The Australian Senate is designed to represent the interests of the states, balancing the House of Representatives, by splitting power equally between the larger states and the smaller ones. However, after witnessing an unprecedented number of accidental Senators in the recent election the issue of senate reform has been resurrected to try and inject a little more democracy into the ‘unrepresentative swill’. One interesting question that has been raised is what the Senate would look like if all 40 senators were elected from Australia as a whole, rather than from the individual states and territories? This new approach to electing the Senate would in many ways be a lot fairer. Voters from each state would be treated equally, instead of giving each state the same number of senators regardless of population size. In addition, citizens from the ACT and the NT would be fully enfranchised, as opposed to the current system which limits them to being represented by two senators each (the states have 12 each).
To answer this question I have created a model of what a national Senate vote would look like. This is done by aggregating the parties’ votes (as provisionally counted by the AEC) and modelling the election of senators and preference flows (based on ‘above the line’ preferences) in a method similar to the ABC’s Senate calculator, but at a national level.
The biggest change under the new system is the smaller quota need to be elected. With 40 Senate seats up for grabs, a party only needs 2.5 per cent of the national vote to be gain a seat (under the current system a party needs 13 per cent of a states vote to get elected). The first stage of any Senate vote count is to elect the senators who already have a quota in their own right. With the new lower quota, this means a lot of seats get quickly filled: 15 Coalition, 12 ALP, 3 Greens, 1 Palmer United Party and a Liberal Democrat are all given a seat on the red leather at the first pass.
Then the fun begins. There are only 8 Senate seats left and there are 50 parties still on the ballot. Now that no party has a quota in their own right, we start eliminating parties with the least amount of votes and redistributing their preferences according to their ‘above the line’ preferences (a few assumptions were needed to create a uniform set of national preferences. For example, the ALP preferenced the Greens everywhere except for Queensland, where they preferenced KAP. In my model I’ve simplified it somewhat and assumed all ALP votes preference the Greens).
Starting with the Non-Custodial Parents Party a total of 40 parties are eliminated and their votes redistributed before a party achieves a full quota. When the Katter Australia Party is eliminated the redistribution pushes both One Nation and the Sex Party up to a full quota electing them to the Senate. With 6 seats left and 9 parties left the process continues again. As the count continues a couple of trends become apparent. First, nobody preferences the 3 major parties. Despite the Green’s having 0.42 of a quota at the start of the count, the universal lack of preferences from the minor parties will deny them a 4th Senate seat. Second, the minor party alliance holds together relatively well, most micro parties choose to preference each other even when it runs against their ideological grain For example the Voluntary Euthanasia Party preferences both the Family First party and the DLP before the Labor party, despite their much more liberal stance on social issues.
The next senators to be elected are from the Shooters and Fishers Party, the Animal Justice Party, a second senator from both the Liberal Democrats and the Palmer United Party followed by the Christian Democrats Party. The last senator to be elected is Nick Xenophon (who is somewhat disadvantaged under this simulation as he only appeared on ballots in South Australia).
Clearly this national approach favours the smaller parties much more than the current system. All of the 3 major parties lose senate seats to the smaller ones. But it is also much fairer in the battle between the micro parties themselves. Under the current system the Australian Sports Party and the Australian Motoring Enthusiasts Party look likely to win seats, while the Sex Party despite running a national campaign and getting more than double their level of first preferences will get nothing. Under a national Senate the minor parties that win senats tend to be the ones who polled more votes. The Senate will almost certainly never change from being the “states house” (the changes required to the constitution would never be passed), but it is interesting to imagine what a more democratic Senate might look like. The fact that this more democratic process would give more senate seats to the minor parties should give those arguing for reform pause for thought.
Zac Gross is a recovering central banker and is blogging about economics (mostly) from Melbourne before he heads to the UK for post-graduate study. He can be found ruminating on twitter at @zacgross or blogging at A Coincidence of Wants
Filed under: Minor parties, Senate, Voters / voting Tagged: Animal Justice Party, Australia, Australian Labor Party, Australian Sex Party, Nick Xenophon, Non-Custodial Parents Party, Senate, Shooters and Fishers Party
