In the wee hours after the elections in Canada on Tuesday, Pete Downunder was kind enough to share kind of a primer on the upcoming Australia elections. I found it super helpful, so with his permission I’ve copied it here.
So study up! If you want to know what’s up before this Saturday morning when results start coming in. :-)
I will have an Australia election results post up at 5am on Saturday morning (blog time) where Pete Downunder has offered to kind of live blog the results in real time as they start coming in. All of our other Australia peeps are invited to chime in, as well, and share what you know or you think you know!
AUSTRALIA PRIMER
Now that Canada has shown the way, we’re up next on 3 May (our time: GMT +10). At the risk of repeating what many of you (and all Aussie Jackals) know, we have a house and a senate. Unless the party with a house majority also has a senate majority the senate acts as a restraint on the majority.
The leader of the majority party in the house is the Prime Minister. To confuse Americans further, the left-ish (or more accurately slightly less right-ish) party is Labor (spelled the US way not the UK way for historical reasons too boring to go into here.) Its colour is Red. The center to far right-ish party is misleadingly named the Liberal Party (again for boring historical reasons). Because the Liberals have an alliance with a right-leaning country based party called the National Party they are usually referred to as the Coalition or the LNP. Their colour is Blue.
They are the major parties. The main minority party is the left leaning Green party whose colour, surprise, is Green. There is also a group of independents whose backgrounds vary but tend to be center to center left but who have in common support from an environmental funder. Their colour is Teal and collectively they are called the Teals but they are not a party and each is an independent individual. Some, but not all, are defectors from the LNP. There are also a scattering of minor parties on the right but they are increasingly irrelevant.
We have mandatory preferential voting. Not only must you vote but you must number all the boxes in order of preference. In my electorate the ballot has 8 boxes, one each for Labor, LNP and Greens and 5 more for some minor parties and independents. My electorate is one of few with a Green incumbent but the LNP is desperate to get the seat back.
After all the votes are cast, if no one has 50% + 1, the election officials then go through those with the lowest votes as #1 and allocate their preferences as shown on the ballots. This is repeated until one candidate exceeds 50%. For example in my electorate Labor wants its voters to vote Labor #1 and Greens #2 and LNP #8 and the rest are more or less random. The Greens ask their voters to do basically the same but with Greens #1 and Labor # 2 and LNP last. Thus a major party candidate who can’t win on their own can get over the line with other party preferences. There will be quiz on this next week.
At the moment Labor holds a majority with Anthony Albonese (known universally as Albo) as PM. The Guardian newspaper recently ran a fun contest to chose the invertebrate of the year. I nominated Albo as he is totally spineless. Good hearted but useless. The Opposition is a former cop named Peter Dutton who is far right but not insane like Trump. He is really unlikable. Up until a few months ago, Australian polling was putting LNP in front, but the Trump madness has, like in Canada, turned things around and Labor now barely leads in the polls. As in Canada it could be a minority Labor government with the Greens and Teals holding the balance of power.
That is more than you wanted to know about Australian elections. I’ll will take questions but I don’t want to always see the same hands. I also welcome additions and corrections from other Aussies.
I believe Australia is 10 hours different from us, but Pete is up right now (it’s the wee hours of Friday morning in Australia and he will be on this thread in case anyone has any questions or wants to talk about the election.
I have family in Australia, so this is even more personal for me, but in the current environment, we all have to follow a lot of things that we might have paid less attention to in the past.
Update:
No Data, No Source, Just Vibes
WaterGirl
I am curious about the 6 stars.
The Audacity of Krope
@WaterGirl: It’s giving…some specific constellation.
I’ll put money on it being one that can only be seen from the southern hemisphere.
::checks bank account, slaps 50 digital cents on the digital table::
sab
@The Audacity of Krope: Isn’t there a Southern Cross that looks a lot like Ursa Major up north
ETA Not a lot alike. More a box with a tail than a Big Dipper.
Pete Downunder
@The Audacity of Krope:
The Southern Cross. 6 stars also represent the six Aussie states.
Timill
@WaterGirl: Wiki says: “The national flag of Australia is based on the British Blue Ensign—a blue field with the Union Jack in the upper hoist quarter—augmented with a large white seven-pointed star (the Commonwealth Star) and a representation of the Southern Cross constellation, made up of five white stars (one small five-pointed star and four, larger, seven-pointed stars).”
