Lidia Thorpe Quits The Greens

Good to be back from the longest posting hiatus in this site's history so far.  I have been working on a couple of other pieces during what little time I have had to spare during another round of having months of my life expended by moving house, but I thought I should first make some quick comments about Senator Lidia Thorpe quitting the Greens, largely over differences concerning the proposed Indigenous Voice to Parliament.  The Greens support the Voice but Thorpe considers the Voice to be tokenism and supports a treaty first.  This week's Newspoll showed that Greens supporters overwhelmingly support the Voice (at least for now) and further highlighted that Thorpe's position is a lonely one within the party.  

Thorpe's defection to the crossbench changes the balance of the Senate significantly.  Previously Labor and the Greens held 38 seats, meaning their easiest way to pass bills was to obtain the support of David Pocock.  The next easiest route involved the two Lambie Network Senators.  Now with Labor and the Greens down to 37 they need two votes out of Pocock, Thorpe, Ralph Babet (UAP), the two Lambie Network senators and the two One Nation senators.  They also need one of these votes to block motions.  While Thorpe will remain a safe vote on climate change related matters, there may be other issues where she is not, especially if she uses her power to horse-trade for her goals.  This means the Lambie Network senators may increase their own power since there may be times when it is easier to work with them than Pocock and Thorpe.  (Voice-related issues will probably not be those times - Lambie is quite sceptical of the ability of the Voice to deliver change on the ground.)

What can we do about party hopping?

Thorpe is hardly the first Senator to get elected on a party ticket then leave less than a year into a six-year term.  Thorpe's case has strong parallels with that of Cory Bernardi, who was somehow reselected for the SA Liberal ticket in 2016 despite it already being clear that he was a flight risk, and who then quit the party in February 2017.  However in Thorpe's case, while it was already clear pre-election that she was at times a liability, she had not to my knowledge openly canvassed quitting the party.

Thorpe's defection has sparked outrage on social media, and with good reason as she is now in the Senate (where most voters intentionally rank parties rather than candidates) for the rest of her term with no mandate to vote differently to the remaining Greens.  This has led to widespread suggestions that such defections should be banned.

The main problem with such suggestions is that if renegade MPs face loss of their seat if they leave the party, then they can choose not to formally leave their party but can vote as if they had left anyway.  So the question then is whether their party can expel them with the same effect.  If their party cannot expel them and hence cause them to be kicked out of the parliament, then a rule prohibiting MPs from quitting the party they were elected has no real effect.  However, if an expelled MP is removed from Parliament with their seat filled as a casual vacancy, then that gives parties great power over their MPs.  An MP who does not toe the party line or who even campaigns for below-the-line votes could be expelled from the party and as a consequence lose their seat.  

The example of Tasmanian Labor Senator Lisa Singh is relevant here.  Singh was dumped to a normally hopeless position on the 2016 Tasmanian Labor Senate ticket as a result of lack of factional support coupled with a particularly silly implementation of the Hare-Clark system for preselections.  A groundswell of support for Singh, coupled with Tasmanian voters having a high tendency to vote below the line, saw Singh elected entirely on below the line votes and preferences, overturning Labor's intended preselection.  If parties could cause MPs to lose their seat, there would be nothing to prevent Labor from responding to such a result by expelling Singh and creating a casual vacancy so their intended Senator could take his seat instead.  Probably they would not do that, but it shows the extra level of power parties would develop over their Senators in particular.

New Zealand has a long history of sometimes troubled attempts to ban party-hopping (known there as waka-jumping), but it is easier to do in New Zealand because NZ retains the expulsion power.  In Australia, the expulsion power was abolished in 1987.  At the least, reviving the expulsion power - assuming this could be done simply by legislation - would trigger debate about its potential for misuse in other cases.  

Ultimately, these issues often come down to failures of personnel management and/or preselection.  As noted the preselection flags may have been less red in Thorpe's case than Bernardi's, but was making Thorpe the party's deputy Senate leader wise in view of a pre-election history of scrapes?  And was making her the party's First Nations issues spokeswoman ever going to end well when her views were at odds with the party?  Concerning the first point, Thorpe was preselected via member ballot (winning overwhelmingly) so this is a risk of member ballots.  

(See also my earlier article re Fraser Anning for similar comments.)

Thorpe's Popularity?

I have seen a fair few assertions that Thorpe is a particularly popular Senator, but the electoral evidence doesn't really support this.  Thorpe polled a below-the-line vote of 1.05% in 2022, easily the highest in Victoria, but this largely reflects the high propensity of Greens voters to vote below the line.  Indeed, 80% of Thorpe's below the line votes followed the Greens ticket 1-4.  The share of the Green vote that was 1 BTL for Thorpe (7.6%) was little above that for new SA Senator Barbara Pocock (7.4%) and relatively new WA Senator Dorinda Cox (6.7%) and was below the figures for the previous Victorian Green ticket leaders (Richard di Natale 9.7% and Janet Rice 11.7%).  It was also below the average for all Green ticket leaders since 2016 (9.2%, albeit boosted by some very high scores by Sarah Hanson-Young).  

It might also be argued that Thorpe brought voters to the party who voted above the line for it.  While there might be tentative support for this in Victoria having the highest Senate swing to the Greens (3.23% cf national 2.47%) and the highest discrepancy between Reps and Senate swings (1.48% cf national 0.62%), neither of these differences is particularly large, and the greater Reps/Senate discrepancy is explainable by teal independents competing with the Greens in the Reps in Victoria (and also in NSW where there was also a large discrepancy).  Overall there isn't evidence of Thorpe having an especially large personal following of a sort likely to make her any kind of electoral threat as an independent at this stage.  

Thorpe's Future

Barring a double dissolution (which one might argue her actions have made a very very tiny bit more likely) Thorpe will not face voters again until 2028.  By that time, the current Voice-related tensions may be ancient history.  If Thorpe contests at all, she would presumably register a front party name or join an existing party, because even grouped independents perform dismally under the new Senate system because of poor preference flows.  (I won't assume the Parliament will actually fix this by allowing for fair above the line box labels.)  As with Anning, Thorpe will be able to centrally nominate candidates for her party if she starts one.  I believe there should be tighter controls on central nomination than allowing any renegade Senator who starts their own party to run candidates everywhere.

I may add further comments later.