Australian Federal election 2nd July 2016

Politics & Elections
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A federal election of 226 members of the Federal parliament of Australia will take place on Saturday 2 July 2016 after a (we think long) 8 week campaign.

Elections in Australia use a full-preferential system in one vote, one value single-member seats for the 150-member House of Representatives (lower house).

Following changes to reduce the incidence of micro-parties the voting system in the 76-member Senate (upper house) is now an optional-preferential single transferable vote system of proportional representation.

Usually Senate elections are half-Senates, this is the first double dissolution since the 1987. Each of the six states has 12 representatives with the territories with the two territories (Australian Capital Territory where Canberra is located) and the Northern Territory having two each.

Voting is compulsory.
Interestingly for our non-Oz audience we have a broadcast media blackout on election advertising here for radio and television from the end of the Wednesday before the polling day until the close of the poll. Online & print services are exempt.

It hasn’t been a campaign of energy and ideas.
The primary issue is … well I’m not really sure. The economy is OK, so mostly it’s about soft issues and trust.

The protagonists are Malcolm Turnbull of the Liberal Party (in US terms of character think LBJ) who would be unbackably favourite for his personal liberal views on SSM or climate change etc in the wider community but the arch-conservative LIB factions would knee-cap him in the partyroom.

Bill Shorten is Labor Party (in US terms of character think Jimmy Carter) is a past senior union leader (who came to national prominence following the Beaconsfield mine collapse) of a party that knows it has to win in the centre whilst the Greens chew away at its inner city progressive base.

Neither have fought an election as leader before.
Both have form by knifing a former leader.
Whoever loses will be displaced as leader.

The Greens will have an influence in several seats. They have absolutely no idea about how to govern themselves or the country, but they do know how to protest.
Spoilt vegetables if you like

The Palmer United Party disintegration in a single election cycleis creating all sorts of angst in Queensland (our Florida) while the maverick Nick Xenephon might make South Australia his personal fiefdom and pick up a bucket of seats in both houses.
Several other prominent pollies have serious contests in their own backyards.

The Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce may lose his seat in NSW regional seat of New England to the independent Tony Windsor

LAB heavy Anthony Albanese may lose his inner Sydney seat of Grayndler to the Greens.
LIBs heavy Christopher Pyne may lose his Adelaide seat of to a Xenophon party candidate.

The polls are saying too close to call, slightly favouring the LIBs.
And with BREXIT still ringing in our ears, no pollster is admitting that they have a clue.

Sit back and enjoy the best night of TV for the year. :cool:

Oh, and a pre-emptive FUCK OFF to those usual suspects contemplating partisan diatribes here when there are literally hundreds of US election threads specifically for the purpose.
Thank you.

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This thread died, and I’m not trying to resurrect it.

Nevertheless, I can’t believe that you are starting a thread about a national election, and stating “Oh, and a pre-emptive FUCK OFF to those usual suspects contemplating partisan diatribes …” How in the world do you think that a thread about an election will not include partisan diatribes? Why in the world would you expect so?

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For Bill Shorten, the major issue seems to be Medicare. He claims that the Coalition will privatise it, but Turnbull denies this.

For Malcolm Turnbull, the major issue seems to be a strong, stable government. Of course, you could get one by giving Labor a majority in the House and the Senate, but I don’t think that’s what he means.

Both major parties are tainted by recent leadership changes mid-term. That, combined with a lower quota in the Senate election, should help the minor parties win seats. I don’t think Turnbull is going to get the majority that he was hoping for, and he could even lose the House. In any case, whichever party gets as majority in the House, that party will need to work with minor parties in the Senate to get legislation through.

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We had long threads on the last British election, some over 1,000 posts without getting partisan. The BREXIT thread went seven pages without getting partisan.
If this OP sinks without trace with a handful of objective/subjective posts que sera, sera.

Remaining civil in political discourse isn’t a problem for the non-merkin segment of SDMB but past experience has been that these can devolve into GOP v DEM bashing in two posts.

Because of the time difference we may have a cordial thread quietly bubbling along at the time for shut eye here and by the time we wake up in 6-8 hours of its all TRUMP v guns v Obamacare v Bengahzi v (insert favourite US political meme here).

Giles I agree. Of the options below, only the top one is not a realistic possibility
LIB increased majority
LIB workable majority
LIB stable minority
Hung/unstable parliament
LAB stable minority
LAB workable majority

Can live with either as stable majorities.

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Almost every Australian metropolitan masthead has backed the Coalition to win the federal election on Saturday.

The first point would be that this is an indictment on the diversity of Australian’s print media where Rupert dominates most markets.

The second would be that this would normally be considered unequivocatably good news for the beneficiary, in this case the LIBS.

But in the current context “Uh Oh” might be a better description of the reaction at LIB HQ.

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I’m hoping for a hung parliament myself. The last minority government, IMO did fine and got stuff done (NDIS, Carbon Tax) - Jones/Bolt cranial explosions notwithstanding. Minority government favours leaders who can actually compromise and negotiate, something I’m happy to encourage in our politicians. Don’t mind too much who leads it, though being a lefty I’d certainly prefer Shorten.

