp successfully championed, the Senate can serve as a back-stop to unfettered House of Representatives power. Or in other words, it can in a way, \u201cKeep the bastards honest\u201d.<\/p>\n

There are 76 senators in the Australian Senate (deliberately aroundhalf the number<\/a>\u00a0of House of Representative seats, as per the Constitution), with 12 senators for each Australian state and two spots each for the territories. Each state Senator is elected for a six-year period, meaning they face re-election after two terms. It\u2019s worth considering this for a moment \u2013 a six-year job at around $190,000 a year, plus benefits \u2013 your own driver, and it seems potentially generous allowances to attend sporting events, weddings, parties, and anything on the public purse (unless you get caught, in which you might have to pay some funds back later).<\/p>\n

From its origins stemming back to 1900, in 1948 the Senate adopted a\u00a0proportional representation<\/a>\u00a0model of voting. In 1984 (nod to George Orwell), prior to the days of senate voting papers stretching for kilometers, above the line voting was introduced.<\/p>\n

Writing in Fairfax newspapers last month,\u00a0Antony Green explains<\/a>that this move was to address a \u201cscandalously high informal vote\u201d. Green:<\/p>\n

\u201cInstead of numbering all squares on the ballot paper, voters could simply adopt a party\u2019s preference ticket by selecting a single square above the line. It more than halved the informal vote and gave voters a quicker and easier way of expressing their vote.<\/p>\n

Parties also liked the new system because it allowed preference deals that would help determine the composition of the Senate crossbench.<\/p>\n

But what was good for the major party goose, became good for minor and micro-party ganders.<\/p>\n

Apparently so, as the banter between the chief ganders Prime Minister Tony Abbott and Palmer United Party (PuP) Clive Palmer begins, with 1 July 2014 in the sights. Palmer has certainly been vocal as he awaits the recount on the Queensland Lower House Seat of Fisher he might soon be representing. He seems to do all of the talking for his three Senators elect.<\/p>\n

And last week he kept up the gander banter with the\u00a0announcement<\/a>\u00a0of his Party\u2019s (so humbly named after himself) new \u2018memorandum of understanding\u2019 with Victorian Senator-Elect Ricky Muir of another new micro party, the Australian Motoring Enthusiasts Party. While Palmer smears the AEC with accusations of \u201crigging\u201d the recount in Fisher, the Queensland mining magnate refuses to release details of the deal he has made with the Victorian Senator-elect Muir of another micro party from another state, while forming a bloc which will potentially have ramifications for the rest of the country.<\/p>\n

This has presumably been lined up in the instance the PuP loses the WA Senate seat in the current recount. And if they don\u2019t, it provides Palmer with extra \u201cinsurance\u201d in holding the balance of power and dominating the cross-benches.<\/p>\n

Prior to the MOU announcement, Palmer was interviewed by the ABC\u2019s Tony Jones (The Australian\u2019s Strewth section documents Palmer\u2019s love-in with Jones\u00a0here<\/a>), in which he requested more resources for his new Senators elect. Palmer provided this possible ransom note to Jones, \u201cIt\u2019s the volume of work, not about how many senators you\u2019ve got, and of course if we don\u2019t get any resources you can well imagine it will take longer for the three people to do their job and maybe you\u2019ll only get one bill through a year.\u201d<\/p>\n

One bill, per year, uh huh. I know Tony Abbott and his new Government is keen to slow down the 24 hour news cycle, but \u201cone bill a year\u201d would really take things to a new level.\u00a0 And it would certainly make a mockery of Abbott\u2019s so-called \u201cAustralia is open for business\u201d claims, grinding government legislation to a halt.<\/p>\n

Incidentally, for all of Abbott\u2019s insistence in Opposition that the Gillard minority Government was \u201cdysfunctional\u201d and \u201cparalysed\u201d,\u00a0a study published in the Guardian newspaper<\/a>\u00a0has found that in terms of legislation passed, the Gillard Government tops the list in terms of being Australia\u2019s most productive government (543 pieces of legislation passed).\u00a0\u00a0Worth a look.<\/a><\/p>\n

State of Senate Play 2013 \u2013 2014<\/strong><\/p>\n

Currently, the Greens hold the balance of power with nine senators and will do so until the new Senate forms in July 2014. The 2013 election means\u00a0the likely Senate make-up<\/a>\u00a0in mid 2014 will shift the balance of power from the Greens to a gaggle of eight independent and micro party representatives.<\/p>\n

The new Abbott Government will need the support of 6 of the 8 cross-bench senators to pass legislation in the Upper House. Come July, the new Senate is likely to have, subject to the WA recount:<\/p>\n

