Anatomy of an Australian Election
Dodgy preference deals cost Green seats, even as public support grows

By Nick McKim MHA
Green Party Member of Parliament, Tasmania, Australia

Things were looking good for the Australian Greens heading into the fall 2004 elections. Greens were trending up in the polls, had a shot at balance of power in the Senate, and were hoping for a Green Senator in every state to join the two already there.

Nick McKim

But leave it to negative advertising, a fundamentalist Christian groundswell and undemocratic electoral rules to spoil an election (sound familiar?). Australia, which uses a multiparty system, headed into the elections with the Liberal Party (similar to U.S. Republican) seeking a fourth consecutive win by Prime Minister John Howard, who as a result of his slavish devotion to the Iraq invasion was dubbed “the Man of Steel” by U.S. President George W. Bush. Opposition parties included the Labor Party (similar to U.S. Democrats), who have been in opposition for nearly a decade and are desperate for power; the Greens; and Family First, a new party founded six months ago that is based on Assemblies of God, an evangelist fundamentalist Christian Church movement with booming membership.

Early Campaign

Labor opened with the theme of “trust,” saying, correctly, that PM Howard is a liar. Howard came back agreeing that trust is crucial, but that it should be about who can be trusted to keep the economy strong and interest rates low. (Unlike the U.S., Australia’s economy is strong with budget surpluses and record low unemployment). The Greens began by campaigning strongly on our core issues of environment, peace, social justice and human rights. 

Family First came out hard with a hugely funded television campaign focusing exclusively on the Greens, suggesting that Greens have, among other things, secret plans to give away hard drugs to children (a lie, of course). Their tag was “that’s not green, that’s extreme”.

Family First withdrew the ads after the Greens threatened legal action, but some damage had been done. A massive talk radio/letters to the editor campaign reinforced the message that the sky will fall in if people vote Green.

House and Senate

The campaign for the House of Representatives (the Lower House, where the majority party forms government) was quite boring throughout, and Labor never looked like winning. The Green Party had one member, Michael Organ, who is the first ever member of a minority party to hold a House of Representatives seat. Michael campaigned hard, and increased his primary vote, but was not re-elected. At the end of the day, Howard’s Liberal Party won convincingly and took a comfortable majority in the House of Government.

The excitement was in the Senate race. Australians generally do not give the same party majority control of the Lower and Upper Houses, since it is considered too much power.

A short lecture on Senate voting is needed here. Due to the enormous number of Senate candidates (up to 300 in some states), and compulsory preferential voting (which requires voters to vote in order of preference for every candidate), the Electoral Commission came up with a system some years ago where voters can vote “below the line” or “above the line.”

Below the line voting means numbering every box, which can take up to half an hour. Above the line voting means that voters can simply place a 1 in the box next to the political party they want to vote for, then preferences are allocated according to how the parties have decided they want them to flow. Parties are required to lodge this information with the Electoral Commission one week before polling day, which means that negotiators from every party frantically make and break backroom deals that make all the difference in determining who gets elected. 

What happened in practice is that all other parties decided that the Greens in the balance of power would be highly problematic, as we have a well deserved reputation (of which we are very proud) of actually voting according to our policies and principles, rather than making compromise deals. So all other parties, including the Australian Democrats, who were previously the third force in Australian politics and have similar policies to the Greens in many areas, preferenced Family First candidates in front of Greens candidates. 

This was viewed with some consternation by supporters of the Democrats, because Family First have said (among other things) that all lesbians should be burned at the stake, and called on their supporters to tear down all edifices to Satan such as liquor stores and Buddhist temples. 

In the end the dodgy preference deals cost the Greens a Senate seat in each of South Australia, Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland. The balancing good news was the election of Rachel Siewert in Western Australia, and Christine Milne in Tasmania. Unfortunately the same deals saw the conservative parties gain ultimate control of the Senate, and therefore control of both Houses of Parliament in Australia. This will have far-reaching ramifications which are too complex (and depressing) to address here.

A huge public outcry erupted in Tasmania when it became apparent that Milne might get knocked off by the Family First candidate, despite Milne polling more than 13 percent, and Family First less than 2 percent, but democracy prevailed in the end and Milne just got up.

The Greens made Tasmania’s globally significant old growth forests a national issue throughout the campaign, and the forestry industry retaliated by spending massive amounts on anti-Green television and newspaper advertisements -- including four full-page ads every day in every Tasmanian newspaper in the last two weeks of the campaign. 

Despite spending less in the entire campaign than the forestry industry spent in one day, the Greens managed a very respectable Tasmanian Senate vote of 13.29 percent.

Nationally, the Green Senate vote went up from 5 percent at the last election to 8 percent this time. Interestingly, the Greens earned about 900,000 Senate votes nationally, for two Senators elected. Our 450,000 votes per Senator elected compares with the next most votes per Senator (Labor), who needed 220,000 votes per senator elected. This is a product of the dodgy preference deals.

Overall it was a tough campaign, fought against the odds, and a result that, although not as good as hoped, still consolidated the Greens as the third force in Australian politics, and the only party which will continue to stand up against the corporatist, warmongering environmental wreckers who control all of Australia’s parliaments.

More detailed election results available at the Australian Electoral Commission website http://vtr.aec.gov.au. Senate results at http://vtr.aec.gov.au/SenateResultsMenu-12246.htm.