Dr Kevin Bonham
THE FEW who still bother scanning the Mercury’s pages for anything of great depth concerning local government would have noticed that once a remarkable result followed a remarkably dull campaign, that newspaper suddenly became far more interested in reporting on the recent Hobart City Council elections.
The letters column (November 9) featured a remarkable outcry from serial Council election failure Peter Charles Donnelly, alleging that the election had been hijacked by the Greens:
“In gaining more than 25 per cent of their vote in Hobart, their total far exceeds their proportion in the community. It is a worrying trend when any minority is over represented.”
Donnelly went on to argue that either “Compulsory voting would address this” or else only ratepayers should be allowed to vote, that there was a risk of political corruption and ballot paper theft in the current system, and that it was now almost impossible to get in without party support. Finally, Donnelly concluded,
“If the present system of voting is not addressed soon, some councils may grind to a halt”
This letter generated several replies. One of them was from lucky-to-be-reelected Alderman Ron Christie, who agreed with it strongly (including the over-representation of the Greens) and claimed that some voters had not received ballot papers. Christie wrote:
“Some [politicians] actually do work hard and want what’s best for the community. Aldermen Eric Hayes and Lyn Archer were such people”
On 13 Nov, a reply appeared from new Greens alderman Bill Harvey, pointing out that “inner city suburbs are the stronghold of the Greens in most capital cities” and disputing the claim that Greens are “over represented” (personally, I prefer that phrase with a hyphen!) Other letter-writers accused Donnelly of being a sore loser and had a hearty chuckle at his expense. This week, former alderman Bruce O’Connor wrote in agreeing with Donnelly.
Did the recent election over-represent the level of support for the Greens within Hobart?
No. In fact it underestimated it.
To demonstrate this, the Denison electorate state election figures for 2006 provide us with the most recent idea of how many Hobartians vote Green. By my count, twenty-eight polling booths were within or on the boundary of the Hobart municipal area. Here they are, sorted from highest to lowest Green primary vote, with the Greens’ 2007 council aldermanic primary vote added in:
Fern Tree 61.8%, Hobart West 51.8, Landsdowne 44.8, Cascades 44.2, Elizabeth Street 42.9, Hobart South 42.8, Hobart 42.7, Swan 40.8, Battery Point 39.7, Hobart Central 38.6, St Peters 38.0, Dynnyrne 37.6, Albeura 37.3, New Town 34.5, Mt Stuart 33.5, Newdegate 33.0, Mt Nelson 32.2, Queenborough 31.8, Sandy Bay 30.1, Hobart North 29.2, Cross Street 28.8, (Hobart Council 2007 aldermanic vote 25.7), St Johns Park 25.2, Lenah Valley 23.7, Waimea 23.2, Cornelian Bay 22.9, Creek Road (on boundary of HCC area) 22.8, Lower Sandy Bay 22.7, Sandy Bay Beach 20.5.
The Greens’ 2006 state election vote exceeds the Greens’ Hobart City Council aldermanic vote at fully three-quarters of the booths. Furthermore, one of those where it does not is on the city boundary, hence around half its voters would probably come from outside the area.
The overall Green state election vote is not quite as high as a look at the list of booth results might suggest, since Lower Sandy Bay is the largest single booth in the electorate by a significant margin. Nonetheless, with the figures for Creek Road halved because of its boundary status, the Greens obtained around 8618 of 25306 votes within the Hobart council area in the 2006 state election, or 34%. One can thus see that far from being over-represented by their Hobart council vote, the Greens are if anything still not maxing out their council vote-getting potential.
I made this point even without the benefit of calculation in a previous column where I wrote: “I have not checked the exact figures, but I suspect the Greens poll just over 30% in those booths within the boundaries of Hobart City in a state election.” Messrs Donnelly and Christie would have been well advised to check the exact figures for themselves before putting pen to paper, but as Donnelly himself stated this would be his last campaign, perhaps being wrong does not particularly bother him.
Would compulsory voting reduce the Green vote in Hobart?
No. If anything it would probably increase it.
Given that the Greens’ state election vote is several points higher than their Council vote, there is an obvious risk that making voting in Council elections compulsory (as Donnelly suggested) would increase that vote still further. Indeed, it is logical to expect that it would, since the effect of making voting compulsory would be to obtain votes from those who currently do not vote because their level of interest is too low. Quite likely those voters would generally be more easily attracted to party names, as they are in other compulsory elections where the whole state votes at the same time, than to the names of individual candidates. Thus it is possible that in a contest where they were the only formal party and competing against a bunch of low profile “independents”, the Greens
Is Donnelly’s proposal for ratepayer-only voting “unacceptable and undemocratic”?
Yes. I can only agree with Bill Harvey on this, especially since rental tenants (including myself) are effectively ratepayers too, except that they pay a share of their rates by proxy.
If there is nothing wrong with the system, why did the Greens poll so much better this time than before?
Harvey correctly identifies three possible reasons for the Greens’ success, although I am still undecided as to exactly how these should be weighted as explanative factors. These were: (i) a strong campaign (ii) the use of climate change as an issue (iii) the unpopularity of the pulp mill.
