Aussie Aussie Aussie Oi Oi Oi #7

[Kieran McConville]

Ah damn, see I knew my knowledge of our local system was probably dated (those memories of Beattie's 'Just Vote One' landslides linger heavy).

Who on earth in the soft left would vote LNP to spite Labor? That's insane. Find a decent independent before you do that. I mean, if I lived in Peter Wellington's seat, I might vote for him regardless.

 

[Axver]

It's your classic single-issue voter. Or, well, I don't think such a thing exists in reality. But people who get so enraged about a few emotive topics and decide that the current government is to blame, so they vote for (or give higher preference to) whichever major party is not in power. I mean, let's be honest, how else did the current federal government get into power? It wasn't on their own merits. It was just "hey, you reckon the ALP's a bit of a shithouse rabble, so vote for us, please don't look at our policies, just VOTE FOR US BECAUSE WE'RE NOT THE ALP" and it fucking worked.

And I'm surprised you've forgotten about one of the greatest days of political theatre in Australian history, when the ALP jumped the LNP to restore compulsory preferences: Compulsory preferential voting returns to Queensland as Parliament passes bill for more MPs - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

I love the LNP claiming they'll roll it back. I promise you, if they win government they're not touching it. Whoever wins will have got there on the back of preferences, probably from One Nation - and, in the case of the ALP, Green too.

 

[Kieran McConville]

Ha, so, she's called the election. 25 November.

Meanwhile, channeling Warren Harding...

“Queensland’s best days are ahead of us,” she said, adding that it was a “state of progress not provocation, a state of cooperation not confrontation, and a state united, not divided”.

 

[Kieran McConville]

It's your classic single-issue voter. Or, well, I don't think such a thing exists in reality. But people who get so enraged about a few emotive topics and decide that the current government is to blame, so they vote for (or give higher preference to) whichever major party is not in power. I mean, let's be honest, how else did the current federal government get into power? It wasn't on their own merits. It was just "hey, you reckon the ALP's a bit of a shithouse rabble, so vote for us, please don't look at our policies, just VOTE FOR US BECAUSE WE'RE NOT THE ALP" and it fucking worked.

Oh yes, I know the type. Either they would vote for Satan if he'd pursue <insert pet policy obsession here>, or they're easily distracted.

And I'm surprised you've forgotten about one of the greatest days of political theatre in Australian history, when the ALP jumped the LNP to restore compulsory preferences: Compulsory preferential voting returns to Queensland as Parliament passes bill for more MPs - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

I love the LNP claiming they'll roll it back. I promise you, if they win government they're not touching it. Whoever wins will have got there on the back of preferences, probably from One Nation - and, in the case of the ALP, Green too.

I guess I've been in a coma, cause that whole thing passed me by. On balance, it's a good thing whoever it benefits - people should fucking allocate all the preferences they are entitled to. The downside is the dreaded 'how to vote cards'. I cannot fathom following some party's instructions as to how to weight my choice.

 

[Axver]

I guess I've been in a coma, cause that whole thing passed me by. On balance, it's a good thing whoever it benefits - people should fucking allocate all the preferences they are entitled to. The downside is the dreaded 'how to vote cards'. I cannot fathom following some party's instructions as to how to weight my choice.

Compulsory preferential voting definitely helps the minor parties be competitive. Of course, that means fuckers like One Nation are competitive as well as parties that are useful to have around, like the Greens or, once upon a time, the Democrats. But not having Green preferences exhaust this time will help the ALP in marginal Brisbane seats.

It's interesting how the accepted wisdom has now become that One Nation takes the vast majority of their voters from the Libs - I'm seeing 80% thrown around. I still reckon there is a large contingent of old ALP voters backing them, and who will give their preferences to the ALP rather than the LNP. I'm legit worried that One Nation will hold the balance of power, but on the other hand without Pauline as a candidate herself the party is not as strong as it could be. I will never forgive Channel 7 and fucking Sunrise for rehabilitating the career of this racist pigshitmonger.

 

[Axver]

Oh, and...

adding that it was a “state of progress not provocation, a state of cooperation not confrontation, and a state united, not divided”.

Surely the exact opposite of this is true.

I mean, KAP fucking want to split the state in two, and could demand it if they find themselves holding the balance of power. That's the other possibility here - if either major party finds themselves short of a majority by just one seat, both KAP and One Nation will jostle to be the minor party of government.

 

[Kieran McConville]

If One Nation hold the balance of power, the LNP gets government (whatever Labor-leaning One Nation voters might want). That's it. That's what'll happen.

