THE MERCURY’S columnist Wayne Crawford last Saturday pondered whether Rene Hidding’s Liberals had managed to pledge themselves out of office by declaring minority government anathema, in his assessment of last week’s 55-page “foundation plan” entitled “Securing Tasmania’s Future”, presented by Hidding at last weekend’s Liberal state council meeting in Hobart.
Said Crawford:
It has the makings of a thoughtful, workmanlike and generally prudent platform from which to begin their attempt to return to the Treasury benches. But what strikes me more than anything is that they are limiting their options to such an extent that — on present trends — they are making their election to government an almost impossible task.
Among about 65 new “policy initiatives” are the abolition of land tax (making Tasmania the first state to do so); the reintroduction of hospital boards to give Tasmania’s three regions the financial and administrative control over running public hospitals; establishment of special drug courts to deal specifically with treatment needs of people with drug problems; expansion of public transport in regional areas and provision of free public transport for Tasmania’s seniors; and the promise of triennial (instead of annual) funding to provide certainty to non-government organisations such as Centacare, Anglicare, Tascoss, Colony 47 and the host of non-profit organisations which rely on government funding and without which the State’s human services would collapse.
Crawford quotes ANZ bank chief economist Saul Eslake saying that what the Liberals are proposing appears to him to be fiscally achievable at a cost of most, but not all, of the forecast Budget surpluses.
Eslake’s main reservation is that while the abolition of land tax is a “readily affordable” promise, he believes there are better ways to provide taxation relief to business and households. For instance, he proposes abolition of ” fiddly, nuisance taxes” such as those collected on rental agreements and insurance policies; and targeted reductions in payroll tax (for example, exemption from payroll tax of new university graduates, to encourage employers to hire more skilled labour).
Exactly when the election will be remains entirely at the discretion of Premier Paul Lennon. Until recently the Liberals were predicting a 2005 election, notwithstanding repeated assurances by Lennon that he would wait until next year. Now, Hidding says he expects the poll in February-March, although Lennon could wait until next winter if he wants to bring down of another Budget first.
Judging by they latest opinion poll, published last week by Morgan, the Liberals remain stalled on about 32% which, if evenly spread across the State, would only give them 10 seats in the 25-seat House of Assembly. Although an improvement on their present seven seats, it would still not be enough to form a majority government.
And there’s the rub.
Whether expectantly, hopefully or stubbornly, the Liberals are clinging to their commitment — the same as one made by Labor when it was in opposition — not to form a minority government and to “govern in majority or not at all.”
The way things look — and in the absence of a major scandal or crisis to bring down the Lennon Government — this probably means that for the Liberals it will be “not at all.”
Hidding says that the groundswell of opinion being picked up by the Liberal Party is that Tasmanians do not want another minority government with the Greens holding the balance of power. “And we are the only ones who will guarantee we will not govern in minority — because Paul Lennon cannot rule it out.”
But Crawford argues that it is a “pity for their supporters that the Liberals have limited their options so severely. Particularly in the smaller Parliament, it would take only a couple of seats to change hands for a party to lose its majority and the Greens to win the balance of power.”
And he makes this point about minority government —- so vilified by the two major parties:
But minority Governments are nowhere near as bad as their reputation. Indeed, in my experience, the most reformist state governments have been minority governments relying for survival on independent or minor party MPs holding the balance of power — kept on their mettle in an atmosphere of “creative tension.”
Saul Eslake notes that the Government which by his assessment got Tasmania into its worst financial mess, the Gray Government in the 1980s, not only had a clear majority in the Lower House but also had a “pretty compliant” Legislative Council.
Conversely, it had been left to minority governments to do a lot of the necessary financial repair work as well as introduce important social reforms.
Although Hidding rejects the suggestion, what the Liberals are effectively saying now is that in the event of no party winning an absolute majority of seats — something which is a plausible scenario — Tasmania will be better off with a minority Labor government than a minority Liberal administration.
Contact Wayne Crawford, Mercury columnist at [email protected]
HAG-iograph: Premier Lennon — also known as Humphrey B. Bear — is preparing to tell his people how lucky they are to have him and his increasingly unruly and disobedient Cabinet, in a State of the State speech next Tuesday.
Now, the Greens reckon the Lennon government is under pressure for its poor performance on a variety of fronts with question marks over Public Housing, Wages Claims, Terrorism, and GE policy, and that next week’s major annual address by the Premier has become a damage limitation exercise.
Well, they would say that, wouldn’t they?
But, there is no doubt the cracks are widening.
Livid, he must be, over his defeat on Ralphs Bay, and Betfair must be causing indigestion in Humphrey’s not inconsiderable tum.