– 33 Coalition Senators,<\/p>\n

– 26 Labor,<\/p>\n

– 9 Greens (Janet Rice in Victoria, with Scott Ludlum\u2019s spot in doubt in WA), and,<\/p>\n

– 8 other cross-benchers.<\/p>\n

At this stage these cross-benchers will be:<\/p>\n

– Nick Xenophon in South Australia, who almost topped the state\u2019s vote and outpolling the ALP, despite not much love in the preferencing stakes,<\/p>\n

– Bob Day from Family First (South Australia),<\/p>\n

– Ricky Muir from the Motoring Enthusiasts Party (Victoria), a 32 year-old out-of-work wood sawyer from Gippsland and father of five. Little is known of Muir but in an interview with the Australian, he talked of his love for going bush and his children having access to \u201cthis great country of ours<\/a>\u201d. Or as Greens Leader Christine Milne has explained<\/a>,\u00a0\u201cI had a look at the motoring enthusiasts [who] say they want unfettered access to the environment. I think that means four-wheel drives and off-road vehicles and so on.\u201d\u00a0Muir shot to prominence soon after the result after a video emerged of him engaging in the great Australian tradition of throwing kangaroo feces (aka \u2018Roo Poo<\/a>\u2019) at his brother. Aww, brotherly love, bless.<\/p>\n

– David Leyonhjelm of the Liberal Democrat Party (NSW). *Note<\/a>, if no Senate reform takes place between now and the next election, and you are keen to make a million dollars with six-years work, it might be worth exploring the creation of a political party called the \u2018Greens Australian Labor Democratic Liberal Party\u2019 to scoop the pool. I wish I was kidding.<\/p>\n

– At this stage three Palmer United Party reps \u2013 Queensland\u2019s Glenn Lazarus (of former Rugby League fame, nicknamed the \u2018Brick with Eyes\u2019 in such glory days, who, already without spending a day in parliament has had a longer career than his rugby league counterpart Mal Meninga (if you are ever having a bad day, or simply haven\u2019t seen it, watch Mal\u2019s now infamous interview launching the shortest political career in Australian historyhere<\/a>)), Tasmania\u2019s Jacqui Lambie (who provided this ominous warning<\/a> after winning her seat\u00a0\u201c\u2019If [the Prime Minister] thinks that Pauline Hanson was a pain in the rear end, Tony Abbott better look out,\u2019\u201d), and West Australia\u2019s Zhenya \u2018Dio\u2019 Wang (The WA Senate recount (called by the Greens and the Australian Sports Party) could take 3-4 weeks. Palmer has labelled the WA recount \u201cundemocratic\u201d. He has also suggested the AEC will \u201crig\u201d the recount currently occurring in Palmer\u2019s House of Representative seat of Fisher in favour of his LNP rival).<\/p>\n

The seven senators will join Democratic Labor Senator John Madigan (who was not up for re-election this time around) on the cross-benchers.<\/p>\n

Fairfax newspapers Tim Colebatch\u00a0profiled the new cross-bench senators<\/a>\u00a0in a piece shortly after the election. You can read about their interests and stances on issues here, however vague, as Colebatch notes \u2013\u00a0\u201csome of them [are] virtually unknown entities with no track record and no known policies, [who] will be given the power to decide whether or not each government bill should be passed.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Antony Green\u2019s blog on the\u00a0ABC election website<\/a>\u00a0also includes a handy summary of the changing nature of the Senate per state and Territory here.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Senate Reform Possibilities<\/strong><\/p>\n

A post-election Sydney Morning Herald Editorial<\/a> argued the need for reform, suggesting that voters have a right to feel cheated:\u00a0\u201cThe triumph of micro-party candidates who earned as little as 1\/500th of the Senate vote in their state betrays democracy.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

A number of the micro party reps have been elected with tiny percentages of the vote. Ricky Muir has been elected in Victoria with just 0.51% of the vote \u2013 Muir effectively unseated current Liberal Senator Helen Kroger, who, by contrast attracted over 10% of the vote.<\/p>\n

This situation has evolved because of (1) the introduction of 1984 changes allowing people to vote above the line in the Senate, (2) the ability for micro parties to be able to register a party status box above the line by having only 500 members and (3) subsequent preference deals being done behind closed doors which can heavily favour micro candidates.<\/p>\n

Such preference deals often go against voter intentions. Referring to his 1999 article recently, ABC election guru Antony Green compared voter intentions in the NSW Upper House above and below the line for a number of parties, and found that huge discrepancies take place.<\/p>\n

SA Senator Nick Xenophon has continued to vocally champion<\/a> Senate reform post the latest poll:<\/p>\n

