1951 And A Reason To Avoid An Early Double Dissolution

In recent weeks there has been a lot of speculation about a possible early federal double dissolution, after the Greens and Coalition deferred Labor's Housing Australia Future Fund Bill 2023 until October.  The Albanese government says that this deferral constitutes a first "failure to pass" the Bill for the purposes of Section 57 of the Constitution and that if the Senate were to block or defer the Bill again, then the Bill would become a trigger for an early double dissolution election whenever the government wished to call one.  The Greens dispute that the deferral is a "failure to pass", but it would be a brave Governor-General who refused an election to a government that had an even arguable case that that box had been ticked, and in my view the government's case would be more than merely arguable.  There are questions about the mechanics regarding whether the Bill needs to be withdrawn before the Senate could fail to pass it again, but in some form or another it seems to me the HAFF Bill could become a double dissolution trigger if it is not passed in October or shortly afterwards.  

This article concerns not the mechanics of whether and how Labor can acquire an early double dissolution should it be unable to pass the HAFF Bill (though I am happy to have that discussed in comments), but whether it is a good idea strategically. 

Unicameral By Stealth: Tony Abbott's Senate Referendum Call

The Australian (Tony Abbott calls for Senate referendum, warns 'we are turning into Italy') reports that relevance-deprived ex-PM Tony Abbott has called for a referendum to reduce the power of the Senate to obstruct government legislation.

As outlined, the plan would allow for a deadlock between the Houses to be broken by a joint sitting of both Houses without the need for a prior double-dissolution election.  It appears that this follows one of two options outlined in this 2003 discussion paper on resolving deadlocks.  These options were:

1. A joint sitting can be convened after a bill has been rejected twice with three months between rejections
2. A joint sitting can be convened after every election for the full House and half the Senate, rather than requiring a double dissolution

It appears Abbott favours the first option, but this is not yet totally clear.  The 2003 proposals were killed off based on a finding that they would not pass a referendum.

Senate Reform Performance Review Part 2

In this piece I continue the roundup of the performance of the new Senate voting system that I started in part 1.  Part 1 covered proportionality, half-Senate projections, winning vote shares, the impact of preferencing, just-vote-1 rates and exhaust.  This part covers  informal votes, the One Nation question, below the line rates, the two most unusual victories (Lisa Singh and Malcolm Roberts), the impact of the fixed quota, the question of verification and areas for improvement. (There's also a brief note about Inclusive Gregory that isn't relevant to reform, but that I thought I should mention anyway).  Anything else I think of may be tacked onto the end.  I have already discussed donkey-voting, proximity preferencing, the abject failure of most parties' how-to-vote cards, and preferencing patterns by state on the Button Press Week thread. Also, lots of Tasmanian-specific stats can be found on the Tasmanian button press thread.

Senate Reform Performance Review Part 1

The results of the Senate election are all in and so it is timely to review how the new Senate system performed in full detail.  No system should be expected to perform flawlessly on its first attempt.  However, the new system has generally exceeded the expectations of its most ardent supporters (save any who supported it for the wrong reasons) and made its opponents' pre-election arguments look very silly indeed.

Two major models of reform were canvassed in the Senate reform debate that ran through the last term of parliament.  The original JSCEM model released in 2014 allowed for fully optional preferencing above the line with semi-optional preferencing (six squares for a half-Senate election, twelve for a double dissolution) below the line.  The revised model released in 2016 initially allowed for semi-optional preferencing (1-6) above the line, but essentially maintained compulsory full preferencing if voting below the line.  After many complaints from the psephosphere (and I especially give credit to Michael Maley and Antony Green here) the final version as amended allowed semi-optional preferencing (1-12) below the line as well.  This change, in the end, allowed Tasmanian voters to overturn the contentious demotion of a sitting high-profile Senator.

Election Wrap: A Total Mess!

ELECTION OUTCOME: Hung parliament or narrow Coalition majority

Apparent Coalition Wins: 69

Apparent Labor Wins: 64

Apparent Crossbench Wins: 5

Links to threads will be added here.

Undecided Seats (12):

Coalition vs ALP (9):

Capricornia

Chisholm

Cowan
Dunkley 

Flynn (see below)

Forde

Gilmore

Herbert

Hindmarsh

Coalition vs NXT

Grey

Coalition vs ALP or Greens

Melbourne Ports

ALP vs Greens

Batman

Some Recent Senate Polling And Related Claims

This article assumes, for the sake of analysis, that the Senate election will be a double-dissolution under the new Senate system.  Neither of these things are yet confirmed, but both appear highly likely.  

I thought that there had been no polling at all of the Senate races yet, and innocently told a journalist so this week, but to my surprise reports of not one but two Senate polls have surfaced (one since I made that comment).  There are also many reports of an (apparently unpublished) Australia Institute analysis that claims that from five to nine non-Green crossbenchers could get up at a double dissolution, apparently based on commissioned Senate polling from ReachTEL and Research Now.  The Research Now (an online panel poll a la Essential) polling has been published but the main thing I can find on the ReachTEL is an AFR report from a month ago (!) that had somehow escaped my notice.

