Unrepresentative swill
by Paddy 0′Cearmada  10 September 2013

As the recycling bins of Australia are filled with how to vote cards, unsolicited mail from hopeful candidates, and the empty bottles from election parties, the nation opened its eyes to an outcome akin to the title of the novel and perhaps in a metaphorical sense to its story line: Wake in fright.

A win for the coalition in the House of Representatives was after all expected, what was less predictable were the independents and the return of Adam Bandt.  The mining magnate Clive Palmer (and boy does he take that title seriously, like Gina Reinhart resplendent in her toga at Barnaby Joyce’s election party) should bring some entertainment, and in a hold-your-breath- it can’t be true – let’s hope it is way the prospect of Sophie Mirabella having absolutely no reason to visit Victoria’s North East is a wonder to behold.  This fine product of Toorak’s own St Catherine’s is the kind of rags to riches Greek migrant story that would be inspiring except for the protagonist.  Sophie, described by Tony Windsor, as the most hated woman in parliament could yet be history, and that honour would return where it rightfully belongs – Bronwyn Bishop – of whom Gareth Evans once said you form an instant dislike because it saves time.

Time weighs heavily however on the Senate count.  Conceived as the State’s House and a brake on the central government in a Federation, this has become a kind of alternate universe.  Once described as a bowl of strawberries and cream in reverse – all red carpet and white headed old men – it has become the kind of democratic expression of the truly weird that only a continent possessing the last of the monotremes could produce, for as odd as it is that such different looking beasts as echidnas and platypi are connected by the fact that they are egg laying mammals, so too is the reproductive cycle of Senators.

The combination of preferential voting, proportional representation and Senators being elected for twice the term of lower house members results in the kind of outcome we are currently witnessing.  A tiny first preference vote can quickly multiply to gain a quota and so we now have Palmer United Party Senators, a Family First Senator, a Motoring Enthusiast Party Senator, a Sports Party Senator and a very right wing Liberal Democrat Senator from New South Wales, added to the DLP Senator from Victoria, and the re-elected Anti-Gambling Nick Xenophon, much less the bowl of strawberries as a bowl of fruit-loops.

Neither the unofficial Labor-Green coalition nor the real coalition have much to look forward to in this morass.   And the gun-boat diplomacy of Tony Abbot in opposition threatening double dissolutions would only reduce the quota and let more of them in.  Perhaps Paul Keating was right in describing the Senate as unrepresentative swill.  Meanwhile in the Maldives, an archipelago in the Indian Ocean disappearing at the rate of three islands a year due to rising sea levels, a hard fought election has been made more honest by the ever watchful local constabulary who have detained a coconut on suspicion of vote rigging.  Perhaps as the last of the Maldives sinks we can grant the Maldive Police 451 Visas and put them in charge of the Senate.

Correction to Plaster Saints, (6th September 2013)
There were two double dissolution elections prior to 1974 (1918 and 1951) and three after (1975, 1983 and 1987).  The appetite now seems to be diminishing.