RJ
It’s Albanese, not Albonese
Albo is right though. But his Twitter handle is @AlboMP, because @albo was taken by an adult performer.
I’ll be handing out how to vote cards for Labor, and am hopeful of majority government.
Elizabelle
@RJ: LOL. Wonder how many voters get startled by the adult performer.
sab
@Pete Downunder: If there were seven stars would they have bifurcated a state?
Belafon
Rank choice voting.
sab
Ohio here. Train traffic has been down, but the fiveish train just went by. First fiveish train this week.
ETA We usually have a daily train between 5pm and 5:45 pm
raven
My friends were legally married in New York but the Aussie couldn’t get a green card so they live in Sydney and have the sweetest little daughter who loves Bluey!!
sab
@raven: Used to be marriage got the spouse in. Now marriage means we expatriate our American spouse. And they wonder why our legal population is tanking?
Elizabelle
@raven: Said friends might have dodged a bullet. And maybe Artie would like Bluey too.
Don_K
Eastern Oz (Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane) is +14 hours to US EDT.(+17 to PDT).
Pete Downunder
The Australian polls close at 6 pm local time, we have three time zones this time of year. AEST on the east coast (Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra, Hobart), central time 1/2 hour later for South Australia (Adelaide) and Northern Territory (Darwin), and then western time 2 hours later for Perth in Western Australia. Results usually start trickling in about 7 pm AEST and we should have a good idea of trends by 9 pm. Almost 40% of eligible voters will have voted before polling day – pre-polls, postal votes, overseas votes – and most of that will get counted on Saturday but may come in quite late. The east coast is 14 hours ahead of EDT in the US. ETA Don K got there first
Birdie
@Pete Downunder: I hate to “well actually”, but the leftmost star has 7 points representing the 6 states and 1 point for all the territories. The rest are the Southern Cross (also on the NZ flag). reference
schrodingers_cat
@sab: The GC through marriage is not automatic. You have to apply for the intent to immigrate and usually there is an interview of both the spouses
Despite what nativists tell you immigrating to this country is not easy.
Pete Downunder
@Don_K:
It gets really crazy in our summer. Queensland does not go to daylight time while the rest of the east coast does. SA goes to daylight time while NT doesn’t. Thus in summer SA is 1/2 hour ahead of Queensland even though it is to the west. The US can thank the railroads for getting remotely sensible time zones. Colonial rivalries prevented until fairly recently a transcontinental railway. QLD still uses a 3′ 6″ gauge, the rest of the east coast uses standard gauge (4′ 8.5″) and SA uses a 5′ gauge. Madness.
Pete Downunder
@Birdie: I stand corrected.
WaterGirl
@Don_K: Is some part of Australia 10 hours different, or did I get that totally wrong?
Pete Downunder
@WaterGirl:
I think the confusion is that eastern Australia is GMT +10, not EDT +10
RevRick
How do people in Australia not fall off the planet? Aren’t they always upside down? And don’t give me that how mass warps the space-time continuum nonsense.
(I’m being completely silly here).
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Pete Downunder:
Wow, the things I learn. And yeah, that’s insane.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_gauge_in_Australia
Elizabelle
@WaterGirl: I got curious too. Australia has three time zones, and Sydney is 14 hours ahead of East Coast/NYC time.
I saw the “10 hours ahead of Universal Coordinated Time — UTC” — which used to be called Greenwich Mean time.
I’d thought UTC would be London time, but it’s apparently 4 hours ahead of Eastern right now, and not 5 as usual. Daylight savings time?
Jackals, is that right?
Pete Downunder
@RevRick:
We’re not upside down but have other issues. I was a lawyer in the US and then became a lawyer in QLD and we used to say that when you came here from the US you set your watch ahead 14 hours and back 50 years.
Pete Downunder
@Elizabelle:
The UK goes onto what they call summer time (same as DST) so they are now GMT or UTC +1
Timill
@Pete Downunder: <checks> South Australia is Irish gauge (5′ 3″). Victoria is about half-and-half Irish and standard gauges.
Sister Golden Bear
@RevRick: Because they’re all named “Bruce.” //
Elizabelle
From Australia.com on time zones.
