A SYSTEM WHICH LETS LOSERS WIN: AUSTRALIAN-STYLE DEMOCRACY

Prefer me above all others   

                                                  

More than 16 million Australians will go to the federal election this Saturday.  By comparison with Indonesia’s razzmatazz last month, the neighbors are playing tiddlywinks.

That doesn’t mean the Ozzie system is slicker.  If the figures are close between the incumbent Liberal-National coalition, and the Australian Labor Party challenger, the result may take longer to determine than Indonesia’s Presidential race.

It’s often written that Australians have to vote, as do citizens of Bulgaria, Gabon and Greece.  Wrong.  We must go to the booth, be marked as present, collect the ballot papers and retire to the private cubicle.

Here we can exercise real people power, our triennial right to put a number against a candidate’s name.  This might help her or him head to Canberra and a job that pays a minimum AUD 200,000 (Rp 2 billion) plus allowances a year. 

Reading the research voters are showing underwhelming enthusiasm.  Many would rather spend their Saturday cleaning out the septic tank than deciding who’ll run the nation. Who’d want to vote for candidates they don’t know and might dislike, unless forced to participate?  The no-show fine is AUD 20 (Rp 200,000).

Without this law the turnout might be below the 55 per cent participation in the 2016 US Presidential election.

The estimated 80 per cent voluntary vote across this Republican archipelago on 17 April is a splendid put-down of those who say Indonesians aren’t into democracy.

Alternatively Australians can leave the paper blank, write All Politicians Are Money-grubbing Ratbags or something uglier. That might provide a brief warm fuzzy for boring it up a loathed class of wannabes, but it’s a waste.  About five per cent disfigure.

The candidates will never know the punter’s feelings as electoral workers will bin the protest.  Hint:  Don’t punch a hole in the card, as in Indonesia. 

More seriously, defacement negates your voice; it insults the millions struggling in dictatorships around the globe, desperate for the chance to vote against oppression. 

The cliché that Australia’s the lucky country is largely spot-on.  There are wide open spaces to grow megatonnes of grains for poor countries to buy, enough minerals and gas to keep the great, great grandkids surfing and boozing, free healthcare, state pensions and a largely uncorrupt administration. 

We won’t mention droughts, bushfires, the nanny state and high taxes, but you get the picture.  She’ll be right, they say.  Right?

Well not with the electoral system bequeathed by the Founding Fathers and devious bureaucrats whose motto has always been:  ‘You use, we confuse.’

Their triumph is Preferential Voting, which only schadenfreudes and psephologists (those who study elections) find orgasmic.

The rules wouldn’t have seen sunrise had the Founding Mothers been around.  They’d have had more sense.

It works (joke) like this: Australia has 151 single-seat electorates in the House of Representatives, each with around 100,000 registered voters.   Let’s put aside voting for the Senate – there aren’t enough columns on this page to explain.

Let’s take the imagined electorate of Dead Dingo Creek and its six candidates standing for one seat: Penny Pure, Hazel Nut, Bill Bludger, Pru Dence and Frank Enstein.  Because Oz is multicultural and multiethnic, there’s also perfect Sam Poerna, originally from Palangkaraya, a capital spot.

Voters number the candidates’ boxes. Penny wins 40,000 votes – or 40 per cent.  In thousands, and percentages, Bill scores 25.  Next comes Hazel with 15, Sam ten, Pru six and Frank four.

Clearly Penny has won.  She would in Britain because she’s first past the post.  But remember this is Down Under so she shouldn’t be shopping for a sober suit yet because 60 per cent didn’t want her as their member.

With me so far?   It doesn’t get easier.

Booths open at 8 am and close at 6 pm.  Then officials look at floundering Frank’s 4,000 votes.  They want to know who he’d prefer to be jetting business class around the continent now he’ll be missing out on the free tickets. 

His team gave out a How to Vote card suggesting second choices. However not everyone wants to be herded, so individuals pick their own. This creates what the beamish would call a challenge, the squeamish a dog’s breakfast.

Eventually it gets sorted with half of Frank’s 4,000 votes going to Bill who now has 27 per cent.

Nothing to Penny and 2,000 to Pru.  Her disciplined backers preferred Bill so 8,000 votes go to him.  In reality it’s never so clean, but hey, this is a newspaper feature, not an academic thesis, so let’s keep it simple.  Another joke.

The score is now Penny 40 per cent, Bill 35 per cent.

Once the bottom two have been eliminated it’s time to distribute Sam’s ten per cent - seven to Bill and three to Penny.

It’s getting tight.  Penny now has 43 per cent and Bill 42 per cent.

Finally we have Hazel’s 15,000 votes.  Her preferences are split – ten to Bill, five to Penny. 

The final result is that Bill wins with 52 per cent of the vote against Penny’s 48.

Think it fair?  Penny and her supporters don’t and now wish they’d swapped preferences with the frightful Frank and hard Hazel.  But Penny’s party claims it has principles and would not sup with devils, which ensures her failure.

Meanwhile duplicitous Bill, who has more faces than a Hydra has heads, back-slapped every rival candidate during the campaign except Penny.  He also vaguely promised to consider their flat-earth policies should he win through their preferences.

Once in Canberra Bill will suffer a memory lapse till 2022.   Unlike Penny he knows how to work the system.  That means he’s a professional politician and clearly deserves his win.

 First published in The Jakarta Post, 16 May 2019

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