Australian National Party splits from the Coalition with the Liberal Party

[Bradskii]

Australia news live: Nationals break coalition with Liberals saying parties need ‘time apart’ after eight decades together; RBA interest rates decision today

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The Coalition has been in place for over 80 years. Labour had won the recent election is a landslide against the Coalition. Now that has split so that we have the National Party and the Liberal party sitting separately within government. It's a huge step backwards for Australian conservative politics. The Nationals generally represent rural areas. To compare it to the US, it would be like 20% of Republicans who represent rural constituents splitting from the GOP.

 

[Bob Crowley]

It is supposed to be an opportunity for both conservative parties to build up their respective bases without being concerned with interference from each other. It remains to be seen what the end result is.

I was surprised to see such a big swing against the Liberal Party in particular, but I think part of the reason is that the conservative vote was split amongst minor parties more than it was among the left wing parties.

In the electorate I'm in, the ALP received 34.3% and the sitting Liberal candidate 30.7% so he lost his seat. We now have a federal ALP member.

The Greens gained 11.4% and had there been no Greens, I think most of their vots would have gone to the ALP, making 45.7%.

One Nation received 10.3%, Family First 5.1%, and Trumpet of Patriots (ridiculous name) 4.7%, totalling 21.1%.

If they hadn't been there I suspect most of their votes would have gone to the Liberal candidate, totalling 51.1%.

Now the coalition has ended, if the two conservative parties have separate candidates in each election, the conservative vote will be split further.

There are some "Christian parties" at either federal or state level, but what annoys me about them is that they are so divided.

Christian politics in Australia - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

United Christian Party (1972–1983)
Australian Family Movement (1974–1990)
Christian Democratic Party (1977–2022)
One Australia Movement (1986–1992)
Family First Party (2002–2017)
Rise Up Australia Party (2011–2019)
Australian Christians (party) (2011–present)
Australian Family Party (2020–)
Family First Party (2021–)

 

[RileyG]

Are you surprised @Bradskii ?

 

[Bradskii]

I was surprised to see such a big swing against the Liberal Party in particular...

Me too. I was expecting a Labor win, but I was also expecting them to only be able to form a minority government. Dutton's nuclear option hit them very hard.

 

[Bradskii]

Are you surprised @Bradskii ?

Very. The coalition had been pretty tight for over 80 years. The Nationals and Liberals are strongly aligned on most policies. But the leader of the Nationals told the Liberals that they wanted a firm assurance, post election, that some policies would be adhered to. The one that was a problem, as I see it, was Australia going nuclear. The Liberals, quite rightly in my opinion, wanted a little time to lick their wounds and rethink their policies. So their new leader (the last one resigned after the election) refused to commit to anything until those in-party discussions had been completed.

The Nationals said no. And took their ball home.

The number of representatives were:
Labor: 94
Coalition: 43
Others: 13

Now we have:
Labor: 94
Liberal: 34
Nationals: 9
Others: 13

Life just got a lot easier for Labor. The official opposition party has barely 1/3 the votes. The extremely small chance that the Nationals would get their nuclear policy across the line is now non existent. And the Liberals simply have to move towards the centre, because moving to the right killed them in the election.

If you're a Labor supporter like me (a Democrat equivalent) then it's a win/win situation. I'm all smiles.

That said, the whole process is a world away from US politics. I wasn't exactly enamoured with the last Liberal leader, but the current one, and the leader of the Nationals, seem decent people who seem to be doing what they think is best for the country. There has been no acrimony, no harsh words, no obvious lies, no personal attacks and no early hours of the morning posts on Twitter with ALL CAPS and multiple exclamation points!!!

 

[GoldenBoy89]

It sure is great to see the rest of the world learn from our mistakes here in the US.

 

[Trogdor the Burninator]

Me too. I was expecting a Labor win, but I was also expecting them to only be able to form a minority government. Dutton's nuclear option hit them very hard.

How good is Albo eh?

He turns a likely 76-or-so-seats hung parliament into a 94 seat smackdown, unseats not one but two major party leaders (Dutton & Bandt) , and to top it all off, is now responsible for the breakup of the coalition.

And looking forward, that's now taken Labor from a likely 3 term government to quite possibly a 4-term one.

 

[Bradskii]

How good is Albo eh?

