Category: Democracy & elections

Ideological role reversal on the will of the people

~ Andrew Norton ~ 68 Comments

Leftist critics of the right like Norman Abjorensen see them as opponents of popular sovereignty. Certainly, in the past conservatives have sometimes supported quasi-democratic upper houses as a way of keeping a restraint on popularly elected Labor governments. Labor responded by planning to abolish upper houses, successfully in Queensland, and didn’t get rid of its pledge to abolish the Senate until 1979.

But over the last 15 or so years there has been something of a role reversal. Conservatism developed a strong populist strain, while Labor governments and their left-wing supporters started thinking of ways to frustrate the will of the lower houses of parliament. This is most advanced in Victoria, where Labor changed the Legislative Council’s voting system to make it difficult for either major party to secure a majority, and introduced a charter of rights, handing substantial power to the judiciary, while reserving the parliament’s power to ultimately over-ride ‘rights’.

The political identity survey suggests that conservatives (combining self-categorised ‘conservatives’ and ‘social conservatives and economic liberals’) are now quite distinctive in their opposition to further ceding power to the judiciary and preserving the democratic system’s role in protecting individual freedoms, though a slim majority of the classical liberals in the survey also prefer the democratic system.
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The economy and elections

~ Andrew Norton ~ 2 Comments

Commenter Krystian asks:

Do government get tossed out because of difficult economic times, or more because of their own incompetence plus the presence of difficult economic times?

Andrew Leigh has asked himself exactly that question, and come to the (data-laden) conclusion that unemployment does affect election results but ‘luck’ – global or national economic conditions – counts for more than ‘competence’, how well a jurisdiction is doing relative to the gobal or national economy.

He puts this down to

something psychologists call ‘the fundamental attribution error’, which is the fact that humans aren’t very good at separating situational factors from ability when making assessments.

But it seems voters used to believe that governments have more influence over the economy than they do now. The Australian Election Survey has a question about what effect respondents think the government will have on the economy twelve months from now. The first couple of times the question was asked, in 1987 and 1990, about 60% of respondents thought that the government could have either a good or a bad effect.
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Is losing an election ever a good thing?

~ Andrew Norton ~ 12 Comments

Third-time unlucky Lawrence Springborg must be feeling a bit down today, while Anna Bligh is triumphantly not packing her office.

But can there be elections it is better to lose?

I can think of two basic scenarios in which this might be the case. The first is when the party is (if in government) no longer capable of doing a good job and risks damaging its reputation if it wins another term or a party is (if in opposition) not ready for government and risks damaging its reputation if it nevertheless wins office.

The second is when there are events over which the government has no or insufficient control, but which overwhelm it and destroy its prospects at subsequent elections.

Unfortunately for the hapless citizens of NSW, both versions of scenario one were at play at the March 2007 election. However for Labor – having so rundown the public institutions of NSW that no quick recovery is possible, even with competent Ministers – a narrow loss would probably have been preferable to the agony of being in terminal decline for years. Despite on-going doubts about the Opposition, Labor runs the risk of severe electoral punishment at the 2011 NSW election.

The Victorian election of 1988 is an example of the second scenario. Labor won, but it was probably too late to avoid the financial disasters of the coming few years. Instead of the Liberals winning a narrow victory and being destroyed by these problems, Labor won a narrow victory and was wiped out by Jeff Kennett in 1992.
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Norman Abjorensen’s mess of a book

~ Andrew Norton ~ 14 Comments

I’ve not thought much of Norman Abjorensen‘s work for a long time, but his latest book John Howard and the Conservative Tradition disappointed even my low expectations. It is a mess.