Concerning (i) I have already noted that the Greens campaigned vigorously while the “conservative” side of Council politics generally campaigned sparingly or not at all. Of the serious “conservative” contenders, only Elise Archer campaigned especially energetically and was duly rewarded. Jeff Briscoe had pamphlets and newspaper ads but no signs that I saw – enough for a comfortable re-election as alderman, but no realistic effort for Lord Mayor. Eric Hayes had signs, but nearly all of them in Sandy Bay only. I heard he had a pamphlet, but I did not see it and am unsure of its distribution if so. Donnelly had few if any signs and a creaky, unimpressive looking pamphlet (as well as newspaper ads which said the election was not about the pulp mill, but gave little idea what it was really about, apart from electing Peter C Donnelly). Ron Christie was virtually AWOL from campaigning as far as I could tell, and Lyn Archer absolutely so.
Concerning (iii) the “conservative” forces had only themselves to blame given that one of their own initiated a plebiscite on the issue, drawing more attention to it and probably contributing to some increase in the turnout. But it is worth noting that even if one assumes that the pulp mill plebiscite attracted pro-Green voters to the election, and even if most of those voters were pro-mill, the increase in the Green vote exceeded the total increase in the turnout, so there must be more to it than that.
Why did Lyn Archer lose? Political biases aside, did he deserve to?
Lyn Archer lost because of the following combination of factors:
• The increase in the Green vote reduced the number of “conservative” seats available from four to three
• While he was able to beat one of the other sitting aldermen (Hayes) this was not sufficient because the election of Elise Archer meant he needed to beat two of them
• His vote should have been high enough to do so easily given that he had polled almost twice as many votes as either Briscoe or Christie in 2002, but he did not campaign at all (he was unable to do so for health reasons)
• His failure to campaign, plus the fact that he had been absent from Council for several months of his previous campaign with a serious health problem
In my view Lyn Archer was deservedly voted out irrespective of political biases because a candidate should not be re-elected on their past record, but must be able to convince the electorate of their ability to continue serving their community. A candidate who says in his candidate’s statement that he is ready to serve but then makes no effort to campaign, if the voters are not told why, should not expect to be returned.
It might well be argued that if he was seriously unwell during the campaign then campaigning should have been the last thing on his list of priorities (and that of those close to him). But if that is the case, then being elected to a city council at all should not have been too much further up the list. The use of the past tense in Alderman Christie’s letter is somewhat to the point – a voter might agree Lyn Archer had worked hard, but to be confident that he would do so in the future could still be an entirely different matter.
Why did Eric Hayes lose? Political biases aside, did he deserve to?
Eric Hayes lost because of the following combination of factors:
• The increase in the Green vote as noted above
• Hayes, Lyn Archer and Elise Archer all competed for essentially the same Lower Sandy Bay “conservative” type vote (this is not to say that they drew their support exclusively from the area, since no-one gets elected off the back of a single suburb). Hayes failed to gain enough of Lyn Archer’s lost voters to make up for those he lost to Elise Archer (and possibly also to the relatively high-profile Briscoe).
• Because Lyn Archer still had a lot of support despite his illness, Lyn Archer was able to stay in the race so long that Hayes was excluded before him.
We know where Lyn Archer’s preferences went in 2002, because he was elected with a surplus. We know that in that year 24.77% of his primaries went to Hayes and 17.85% of them to Christie. If Lyn Archer had not contested in 2007 but all other voting had been the same, there would have been a race for the last spot between Eric Hayes and Christie instead of between Lyn Archer and Christie. If Lyn Archer’s voters had voted in the same way as 2002 then Hayes could have gained 82 votes from those preferences. This would have reduced the gap between Hayes and Christie at the crucial moment from 127 votes to 45, with an unknown questions being the direction of the 750 votes worth of preferences that Lyn Archer picked up during the count.
Of course, there are many assumptions here, because the candidate line-ups are not the same from election to election, but overall it is an open question whether Eric Hayes would have lost his seat had Lyn Archer not contested. It is possible that Eric Hayes was therefore unlucky to lose, or it is possible that he would have been defeated anyway.
During the campaign I thought that Hayes was campaigning reasonably strongly and would likely poll a solid vote and be re-elected. In retrospect, he did not have the profile of Briscoe or Christie, and while he did have a number of signs up, they were mostly in one suburb.
Why don’t some people get their ballot papers?
Most likely, in most cases, because they are not correctly enrolled.
Is there a risk of corruption?
It is quite possible that a voter, having stolen a ballot paper, could then vote on it illegally and forge a signature then send it in. But it would only take a small number of voters doing this, and a small number of electors reporting in that they had not received their papers in time despite being correctly enrolled, before a problem was detected; the forged vote could easily be intercepted several days before the count. Additionally, it would be a very effort-intensive form of corruption for very little difference, and there is no known evidence at all of it occurring.
There is some risk for corruption in any election system. In booth voting, it would be possible to repeatedly vote under different names. There is no guarantee a person doing this would be caught, as the rolls are not all checked until the day is over. However, reviews have found no evidence of this occurring on a level sufficient to alter the results.
So is there any substance at all any of the claims in the Donnelly letter?
Nope. Nix. Nothing whatsoever …
… except for his claim that it is difficult for candidates to make themselves heard in the local media, which is probably true with reference to some parts of it
And speaking of which …
“Elise Archer’s 1391 primaries is the highest vote in HCC by a candidate who had not stood before since the advent of postal voting.” –yours truly on TT, 2 Nov 2007
“Ms Archer received 1391 primary votes, the highest vote in Hobart council elections for a candidate who had not stood before since the start of postal voting” – Charles Waterhouse, The Mercury, one day later.
How much does the Mercury pay per word these days? Enough for me to buy a Coopers out of that?
Kevin Bonham has been an observer and analyst of Hobart City Council elections since 1988, and an observer and analyst of beer for only about half that time.