He turns a likely 76-or-so-seats hung parliament into a 94 seat smackdown, unseats not one but two major party leaders (Dutton & Bandt) , and to top it all off, is now responsible for the breakup of the coalition.

And looking forward, that's now taken Labor from a likely 3 term government to quite possibly a 4-term one.

He's better make good use of this. I am expecting good things.

Incidentally, I knew there were not many Aussies posting here, but gee, I thought it would be nice just to talk about normal politics in the real world for a while.

 

[sunshine_]

Interesting. With the Nationals now becoming part of the crossbench, there's more room for cooperation among the smaller parties. Although with how varied the crossbench is I'd be surprised if they could ever come to a consensus on anything. Overall this is another win for Labor which is good to see. I'm glad Labor has the power this term to implement their Future Made in Australia plan.

 

[JSRG]

It is supposed to be an opportunity for both conservative parties to build up their respective bases without being concerned with interference from each other. It remains to be seen what the end result is.

I was surprised to see such a big swing against the Liberal Party in particular, but I think part of the reason is that the conservative vote was split amongst minor parties more than it was among the left wing parties.

In the electorate I'm in, the ALP received 34.3% and the sitting Liberal candidate 30.7% so he lost his seat. We now have a federal ALP member.

The Greens gained 11.4% and had there been no Greens, I think most of their vots would have gone to the ALP, making 45.7%.

One Nation received 10.3%, Family First 5.1%, and Trumpet of Patriots (ridiculous name) 4.7%, totalling 21.1%.

If they hadn't been there I suspect most of their votes would have gone to the Liberal candidate, totalling 51.1%.

Now the coalition has ended, if the two conservative parties have separate candidates in each election, the conservative vote will be split further.

There are some "Christian parties" at either federal or state level, but what annoys me about them is that they are so divided.

Christian politics in Australia - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Given that Australia has ranked choice voting, shouldn't that greatly reduce the effect of any vote splits?

 

[Bob Crowley]

Not really - As I understand it the votes for the candidate with the lowest number of votes are divided up equally and distributed amongst the others. This is repeated until one of the candidates reaches 50% of the vote.

In the case of One Nation in our electorate with 10.3% of the vote, if their votes had been required to get the ALP or Liberal candidate to 50% for example (I don't know if were required), then 5.15% would have gone to each main party. But in reality I think most One Nation voters would have been personally skewed towards the conservatives or Liberal Party.

But the rules are the rules, and at least they apply to everyone across the board.

With compulsory voting at least the vote is more representative that with non-compulsory voting.

Mind you it's not much of a penalty at a $20 administrative fee if you don't vote, unless you're on the bread line (in poverty) which is quite possible in some cases.

Non-voters

www.aec.gov.au

In our electorate at least one party didn't get a single vote, so they had nothing to divide for ranked voting.

Voting for the senate or upper house takes a lot longer for the Electorate Office to work out as it is quite complicated. I think the Senate voting slip is about 18 inches long (as a guesstimate).

How are Senate below the line votes directed? What if none of a voter's 12 preferences gets a quota? - Parliamentary Education Office

Need help with a question about the Australian Parliament? The Parliamentary Education Office has the answers! Search the answers to already asked questions or, if you can't find the information you are looking for, ask your own question.

peo.gov.au

 

[Bradskii]

In the electorate I'm in, the ALP (Labor) received 34.3% and the sitting Liberal candidate 30.7% so he lost his seat.

Coincidently, those are pretty much the percentage of total votes that a labor got compared to the Coalition (34% to 30%).

Given that Australia has ranked choice voting, shouldn't that greatly reduce the effect of any vote splits?

There is that. It can get complicated. But the biggest difference between votes versus elected members is the fact that each electoral area has different populations. So the seat allocation to the parties was Labour with 62% and the Coalition with 40%.

 

[Bob Crowley]

There is that. It can get complicated. But the biggest difference between votes versus elected members is the fact that each electoral area has different populations. So the seat allocation to the parties was Labour with 62% and the Coalition with 40%.

There is a big difference in size in some cases.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese's seat of Grayndler is the smallest in Australia. In 2010 it covered 32 square kilometres with a population of 98,112. It's in suburban Sydney, and probably not far from where @Bradskii lives (?).