So we can keep up with the mushroom poisoning case that’s at trial right now. Happened near Melbourne (far southeast coast of Oz, and I think she did it.)
sab
@RevRick: Nosebleeds should be a serious issue. I know I have them when I stand on my head too long.
How do kangaroos feel about Christmas in summer? Their winter is mild, shouldn’t Christmas be then?
How obnoxious can we Yanks be? Let’s compete!
Elizabelle
@Pete Downunder: Thank you.
And thank dog for Apple’s iPhone World Clock feature!
sab
@Pete Downunder: I head a classmate in law school, Canadian, grew up in Texas, married a Kiwi. He was really torn about where to land.
Miss Bianca
@Pete Downunder:
I bet they’re not saying that any more, tho’…
jonas
@Pete Downunder: One of my wife’s and my favorite Netflix shows the past couple of years was Fisk. So that’s basically all I know about the Australian legal profession.
kindness
My niece moved to Australia about 20 years ago. Now she’s a dual citizen with kids and husband over there. I don’t blame Australia for Rupert Murdoch. I just wish he had swum with salties when he was young.
GrueBleen
@WaterGirl: Re the 6 stars: the five together on the right are the Southern Cross, a constellation visible from the southern hemisphere. The big one on the left is a kinda composite alpha+beta centauri which in the sky works as a pointer to the Southern Cross. Centauri is a triple star system comprising a pair (alpha and beta) and a captured wanderer (proxima).
Pete Downunder
@Elizabelle:
That case is dominating the news just below the election. For those not familiar the accusation is that a woman invited her ex-husband, his parents, and I think the sister of a parent to lunch. The ex hubby declined but the others went and were fed a beef wellington made with death cap mushrooms. Three died and one was ill for a long time. The cook ate from a different color plate. Most folks here are pretty sure she did it. The trial just finished opening statements and has a few weeks to go.
zhena gogolia
@Pete Downunder: When is the miniseries coming out?
Pete Downunder
@kindness: We do too. Half our newspapers are Murdoch rags. ETA typos
catclub
So my question is: How big is the red-green colourblind vote?I am not a crank.
sab
@Pete Downunder: Exes poison people all the time. This really shouldn’t damage our view of Australia, unless we want to poison, or our bad cooking might suggest we have ( that’s me!)
I like beaches, but Australia seems too warm for me. Scotland seems better, but they won’t let me in there either.
WaterGirl
Is it realistic to thing that the orange monster may turn the Australia election in the same way that he appears to have turned the Canada election just a few days ago?
GrueBleen
Never believe that voting in Australia is ‘compulsory’: turning up to the polling booth (or mailing in) is compulsory to get your named crossed off (ie you’re fined if you’re caught not doing it), but you can put anything you like on the ballot paper, including nothing (ie, you didn’t actually vote !).
We just like to know whether people are still alive and whether they’ve noticed that there’s an election going on.
Pete Downunder
@sab:
I saw on the internet the question “is English cooking really that bad?” The response: “Only if done correctly”. In the same vein Bill Bryson in his great book In a Sunburned Country relates that Capt Cook beat a French explorer to Australia by only a few days, thus, as he said, damning Australia to 200 years of English cooking.
catclub
@sab: “Six white boomers, snow white boomers,
pacing Santa Claus in the blazing sun.
Six white boomers, snow white boomers,
on his Australian Run.”
Pete Downunder
@sab: My step daughter and son-law and grand kids live in Scotland. They love visiting us here but struggle in the heat at Christmas; they prefer our winter which is like their summer
Pete Downunder
@WaterGirl: He certainly had some influence in my view. Some of the LNP (right wing) politicians have certainly been MAGA curious but after Canada have been desperately trying to distance themselves, but the effect has been visible.
FastEdD
I will forgo all the Oz jokes just to wish you well. You can’t possibly be as stupid as the US is right now.
Pete Downunder
Here is link to Guardian with a chart showing the reversal of fortune of the LNP since January:
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/ng-interactive/2025/may/02/australia-election-polls-latest-aus-opinion-poll-tracker-results-current-polling-survey-labor-vs-liberal-dutton-albanese
Viva BrisVegas
A little exposition regarding the Teals. They are a relatively new phenomenon and consist of loosely aligned independents without any party structure but sharing some funding resources.
