With the Senate results in all states now finalised (with a recount in the WA looking like it’s on the way), progressive voters are quickly looking for someone to blame. The results saw three candidates from the Palmer United Party elected as well as a Liberal Democrat, Family First and Motoring Enthusiasts Party member put into our Senate next year. Meanwhile the Greens lost in WA, NSW and QLD, whilst the ALP only managed one seat in SA. With such shocking results for the left, many are turning their attention to our Senate preferences system. The argument is simple, without the system working as it currently is, there would have likely been a different more even result. At least a lot of these minor parties would not have been elected.
Now, I think the Senate system seriously has its issue. The fact that people can still get elected on 0.51% of the vote (the Motoring Enthusiasts Party) or that if 15 Greens voters had voted for the Australian Christians in WA instead of the Greens we would have ended up with a completely different result, shows that there a problem.
But I fear that if the left seems to be focusing all of its ire at the Senate preferencing system. If we continue to do so it will be at our own peril.
Straight after the election, the left were desperate to find scapegoats for the result. It was the stupid racist voter who didn’t know what was good for them. The Murdoch media and their duping of the electorate. Tony Abbott and his manipulative campaign, which held facts back from the voters. Now, with the Senate result in, it is preferences.
It feels a little bit like we are the right in the US after the Presidential election; looking for a scapegoat, trying to find somebody else to blame, trying to find some form of corruption or fault in the system.
But, just as we would say to the right in the US, I think we need to look at ourselves. Let’s just have at the Senate numbers.
For example, based on Antony Green’s website*, in WA progressive parties (the ALP and the Greens) received 36.34%, whilst conservative parties (the Liberals, Nationals, Palmer United and Liberal Democrats) received 52.77% of the vote. In NSW, conservative parties (the Coalition, Liberal Democrats and Palmer United Party) received 47.11% of the vote, whilst progressives (the Greens and ALP) received 39.35% of the vote. In Queensland, conservatives (the LNP, Palmer United Party and Katter Party) received 54.22%, whilst progressives (ALP and Greens) wallowed in a pathetic 34.56% of the vote. The shift was even seen in Tasmania, where conservatives (the Coalition, Palmer United Party and LDP) received 46.46% of the vote, compared to a 44.53% for progressives (ALP and Greens). This is remarkable given that Tasmania has been the only state to regularly send 4 progressives to the Senate for the past few elections.
The only state that really bucks the trend is Victoria, where progressive parties (the ALP and the Greens) received 43.32 and conservative parties (the Coalition and Palmer United Party) received 43.83% – a virtual tie.
To put it simply, all across the country, progressive parties in the Senate got spanked. Our votes tanked and tanked bad. In states like WA and QLD they tanked so badly, that no matter what the configuration, there was basically no chance that progressive parties would do better than winning two Senate seats. That truly is a pathetic result.
And if we don’t deal with this fact the left will not recover quickly. The search for scapegoats means we will fail to look at the real issues here; how the right out-campaigned the left, how we failed to develop and effectively sell a progressive vision to the public, how we failed to get on the ground and change votes where we needed. These are the things that the left needed to do to win, and if the results are any indication, the left failed at it.
So whilst changing the Senate voting system may have gotten Scott Ludlam elected in the last election, what it wouldn’t have done is fix the core problem; that voters deserted progressive parties. Without dealing with that fact – without looking at the problems of the past six years and figuring why it is that voters deserted us, we’ll just spend our time not changing, blaming the system, and losing time and time again. We’ll look a bit like the crackpots in the US blaming the election on a major conspiracy, and in doing so failing fix our own failures.
It’s time we stopped trying to find scapegoats; whether it is the ‘inherently stupid racist voter’, or the Senate preferencing system. Progressives lost the last election. And we lost it fair and square. Until we deal with that, we’re not going to win again for a while.
*For this calculation I have used all votes above 2%. It is important to note however, that including votes below this could add significant extra vote to conservative parties as minor parties are dominated by conservatives. I have left out SA as the inclusion of Xenephon makes the progressive/conservative split difficult to determine.