Under no circumstances will the state be getting broken up into two. You might as well say that if KAP wanted free unicorns on Sunday, one or other party would be in a position to grant it. Or that if the winner promises to bring back the upper house (complete with its landed gentry, frozen in aspic), then they'll get the nod.

I mean, for what it's worth, there could be legitimate historical/cultural/whatever arguments that it might have made sense for the far north to be another state again, but that ship sailed long ago. The late nineteenth century would have been the time for that.

 

[Axver]

Yeah, KAP can keep dreaming. But there's still a good amount of support in North Queensland for separation, and I wouldn't be shocked if they kept pushing the barrow - at least for some sort of referendum. And I'm not entirely sure a referendum would fail; New England in 1967 was faced with the problem of having Newcastle thrown within the boundaries to give it a port, and that's why it failed (the vote for a new state was massive closer to the Queensland border). North Queensland already has a port so you wouldn't need to draw the border too far south.

Of course, a canny state government probably would extend the poll south enough to ensure it fails. I also suspect that even if a referendum succeeded, it would encounter a roadblock in Canberra.

But yeah, it isn't happening.

 

[Kieran McConville]

Oh sure, there's support for it, and probably always has been to one degree or another. But concerted, you know, momentum and active effort, maybe not so much. Not comparable to the recent history of places like Scotland or Catalonia (although they're a bad example maybe; more wouldbe Galts than plucky nationalists).

If Northern Queensland electorates were fielding serious challenges from an organised separatist party at state elections, one with a platform of forcing a referendum or future steps to 'independence', I might view the matter differently. Perhaps if Katter changes the name of his party to Katter's Northern Queensland Independence Party, I might sit up and take notice.

 

[Axver]

Didn't almost all the local councils recently express support for separation?

But yeah, the movement is insufficiently organised at the moment. KAP holding the balance of power could give it more airtime and fire, though. The ALP will never take it on as the ALP has always opposed separation movements historically - but the Country Party has a lengthy pro-separation history (they drove the New England movement), so I wonder how the LNP would play it if it did blow up. I can't imagine the Brisbane Liberal elements being in support, but you'd expect a lot of northern Nats to jump on board.

I do wonder how long KAP will remain in the state parliament. I don't know much about how strong a hold the two current members have on their seats. And is there any serious prospect of them expanding their reach, or has that train left the station?

 

[Kieran McConville]

I feel like KAP stalled somewhere around the time of the Clive Palmer Experiment, and now of course One Nation's floating around again (not that they are identical by any means to KAP), and I guess they're just not possessed of all that much momentum.

Plus, a lot depends on Bob himself, and Bob himself doesn't seem very effective in building his eponymous party.

 

[Axver]

Eponymous parties are never long-term parties anyway. It's silly to try to leverage a little bit of momentum off your own name in the short-term because it'll fade. Imagine if we had Robert Menzies' Liberal Party? It wouldn't have got out of the 1960s.

 

[Kieran McConville]

The Malcolm Ieuan Roberts: Living Soul, Blood And Soul Party

"Freemen on the land!"

 

[Kieran McConville]

Robert Menzies' All Aussie Party

Well I like to have beer with Robert
I like to have a beer with Bob
I like to have a beer with Robert
Cause Robert's me mate

 

[Axver]

The Malcolm Ieuan Roberts: Living Soul, Blood And Soul Party

"Freemen on the land!"

Oh please let this happen. If he somehow stumbles into a state seat, it probably will be a party by 2019 as One Nation fractures into Many Factions.

 

[Kieran McConville]

I'd be astonished if Roberts gets more than two votes, and one of those will be his own.

But saying he got elected, he'd probably spend the next three years wasting parliament's time with obscure procedural voodoo cribbed from the American movements he draws his ideas from. If you use just the right form of words, you don't have to pay taxes.

Really, he's like the cranks who used to reliably populate the public gallery of certain local councils I knew.

 

[Axver]

Nah, he'd "believe" that he voted and that that would be good enough to count as a ballot.

 

[Axver]

SENATE PRESIDENT STEPHEN PARRY IS A DUAL CITIZEN aaaaaahahahahaha

Just when you thought the section 44 party was winding down too! He's the first Lib to get embroiled in this, and it leaves the ALP as the only party with more than one MP to avoid a section 44 fiasco this year.

 

[Kieran McConville]

The whole thing is fairly ridiculous, but as it seems the court has decided to apply the letter of the law in most cases (leaving aside Italy's intricacies)...

.