Currently at least, they are all women. They are generally fiscally conservative and socially liberal, but their most common characteristic is environmental awareness. They represent a revolt by upper middle class Liberal women against the rampant misogyny and climate denialism of the Liberal Party as it has drifted to the far right.
The reason they are significant is that they are winning in safe, wealthy Liberal (conservative) seats. In numbers that, if they persist, make conservative election victories very difficult. The reason they are called Teals is that they have both Green and Blue (Liberal) political attributes.
The most likely result of this election is a Labor government. What is a toss up is whether Labor will get to a majority of seats in the House. If it does not, then it will need the co-operation of Greens and probably Teals as well to form a minority government. If the Liberals gain more seats than Labor (possible, but unlikely) they will be looking for support from among the Teals in order to form government.
Essentially the Teals represent a splintering of Australian conservatism as the Liberal Party has become more and more unpalatable to centrist voters. This has been accompanied by a proliferation of small extreme right wing parties competing with the Liberals for the extreme right vote and dragging them ever further to the right.
Pete Downunder
@Viva BrisVegas:
That’s a great explanation, thanks for joining in. Teal is also the color they use on their yard signs and posters.
Pete Downunder
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/ng-interactive/2025/may/02/australia-election-polls-latest-aus-opinion-poll-tracker-results-current-polling-survey-labor-vs-liberal-dutton-albanese
Useful chart showing trend of conservative support declining since January
Pete Downunder
I have to go do some stuff, hopefully Viva BrisVegas can relieve me on post
sab
@Pete Downunder: American of Brit ancestry. I always liked British cooking if it wasn’t eels. I think they got a bum rap from shortage cooking during WWII.
My junior year abroad I loved their food, and have taken decades to try to recreate that which wasn’t pretty much what my mother raised by a Canadian mom did.
Outlander industrial complex has a cookbook of British food by a Canadian, who knows how to calculate Brit measurements into American measurements. All kinds of pub food. Pasties, Scotch eggs, etc. Solved many culinary mysteries for me.
mrmoshpotato
Time to bitchslap Aussie Trump trash – especially Rupert.
Old School
“You call that an election?
Now this is an election!”
WaterGirl
@Pete Downunder: Fingers crossed!
sab
@sab: I can visit, but not emigrate.
frosty
@sab: Yanks: When I was Railpassing and drinking beer with them the Aussies called us Septic Tanks (rhyming slang).
Then the Brit chimed in: “You’re all just a bunch of Colonial bastards!”
Viva BrisVegas
@RevRick:
@RevRick:
We do of course live upside down, and as a result the blood rushes to our heads increasing our brain power such that we are now the secret masters of the universe.
Although for some reason our feet always seem to be cold.
WaterGirl
@Pete Downunder: Thanks so much, again, for the great write-up and the idea (and offer) for the Saturday post.
Muchy appreciated!
Pete Downunder
@WaterGirl:
I’m trying to post a link to a good chart of the polling trends but failing. Can I email the link to you and perhaps you can extract the graph?
WaterGirl
@Viva BrisVegas:
:: chuckle ::
WaterGirl
@Pete Downunder: Yes!
edit: chart just added up top.
Birdie
@WaterGirl: I think his influence is present, and mostly a turn off, but limited. He hasn’t been calling Australia the “52nd state” or anything like that so I wouldn’t expect a rally round the flag effect. People I know are pretty focused on local issues – cost of living, housing, and environment / climate (which the current government has been very weak on) in particular.
We have also (depressingly) seen a number of MAGA hat wearers around the state where we live. There are plenty of Trump supporters here, just hope that compulsory voting means they aren’t influential.
I think it will be very tight and most likely a strong night for minor parties and independents. The movement in polls in the last few weeks is mostly (I think) a function of people being reminded how offputting Dutton is than anything else.
WaterGirl
I hope all of the Australia peeps on this thread will join in on the Saturday thread, too.
Pete Downunder
@WaterGirl:
For now since we’ve been discussing the Trump effect. Graph shows Conservatives leading then crashing after January
Viva BrisVegas
For all the anoraks out there, all mainland capital cities are joined by standard gauge rail (4 foot 8 and a half inches). My state of Queensland uses narrow gauge (3 foot 6 inches) within the state basically because they couldn’t afford anything better. The state of Victoria used wide gauge (5 foot 3 inches) basically because they’re nuts.