Division of Grayndler - Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

simple.wikipedia.org

Bob Katter's Division of Kennedy in North Queensland covers 567,377 square kilometres (over half a million square kilometres - getting towards the size of Texas with 695,562 km2) with a population of 123,724 according to the 2019 census. That's about 4.58 people per square kilometre average.

Division of Kennedy - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

As you can imagine the electors in each seat are going to have different perspectives on government. One consists of bus and train commuters, the other of small towns, grazing communities and probably some mines.

 

[JSRG]

Not really - As I understand it the votes for the candidate with the lowest number of votes are divided up equally and distributed amongst the others. This is repeated until one of the candidates reaches 50% of the vote.

In the case of One Nation in our electorate with 10.3% of the vote, if their votes had been required to get the ALP or Liberal candidate to 50% for example (I don't know if were required), then 5.15% would have gone to each main party. But in reality I think most One Nation voters would have been personally skewed towards the conservatives or Liberal Party.

That's not how it works, at least as far as I understand it.

In ranked choice voting, the votes for the candidate with the lowest number of votes are not divided up equally and distributed among the others--in fact, that would make it utterly pointless, because if you distribute them evenly, it would always mean whoever had the most votes as the first choice would be guaranteed to win anyway.

What happens instead is that, if no one has a majority of the votes with their first place picks the person with the lowest number of votes is removed from the election, and anyone who voted for them as their first choice will have their vote transferred to their second choice (if someone chose to only vote for their first place and no one else, they will be removed from the voting pool entirely). If after that there still is no majority winner, the person who now has the fewest votes is removed, and the process repeats (if someone had both of the people who are removed as their first and second, it will go to their third).

This functions to dramatically reduce the effect of vote splitting.

To demonstrate this, suppose you have three candidates. Candidate A and B are conservative, whereas Candidate C is liberal (I refer to conservative and liberal as ideologies, not the parties). In a conservative area, Candidate C can still win if A and B split the vote; suppose A gets 31%, B gets 29%, and C gets 40%. That means C, the liberal, wins despite the fact the majority voted conservative, if it's plurality or first past the post voting (what most of the US uses).

But in ranked choice voting, after B is eliminated, we can expect that most of their votes would be transferred to the similar A, quite probably enough to push A past C and win. Ranked choice voting therefore dramatically reduces the impact of vote splitting, because if your preferred candidate loses in the first "round", your vote can go to a similar candidate.

 

[Bob Crowley]

Who decides which party is going to get the votes from the lower ranked candidate?

 

[Bradskii]

Who decides which party is going to get the votes from the lower ranked candidate?

You do. If there are 6 candidates then you number each of them them preferentially.

And here's a detailed exam0le from the ABC: What is preferential voting and how does it work?

Let's say you live in the electorate of Pavlova and there are four candidates to choose from: Buddy, Muffin, Rusty and Coco.
Your first choice to win is Coco, so you number them 1 on the ballot paper.
But when all the votes are counted, no-one has more than 50 per cent of the vote and Coco got the least amount of votes.

First round of vote counting:

• Buddy: 8 (27 per cent)
• Muffin: 10 (33 per cent)
• Rusty: 7 (23 per cent)
• Coco: 5 (17 per cent)

Coco is eliminated from the race.
Now the vote counters look at all the ballot papers that put Coco as number 1 — including yours — to see who they put as number 2.
Those votes are then given to the remaining candidates.
Your second choice to win was Rusty.

Second round of vote counting:

• Buddy: 8 + 2 = 10 (33 per cent)
• Muffin: 10 + 2 = 12 (40 per cent)
• Rusty: 7 + 1 = 8 (27 per cent)

But after the second round of counting, no-one has more than 50 per cent of the vote.
Rusty got the least amount of votes and is eliminated from the race.
The vote counters look at all the ballot papers that put Rusty as number 1 to see who they put as number 2 — those votes are given to the remaining candidates.
For those who put Coco as number 1 and Rusty as number 2 — like you — the counters see who they put as number 3.
Your third choice to win was Muffin.

Third round of vote counting:

• Buddy: 10 + 4 = 14 (47 per cent)
• Muffin: 12 + 4 = 16 (53 per cent)

Muffin now has more than 50 per cent of the vote and is elected to represent the people of Pavlova for the next three years.

 

[Trogdor the Burninator]

The other great thing about preferential voting that isn’t often mentioned is the stabilising effect it has, and how it tends to work against radical shifts in government, because preferences almost always flow towards the centre.