Heading west for easier parliamentary election

29 January 2023

Voters in Western Australia have two years until their next State election. The last election occurred in 2021, and the Labor Party won overwhelmingly. At first glance, it doesn’t look like losing power, unless something dramatic happens. Then again, the Liberal Party had easily won an election in 2013 before a big swing in 2017 saw it lose power.

But the next election will have something very different, regarding the Upper House of Parliament.

Apart from a crushing victory in the Lower House, with more than 50 of 59 available seats won there, Labor won also won a majority in the Upper House. This chamber is where minor parties generally fare better, because they only need a certain percentage of the vote in order to win seats, rather than anything near a majority. But in 2021, Labor won a majority, and then reformed the chamber.

In 2025, when the next election comes, the Upper House will consist of 37 seats, with the whole State treated as a single electorate. This will differ from how it looks at the moment, with 36 seats spread across several regions. Parties need a certain percentage of the vote across each region to win seats, whereas in 2025 this percentage will refer to the entire State and make seats easier to win.

It doesn’t matter whether candidates live in Kununurra, Karratha, Kalgoorlie, Katanning, Kelmscott, Karrinyup, or Kingsley. If they or their parties win about 2.6 per cent of the statewide vote in 2025, they’ll be guaranteed an Upper House seat.

Where does this percentage come about? The answer is that when calculating how much of the vote you need, you divide the total vote by a number which is one more than the number of seats actually up for grabs across the jurisdiction. It doesn’t matter how seats are there.

In the case of the reformed Upper House, with 37 seats available, it’ll be a case of dividing the total votes cast by 38, before adding an extra vote to that. This equals about 2.6 per cent of the vote. You can alternatively just divide the total votes cast by 38, to get a rough idea.

Perhaps this will make the reformed Upper House closest to an accurate measure of popular support that political parties really have. The major parties tend to poll more strongly in Lower House seats, because parties and candidates need to win large shares of the vote, though not necessarily a majority, within clustered areas, such as a handful of suburbs in a capital city or a large group of towns. About 35-40 per cent of the vote gives candidates a chance, but minor parties normally struggle to win that level of support locally. Upper House contests are easier for them.

At the moment, the Upper House of Parliament in New South Wales comes closest to showing how much support political parties really have. With 21 seats up for grabs there at election time, parties only require about 4.5 per cent of the vote to win seats. The next closest would be in South Australia, with 11 Upper House seats up for grabs and about 8.3 per cent of the vote required to win seats.

I might wonder if minor parties in particular might think of heading west to find easier parliamentary contests. With the percentage of the vote required for election pretty low, the temptation is there.

Based on the last election results, Labor would’ve won at least 22 seats, with 60.3 per cent of the vote across WA. Less than 38,000 votes statewide would’ve won somebody a seat.

Previously, when Labor took power in WA in 2017, it would’ve taken at least 15 Upper House seats, with 40.4 per cent of the vote. But at the election prior, in 2013, which it lost, its tally would’ve been 12 seats, with 32.5 per cent of the vote. The Liberals, in winning that 2013 election, would’ve taken 18 seats, with 47.6 per cent of the vote.

This arrangement for 2025 will be naturally different from how the Upper House is arranged now.

With six regions returning just six members each, each party needs a larger share of the vote to take seats. But some regions, especially around the State capital, contain hundreds of thousands of voters, in contrast to just tens of thousands elsewhere.

Voters in rural and remote locations will probably feel marginalised. But doesn’t their existing power seem disproportionate to their numbers, when most voters live around the State capital? Then again, might a better population policy and better infrastructure entice more people to move to the regions, thereby potentially making support increase for political parties who claim to care about the regions?

Regardless of what both urban and rural voters think about the reformed Upper House in WA, their opportunity to pass judgement on it will come in 2025. Minor parties in particular may be motivated to put more efforts into the 2025 election, with an easier opportunity to win parliamentary seats and give exposure to the issues that spur them to run.