HopefullyNotcassandra
@Pete Downunder: that is wild
feather as a light
@WaterGirl: you can see the Trump effect clearly in the polling vs. time charts on here. Quite a dramatic turn.
WaterGirl
@Pete Downunder: Just posted the chart up top. I see lots of change since January. Yay!
WaterGirl
@feather as a light: Wow.
Also, check out the chart and the link I just added up top.
NotMax
@Viva BrisVegas
In college (in the heady days before pull tabs) whenever someone would show up at a gathering with cans of Foster’s, we’d urge them to use the churchkey to open them on the bottom.
:)
HopefullyNotcassandra
@Elizabelle: I wondered if it wasn’t ai behind the deadly shrooms. An AI had a foraging recommendation to pick death cap mushrooms and a recipe for how to cook them. The AI skipped the warning of a violent death following consumption of your meal.
Viva BrisVegas
@Birdie: You left out mentioning the Trumpet of Patriots Party.
They are something that needs to seen to be believed.
feather as a light
Mate this is spot-on.
Great explainer. Only one thing missing: democracy sausage.
Viva BrisVegas
@NotMax: I don’t think I have ever seen Fosters for sale in Australia. It kind of died a death after Barry McKenzie.
sab
@Viva BrisVegas: I like that, that gravity makes you and the Kiwis brighter than the average Canadian.
A lot of Americans live in Florida, almost on the Tropics.
I haven’t been impressed with the brainpower there. Our dairy cows in Ohio are brighter.
Florida Americans only ( excepting Betty Crscker)
Pete Downunder
@WaterGirl:
@WaterGirl:
Many thanks
They Call Me Noni
@feather as a light: So voting is compulsory? Did not know that.
feather as a light
@WaterGirl: Looks great!
It’s not as big as the swing in Canada (which makes sense given the “51st state” rhetoric) but it sure is looking like Trump will have cost two conservative parties their elections in two countries.
NotMax
Election announcement from the TV series Rake. (For those who may be unfamiliar with it, the lead character is a lawyer with no scruples whatsoever.)
:)
feather as a light
@They Call Me Noni: Yes, one of the cool aspects of Australian democracy (after Saturday elections and sausage sizzles). Voter turnout is typically well above 90%.
Pete Downunder
@Viva BrisVegas: I too failed to mention them. How do you explain Clive Palmer? Very rich guy (from mining) who has been involved in the fringes of Aussie politics for years. Willing to spend gazilions of bucks on quixotic runs. Actually won a seat a while back. Now has a new venture called the Trumpet of Patriots party (color garish yellow) that seems to be spending heavily on ads in every medium and attracting about 0.1% of the vote. I think has perhaps five members. A mix of populist nonsense and regular nonsense.
Viva BrisVegas
@They Call Me Noni: Since it’s against the law not to vote, it makes voter suppression by the government almost impossible.
The libertarians complain, but the answer to that is, what about jury duty? Should we make that voluntary too?
Sure Lurkalot
@sab: Totally OT…you mentioned bopping to “Never Gonna Give You Up” during a dine out last thread…a podcast, Song Exploder, breaks down that song here https://songexploder.net/rick-astley most excellently and it may just be a forever ear worm. Rick Astley comes across as someone you’d love to meet.
Matt McIrvin
@Viva BrisVegas: Well… I figure if we had mandatory voting, they’d just suppress the vote and then arrest all the people they suppressed. Maybe take away their right to vote next time!
TS
Just wanted to add one thing to Pete’s great description of our political parties. There are 10 candidates for my electorate (district). The main 3, Liberal, Labor, Greens.
The other 7 are a collection of far right, off the planet right wing bigot parties. One is even called “trumpists”. Because we have to vote for all 10, (numbered 1 to 10) I start at the bottom with the one that looks the worst – but it still means my number 4 vote goes to someone who should never be elected to parliament.
NotMax
@Viva BrisVegas
Did someone mention Australian rail?
:)
Viva BrisVegas
@Matt McIrvin: In Australia it is illegal for prisoners in gaol to not vote.
sab
@Sure Lurkalot: I would love to meet him.