Abjorensen states himself to be in favour of popular sovereignty, and sees the efforts of liberals and conservatives to limit it to be their most important, from his perspective, feature. The great success of Australian conservatism, ‘has been to serve a ruling elite under a pretence of caring for all’. But after having run through some 19th century conservative resistance to the then maturing Australian democratic institutions, for the 20th century Abjorensen seems to have forgotten how he started. Much of the book is just a summary of the political lives and times of successive ‘conservative’ parliamentary leaders, with no particular emphasis on democratic developments or how the interests of the ‘ruling class’ were served.

In an unusual move, however, he has tacked on the end of the main text several previously published book reviews, and in one – on Clive Hamilton’s Silencing Dissent – the anti-democracy theme is developed. As I noted when that book was published, while the Howard government did not always deal ideally with its opponents, its overall account is tendentious. Vigorous debate continued throughout the Howard years, including constant and often vitriolic criticism of the government. And of course the democratic system smoothly removed the Howard government in 2007.
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Corporate pork watch

~ Andrew Norton ~ 16 Comments

Most of the arguments for political donations disclosure are process-oriented, but this issue needs to be put in a broader theory of good government. That a CEO may buy dinner with a Minister at a party fundraiser is of no consequence unless some kind of bad decision – eg one that favours the CEO’s company when there is no strong public policy case for doing so – flows from it.

However, the best evidence for such bad decisions is not the annual political donations disclosure but the spending announcements of the government. Why use a proxy when you can use the real thing?

As I have been noting recently, the people calling for greater donations disclosure are strangely uninterested in the public policy bad they are ostensibly trying to prevent. So I have decided to do their job for them and keep note of corporate pork on my blog. On the recent history of the Rudd government this may become a rather time-consuming task. I’ll start with the stories in today’s media and over time try to fill in the gaps from earlier decisions. A listing does not mean that the decision is an entirely bad one (though I suspect the bulk of them are bad).
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Shock, horror – ACTU campaign funded by unions

~ Andrew Norton ~ 10 Comments

Jamie Briggs is not the only person calling for electoral law reform that has already occurred. In today’s Crikey email they say:

…the role of third party activities must also be addressed. Nowhere in today’s figures will you see the cost of the union movement’s “Your Rights At Work” campaign, which was a major component in Labor’s victory.

But as The Age‘s report correctly noted, the political expenditure laws did require the ACTU to disclose the nearly $16 million they spent, mostly on the Your Rights at Work campaign. While this is of some interest to close followers of politics, it is hard to see why the ACTU should have to disclose it. That the ACTU was campaigning strongly on this issue was not exactly a secret. And who would have guessed that union donations paid for it?

GetUp! dislosed $1.3 million in expenditure, but less than $200,000 in donations, reflecting its large donor base. Their biggest single donors were Lonely Planet travel guide founders Maureen and Anthony Wheeler, who gave $82,500. More discreetly, $50,000 came from Jagen, the investment vehicle of the Liberman family. While lefties often like to parade their ‘social conscience’, it is hard to see why GetUp! should be forced to reveal this information. It does not tell us anything we need to know about GetUp!’s campaigns.

This data plus the political party donations also disclosed today shows that the left massively outspends the right in modern politics. It is not surprising – but not to their credit – that Liberal politicians want to throw as many bureaucratic obstacles in the left’s financial path as is possible. It is much less clear why Labor is going along with it, except that they been caught up in the groupthink surrounding this issue.

Is trust in goverment declining?

~ Andrew Norton ~ 5 Comments

After the troublesome nature of the last few Howard years and systemic problems in several ALP state governments, these days public trust in government is a rare commodity.

In his quest to restore such trust, this year Faulkner not only intends to rewrite the Freedom of Information Act to free up government information, he has indicated that he also wants to change key elements of Australia’s electoral system. [emphasis added]

Ross Fitzgerald in this morning’s Australian.

Like Jamie Briggs, Fitzgerald is inferring public attitudes from his own perceptions. And like Jamie Briggs, he gets public opinion wrong. As with questions on satisfaction with democracy and the role of big interests, a series of questions on trust shows that it is improving rather than declining.