Liberals awkwardly twisted in political knickers

22 January 2023

The Liberal Party looks very unsettled at the moment. Events of the past year, mainly a Federal election defeat, would seem to be messing with the minds of many of its people.

Of course, losing a Federal election last year wasn’t the only event of note. Before it, the Liberals lost power at a State election in South Australia, despite having governed reasonably well over the preceding years. Later in the year, the Liberals lost a State election in Victoria, though almost nobody tipped them to win that election anyway.

Now they face a State election in New South Wales, where they took power in 2011 and seek a fourth straight term in power. Governments often struggle to win three terms in power, so winning four terms rarely is easy. You can see what the Liberals are up against in the most populous Australian state.

Where does messing with minds become relevant? Well, the Liberals lost some of their safest seats in last year’s Federal election to Independent candidates. Before then, they’d lost one safe seat, Warringah in northern Sydney, to Independent candidate Zali Steggall. She’d campaigned hard on environmental issues like climate change. Her victory inspired other Independents, and some won seats in 2022. They ran against the Liberals on not only climate change but also corruption and women’s issues.

The Liberals were perceived as flip-flopping on climate change, and indifferent to corruption and issues of great concern to women, such as sexual assault. Also, Scott Morrison was really unpopular as Liberal leader and Prime Minister. And apart from successful Senate candidate David Pocock, the Independents taking Liberal seats were women.

But until the Independents emerged, voters in those seats saw no appealing alternatives. They mostly detested the Labor Party, the tradition opposition, because of its policies around taxation and wealth.

The Liberals frequently held these seats for that reason. No matter how much they peeved those voters, including some of the wealthiest people in Australia, they could never abide Labor’s agenda of taxing them more heavily and redistributing their wealth to others – even though they shared Labor’s fervent belief in acting on climate change. But once the Independents convinced them that climate action might be the only issue making them side with Labor, they managed to win seats that Labor couldn’t win.

Concerns about women’s issues, coupled with criticism regarding a lack of female MPs in Liberal ranks, are now spilling into the pending State election in NSW. The Liberals have sought to get more women into winnable seats – especially where Labor has seemingly little chance. But success has been limited.

While some women have sought to be Liberal candidates in sought-after seats, men have often emerged as winners. Many Liberal branch members, who actually vote for candidates, don’t like having people imposed on them as candidates, be they men or women. Mind you, women are running as Independents in some treasured Liberal seats in the Lower House, some of which cover areas where Federal Liberal seats fell to Independents last year.

This probably spooked Liberal powerbrokers into dumping three men from the Upper House and giving women their spots for the election.

Then again, I’d hardly consider those dumped men, Matthew Mason-Cox and Lou Amato and Shayne Mallard, to be inspiring characters with much to show for their time in the Upper House. Both Amato and Mallard were elected in 2015, and Mason-Cox entered the Upper House some years earlier. Their departures don’t look like depriving the Liberals of much talent. Time will tell if the women replacing them are better. There are plenty of politicians, male and female alike, who seem like wastes of space, and they only hold seats because of connections to influential figures – just as there are plenty of women and men who should hold seats but lack support among those influential figures.

Also, in contrast to Morrison, State Liberal leader Dominic Perrottet has been more popular, and done reasonably well on issues that brought Morrison undone. Perrottet became Premier in 2021, following the resignation of Gladys Berejiklian, amid a corruption investigation. Berejiklian had also been quite popular when she was Premier.

Meanwhile, the Liberals generally oppose the notion of guaranteeing seats for female politicians, which Labor has long been doing, so they try to get more women in their ranks by other means. But it seems that events of the past year have messed with their minds, spooking them to have more women elected, regardless of talent or ability, because nowadays the appearance of more men makes them seem rather old-fashioned and “behind the times”. Might they be awkwardly twisted in political knickers – playing on a saying about getting one’s knickers in a twist?

The coming NSW election will likely see more women elected, of various political colours. The question about their talents and abilities, or lack thereof, might take time to be noticed.