Reflecting on results post the recent State election in NSW

From the President of the HS Chapman Society, Dr Amy McGrath

With the March 24 NSW State election mercifully over, one media report caused alarm about the outcome of the election by asserting that half a million electors had not been on the electoral roll. But alarm bells should not sound about the conduct of the election. They should sound about the negligence of our 17 year old children, all of whom are provisionally enrolled on the national electoral roll when they turn 17, but who fail to confirm that enrolment when they turn 18. That meant only 58% of 18 year olds were enrolled.

How have they become so indifferent to that right to vote for which millions have died for? Does the fault lie with all those unthinking adults, who run around saying they have no time for parliaments and politicians instilling a lack of respect in the young for the fact they deliver us the remarkable stability of our democracy?

Another figure of 80,000 people left off the electoral roll has been touted in the media as if the NSW Electoral Commission could be at fault. This was nonsense as the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) keeps the roll. Most of those, who have fallen off the roll, have been removed because they have failed to re-enrol after moving to a new address, or failed to confirm they still live at a given address when the AEC is updating the roll by the process known as Continuous Roll Review. In any case, electors have little cause for complaint. They are allowed to cure their enrolment on election day.

Preferential Voting
There have been many elections from which the results do not conform to the expectations of the voters. Could this be why politicians rate at the bottom of such surveys as ' Australia 's Most Trusted'? Could this be part of the reason why not enough talent went into national politics?

There are many examples of strange results - such as a candidate with more than 40% of the primary votes being beaten by a candidate with 18%. In other words, it is legal for a person who has the direct support of only 19% of the electorate to collude with candidates who are even less individually popular, to add their second, third, fourth etc. votes at full value, to exceed the full value votes of the 40% primary candidate.

By encouraging more candidates to stand, invariably for single issues and to give the relatively unknown 18% candidate their preferences, it becomes a numbers game, not an election of the most popular candidate. The role of the individual voter is abused by the corruption of his or her vote.

The forgotten factor in winning elections
With the Liberal Party going down to the knockout yet once again in this March 24, 2007 election, its defeat is psychoanalysed in acres of space and airwaves. Leadership and infighting in-house are to blame, they pronounce. Unfortunately the Liberal Party tends to believe them and leaders go down for the knockout too. But what of the factor of fraud by roll-stacking and other means in the usual crucial 8-13 seats?

From this standpoint one small statement caught my eye in The Australian (April 2, 2007). It said: “A staggering 19 leaders have taken their turn at the Liberal helm in NSW since the party's founding in 1945 and only two of them, Bob Askin and Nick Greiner, have led the party to electoral success.”

It so happened that, in 1949, the Chifley ALP Government abolished any requirement for citizens to produce identification on enrolment. From that time a study by David Patton has shown that almost every year more than 100% of citizens entitled to be enrolled, in fact were enrolled, where one would expect a level closer to 90%. Habitation reviews by street walks and door-knocking, during each federal term of office, kept the roll in reasonable shape. Does this anomaly have any bearing on the almost unbroken reign of the Labor Party in the NSW Parliament?

The Coalition has only been able to overcome fierce opposition from the ALP and Democrats at both State and federal level against identification on enrolment and re-enrolment this month, now that it controls both Houses. They have exposed themselves to the doubt they oppose it because they profit from the lack of it.

31 March 2007