Australian Politics With Powerful Third Party

What if their was a powerful third party in Australia politics? And I mean apart from the Nationals.

Australia has had quite influential third parties, ie the Australian Democrats adn the Greens, usually getting 5-15% of the vote. This has enabled them to gain seats in the Senate although never getting a seat in the House of Representatives.

This is compared with the UK which for the past twenty-five years has had a powerful third party (the LibDems) getting often 20-25% of the vote and often around 10% of seats in the House of Commons.

What POD would be required for this to occur in Australia? I'm particularly interested in this third party being able to gain a small number seat in the House of Reps.

My own theory is that the ability of small parties to gain seat in the Senate, has meant that they don't focus particularly well on getting seats in the House. Any thoughts about this?
 
Change the voting method for the House of Reps so it has some form of mixed preferential/proportional representation system akin to the New Zealand's mixed voting system.

Otherwise follow the system I once wrote a paper at uni on. Instead of single MP representative electorates, as we have now, have it so there's five representatives per enlarged district (by simply combining five current electorates into megaelectorates). Then have proportional representation as the method which elects all five. The Tasmanian state voting method is something akin to this.

So in this way the House will somewhat open up to the smaller parties gaining some seats. At some point, after the initial rush, these minor parties will either form some alliance &/or one will emerge larger than the others akin to what the Greens have recently done in the Senate.
 
Change the voting method for the House of Reps so it has some form of mixed preferential/proportional representation system akin to the New Zealand's mixed voting system.

Otherwise follow the system I once wrote a paper at uni on. Instead of single MP representative electorates, as we have now, have it so there's five representatives per enlarged district (by simply combining five current electorates into megaelectorates). Then have proportional representation as the method which elects all five. The Tasmanian state voting method is something akin to this.

So in this way the House will somewhat open up to the smaller parties gaining some seats. At some point, after the initial rush, these minor parties will either form some alliance &/or one will emerge larger than the others akin to what the Greens have recently done in the Senate.

Interesting thoughts. However I was thinking more of something with the current electoral system.

Of course the single-member system discriminates against third-parties, however there is no real reason why a 3rd party can't gain at least some House of Reps seats.

As I said earlier I think the existence of PR in the Senate has to some extent deflected the attention of 3rd parties away from the House of Reps. In the UK any party that wants any representation has to attempt to concentrate their support in certain areas. The Lib Dems have done this with considerable success.

I see no real reason why the Aust Democrats in the 80's and early 90's couldn't have better targeted inner-city seats and have gotten some House of Reps seats.
 
Interesting thoughts. However I was thinking more of something with the current electoral system.

Of course the single-member system discriminates against third-parties, however there is no real reason why a 3rd party can't gain at least some House of Reps seats.


As you point out here, the hassle is the current system works against third parties, given the preferential voting method sends all votes towards having only one candidate winning, regardless of who got what actual percentage of the vote in the first round of counting.

Mind you a few independents often get into the House, but that's because they're locally known & run as independents.


As I said earlier I think the existence of PR in the Senate has to some extent deflected the attention of 3rd parties away from the House of Reps. In the UK any party that wants any representation has to attempt to concentrate their support in certain areas. The Lib Dems have done this with considerable success.


Well the small parties go for the Senate as its easier to be elected & they know it. Besides they, unlike the big parties, have limited funds for election campaigns. So if you know you're bound to get a Senate seat somewhere, unlike with the House, which requires campaigning in every seat, plus the third party's infrastructure is limited, it's far easier & cheaper to go for the Senate. But all this shows the unfairness of how the House is elected.

Plus I wouldn't overly claim that the UK Lib-Dems have gained "considerable success". After all the Liberal part of the Lib Dems has been involved in UK politics for a very long time. Now they may have 63 MPs at Westminster, but that's less than 10% of the overall number of seats on offer. Meanwhile they constantly get around 25% of the total vote. Now if their number of MPs equalled their voting percentage, ie they used proportional representation in the British elections instead of the simple majority method, well that'd be a different story.


I see no real reason why the Aust Democrats in the 80's and early 90's couldn't have better targeted inner-city seats and have gotten some House of Reps seats.


You mean other than the fact that they had policies which sucked? :D
 
In addition to the usual anti-Third Party of first-past-the-post voting system, the Australian Alternative Vote system makes it even more likely to reduce it to two parties in the House of Representatives.


