I noticed that most of the Sunday papers had an editorial solemnly advising their readers how they believed their votes should be cast next Saturday.
My first reaction was: “How quaint!” Given the very low levels of newspaper readership in Australia these days, I was hard put to imagine who would read them, let alone heed them.
But then I remembered my parents, many years ago, earnestly reading (often aloud to each other) and debating similar editorials and felt nostalgia for a time when the electorate had far less media and far fewer opportunities to get political information but were more genuinely politically aware.
They also had far fewer political parties and independents to contend with. According to the Australian Electoral Commission there are currently 57 registered political parties.
Whilst commentators complain about three-word slogans and the dumbing-down of politics by politicians, many voters are getting their information from GetUp! petitions, Facebook “discussions” and push polling where telemarketers phrase a question with the aim of getting a predetermined answer.
It’s become a commonplace view that the election has primarily been about economics and that’s boring. It’s even posited as a reasonable excuse for opposition leader Shorten’s outrageously dishonest campaign about the privatisation of Medicare. “At least it was something different to talk about” seems to be the rationale.
I fervently hope that we end up with a boring outcome in this election – a Coalition government with a workable senate. This isn’t the time for interesting experiments, although it is interesting that Mr Shorten, on Four Corners, has only discovered since he became leader that unity is more important than factionalism.
With more and more candidates jostling to communicate with their constituents, it’s not surprising that the messages are getting simpler or that voters are using their own methods to filter the message.
But this isn’t the election to play games with the system. No one knows what the outcome of the new senate voting system will be – the ABC’s psephology guru Antony Green has refused to make predictions, saying they would only be meaningless given the total lack of precedent.
But Mr Green notes four recent polls suggesting that between 12% and 14% of the electorate will vote for parties other than the Coalition, the ALP or the Greens.
In the senate where all 76 seats are being contested there are 631 candidates, an average of 8.3 candidates per seat.
With this degree of uncertainty, it’s no wonder the Coalition have launched a last-week advertising campaign urging voters to “Be Sure. Vote Liberal.”
It echoes Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s pleas to voters to not only support the Coalition in the House of Reps but also in the Senate.
On this basis, I’ve been assessing my local Liberal National Party How to Vote card in Queensland.
For the House of Reps, it’s pretty simple—LNP 1, then Labor and the Greens in the last two places with another three arranged in the middle.
For the Senate, it’s more intriguing: LNP at 1; then Family First; Katter’s Australian Party; Shooters, Fishers and Farmers; Christian Democratic Party (Fred Nile); and Australian Christians.
Now I must admit these are not my personal preferences. I even had to look the Australian Christians up although I thought I could guess from the name where they stood.
Nevertheless this is the way I’ll vote. I know some mathematical types (almost invariably youngish and male) far more interested than me in the more arcane art of preference flows have done the calculations.
The objective is to maximise the chances of the six sitting LNP senators being elected.
If this means I give my sixth preference to the Australian Christians, so be it.
The ALP in Queensland have a similarly interesting How To Vote card. Labor 1 and Greens 2 is expected but then the Australian Sex Party; Jacqui Lambie Network: Glenn Lazarus Team and Katter’s Australian Party in that order? Weird, but obviously designed to maximise the Labor vote.
Whatever the outcome on Saturday, I really hope it produces three years of boring, stable, workable government.
Sue Boyce is a former Liberal senator for Queensland.
