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Australia Votes

The people have spoken

Moazzem Hossain
THE Australian general election 2013 was held on September 7. Incumbent PM Kevin Rudd was dis-lodged by opposition leader Tony Abbott. Out of 150 Lower House seats, Kevin Rudd's Labor won 57 and the PM-elect Tony Abbott's coalition, Liberal and National Party (LNP), won 88 seats. In the last election (2010), both Labor and LNP were neck-and-neck with a hung parliament. This year, however, the coalition gained 16 seats from Labor.
This was this writer's 9,h election as voter over the last quarter of a century. The 2013 election was certainly extraordinary. Many pundits argue that this was an election which was not judged by the electorate on the grounds of economic credentials of the incumbent, but on Labor's dysfunctional nature over the last six years. Australian voters do not like infighting in a political party when it is in power. The former health minister put the defeat in the following words: "I give our government 9 out of 10 on strong policy initiatives, but 0 out of 10 on governance."
What was wrong with the governance? Over the last six years the incumbent Labor had sacked two PMs due to infighting. Rudd, who led the 2007 election as opposition leader and steered the party to a win against a 12 year long (19 9 6-2007) coalition government, was sacked from the office of the PM immediately before the next (2010) election, which brought Australia's first female PM, Julia Gillard to power. This move was never seen before in Australian parliament (except when another Labor PM Gough Whitlam was sacked by the Governor General in 1975). In 2010, after assuming power, Ms. Gillard successfully steered the party to form a minority government and ruled until she was dislodged by Rudd in the same fashion immediately before 2013 election. The rivalry between Rudd and Gillard over six years in the government wiped out all achievements of the two terms due to disunity.
Indeed, the achievements had not been small. They kept the Australian economy from going bust like western economies during the GFC with a growth rate of 2.7%-4.2%; inflation has been under control within 2.5% and 3.5% range; unemployment rate was stable at 5%-5.5%; interest rate has been at all-time low after deregulation in 1983 (2.5%); national debt presently is one of the lowest among the OECD nations, at less than 20% of the GDP; and finally the economy has been enjoying AAA rating from all three global rating agencies.
Generally, with such a healthy economic credential, it is unlikely that the electorate will say no to a government. The Australian electorate of 14 million plus voters was disturbed by the disunity in the Labor party and was of the view that if an old party such as this was not capable of managing itself, how could it manage an economy - which is the world's 12,h largest. In this year's election more than 95% of the total votes were cast due to Australia's mandatory voting regime. Out of this, the winning coalition - LNP - got 44% of the primary votes, Labor 34% (lowest in the last 100 years), and minor parties 18% (highest in Australian history). Overall, there was a swing towards the coalition by 3% and swing away from Labor by 4.5%.
It appears that with such a huge swing away from Labor, the damage by all means was not catastrophic as was predicted by the gallop polls. Why? Australia has a preferential voting system. Every voter needs to vote with giving preferences for all the contestants. For example, if a seat was contested by 4 candidates (two from main parties and two from minor parties), a voter must cast his/her vote for all four by giving preferences 1,2, 3 and 4. The candidate who gets first (1) preference is regarded as the primary vote of the candidate and the candidate who gets second (2) is regarded as preferred vote and so on. In other words, a candidate having more than 50% primary and preferred combined votes is declared as the winner. A candidate who gets more than 50% primary votes is declared elected since he/she does not need any preference count. Under the preferential system, all winners must get more than 50% of the votes, either primary or primary, plus preference combined; unlike the Indian or our system of voting, which needs only a simple majority in order to get over the line.
Indeed, Australia has two unique elements of voting: compulsory (punishable by law if not exercised) and preferential. One's vote becomes informal or invalid if the ballot paper is not filled in with preferences. With all these equity measures in place, unfortunately, if the politicians choose to keep self-interest ahead of party interest, it will bring about a lose-lose situation for the nation. Thus, the electorate has no other alternative than to dislodge an incumbent at the earliest opportunity. That is what happened over the last few weeks to the government led by Kevin Rudd.
Sent from Brisbane, Australia. E-mail: m.hossain@griffith.edu.au