As with Quebec & the Bloc Quebecois the easiest way for a powerful third party is have it be isolated to one state. So a Queensland Party would get lots of seats with 5-10% nationally because it would be concentrated.


The alternative is somewhat different ideological positioning, making Labor and Liberal about even with the Nationals not allied to Liberal and retaining reasonably good support in a few key areas like the UK's Lib Dems.


(One way to help having a third party at all is to increase the number of seats in the House of Representatives. With a current population of 21 million, there are only 150 seats. In comparison Canada has 308 for 33 million, and the UK has 646 for 60 million. Clearly Australia is lagging in a per capita basis… as is Canada, to a lesser extent.

Generally speaking countries do not increase seats to match population growth because the citizenry mistakenly view more politicians as being against their interests when additional politicians would actually bring about preferred outcomes: more independent MPs & closer/more personal attention to local issues, most notably.)
 
You mean other than the fact that they had policies which sucked? :D[/quote]

I would disagree to some extent on this. From the late 1970's (in its predecessors the Liberal Movement and the Australia) and until the late 1980's, the Democrats had quite sensible centrist policies that were definitely a middle ground between the ALP and Liberal.

These sorts of policies would definitely appeal to the inner-city small 'l' liberals.

It was only in the 1990's and particularly later on that they went very left-wing.
 
I would disagree to some extent on this. From the late 1970's (in its predecessors the Liberal Movement and the Australia) and until the late 1980's, the Democrats had quite sensible centrist policies that were definitely a middle ground between the ALP and Liberal.

These sorts of policies would definitely appeal to the inner-city small 'l' liberals.

It was only in the 1990's and particularly later on that they went very left-wing.


Well we didn't call the Democrats the Sex, Drugs, & Rock n Roll party for nothing back in the good old days... :D

Mind you Don Chip was always cool. Gotta love him for the phrase "Keep the bastards honest!" But after Don left the party, well they more or less went down hill from there.

It was good to see, though, when Alexander Downer was given a run for his money in one election.
 
Just thinking about how the Australian Democrats emerged out of various other third parties in the late 70's.

In the UK around the same time (early 80's) the rise of the Alliance was due in large part to the hard-left nature of UK Labour at the time.

If after the 1975 dismissal the ALP decided that 'we lost because we weren't socialist enough' like UK Labour in 79, and they went hard-left would this cause a much more powerful Democrats to emerge?

Also, as a side-issue, who would be the leader of such a hard-left ALP. Jim Cairns springs to mind; any others?
 
Just thinking about how the Australian Democrats emerged out of various other third parties in the late 70's.


Well its leader did come out of the Liberal Party. And if it wasn't for Don Chip the Democrats wouldn't have lasted as long as they did. So I'd dare say that third party influence was minimal at first. Granted it did change, though


In the UK around the same time (early 80's) the rise of the Alliance was due in large part to the hard-left nature of UK Labour at the time.

If after the 1975 dismissal the ALP decided that 'we lost because we weren't socialist enough' like UK Labour in 79, and they went hard-left would this cause a much more powerful Democrats to emerge?


Given the situation of the Dismissal, & it's aftermath, I don't think it'll matter what direction the ALP will take. The Coalition will still remain in power. And don't forget, Chip didn't form the Democrats because of Gough or the left leaning ALP, he formed it because of his disgust at his own party's behaviour in causing the Dismissal as well as his hatred of Fraser.

Another thing, to consider, is the fact that a hard left wing party may indeed be more successful, at gaining third party status, thanks to the fact that the ALP swung to the right. After all the Greens have a lot to thank both the ALP & Democrats, because they've both moved away from the left, & thus the Greens have filled a void thanks to there being no other creditable left wing party around.


Also, as a side-issue, who would be the leader of such a hard-left ALP. Jim Cairns springs to mind; any others?


I think it's safe to say Cairns is out after the Loans Affair business, not to mention the Morosi Affair. Plus, after the Whitlam experiment, the right wing of the ALP had pretty much had enough of such things & has, since then, firmly taken control. And I can't see that changing unless Bill Hayden & a few of the members of the right aren't reelected in 1975. Well considering the thrashing the ALP got, in 1975, it's unlikely that the election results could have been any worse IMHO.
 
In addition to the usual anti-Third Party of first-past-the-post voting system, the Australian Alternative Vote system makes it even more likely to reduce it to two parties in the House of Representatives.