Poll Roundup And Seat Betting Watch: Labor Contesting The Lead

2PP Aggregate 50.1 to ALP (+0.7 in a week)
Coalition would still probably win election "held now" (seat estimate 77 Coalition 69 Labor 4 Others)
First ALP lead on my aggregate since Malcolm Turnbull became Prime Minister

In this issue:
A DD Is The Right Thing To Do
This week's polls
Leaderships
Issue Polls
Fishy Polls Of The Week
Seat Betting

===============================================

In another stirring triumph of tipping skills, a plurality of voters on my sidebar Not-A-Poll have correctly predicted that the Labor Opposition would recapture the 2PP lead on this site in March or April.  35.5% picked this, compared to 34.1% for May or June, 18.2% for not at all, and a dribble for various options that depended on a later election date. It's a trivially small lead, it's not an election winning lead, it's not being replicated by other aggregators yet, and it may not even last long enough to survive on the smoothed tracking, but it's still a big improvement on losing 54:46 just three months ago.

There is some rejoicing and a fair bit of schadenfreude on the left about the direction polling has moved in.  Many lefties seem amused that Malcolm Turnbull pulled a constitutional swifty to beef up his argument for a double-dissolution only to find himself in a position where it might not seem like such a great idea anymore.  With the rejection of the ABCC bill at the second reading the government has no obvious plan B; to welsh on the threatened double dissolution on account of indifferent or even bad polling would just make the PM a laughingstock.

Colbeck Demoted To Fifth On Double-Dissolution Liberal Ticket

I am working on a belated roundup of federal polling but a quick post on today's Tasmanian Liberal Senate preselection decision is appropriate.  The state executive has confirmed a Senate preselection decision to order the Tasmanian Liberal Senate ticket in the event of a double dissolution as follows: 1. Senator Eric Abetz 2. Senator Stephen Parry 3. staffer Jonathan Duniam 4. Senator David Bushby 5. Senator Richard Colbeck 6. Break O'Day Councillor John Tucker.  There might yet be federal intervention, but in the absence of such, this article discusses what it may mean.  The Liberal preselection process does not include any member balloting or proportional representation and my understanding is it progresses by a series of votes on each position down the list.

This follows a previous preselection decision for a half-Senate election, which I did not cover here, in which Senator Abetz retained his position on top of the ticket very comfortably while Senator Parry apparently defeated Duniam for position two by one vote.  (Senators Colbeck and Bushby are mid-term so were not involved).

Aside from the state branch not preselecting even one woman to any of the six remotely winnable Tasmanian senate positions, the aspect attracting attention here is the effective demotion of Senator Richard Colbeck, who is currently Minister for Tourism and International Education, from top of the ticket in 2010 to below newcomer Duniam and Senator Bushby.  This has been widely and in my view probably rightly seen through the prism of conflict between hardliners and moderates, with the Tasmanian party being dominated by the former.  With Eric Abetz demoted from Senate leadership and all of the "three Amigos" in the Lower House being first-term backbenchers, Colbeck is now the most senior (though not the most longserving) Liberal in Canberra and topped the Coalition ticket for the 2013 election.

Senate Reform Has Been Passed

It's all over bar the High Court challenge(s).  On Friday, the Commonwealth Electoral Amendment Bill 2016 finally passed both houses of parliament and was quickly whisked off to receive royal assent.

I've never been a fan of the now presumed-dead group ticket system, but my own campaigning to change it really dates from 30 August 2013.  On that day I discovered that the Family First candidate who had a dream run on the Tasmanian preference allocations, including from Labor, the Greens and various left micros, was an anti-gay extremist.  There was a high risk that socially progressive voters innocently voting above the line for their preferred parties would elect someone whose views would horrify them.  So I wrote this article.  In the end the disaster was avoided by just 821 votes.

I found it was uphill work convincing people to vote from 1 to 54 below the line (let alone the number of squares required in the larger states!) and that party operatives were concerned that I might cause their voters to vote informally.  Around the same time the Truth Seeker site was predicting Senate chaos with numerous micro-party wins based on tight preference flows between micro-parties.

What was most concerning, when the votes were finally counted, was not just that Truth Seeker had been right in a big picture sense, but also that the micro-parties that actually won or nearly won were frequently those that were not even on the radar of those trying to model the election in advance.  Trying to alert people to the consequences of their preference flows and do background checking on which micro-party Senators were going to win was a nightmare when not even expert modellers and not even preference whisperers could determine which micro-parties were going to get up.  Other results of the 2013 election showed that the system was not only absurd on a massive scale, but also a sovereign risk.  The voiding of the WA election would not have happened under the same circumstances but with voter-directed preferences.

Senate Reform: It's Too Easy Being Breen

A quick one by my standards as I am away on fieldwork.   It's sad to report that the so-called "analysis" of Peter Breen and Graham Askey on the subject of the new proposal for Senate Reform has been picked up by The Age.  As many commenters on the Tally Room thread have noticed, the Breen/Askey forecast of a Coalition-dominated Senate is utter rubbish.  Breen is a serial errormaker with an obvious conflict of interest and absolutely should not be reported as if he was an expert in such analysis.  He has received a ludicrously cushy ride in this instance, and it's high time the media gullibility in lapping up this scaremongering guff up because it's an easy story came to a shuddering halt.

The so-called analysis (no copy of which I have yet been able to find) projects that in a double dissolution the Coalition would win seven seats in each of Queensland, NSW and WA, and that in each of these seats Labor would win four and the Greens one.