Let's talk about the problems in Australia for a change!

[Tigers!]

The state of South Australia just had an election.

It was a fucking bloodbath for conservatives. It also a pretty interesting case study on preferential voting.

The primary votes were 38% Labor, 19% Liberal (I'm assuming the ABC meant Coalition - I find it difficult to believe Nationals would ignore an entire state) and 43% third party. When the votes and preferences were tallied, the results looked like this;
View attachment 53877

So One Nation is the Opposition in South Australia apparently. Not ideal. To put into context for non Australians, One Nation is pretty much "If Stephen Miller formed his own political party". Jordan Shanks (I've mentioned him before) had an interesting take on Eine Vaterland's sudden rise in influence. A billionaire mining magnate named Gina Reinhart has been dumping her money into the party recently and this is an indication of the new normal. The obvious other example is Musk but things have changed from billionaires influencing parties during elections to benefit themselves (Citizens United, Work Choices etc) to using political parties as their personal playthings to amuse themselves the way they used to buy Gulfstreams and Bentlys.

Anyways, good on South Australia for being woke.

Election map shows how One Nation became Labor's main opposition in much of Adelaide

Labor won the South Australian election in a landslide, but nationally, more attention has been on the undercard fight, which has left the Liberal Party deeply wounded.

www.abc.net.au

I used to be relatively pleased with Australia's voting system. The logistics are fine but the way the votes are tallied has been strange the last few elections, state and feral.
Labour got 38.4% of the primary votes but about 68% of the seats??????. I know we have the TCP (two candidate prefered) count but that result is not very kosher.

 

[Tigers!]

You do not need to have them as communist to think that. The author thinks that both fellows are no-hopers and useless. I'll let you judge if they are correct.

Until Albo lies about being on the other side of the planet on holidays during bushfire season, I reckon he is significantly better than the pants shitting cunt he replaced. And I absolutely love how Dutton has fucked off into obscurity.

I wish other former PMs, Howard & Keating et. al would also fade into obscurity.

 

[Patooka]

I wish other former PMs, Howard & Keating et. al would also fade into obscurity.

A million percent agree. Add Rudd and Abbott to the mix.

 

[Patooka]

I used to be relatively pleased with Australia's voting system. The logistics are fine but the way the votes are tallied has been strange the last few elections, state and feral.
Labour got 38.4% of the primary votes but about 68% of the seats??????. I know we have the TCP (two candidate prefered) count but that result is not very kosher.

It makes perfect sense. "I want A as a first choice but I can live with B as a second choice". You get a better representation of politicians that people are satisfied with that way . Honestly I'd be worried if political parties get more than 40% of the vote because that means people are voting the way they follow football teams.

 

[Tigers!]

I used to be relatively pleased with Australia's voting system. The logistics are fine but the way the votes are tallied has been strange the last few elections, state and feral.
Labour got 38.4% of the primary votes but about 68% of the seats??????. I know we have the TCP (two candidate prefered) count but that result is not very kosher.

It makes perfect sense. "I want A as a first choice but I can live with B as a second choice". You get a better representation of politicians that people are satisfied with that way . Honestly I'd be worried if political parties get more than 40% of the vote because that means people are voting the way they follow football teams.

We will never vote with the passion we follow our footy teams. Thank God for that.

 

[Tigers!]

I wish other former PMs, Howard & Keating et. al would also fade into obscurity.

A million percent agree. Add Rudd and Abbott to the mix.

And Turnbull too.

 

[Patooka]

I wish other former PMs, Howard & Keating et. al would also fade into obscurity.

A million percent agree. Add Rudd and Abbott to the mix.

And Turnbull too.

I didn't mention him because like Gillard he has faded from the public eye. Him dissolving the last vestiges of Cross Media Ownership laws caused more damage to Australia than any other government in recent history so it was pretty funny he was hoisted by his own petard*.

Fuck, I just remembered Australia has gone through more Prime Ministers since 2000 than Italy and only 2 less than Pakistan. And more than half didn't serve out a full election cycle.


*For context - Australia used to have Media laws in place in order to prevent monopolies. The Howard Government watered it down in 2006 and the Turnbull Government got rid of it completely in 2017. A few months later, every recently bought right wing media outlet launched a campaign shitting on the Turnbull government so much he got replaced by Scott Morrison. Turnbull pretty much gave his critics enough rope to hang him with. /context.

