2004 Election Analysis

I've been looking into alternative voting systems as procrastination from exam study. Recently, I fell in love with New Zealand's MMP system and have produced an analysis of the last Federal election for the House of Representatives based on MMP.

The MMP system gives each voter two votes, one for their local candidate and one for a party (the "party vote") to determine the share of seats accorded to each party. All elected local candidates are given a seat in the House and there's an extra amount of seats to be allocated to restore proportionality of seats commensurate with the party vote. NZ uses a first past the post system for electorate voting but I've modified it to use Australia's Instant Runoff Voting system.

For a party to gain representation under NZ's MMP rules (duplicated here) it must win at least one electorate or gain 5% of the party vote. I have assumed that the 150 federal electorates form the basis of the House with an extra 50 to be allocated to restore proportionality. Any seats won by independents are removed from the list of seats available to parties.

Party	Votes	%	Won Seats	Adjusted %	Raw Seats	Rounded	Extra
Liberal	4781313	40.81	75	44.59	87.84	88	13
ALP	4409117	37.64	60	41.12	81.01	81	21
Greens	841734	7.19	0	7.86	15.48	15	15
Nationals	690275	5.89	12	6.44	12.68	13	1
Family First	235315	2.01	0
Democrats	144832	1.24	0
One Nation	139956	1.19	0
Independents	292036	2.49	3		3	3
Other	180554	1.54	0
Total	11715132		150		200	200	50
5% Quota (or one seat) to gain representation
200 seats, 150 electorates

The Liberal, National, Labor and Green parties all qualified for representation. Three independents were elected and the various parties won electorate seats as well (Won Seats). The total vote for the qualifying parties was calculated and the party vote split up accordingly (Adjusted %). These percentages were multiplied by the number of available seats (200-3=197) to get a raw number of seats to be handed out to each party. These numbers were rounded to the nearest integer. The final column details the share of the extra seats each party received to bring its share of the seats closer to its share of the vote.

The result of this House of Representatives election is a majority on the part of the Liberal-National coalition, an outright majority of one seat. The government can count on the support of Bob Katter and one of the two remaining independents to bolster its numbers a bit. It would only take 4 or 5 government MPs crossing the floor to bring down any legislation they thought unfair/damaging. It would also only take a few government MPs crossing the floor to pass any legislation put forward by the opposition parties or to pass a vote of "No Confidence" in the Prime Minister.

This style of government lends itself well to broad coalitions and minority governments. Because it's rare for any one party to win an outright majority of votes, legislation put forward tends to be less driven by one overriding ideology. This results in legislation that much of the country will find palatable.

The major advantage of all PR systems in general (and this one in particular) is that a larger number of voters have their voice heard, rather than those who voted for a party which managed to win a sizeable number of electorate seats. One could argue that lowering the quota to 2% would improve the proportionality of the elected House but the numbers start getting quite small when you take into account that people already think 226 federal politicians (150 MPs, 76 Senators) is too many let alone 276. Reducing the number of electorates to 100 and using 50 extra seats would keep the politician numbers the same and still give people a local representative.

Green Guerrillas

I have often wondered about guerrilla gardening, the act of covertly greening up a disused lot with a few sunflowers to provide something more aesthetically pleasing than a pile of rubble. A group in Sydney have taken the idea of covert environmental activism a little further and are going around changing inefficient light bulbs for compact fluorescents. They have spent the last six months targeting car parks, housing complexes, motels, public toilets and restaurants.

This goes beyond changing your own lifestyle to help the environment and saves other peoples' money through lower power bills. I imagine the altruism doesn't come cheap, though, with the costs absorbed by the group and the power bill savings made elsewhere. Still, I think they're doing a fantastic job. The New South Wales government had made energy efficiency packs of bulbs and shower heads available to homes but the response was very poor and the project was shelved. Perhaps the NSW government could make any excess packs available to the activists?

ABC News - Green guerrillas target Sydney

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