Comments on: Periodical tables

By: Kevin Bonham

Kevin Bonham — Sat, 05 May 2007 07:08:04 +0000

When I voted today my name was marked off the roll electronically using a handheld Palm device.

By: William Bowe

William Bowe — Wed, 02 May 2007 12:41:25 +0000

I expect to be posting in the comments section on this site during the count, either on this thread or on a relevant live thread if there is one going.

Which there will be.

By: Kevin Bonham

Kevin Bonham — Wed, 02 May 2007 12:02:05 +0000

The Electoral Commission really are active (or desperate?) in trying to lift the turnout. Today I received a *second* pre-election card from them. This one comes with a popout map of Tasmania with the voter’s name and address on the back, which one can take along to the polling booth to “get your ballot paper quicker”.

I expect to be posting in the comments section on this site during the count, either on this thread or on a relevant live thread if there is one going. I would do so on TT but the number of defamatory posters there means that all comments have to be moderated so live posting there is not practical.

By: jasmine_Anadyr

jasmine_Anadyr — Wed, 02 May 2007 01:32:31 +0000

Wouldn’t more smaller seats increase the chances for independents and local characters to get up?

By: Michael

Michael — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 12:19:20 +0000

Do we really want more politicians? And you’ve got to remember that we have state parliaments too.

By: Ben Raue

Ben Raue — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 04:36:52 +0000

I would be open to us increasing the number of seats in the House of Representatives. If you compare our number of 150 to other countries, it is much smaller than the numbers in the UK and US. While the US has a lot, lot, lot more voters, The UK had 27 million voters in 2005, compared to 12 million Australian voters in 2004, yet the House of Commons has more than 4 times the number of seats (over 600).

Scotland has 129 MSPs, New Zealand has 120 MPs, despite being much smaller than Australia. Canada has over double the number of seats in their House of Commons than in our HoR, and without checking the exact figures, I don’t believe Canada would have double the number of voters or citizens as Australia.

Of course, this would mean an increase in the Senate numbers, but I reckon an increase to 7 per state (possibly 3 for the ACT?) at each election would solve a lot of the problems we have seen where it is very hard for one side or the other to get the upper hand. STV works much better with odd number of seats.

This would result in 175 seats, roughly, which would be quite an improvement.

By: Stephen L

Stephen L — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 02:03:42 +0000

As a mainlander I tend to agree with Stuart. Most people hate politicians, and therefore assume the less of them the better. However, I’m not sure it works that way. I think where there are huge seats and people can get elected through expensive campaigns without having more than token contacts with the people they are supposed to represent there is much more risk of the sorts of things people hate about politicians occurring than where they actually have to win votes face to face.

I’m not a big fan of most of the parliamentarians in the Tassie parliament, and still less in the Northern Territory (the other place where face-to-face campaigning really matters. But I think that cultural factors matter at least as much as the actual system. In Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire the state congress has tiny little districts which force the representatives (who are only paid part time btw) to operate more like local councillors than members in other states, and it seems to have delivered better representation than most US states have.

By: The Speaker

The Speaker — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 01:33:50 +0000

Hope I havenâ€™t lowered the tone of this excellent blog with my first post.

stuart: it was an excellent post.

By: Kevin Bonham

Kevin Bonham — Sun, 29 Apr 2007 14:24:28 +0000

I actually think the “sixth-election” rotation (rather than “half-elections” or “third-elections”) is one of the things that makes Tassie LC elections so odd. Because the influence of elections for two or three seats at a time on the balance of the place is so minimal, it’s hard for candidates to make it sound like these elections really matter. That, plus the fairly small electorate sizes, means the elections tend to have a personality focus rather than an issue focus. They are rather similar to Tassie council mayoral elections in this way.

An anti-Labor backlash vote in Pembroke, if it happened, would certainly spice things up a bit, but I’m not expecting there to be much if any of it. I guess it helps to discuss parameters for a backlash vote in advance – on that basis, if Ritchie’s vote is anything below 40% I will suspect a backlash. I would be reluctant to interpret a vote in the low 40s, if it happened, as a backlash given that she is up against five candidates, most of them “independents”, even if they are not a very threatening looking bunch.

By: stuart

stuart — Sun, 29 Apr 2007 14:09:05 +0000

You know, living here in Tasmania, I’m deeply impressed by our electoral arrangements. Unfortunately, less so with our politicians. But that’s another post from a newbie somewhere along the track.
I can really only speak somewhat subjectively about this, but a state where you pass the limo of the Chair of the LC in your beat-up 1986 4WD and he waves from the window because he saw you at the theatre the week before, or you have the then-member for Bass (now a state minister) getting dragged away from the pub at 2am because you’ve been talking politics for too long, or one of the state reps now lives in your old studio space, or you’ve done a couple of theatre gigs with an other MLC or whatever…
You know these people and, regardless of their politics, you like/dislike these people on a very personal level. They are our representatives. They’re subjected to far more political scrutiny than anywhere else in the nation because they’re just that much more visible.
Our arrangements may be ‘unusual’ and ‘obscure’, but, even with the rubbish of 25 seats as opposed to 35, they’re stacks more representative than anywhere else in the nation. I’m aware that our arrangements are an abberation nationally. However, there are some real plusses: our House of Assembly is like the federal Senate – proportional representation. (Just because our politicians are crap at the moment doesn’t take away from the beauty of the theory) And then our Leg Council is 2/3rds independent. Admittedly, most are conservative, but even myself as a hard left voter can appreciate that the less party politics in a house of review the better.
Anyway. Hope I haven’t lowered the tone of this excellent blog with my first post. If anyone wants to know which way the wind is blowing in Bass, just give us a yell and I’ll head down to the Mall and do a straw poll. (Jodie Campbell by 2200 votes). Anyway. Cheers.