Ding dong, the witch is dead

I'd like to believe that we have a new government because of this (slightly outdated, it's from a couple of years ago)...



...but to be honest, I think people just went "Ooh, shiny".

I'm also less than stoked by the landslide majority in the House of Reps, but the really interesting place is the Senate, where the conservative parties (Liberals, Nationals, Family First) have 38 seats, the "left" parties (ALP, Greens) have 37, and independent Senator Nick Xenophon, who split his preferences between a conservative ticket and a leftish ticket and who has tended to campaign on issues that should attract bipartisan support, such as gambling. He's in for an exciting 6 years.

There are two things that should give Labor supporters pause: firstly, the real possibility of an imminent economic downturn, and secondly, what will happen now that the ALP holds *ALL* Australian governments. In both instances, there is likely to be what the economists call a "correction". I know I wouldn't bleed very hard if Labor went down in Victoria - can you tell the difference between Brumby and The Other Guy? Victoria's not due for another state election until 2010, having passed a US-style law to hold elections on the last Saturday of November every four years, but it will be interesting to see what will happen to other states and territories.

This reserve won't stop me from shouting myself a tall glass of something with bubbles in it tomorrow afternoon, though.

More voting fun

GetUp have created a rather nifty little website called HowShouldIVote.com.au, which allows you to fill in a quick quiz to establish roughly how you should fill out your preferential vote card for the House of Representatives. (Such an exercise for the Senate would require SETI to power, which is why they don't offer it.) It's not 100% foolproof - my results had the CEC ahead of the Greens and the Liberals ahead of Family First - but it's near enough, and if you aren't too fussed about how the numbers after 3 flow, you may find it useful. (I wouldn't be devastated if my vote was submitted the way GetUp generated it, I just want to switch a couple of minor parties around.)

If the whole preferential voting thing makes your head whirl, GetUp have thoughtfully provided a mostly non-partisan guide to the Australian electoral system in plain English.

Voting above the line - will it bring on the apocalypse?

Last Federal Election, I spent a great deal of time printing out "how to vote" pdfs from the Australian Electoral Commission to reassure myself that I hadn't done anything that might have caused Family First's Steve Fielding to get elected. In fact, I hadn't - I'd spent a good ten minutes painstakingly voting below the line, numbering my preferences from 1 to about 15 or so, then going the other way and sequencing the bottom numbers from 63 up to about 40, then trying to remember where I was up to on each side so I didn't accidentally end up with two 36's and invalidate my vote.

(For non-Australian readers, voting is compulsory and enforced in this country, and it is preferential, which means you number your preferences in order, so that an electorate selects the candidate they despise the least. The AEC publishes a handy Flash guide here. It's pretty easy at the House of Reps level, where you'll have maybe 10 candidates at most to rank, but the Senate is where every unelectable freak chooses to express themselves, blowing out the numbers to 60-70 candidates. As a result, there is the option to vote "above the line", where you tick one box, say, Australian Democrats, and you accept that party's preferences. Understandably, it's a pretty hardcore political nerd who bothers to vote below the line.)

Anyhoo, for the current election I stumbled on the extremely useful listing of group voting tickets for the Senate. Simply pick the state you live in, download the pdf and find out how political parties are distributing their votes. Each party's votes cover two pages of pdf - just find the party closest to your ideological outlook and make sure they haven't done anything hilarious like preference a party that's largely against what most of their supporters would want just to spite a party that's reasonably similar to what most of their supporters would want. (You can interpret that any way you like.)