Pete Downunder
@TS:
Mrs Downunder voted yesterday at a pre-poll and had the same comment – we have 8 spots in our electorate and the bottom four range from neo-Nazi to Martian. Impossible to rank them but fortunately none have any chance. I have not discussed our senate election because its rules make quantum mechanics look easy, but preferences have in the past given a seat to people with less than 1% of first preference support. Some years ago a guy from like the motor sports party actually got a seat and despite no political back ground at all actually tried hard to be a responsible senator. He only lasted one term
WaterGirl
@feather as a light: I sure hope so.
As someone (maybe Professor Bigfoot?) wrote this morning…
from your keyboard to god’s monitor!
Pete Downunder
@NotMax: Utopia is a great satirical program that hits close to home. Highly recommended. The same team had a program called The Hollow Men about parliamentary staff and a close friend who worked in Parliament told me she had been to meetings just like those depicted. Australia will never have high speed rail – the distances are too vast and the population density too small, so the cost per seat kilometer is out of hand.
stinger
I’d like to understand how compulsory voting works. How do they make people go to the polls? How do they make you vote for/rank all candidates? What are the penalties for not voting or partially voting? Do you have early voting, vote by mail, etc.?
ETA: Is this a recent innovation, or has voting always been compulsory?
Matt McIrvin
@Viva BrisVegas: Well, gee, how are politicians going to pick their own electorate with THAT attitude?
sab
Took the pitbull in for a nail trim today. She needs a muzzle but we had lost ours. She trotted in calmly past all the other silly beneath contempt dogs getting their fur washed and trimmed.
But then they put her on a table and hoisted her and she said an emphatic grrrr.
They laughed and said that is barely a moan, and muzzled her. Then she growled much louder. They laughed but not so loud ( dogs do have feelings.)
After the humiliations she walked out and I paid and left a generous tip I didn’t tell her about.
Walkies tomorrow won’t hurt her feet so much. Humans do suck, don’t they?
Viva BrisVegas
@Pete Downunder: Yes, the distribution of Senate preferences is one of the great mysteries of Australian democracy.
Fortunately we have the Australian Electoral Commission to handle it for us.
They are an independent government agency (I realise that is an oxymoron) that oversee Federal elections in Australia. So far the conservatives have not screwed with them, although I’m sure they’ve been tempted.
Their job is to run the election, maintain the electoral rolls, set electorate boundaries, count up the votes and send out fines to those who don’t vote. All with bureaucratic impartiality.
So far it has worked. I recommend the process to our American readers.
Pete Downunder
@stinger:
When you go the poll to collect your ballot they tick off you off the list in the computer. Because it’s a secret ballot they cannot know if you marked all the boxes or, as happens, just wrote an obscenity on the ballot. Those that do not complete all the boxes are just not counted and are called informal votes. At many elections I scrutineered (monitored the count) so saw all the ballots in my polling place. Probably 1-2% were informal, most unintentional. One ballot marked two boxes with number 5 for example. The ones with obscenities or rude remarks or drawings are called donkey votes and they, obviously, are not counted either. The informal vote issue is most often with the senate ballot which is huge and complex.
Matt McIrvin
@Pete Downunder:
Hmm… not across the whole country, of course, but could you make the case for a high-speed link between, say, Sydney, Canberra and Melbourne? Fair-sized cities and the distances are US Eastern Seaboard-scale, though I guess there’s less in between.
Viva BrisVegas
@stinger: Compulsory voting works because most people know that there is such a thing as compulsory voting, but almost nobody knows what the penalty is for not voting. So they go vote rather than risk the penalty.
The penalty for not voting a fine of $20. Due a conflux of circumstances I failed to vote in my state election last year. I waited for the fine to come in the mail, but nothing ever arrived.
So essentially it is an imaginary penalty.
Matt McIrvin
(sounds like the New South Wales XPT is kind of like Amtrak’s Acela, theoretically fast but hamstrung by terrible track alignments)
Pete Downunder
@Matt McIrvin:
@Matt McIrvin:
This has been studied, at great expense, and the combination of challenging terrain and heavy development around the cities even for an obvious city pair like Sydney Melbourne (busiest air corridor in the world I’m told). The direct distance is only 440 miles (770 km) but there is a mountain range (the Blue Mountains) in the way plus sprawling suburbs. The clip that Not Max linked to above is satire but is actually right on.
The Lodger
@TS: Portland, Oregon has a slightly different system for mayor and council elections. If you don’t want to vote for a candidate, don’t rank them and you won’t be supporting them at all. It’s cleaner and faster than ranking the no-hopers at the bottom of the ballot.