As with Quebec & the Bloc Quebecois the easiest way for a powerful third party is have it be isolated to one state. So a Queensland Party would get lots of seats with 5-10% nationally because it would be concentrated.


The alternative is somewhat different ideological positioning, making Labor and Liberal about even with the Nationals not allied to Liberal and retaining reasonably good support in a few key areas like the UK's Lib Dems.


(One way to help having a third party at all is to increase the number of seats in the House of Representatives. With a current population of 21 million, there are only 150 seats. In comparison Canada has 308 for 33 million, and the UK has 646 for 60 million. Clearly Australia is lagging in a per capita basis… as is Canada, to a lesser extent.

Generally speaking countries do not increase seats to match population growth because the citizenry mistakenly view more politicians as being against their interests when additional politicians would actually bring about preferred outcomes: more independent MPs & closer/more personal attention to local issues, most notably.)

Would have to agree with you that Aust had a particularly low number of MPs for its population. Smaller seats would definitely allow minor parties to far easy gain niches of support.

How does the preferential alternative vote system work against minor parties more than first-past-the-post? I was always under the impression it gave them more influence. I'm not disagreeing with you just want to know how this effect occurs.
 
How does the preferential alternative vote system work against minor parties more than first-past-the-post? I was always under the impression it gave them more influence. I'm not disagreeing with you just want to know how this effect occurs.

It was considered in the UK, and The British Independent Commission on the Voting System (Jenkins Commission) came out against it:

82. Beyond this AV on its own suffers from a stark objection. It offers little prospect of a move towards greater proportionality, and in some circumstances, and those the ones which certainly prevailed at the last election and may well do so for at least the next one, it is even less proportional that FPTP. Simulations of how the 1997 result might have come out under AV suggest that it would have significantly increased the size of the already swollen Labour majority. A 'best guess' projection of the shape of the current Parliament under AV suggests on one highly reputable estimate the following outcome with the actual FPTP figures given in brackets after the projected figures: Labour 452 (419), Conservative 96 (165), Liberal Democrats 82 (46), others 29 (29). The overall Labour majority could thus have risen from 169 to 245. On another equally reputable estimate the figures are given as Labour 436, Conservatives 110, Liberal Democrats 84 and others 29, an overall majority this time of 213. On either basis an injustice to the Liberal Democrats would have been nearly two-thirds corrected (their strictly proportional entitlement was 111 seats) but at the price of a still greater injustice to the Conservatives. The Conservative 30.7% of the votes should strictly have given them 202 seats. Instead FPTP gave them 165 or 25% of the seats, whereas AV would have given them on one estimate only 96 (or 14.6% of the seats), and on the more favourable one from their point of view 110 seats (or 16.7% of the total).

83. The 1997 election, it can be argued, was far from typical. The scenario was the one most calculated to produce an exaggerated majority and to increase disproportionality. There was a strong desire to get rid of the incumbent government, the third party (Liberal Democrats) was much closer to the main Labour challenger than to the government, and many voters cared more about casting an anti-Conservative vote than about whether this would result in a Labour or a Liberal Democrat victory in their particular constituency. (This last factor, however, did not clearly add to the difference between a FPTP and an AV result, for many electors did a sort of 'do it yourself' AV and voted for whichever of the two opposition candidates they thought was the more effective challenger.) In the three previous elections, those of 1983, 1987 and 1992, AV would have had a less distorting effect on proportionality between the two main parties. For example, one estimate suggests that it would have led to a Conservative majority (with the actual FPTP result again given in brackets) of 27 (21) in 1992. But it would have avoided this distortion at the expense of being able to claim much less credit for correcting the adverse treatment of the third party. The Liberal Democrats would in 1992 have got only 31 or 4.8% of the seats for 19% of the vote.


Either it screws over all non-winning parties in a "change" election, or it punishes the third party extra hard in a more normal election.
 
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It was considered in the UK, and The British Independent Commission on the Voting System (Jenkins Commission) came out against it:




Either it screws over all non-winning parties in a "change" election, or it punishes the third party extra hard in a more normal election.

Thanks for the info about AV.

I still am supportive of the idea of AV (prob I'm biased here cause it's the one I'm used to in Australia). Although not helping proportionality, it does allow people to vote '1' for their preferred party. It also does give 3rd parties the ability to negotiate the '2' position on 'how-to-vote' cards in return for policy concessions (although this doesn't give them a significant number of seats).
 
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