\u201c[Micro Party Representatives] have been elected according to the current system. Now there\u2019s going to be debate as to whether the system can be improved. I think the benchmark for any reform has to be \u2018what do voters want?\u2019 What is the fairest thing in a democracy to do? If somebody gets 80 per cent of a quota or 90 per cent of a quota and gets pipped at the post by someone who gets 0.2 per cent of a quota?\u201d (ala Kroger and Muir).<\/p>\n

According to the current system, once a candidate has been elected by reaching the required quota (for states, typically 1\/7 of the vote or 14.3%), any extra votes they receive are distributed along their preferences lines.<\/p>\n

Like Xenophon, former Greens Leader Bob Brown has also been a long-time advocate of Senate reform, recently arguing in an opinion piece<\/a> for Fairfax,\u00a0\u201cThe grabbing Senate seats by micro-party candidates with a handful of primary votes and a manipulated preference flow, while other party candidates with hundreds of thousands of votes are bypassed, is a matter demanding reform.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Even though Senate reform is bandied about following each election, it has not typically gathered much support from the major parties. However after this last poll, even Prime Minister Tony Abbott has indicated he is open to reforming the way we vote in the Upper House, but has said he will wait until the usual joint standing committee on electoral matters reports back to government.<\/p>\n

Another long-term Senate reformer, election analyst Antony Green has compiled articles he has written since the 1990s on the topic, in\u00a0this recent piece<\/a>\u00a0for the ABC. Green notes how people like Glenn Druery of NSW (who contested NSW Upper House elections in the 1990s) have worked out how to manipulate the system. According to Green, Druery has since been\u00a0\u201cadvising micro parties as the so-called \u2018preference whisperer\u2019\u201d<\/a>, most recently as an advisor to the Australian Motoring Enthusiasts Party (obviously with some skill and success with Ricky Muir\u2019s election).<\/p>\n

But even Druery is now arguing for reform \u2013 not in terms of below the line reforms (like Brown\u2019s 1-6 approach), but in terms of how easy it is to register a party and be issued with a box above the line (Druery suggests increasing the threshold from 500 members to 1000-1500 signatures). He has also defended his role in working with micro parties, telling ABC radio, \u201cAll I did was explain how the system worked and off they went and did their own deals.\u201d<\/p>\n

Antony Green\u2019s proposes a\u00a0number of reforms<\/a>, including:<\/p>\n

–\u00a0 Tightening the regulation of parties (eg. increasing the current 500 party member threshold to be eligible for a box above the line (to be more in keeping with NSW requirements of 2000),<\/p>\n

–\u00a0\u00a0 Keeping above the line voting but abolishing between party preferences,<\/p>\n

–\u00a0\u00a0 Reforming deposit laws (to get above the line boxes),<\/p>\n

–\u00a0\u00a0 Introducing simpler below the line preferences (similar to Bob Brown\u2019s suggestion, which Green says \u201cmust\u201d be introduced, so instead of having to fill out all the below the line boxes (as in NSW, 110), reduce this to a minimum requirement of say, five boxes needed to fill in order to be considered a valid vote.<\/p>\n

Similar to this last point, Bob Brown proposes an uncomplicated response<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u201cReform is simple. Six<\/em> Senators are elected from each state. Voters would be required to number the parties from one to at least six in the order of their own choice above the line. That\u2019s it \u2026 Below the line voting could be maintained, or abolished if this is needed to<\/em> minimize confusion for ordinary voters. The corrupting system of parties dictating preferences would come to an end.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

It\u2019s an exciting prospect, and one which would not only simplify the process, but which would better reflect voter intentions and ultimately vastly improve our democratic processes. Convincing the \u201cganders\u201d of it, who will almost always favour current political advantage, may be another matter. Voters might need to shake some tail feathers to encourage it along (as long as we are spared from a repeat performance of Palmer \u201ctwerking<\/a>\u201d).<\/p>\n

Sarah (\u00a0sarah@vwt.org.au<\/a>) is the editor of feminist monthly\u00a0Sheilas<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[clear] By\u00a0Sarah Capper 18 October 2013 It was perhaps the moment in which I found myself googling \u201cRicky Muir\u201d + \u201cpoo\u201d that served as the final straw in realising the need for Senate reform. Not that I needed much convincing \u2013 the new Senator-elect from Victoria from the\u00a0Palmer United Palmer\u00a0Motoring Enthusiasts Party is just one […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":10655,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[3434,3546,66,585,43],"tags":[80,2587,1325,1304,2592,2620,274,287,2598,297,1326,351,2637,1095,1353,2581,427,2649,738,500],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/ac-united-main-20131011062608598225-620x349.jpg?fit=620%2C349&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3t0mw-2LQ","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10654"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10654"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10654\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56899,"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10654\/revisions\/56899"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10655"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}