As I wake this morning the rest of the nation is gearing up to head of to the polling booths to cast their votes in today’s Federal Election – a vote that will determine who will lead Australia for the next three years.
Australia is rather unique in its form of democracy. First, we are one of the few nations that has compulsory voting for all citizens over the age of 18. Secondly, we use a system of voting known as “preferential” – that is, to be elected to parliament a candidate must secure 50% of all votes plus 1. To vote, Australian need to number every candidate in the order of their preference. If there are five candidates then the ballot needs to be marked from 1 to 5. After counting, if no candidate has 50% plus 1 then the candidate with the lowest votes polled is eliminated and their next preference distributed. This process continues until one of the candidates has the required votes. Australia has two houses of parliament, the House of Representatives and the Senate. The Senate ballot can be much more complicated with over 100 candidates and voters having to number them from 1 to 100+. Fortunately there is now a shortcut where you can vote for a party and the remainder of your vote follows that party’s card.
Who will win is the big question. Early polls showed that the current government would be defeated and the Kevin Rudd led Labor party would sweep to victory. Late polls suggest the current Prime Minister, John Howard, has clawed his way back to what could be a cliff hanger result. One of the interesting features of the Australian electoral system is that it is not the party with the most votes that wins, it is the party that wins the most number of seats. Former leader of the Labor Party, Kim Beazley led his party to a narrow loss to John Howard’s Liberals despite winning 51.5% of the total votes.
This election will be interesting. The Labor Party will indeed sweep to victory or John Howard will be returned with a small majority – possibly as small as one or two seats – in fact a hung parliament is quite possible.
If Kevin Rudd loses this election it will be due the Labor Party’s over confidence in the final weeks. The key to this election are the many marginal seats that only require 5% or less swings to change the government. Rather than campaigning in these seats Rudd has ventured out into the harder seats that require as much as 10% swing to change hands. A swing of that level is not realistic and his efforts where possibly better off directed to the more marginal seats.
If John Howard loses the election it will be for three reasons. First and foremost in most peoples minds is the simple fact that Howard has already announced that he will be retiring in 18 months or so and handing the leadership of the country over to Peter Costello who is not very popular within the community. The second reason Howard may lose this election will be due his underestimating the level of discontent amongst voters towards the harsh industrial relations laws that he introduced during his last term in government. The third and final reason that Howard may lose is simply due to the negative campaign that the Liberals have run during this election period. Most Australians have poor opinions of politicians already so to run a campaign that is so negative may just have the opposite effect and reinforce the poor opinion already held.
Who will win? Not Australia! This campaign has been the dirtiest seen for many years and really speaks poorly of the quality of some of the candidates. Australia probably needs a change of government to bring a new direction. The Howard led Liberal Party that have held office for 11 years now probably need a defeat to freshen them up, force them to rethink some of their strategies.
Strangely, this is probably one election that as a politician you don’t want to win. The world economy is due for down turn and after so many years of positive growth, the downturn could be a big one. The next three years world wide could be very interesting. Good luck – Australia – we need it. Australia – The Lucky Country.
Nice round up – but it seems that the mud slinging and dirty mail drops etc have only come from one direction – Coalition and that weird brethren group.