 

[Kieran McConville]

Meanwhile a man who actively renounced his Australian citizenship decades ago continues to exercise an outsized, and malignant, influence on the Australian body politic. Continues to be feted, instead of shunned and kicked physically, and repeatedly, in a gutter at closing time.

Rupert, thy master's voice.

 

[Axver]

You really do have to wonder what today's Newscorp columnists and pus-filled, bile-spewing talking heads would make if Rupert renounced his Australian citizenship for American gain today. Or, more to the point, if some Fairfax supremo did.

Also, holy fuck this section 44 business is getting more insane. Hollie Hughes, in line to take over from Fiona Nash, might be ineligible because she took an office of profit under the crown after the original election was declared. But because that has now been invalidated, there is a strong argument that the election is not over and she is not eligible to be chosen.

It gets better - or, well, worse. If Parry is ineligible, then his replacement, Richard Colbeck, has ALSO taken an office of profit since the election. And should neither Hughes nor Colbeck be found ineligible, it is possible that Nick McKim of the Greens could be unelected in favour of a One Nation candidate because of changed preference flows with Parry excluded. People like Antony Green think it unlikely McKim's election would be voided, but it's still on the cards.

Insane, I say.

 

[Kieran McConville]

What you have there is a house of cards (not the US tv soap, an actual house of cards).

After all, the political class with rare exceptions (Ricky Muir and the like) is just that, a class. It's dollars to donuts that the next two or three people on the list - in the major parties - behind this or that senate person will have been people who, not getting their shot this time for the senate, will have moved on to some sort of 'office of profit under the Crown'. It's not like most of them went back to plumbing or bricklaying, or even running a grocery store.

 

[Axver]

Absolutely. When Hughes got her job there were a bunch of accusations that it was just part of the Liberal Party's largesse for unsuccessful candidates.

And even though she's resigned it now, no doubt if the High Court tells her she can't sit in the Senate, she'll walk right back into it or a similar position.

 

[Kieran McConville]

Yeah, so round and round it goes... this thing of ours (sorry, channelling Paulie from the Sopranos).

 

[Axver]

Really quite extraordinary how Turnbull is digging in against an audit of parliamentarians' citizenship. Public confidence in parliament has been eroded by so many things these past few years, and the current scandal is causing serious damage. An audit is an opportunity for the government to actually be seen to be addressing the problem and they just stubbornly won't. They're signing their own death sentence for the 2019 election.

 

[Kieran McConville]

I would imagine he's digging in because it's a rabbit hole with no bottom. And also a house of cards (the metaphors just keep mutiplying).

It's a weird one; on the one hand, I'm enjoying the schadenfreude.

On the other, I do think the citizenship tests as applied (and the court is not wrong to apply what is there in the constitution) have given rise to a farcical situation. It's throwing good people out of parliament along with bad, and it does nothing to deter actual modern political corruption (may have had some bearing on the 19th century version).

 

[Axver]

What we need most of all is for the major parties to get together and agree on a multi-partisan new version to take to the public at a referendum.

Some exclusions in section 44 are necessary, or just need a bit of tweaking (the office of profit one needs to be clarified - e.g. should it apply to teachers?). The citizenship one needs to go.

 

[Kieran McConville]

One suggestion I heard somewhere - how legally viable I do not know - would be a reform to the effect that if you stand for parliament, you implicitly and automatically renounce any other citizenships you may or may not know about. Which is to say, something like that should be the change, if a referendum were held on the matter.

The matter of offices of profit under the crown is a trickier one. Indeed it has been suggested it could apply to teachers, and university professors and any number of other people.

 

[Axver]

I'd suggest we simply permit dual citizens. It hasn't brought Canada or Ireland or New Zealand unstuck! Indeed, the only country's parliament getting undermined by citizenship is the one that demands solitary citizenship. The only condition should be that you cannot acquire any additional foreign citizenship while an MP.

The office of profit one must be tightened. It was absurd for Phil Cleary, on unpaid leave as a teacher, got rubbed out in 1992. Whether public university employees also run afoul of this has never been tested, though it is probably about to with Andrew Bartlett for the Greens. Redrawing it to be more precise would be sensible.

And the pecuniary interests one is a toughie too. Should the MP who owns a shopping centre with an Australia Post outlet be removed for receiving an indirect pecuniary benefit? That too seems like an over-reach.

 

[Kieran McConville]

^ Yeah, or that too. I guess I figure something like what I described might go down better with the public than dual citizenship (though like you say, it's not like allowing it has been disastrous in certain other countries).

As long as some of this stuff is framed as it is at present, I guess the scope for shall we say vexatious overreach, is always there.