Tasmanian Government Agrees To Increase Size Of Parliament

This Wednesday there was a surprise in Tasmanian parliament with the Premier, Jeremy Rockliff, announcing that his Government would introduce a Bill later this year to restore the House of Assembly to 35 seats.  

Unlike most states and the federal parliament, Tasmania has an "upside down" system with the House of Assembly (lower house) elected by the Hare-Clark system of (more or less) proportional representation, while the Legislative Council (upper house) has single-member seats, elected on a rotating basis.  Tasmania has used Hare-Clark statewide since 1909, always with five electorates that match the state's five federal seats.  

The state elected six members per division from 1909 to 1956, but the death knell of that system was sounded in 1955 when the election that year produced a 15-15 Liberal-Labor tie.  An unsatisfactory system in which the loser of the primary vote (in this case the Liberals) provided the Speaker in order to enable the winner to govern was tested to its limits when Labor's Carrol Bramich defected to the Liberals, giving the Liberals a floor majority.  The Cosgrove Labor government secured a dissolution (aided by the Liberals having let the House adjourn rather than using their numbers to take control of it as they might in theory have) but the result again was 15-15.  From this point on, the state used 35 seats.

Tasmanian Snap Election? Early Elections and Majority vs Minority

Following the resignation of Sue Hickey from the Liberal Party, placing the Gutwein Government into minority, there have been strong rumours since Wednesday afternoon of a May 1 snap election.  Whether or not the election is actually called for this date or soon, I thought it would be interesting to cover some of the history.

The resignation of Sue Hickey from the Liberal Party presents no clear threat to confidence in the government.  Hickey has promised continued confidence in the government in the absence of "corruption", but notwithstanding her definition of "corruption" or whether the government can trust her, they presently have another confidence vote if needed from Madeleine Ogilvie.  So I classify this as an unforced early election.

However, the spectacle of recent days and the constant goading that losing a majority brings would be unappealling for the Government.  It seems most likely that the Government brought on Hickey's departure having already decided to go to an election ASAP, perhaps inspired by the example of the McGowan government which has been massively re-elected and which has followed a similar COVID-19 storyline to Tasmania.  There is however one major difference between Tasmania and WA: federal drag.  In the absence of COVID-19, McGowan's government would have been expected to increase its majority anyway (though not by as much as it has), while Gutwein's would have been expected to go backwards.

The Federal Government's Majority Is Three Seats, Not One

(23 FEB 2021: Scroll down for Craig Kelly update; the headline is now out of date!)

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I have a number of pieces half-written, in the pipeline, or mostly written but not quite right yet, and hopefully most of them will see the light of day sooner or later, though I am extremely busy with contract work and other things through to about mid-February.  However having seen quite a few people making false claims about the size of the federal government's majority on social media lately, I thought I would just correct them and also make the case for using one convention of defining a majority instead of some of the others some people are using. 

The best way to define a government's majority, conventional in the UK especially, is the number of government seats minus the number of non-government seats.  In this case, 77-74=3.  In Australia it is fairly common to see alternative methods used involving the number of MPs who have to vote with the other side for a bill to be defeated.  However, these methods are inferior, because the mathematical consequences of every possible majority in the conventional form are different, but for the votes-to-swing methods this isn't always true. As a result, the votes-to-swing methods lose useful information and create confusion.   

Psephology And "Total Control"

Episode One

I don't watch a lot of TV drama really (too much else to do).  However, yesterday some tweets regarding electoral situations in the ABC's new political drama "Total Control" attracted my attention and I decided to watch an episode to see what its representation of Australian politics is like.  I may do this for future episodes too, either as updates to this article, or if there is enough material as separate articles.  Warning: spoilers will be posted without restraint and commenters are welcome to post spoilers likewise.

This article and any that may follow it are not intended as reviews as such, though like the reviewers I have noticed that these are tough times for political drama generally as it struggles to keep pace with the outlandishness of the real thing.   Rather, what I'm doing here is purely commentary on whether the series' representations of Australian politics, and especially electoral politics, are accurate.  Some people think such commentaries about fiction are pointless because "it's fiction", but others enjoy political fiction more when they are able to suspend disbelief and think they are watching something that could really happen, and that as such is an insight into our actual political condition.  I don't personally care at all about the plot holes and contradictions already evident in this series, because I wouldn't have watched it except to write about it, but others may find them irritating.

Also in a world where many people take their political cues from dispersed, self-selected and frequently non-credible/biased sources, it's not that unlikely that someone out there who sees something in an ABC drama production will assume that that is how things actually work.  So far as Episode One is concerned, it isn't ...

Poll Roundup: Citizenship Chaos Sends Government To New Term Low

2PP Aggregate: 54.2 to Labor (+1 point in a week) - highest reading of term
Labor would win election "held now" with a large margin
Government has lost majority (for now) with two MPs recontesting their seats in by-elections

This week we've seen a highly unusual event in Australian political history: a federal government has lost its majority partway through a term.  This last happened in 1931.  The one-term Scullin government began its term with a robust 46 seats out of 75, but a by-election loss and defections to the opposition UAP and the Lang Labor split saw it whittled down to 35, following which it collapsed before the year was out.  What has happened to the Turnbull government, so far, is much less dramatic - two of its seats are vacant pending by-elections, and the government will recover majority status if Barnaby Joyce is returned, although it would then lose it again if John Alexander is defeated.

However, as the Section 44 eligibility issues continue to unfold (with the tabling of required evidence by December 1 expected to be the next step), we could well see more by-elections early next year in some much more difficult government seats.  The prospect of the government slipping into permanent minority, or perhaps even losing enough seats that it can no longer govern, is a real one.  There may also be by-elections in Labor and crossbench seats, but no incumbent government has gained a seat from an opposition in a federal by-election since 1920 so there would not be too much optimism regarding chances of gaining seats there.  My legally unqualified view, incidentally, is that the "hesitators" (those who filed to renounce UK citizenship too late for the process to complete by the close of nominations) are in trouble.  The references in previous cases to the taking of all reasonable steps as sufficient refer to a context in which a member cannot reasonably renounce an overseas citizenship, not one in which a candidate was needlessly slow about it.

Section 44 Strikes, But The Government Hasn't Lost Its Majority Yet

Many news sites have now claimed that, in light of today's dramatic Section 44 disqualification of Barnaby Joyce from Parliament by the High Court, the beleagured Turnbull government has now lost its majority.

This is an exciting claim, but it isn't actually correct.

Pending the holding of a by-election for the seat of New England, the government will, when the House of Representatives next sits, hold 75/149 seats, with one vacant.  74 seats will be held by other MPs.  75 is larger than 74.  75 is larger than half of 149.  75 divided by 149 is 0.5033557... .  It is more than 0.500000.

The government's new and very temporary position is no different mathematically to that of the Cook Liberal government in 1913, which won 38/75 seats.  The Cook government is widely referred to as having had a one-seat majority.