I live in na na na na na na na na BATMAN which is shaping up to be an interesting fight (It’s the Greens rising hope for Parliamentary Seat Number 2). TBH I’m expecting Labor to get it, but hoping to be surprised

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I was looking at some maps. [del]Are your electoral divisions rather heavily gerrymandered, or is there some other reason for their squiggliness?[/del]

Never mind, I was misreading how the outer Sydney divisions worked.

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I am in REID, which has been LAB heartland since 1922 but the area has been progressively gentrified and went to the LIBs in 2013. Further redistribution has made it more LIB.
The LAB candidate is the thoroughly hard working local mayor who’s having his second crack at the seat.

The really good thing is that we have one of Fred Niles apostles (Christian Democrats) standing so that decides the all important last place on the ballot.
(the person you rank last cannot get your vote even after all preferences are exhausted)

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I’m in Fremantle, which has been held by the Labor party consistently since 1934. It doesn’t matter who I vote for or indeed whether I vote at all; Labor will win again.

So confident are the Labor party that they will win the seat that they put no great thought into the selection of their candidate; they could nominate a goat, and it would be elected. So they nominated one who turned out to have an embarrassing history, and to be unpopular on the doorsteps. Had they run with him he would have been elected, and they decided they didn’t want him in the parliamentary party, so at the last minute they dumped him and nominated someone else - someone they had previously rejected for the gig.

And so confident are the Liberal party that they cannot win the seat - they have never won it - that they, too, put no thought or effort into the selection of their candidate and nominated one who, even though he had no chance of being elected, was going to win ridicule and derision for the party even by running. So they dumped him, and nominated someone else who can’t possibly win, but at least will manage to keep her name out of the papers during the campaign.

Amusing, but it does illustrate how little the major parties care about you, or your views, or your concerns, or even your good opinion, if you live in what is perceived to be a “safe seat”.

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Glad to hear ours isn’t the only shitshow in the world… :smiley:

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+1
Further evidence on the fallacy of American exceptionalism!

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It’s not a great election offering this time around, I have to say.

For the first time in a long time I actually don’t really give a shit who wins (as long as it’s not the Greens); there’s pretty much no major difference I can see between the LNP and Labor with regard to anything that matters to me.

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Elections in Australia are just more of the same, more of the same, regardless of the boring party winning .
The only GOOD things about Aussie elections are the sausage sizzles and the cake stalls.

And I eagerly await them for my brekkie in the morning. :smiley:

Oh…nearly forgot the OTHER good thing about Aussie elections: Antony Green!!!

I’ll get my culinary jollies in the morning, and my hunk perv jollies in the evening.

My day is complete…:slight_smile:

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You know, I’ve never seen a cake stall at a voting booth, although I see enough people going on about them on social media for me to know they’re a thing.

I do, however, insist on enjoying a Democracy Sausage™ after I’ve voted. It’d be UnAustralian™ not to. :smiley:

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http://www.electionsausagesizzle.com.au/

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I have a confession to make. I’m a member of a political party – I have been for 40 years, since shortly after the 1975 election. And for most of those 40 years, I’ve handed out how-to-vote cards at the primary school where my children were students.

For most of that time, the P&C (Parents and Citizens, the equivalent of the PTA in the US) have run a cake stall to raise funds. However, more recently, they’ve been running a barbecue and selling sausages on buns. So yes, cake stalls are (or were) “a thing”. If you get a few thousand people walking through your school on a Saturday, why not sell them a lamington or a sausage on a bread roll?

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From the link:
2016 Federal Election Sausage sizzle and cake stall counter

1552

Previous Record: 1470
(Federal Election 2013, 19% of all polling booths)

Excellent!

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Oh yeah, and about that … anyone noticed that that doesn’t seem to have actually worked? There were 97 Victorian Senate candidates in 2013 - this year it’s 116.

In the lefty circles in which I run there was a good deal of angst about the voting changes, with a lot of henny-penny handwringing about how this was going to cede Senate seats to right wing parties in perpetuity (why the hell, I don’t know). Anthony Green, on the other hand, thinks the changes actually benefit smaller parties, for reasons outlined with plenty of maths on his blog.

So I’d like to make my first two predictions for this election.

a) At least one Senate microparty candidate is going to be elected, to their own astonishment, after sorting out of itty bitty bits of eighth, twelfth and twenty-ninth preferences, and despite getting less than a couple of percent of first prefs, and:

b) Newspapers will have a grand old time clutching at their pearls about how terrible and undemocratic this all is.

I just hope it isn’t that pratt Leyjohnhelm, is all I can say.

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I thought that you fellas considered your old ranked system “The best and fairest system in the world”!

Anyway, it sounds like you just tried to cut down the effect of donkey voting, I think you call it.

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Better and fairer than a system created for donkeys.