 

[bilby]

The state of South Australia just had an election.

It was a fucking bloodbath for conservatives. It also a pretty interesting case study on preferential voting.

The primary votes were 38% Labor, 19% Liberal (I'm assuming the ABC meant Coalition - I find it difficult to believe Nationals would ignore an entire state) and 43% third party. When the votes and preferences were tallied, the results looked like this;
View attachment 53877

So One Nation is the Opposition in South Australia apparently. Not ideal. To put into context for non Australians, One Nation is pretty much "If Stephen Miller formed his own political party". Jordan Shanks (I've mentioned him before) had an interesting take on Eine Vaterland's sudden rise in influence. A billionaire mining magnate named Gina Reinhart has been dumping her money into the party recently and this is an indication of the new normal. The obvious other example is Musk but things have changed from billionaires influencing parties during elections to benefit themselves (Citizens United, Work Choices etc) to using political parties as their personal playthings to amuse themselves the way they used to buy Gulfstreams and Bentlys.

Anyways, good on South Australia for being woke.

Election map shows how One Nation became Labor's main opposition in much of Adelaide

Labor won the South Australian election in a landslide, but nationally, more attention has been on the undercard fight, which has left the Liberal Party deeply wounded.

www.abc.net.au

I used to be relatively pleased with Australia's voting system. The logistics are fine but the way the votes are tallied has been strange the last few elections, state and feral.
Labour got 38.4% of the primary votes but about 68% of the seats??????. I know we have the TCP (two candidate prefered) count but that result is not very kosher.

Sure it is; It just implies that the electorate isn't as regionally polarised as it was, and that the right-wing vote is splintered.

If each seat is more marginal, then the number of seats won by the leading party will increase with no increase in the state-wide primary vote.

Then you have the splintered vote on the right. One might expect many Liberal voters to have enough sense to preference even Labor ahead of One fucking Nation; And One Nation voters probably can't reliably count up to the number of candidates on a lower house ballot, so some will inevitably preference Labor ahead of Liberal, even if they didn't intend to. When Labor have 38% of the primary vote, it only takes about one in five of the Lib and ONP voters to preference Lab over the other right wing candidate, and that gets the Lab candidate across the line - you would need about 80% support for "anyone except Labor" in order for Labor not to win.

Given this calculus, it surprises me that Labor only got 68% of the seats. Basically, they keep all their safe seats in the inner suburbs), and pick up any Lib or ONP marginals (in the outer suburbs), leaving only strongly anti-Labor seats (mostly the rural areas) for Lib and ONP to fight each other over.

 

[Tigers!]

The state of South Australia just had an election.

It was a fucking bloodbath for conservatives. It also a pretty interesting case study on preferential voting.

The primary votes were 38% Labor, 19% Liberal (I'm assuming the ABC meant Coalition - I find it difficult to believe Nationals would ignore an entire state) and 43% third party. When the votes and preferences were tallied, the results looked like this;
View attachment 53877

So One Nation is the Opposition in South Australia apparently. Not ideal. To put into context for non Australians, One Nation is pretty much "If Stephen Miller formed his own political party". Jordan Shanks (I've mentioned him before) had an interesting take on Eine Vaterland's sudden rise in influence. A billionaire mining magnate named Gina Reinhart has been dumping her money into the party recently and this is an indication of the new normal. The obvious other example is Musk but things have changed from billionaires influencing parties during elections to benefit themselves (Citizens United, Work Choices etc) to using political parties as their personal playthings to amuse themselves the way they used to buy Gulfstreams and Bentlys.

Anyways, good on South Australia for being woke.

Election map shows how One Nation became Labor's main opposition in much of Adelaide

Labor won the South Australian election in a landslide, but nationally, more attention has been on the undercard fight, which has left the Liberal Party deeply wounded.

www.abc.net.au

I used to be relatively pleased with Australia's voting system. The logistics are fine but the way the votes are tallied has been strange the last few elections, state and feral.
Labour got 38.4% of the primary votes but about 68% of the seats??????. I know we have the TCP (two candidate prefered) count but that result is not very kosher.

Sure it is; It just implies that the electorate isn't as regionally polarised as it was, and that the right-wing vote is splintered.

If each seat is more marginal, then the number of seats won by the leading party will increase with no increase in the state-wide primary vote.