NotMax
@Pete Downunder
Find it giggle worthy that the original name for what later became Melbourne was Batmania.
;)
Viva BrisVegas
@The Lodger:
That is called Optional Preferential Voting in Australia. It’s used in several states and for the Federal Senate election.
TS
@Pete Downunder:
I learned years ago not to vote above the line for the senate. You have to vote for at least 6 parties & I am flat out finding 6 that I would want to vote for. Voting below the line – putting the No 2 from the party of your choice first works for me. I can get my 12 votes from 2/3 parties max.
currawong
We voted on Tuesday, Canada’s voting day because voting day itself can be pretty busy. It’s on a Saturday, unlike Canada, the UK and US who vote midweek, itself a form of voter suppression. The only problem is that we’ll miss out on a democracy sausage (a supermarket sausage grilled and wrapped in a slice of supermarket white bread, with or without onions). The polling stations are usually local schools and the schools run a sausage sizzle to raise funds.
Both major parties, Labor and the LNP prefer the old duopoly and recently joined together to vote through a new law restricting the spending of minority parties at elections while strangely excluding their own sources of funding. Both major parties are also completely beholden to the fossil fuel companies and Australia exported record amounts of coal last year in the middle of a climate crisis.
The only solution is that we elect enough independent MPs to force Labor into a minority government which will hopefully stop them licencing any more coal and gas fields. Plus, renewables are now so cheap that fossil fuel power is disappearing despite big subsidies to keep them open.
Hopes of a minority government have diminished by the awful campaign that Peter Dutton of the LNP has run. They basically have no policies that anyone would vote for any he’s stumbled badly when questioned, something he’s not had to face in three years of leadership by just appearing on friendly unquestioning radio shows and in the Murdoch press. When elected to the leadership, the Murdoch press had to run a front page headline about Dutton with a quote from his wife “He’s not a monster”. The other hightlight was a Greens MP calling him Temu Trump in parliament which was then entered into Hansard, the official parliamentary record. The nickname was so accurate that it stuck.
So fingers crossed for a minority Labor government on Saturday.
TS
@stinger:
It’s been compulsory for as long as I could vote but google tells me it came in 1924 – because “not enough people were voting”
If you receive a notice for not voting – any excuse will usually suffice (I was ill on the day is popular) otherwise as said above a $20 fine. When I worked the polls we often had people come in and say “My brother is ill or overseas” or give some other reason for brother not voting – which was passed on to the returning officer.
We also used to have people tell us “my mother died” as a reason for not voting – before the updating of rolls from the BDM registries. I think that is all automatic now.
The system does work well. There is b.s. from the right wing about needing voter id etc etc – it was introduced once in Queensland but didn’t last the distance. I have always walked in, given my name, verified my address and voted. Easy & fast.
TS
@currawong:
You obviously don’t know some of the people I know. As per people voting for trump’s “policies”, Dutton was in with a big chance until the world was blown into disarray by trump – he (Dutton) realised too late most of Australia did not want its politicians “begging” trump not to be mean to them. On the day he said Albo should head to DC, he lost the election. Everything else has just added to the mess of the party under his leadership.
Not that Labor is so much better – they have certainly forgotten their roots and the continuation with “tax cuts” is appalling – the people that want tax cuts vote LNP, he is getting nothing out of that policy except disenchantment from the party supporters.
Gvg
@sab: yes. I think it’s outrageous we aren’t granting citizenship to spouses within a year unless there is some serious believable criminal charges. In the past we tended to dismiss accusations from certain countries that were authoritarian. The government really shouldn’t be weighing in on who people marry to this degree.
Baud
@currawong:
Stolen from the Baud! 20XX! campaign!
Viva BrisVegas
@Baud: Yet another political promise that won’t be kept!
The Nameless One
@Viva BrisVegas: The fine depends on whether it’s a Federal, State or Local election. I’ve paid $50 for a NSW State election, $25 for a Federal and I think the Local Election that I completely forgot about last year, was somewhere between the two. The form does give a chance to contest by providing space for a reason to not vote and they do threaten to take a person to court if the fine isn’t paid. I got a follow-up letter for my local failure to vote because I opened the envelope at my mailbox, put it in the bag I carry to work then completely forgot about it for the next three months until the follow-up letter arrived.