A question in the Australian Election Survey asks,

In general, do you feel that the people in government are too often interested in looking after themselves, or do you feel that they can be trusted to do the right thing nearly all the time?

From its low point of 9% in 1993, 15% of people in 2007 said that people in government can usually be trusted (equal with 1996 and 2004). ‘Sometimes be trusted’ is on 28%, the second highest result (after 1996) since this question started being asked in 1993. While in absolute terms these numbers show the usual cynicism about politicians in general, there is no evidence of decline. (And some of this seems to be just empty stereotyping, since individual politicians – even those relentlessly portrayed as untrustworthy like John Howard – do better in surveys on trustworthiness than politicians in general).
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Are Australians losing faith in the integrity of our political system?

~ Andrew Norton ~ 7 Comments

Jamie Briggs is cloaking his attempt to nobble GetUp! with electoral law in concern about how Australians feel about their political system. He told The Age that

“We are heading into dangerous territory where Australians are losing faith in the integrity of our political system because of the large amounts of money being spent on access and donations.”

Alas Jamie, a subject on which there is empirical evidence!

As this publication on trends in Australian public opinion (largish pdf) records, satisfaction with Australian democracy in 2007 was, at 86%, the highest it has been in a series of questions going back to 1969. It has been trending up since 1998. No sign of losing faith in the system there.

A question which more directly targets the issue of ‘access and donations’ is this:

Would you say the government is run by a few big interests looking out for themselves, or that it is run for the benefit of all the people?

Here people are more cynical, with 65% saying ‘big interests’. But contrary to the losing faith theory, this is trending down from a peak of 82% in 1998. On a slightly different question, 71% gave the ‘big interests’ response in 1969. There is no long-term rise in cynicism, despite the vast increase in the cost of election campaigns and consequent need for more donations.

Voters are wisely sceptical of what politicians tell them. But there is no crisis of integrity in government or public perceptions of that integrity.

Liberals still trying to get at NGOs

~ Andrew Norton ~ 15 Comments

Newbie Liberal MP Jamie Briggs is off to a bad start to his parliamentary career, continuing the Howard government’s anti-democratic attempts to use electoral law to get at its political enemies.

Briggs told The Age that:

with the Government’s recent release of a green paper on all aspects of electoral funding, “we must not just look at donations to political parties — reform must also cover the influence of third parties on elections”.

“If not addressed, heavily financed third-party campaigns will be like a growing cancer in our democracy.”

Though it does not provide a direct quotation, the paper reports Briggs as saying expenditure by third parties should probably be capped.

But I fail to see how people getting involved in politics can be a cancer on our democracy, unless they are aiming to overthrow our democracy, which clearly the groups that seem to pre-occupy Briggs – GetUp! and the ACTU – are not. All they are doing is opposing the Liberal Party, which may be frustrating and annoying to a Liberal MP, but is of no systemic concern.
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Brand power

~ Andrew Norton ~ 19 Comments

In the end, so that I could support his classical liberal deputy Tim Wilson, I did vote for Labor Party member Peter McMullin for Lord Mayor of Melbourne.

But as it turned out McMullin came third, behind former state Liberal leader Robert Doyle and Adam Bandt of the Greens. The Age‘s Jason Dowling thinks that the council electoral system is rotten:

Doyle had almost twice as many votes as his nearest opponent but any one of five of the 11 candidates who stood for lord mayor could still win. Such a system raises the question of who really decides the outcome: the voters or the back-room dealers who decide preference deals? The best policies — not the best preference deal — should count.

But this isn’t the problem. What the result shows is that brand counts in politics like it does in any other situation where we must make choices based on minimal information. I doubt most voters wanted to read the 23-page booklet they were all sent on the Lord Mayor race, or the large amount of campaign material distributed by the candidates.

So they went first for a name they knew – Doyle – and second for a party they had heard of, the Greens. No other party formally endorsed a candidate.
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