Humphrey’s greatest asset has been the public perception that he is the hardman.
But, examine his history and another reading is possible. Under extreme pressure, Humphrey does one of two things:
1. Goes to water.
2. Whips out the chequebook in a desperate attempt to make up ground lost through years of incompetence. Witness health.
All this indicates visionless, kneejerk leadership which will hang on to the very last second before calling the next election.
The most fertile ground imaginable for a proper Opposition.
But, in the light of Mo’s lock-step leadership of the Libs the likelihood of a hung Parliament becomes ever more greater …
As Hag has written here:
The Stench of ’89
Mark
September 15, 2005 at 15:56
Dear Hag,
Please use a different visual for our dear Premier.
The thought of Paulie wearing only a waistcoat does not bear/bare contemplation.
Leonard Colquhoun
September 20, 2005 at 15:08
Discussion about minority governments are often associated with discussion about various voting systems, the three main ones being the simple plurality [or “first-past-the-post”] used for the UK House of Commons, preferential voting as used for Australia’s federal House of Representatives and most State lower houses, and proportional voting, a variant of which is Tasmania’s Hare-Clark system for its Legislative Assembly, with the “single transferable vote” system for the federal Senate being another.
Whether voting* is compulsory adds another layer of complexity.
Whatever the arrangements, a balance between two somewhat conflicting purposes has to be achieved: one is that a party or coalition capable of forming an administration be elected; the other is that the range of voters’ views and preferences be represented in the ensuing parliament or congress. Some electoral systems favour one, some the other; there are no “ideal” systems, but some achieve a fair and reasonable balance.
Take the UK’s first-past-the-post rules, where candidates in each single member electorate win their seats by having more votes than each other candidate separately: A gets 25000 votes, B gets 22000, C gets 19000, D gets 18000 and E 16000. The winner is A, even though rejected by 75% of the voters. Simple, straightforward, quick result, usually a clear majority of MPs for the party winning government. Scores highly on the “government-formation” criterion, but minority parties hardly get a look in. What’s more, the “third” party might be given about 30% of the national vote, but get fewer than 5% of the seats in Parliament.
At the opposite end of this continuum is the historical case of post-WWI German Weimar constitution, where just about every conceivable pressure group from the Bavarian Beer-drinkers Party got up a leather guernsey in the Reichstag. Absolutely brilliant in representing a wide spectrum of political viewpoints; hamstrung by the need for so much wheelin’ and dealin’ in cobbling together, at least for the next ten minutes, a governing coalition.
For the post WWII German Bundestag, a “5% rule” was introduced, whereby parties failing to get five per cent of the national vote did not qualify for parliamentary seats. The Bavarian boozers had to go national, or drop out and just concentrate on the upcoming Oktoberfest.
This was an attempt to avoid the sort of parliamentary chaos that helped Hitler to power in 1933. Interestingly, the NSDAP never won an electoral majority, even when, in March of that year, they used all sorts of “extra-curricular” pressure for that purpose. After March, of course, they just didn’t bother.
The modern Bundestag, and our trans-Tasman cousins, have a set of arrangements that tries to combine the immediacy of voting for your own local member and voting, Senate-like, for parties. The recent German and NZ elections have both failed to provide their parliaments with clear majorities, and some pundits predict unstable coalitions and/or new elections. High marks for Representation, low for Administration.
Here, the Hare-Clark system’s reliance on proportional representation may well produce a 12-10-3 result with neither main party having a majority. The late Jim Bacon dared the Tasmanian electorate to give him a majority – which they notably did. Commentators appear to doubt whether Raul Hiddon, can similarly carry the electorate.
Will we therefore suffer unstable, short-term, horse-trading coalitions comprising groups who are ideological opposites, and, publicly at least, loathe each other ? Or will the good of the state, not to mention the spoils of office, be too attractive at the final constitutional hurdle ?
In the two decades after the 1950s Labor split, received wisdom was that preferential voting for the federal House of Representatives “handed” government to the conservatives and “denied” it to the ALP, because of DLP preferences. But maybe it’s not so simple.
People who voted DLP [1], Lib [2], ALP [3 or 4 or ..] were able to achieve two quite distinct things: they could express their rejection of the way Labor had gone since 1955 through DLP [1], and they could at the same time withhold full endorsement of the coalition parties, necessitating those parties’ having to adopt some DLP policies. Had there been in place UK-style plurality voting, there is no strong likelihood that DLP votes would have gone to the ALP: different system, different voting behaviour.
No wonder psephology is so tricky to spell ! [Bloody Athenians !!]
* Of course, as every psephological pedant knows, the act of “voting” is not compulsory – only that of getting one’s name crossed off the list.