It's On - Australian Federal Election 2016

[Phailhammer]

(I was going to title this thread "There's Never Been a More Exciting Time to Hold an Election", but that looked way too long.)

Since Arclight_Dynamo created their Canadian Election thread, I decided to put up an Australian one now that the official announcement has been made. Just about everyone in the country has known for weeks when the election will be, but today it was made official; the Governor General has agreed to the Prime Minister's request for both Houses of parliament to be dissolved, with a double dissolution election to be held on Saturday, July 2nd.

A double dissolution differs from a regular election in that a regular election is for the full House of Representatives and half of the Senate, whereas under a double dissolution, both houses are fully dissolved, as the name implies. The reason we are going to a double dissolution is that the Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, has decided to use the trigger available to him: a bill being rejected by the senate twice within a given period (can't remember what that is off the top of my head). The usual timing for an election is later in the year, often around September-November. This election will be in July due to elements of the constitution preventing a double dissolution from being called less than six months before the terms of the House of Representatives are due to expire. The cut-off for this parliament is the 11th of May, one day after the Federal Budget was originally to be delivered. For this reason, the Budget was brought forward a week to allow passage of supply and for the Opposition Leader, Bill Shorten, to deliver his Budget-in-Relpy speech.

Also of interest in this election are the new Senate voting rules that have come into effect this year. Previously, voters had the choice of numbering 1 "above the line", casting a vote for a party ticket, or distributing preferences "below the line". The problems with this were thatit was impossible to know where exactly your "above the line" vote would go, due to party preference deals, and many voters were overwhelmed going "below the line", due to the sheer number of candidates (e.g. over 100 on the New South Wales ballot paper). Now, voters can either number at least six boxes "above the line", or at least twelve "below the line".

The current composition of the Australian Parliament (taken from Wikipedia):

[korvys]

Previously, voters had the choice of numbering 1 "above the line", casting a vote for a party ticket, or distributing preferences "below the line".

You didn't actually explain what the change is.

I'm in the slightly odd position of all of this affecting me greatly (living in Australia) but not actually getting to vote (because I'm not Australian).

Personally, I think people should vote for the Greens. There's some stuff I don't agree with, but frankly, they're the only truely left/progressive party in the country, since Labour's policy in the last few years has just been "Whatever the Libs say, but we'll feel slightly bad about it". Plus Scott Ludlam seems like a great guy, who actually understands technology, etc. I believe he was one of the leading voices pushing for the government to investigate the games development industry in Australia, and wrote a piece for KotakuAU about it: http://www.kotaku.com.au/2016/04/its-time-for-the-australian-government-to-get-involved-with-video-games/.

[Phailhammer]

Previously, voters had the choice of numbering 1 "above the line", casting a vote for a party ticket, or distributing preferences "below the line".

You didn't actually explain what the change is.

Oops. I did mean to include that. Thanks.

On the Senate, the Coalition could actually do worse under a double dissolution than under a regular half-Senate, according to the ABC's election analyst Antony Green. It seems the main reason Turnbull's gone to a double dissolution is to try and use the new Senate voting rules to get rid of the crossbench; only one of the crossbenchers would be up for re-election under a half-Senate election.

Regarding Scott Ludlam, I only wish I was West Australian so I could actually vote for him. His efforts for the games industry have been directly relevant to me, seeing as I'm trying to break into it.

As for my local member, just getting rid of the incumbent is a start; she may as well be a cardboard cutout.

[DaMage]

I'm looking forward to this election....hopefully whoever ends up winning can finally run the country. We've been stuck with minor parties in the senate dictating terms for nearly a decade and stopping any government that actually tries to do something.

It's neither Labor nor the Libs fault that the budget has blown out so bad, each year in the budget they have both tried to make cuts that got rejected by greens/minor who only ever let through their policies and budget increases.