So despite 62% of the voters not voting Labour, Labour got 68% of the seats.
If the position were reversed i.e. Coalition got 38% of the vote yet got 68% of the seats I do not think you would be as sanguine.
I used to think our system was good but as time goes on I am leaning more to PR, despite its limitations.

Then you have the splintered vote on the right. One might expect many Liberal voters to have enough sense to preference even Labor ahead of One fucking Nation; And One Nation voters probably can't reliably count up to the number of candidates on a lower house ballot, so some will inevitably preference Labor ahead of Liberal, even if they didn't intend to. When Labor have 38% of the primary vote, it only takes about one in five of the Lib and ONP voters to preference Lab over the other right wing candidate, and that gets the Lab candidate across the line - you would need about 80% support for "anyone except Labor" in order for Labor not to win.

I wonder how the donkey vote went?

Given this calculus, it surprises me that Labor only got 68% of the seats. Basically, they keep all their safe seats in the inner suburbs), and pick up any Lib or ONP marginals (in the outer suburbs), leaving only strongly anti-Labor seats (mostly the rural areas) for Lib and ONP to fight each other over.

 

[Tigers!]

I wish other former PMs, Howard & Keating et. al would also fade into obscurity.

A million percent agree. Add Rudd and Abbott to the mix.

And Turnbull too.

I didn't mention him because like Gillard he has faded from the public eye. Him dissolving the last vestiges of Cross Media Ownership laws caused more damage to Australia than any other government in recent history so it was pretty funny he was hoisted by his own petard*.

Forgot about Gillard.

Fuck, I just remembered Australia has gone through more Prime Ministers since 2000 than Italy and only 2 less than Pakistan. And more than half didn't serve out a full election cycle.

We used to laugh at the no. of Italian premiers yet Aust. is no better. Most of the Paki ex-PMs are in jail or exile.

*For context - Australia used to have Media laws in place in order to prevent monopolies. The Howard Government watered it down in 2006 and the Turnbull Government got rid of it completely in 2017. A few months later, every recently bought right wing media outlet launched a campaign shitting on the Turnbull government so much he got replaced by Scott Morrison. Turnbull pretty much gave his critics enough rope to hang him with. /context.

Lenin's quote about the capitalists supply him the rope he would use to hang them sounds so plausible.

 

[bilby]

So despite 62% of the voters not voting Labour, Labour got 68% of the seats.

62% of the voters didn't put Labor FIRST.

It's an instant run-off; To vote Labor, all a voter need do is to put Labor AHEAD of whichever candidate comes SECOND in the 2CP result.

What you are seeing is not unexpected in a three party race - the primary votes are not a good indicator of the result.

IRV systems are a way to reject the least popular candidates, rather than to select the most popular.

If the position were reversed i.e. Coalition got 38% of the vote yet got 68% of the seats I do not think you would be as sanguine.

I wouldn't be happy, but I wouldn't think the problem was the system; I would be looking at what my party was doing wrong in its platform and campaigning, and at why the voters were abandoning us.

I used to think our system was good but as time goes on I am leaning more to PR, despite its limitations.

Our system is good. Our electorate is becoming increasingly polarised (mostly by overspill from US right-wing propaganda) and with the rise of a new party to the right of the Liberals, that was always going to hurt the party in the middle of the shifted Overton window.

Something similar (though somewhat less extreme*) happened to Labor in QLD, with the rise of the Greens in Brisbane handing the LNP a much bigger number of seats than their primary vote suggested.






* Green voters are far more likely to preference Lab ahead of Lib, than ONP voters are to preference Lib ahead of Lab; ONP voters are nationalists, rather than traditional right-wingers, and many lean left on issues other than their immigration monomania.

 

[spikepipsqueak]

I heard about something the SA gov't is doing that seems like a very intelligent win/win situation.

Lifting some taxes on people who downsize into a new build.

I love it.

Increasing housing infrastructure while freeing larger homes for families.

 

[Tigers!]

I heard about something the SA gov't is doing that seems like a very intelligent win/win situation.

Lifting some taxes on people who downsize into a new build.

I love it.

Increasing housing infrastructure while freeing larger homes for families.

State governments in Aust do not have a stellar record when attempting things like that. Somehow it always costs more, takes longer and doesn't help those who were the original target.