The Nameless One
@TS: What?!?! You don’t have to number every box below the line for the Senate?
Damn!
When Labor nominated Mark Latham I numbered every box on the tablecloth below the line because there was no way I wanted to support a party that selected that POS to be potential Prime Minister. I selected the joke parties first – The Party Party Party Party, Free Beer Party – screwed up around number 45 and took about 10 minutes to complete the entire thing leaving the people who were waiting for me to finish pissed off with me.
For those who don’t know, Mark Latham was the Labor leader for the 2004 election and I disliked him intensely. He had broken a taxi driver’s arm claiming the driver stole something, boasted about being a hater from a long line of haters, seemed to me to be thoroughly obnoxious – and the punchline is he is now a member of the racist One Nation party. I will never regret voting against him (via voting against the ALP candidates) even though I played my part in bringing on Howard’s WorkChoices BS.
Birdie
@TS: I’m hoping for a minority government too, maybe it will be like the Gillard government and get some meaningful legislation through. Though I think the main problem is that Albo is gutless and triangulating and no configuration will change that.
Someone told me recently that everything good about Australian society was brought in by Whitlam and the country has been coasting ever since. Seems fair to me.
Birdie
@The Nameless One: Yes, Labor puts up some terrible characters. Also recently found guilty of defaming an openly gay MP in NSW with gross homophobic slurs (and hasn’t apologised for it either I think).
Trivia Man
@Sure Lurkalot: rick astley got rick rolled on reddit and it was glorious. Somebody posted “ive been a fan for years! My 14th birthday i went to your show and got a picture in front of the stage! Coolest birthday pic ever!”
Link was a rick roll, he took it with good cheer.
Whomever
@Pete Downunder: No it’s even worse. Victoria uses wide guage.
Trivia Man
@currawong: funny thing, i had never heard the term Sausage Sizzle until an hour ago. It was a plot point in the show Middle Class Bogan. And not one hour later it comes up again.
Sally
I am sorry that I have not citations for what I am about to write. I have read over the years that populations in countries that have compulsory voting are more politically aware than the others. People know they have to vote, so they take more notice, even if it is only during the election cycles. With a secret ballot (I think actually called the Australian ballot), in reality you just have to turn up, or have your name ticked off. If you submit a blank, defaced, or incomplete ballot, who’s to know?
As a nice man once said, you mightn’t be interested in politics, but politics is interested in you. I believe, as I have said here a few times, compulsory voting and universal franchise, including those in jail who are still citizens, are necessary (but not sufficient) conditions to maintain a democracy. There is no perfect system, but some are better than others
Ed: There about a dozen countries with compulsory voting.
Sally
I have also read over the years, mathematical analyses that show that the higher the percentage of the population that participates in voting, the less extreme are the political parties. I am guessing it reduces the influence of the extremists, in terms of their proportion in the electorate.
stinger
Thanks, everybody!
Matt McIrvin
@Elizabelle: UTC is the basis for all the different global time zones–it has no Daylight Saving Time adjustment. But British civil time does, so London time is UTC in the winter but UTC+1 in the summer (with different changeover dates from the US, so it gets a little confusing in the spring and fall).
Matt McIrvin
@Pete Downunder: And isn’t there an oddball UTC+8:45 time zone that is only used by a few remote settlements in the west?
TS
@Birdie:
It is amazing to list all that the Whitlam Government did – in three short years – and like all good governments we voted them out. Because I was in “no man’s land” in regard to divorce, that was one amazing law that they passed – which has been slowly stuffed up ever since. It cost me $150 for a divorce (the basic cost defined in the act), it was all the lawyer could charge. There were zero court fees. Now I think it costs $1000 to even get to court.
Then we had medibank (now medicare after the LNP tried to remove it, free tertiary education which lasted 1 generation & now costs $$$ for a basic degree.
Single mothers actually got some financial support & it is amazing to note how quickly those church run “home for unmarried mothers” disappeared, as did forcing women to give their babes for adoption. Shortly thereafter the word “illegitimate” disappeared from birth certificates – although this was a state issue, I’m sure the Whitlam govt at the time had much to do with this happening.
This was a government that legislated for the people, rarely seen again.
sab
@TS: I cannot say enough about how much I want to hear from people in other parts of the world under their governments. It is all different and ot all matters.