Conservatives: “The Voting System Is Unfair If We Lose”!

‘After the election, Labor is now emboldened. And their objective is to inflict tax violence on wealth and deliver revenue for their spending agenda while crowing they’re balancing the budget from the blood they can extract from your wallet.’

Tim Wilson

There’s something amusing about watching a political party throw the toys out of the cot when they lose. Of course, all political parties have done it from time to time. Labor, for example, complain about the bias of the media when they lose but rarely ever do anything to ensure media diversity or integrity when they win.

However, I must say that there’s something strange about the idea that it’s the preferential system that’s been the reason behind Labor’s massive win because,as “The Australian Financial Review” told us, if we’d had a simple majority system then the Liberals would have won another 13 seats.

There is something wrong with this for two reasons:

1. The Coalition’s side of politics only complain about Labor winning on preferences; they never tell us that they don’t have a mandate because they received less than 50% of the vote when they win.
2. It’s by no means certain that people would have voted the same way if they’d known that it was a first post the post system. If you know that you can vote for the “We’re A Pack of Loonies” Party with your first preference content in the knowledge that – while they have no hope of winning – your vote will still help determine which of the candidates actually ends up with the win. Preferences give you the opportunity to express a view on legalising marijuana, immigration, climate action or animal rights without losing your say on which of the two major parties ends up government. On the other hand, if your vote won’t count unless you pick one of the likely winners, then you’re more likely to pick one of the likely winners.

While I’m sure that some would argue that this is unfair because it gives some people two votes, preferences actually help ensure that we don’t end up with some cult member who managed to get 21% of first preference, while the other 17 candidates split the votes between themselves without any of them getting a significant number.

For example, imagine these results:

• Processed Food Only Party 18%
• Carnivore Party 15%
• Omnivore Party 13%
• Vegetarian Party 12%
• Vegan Party 12%
• Organics Party 14%
• Marijuana Party 5%
• Hemp Party 6%
• Informal 4%

You can probably surmise two things from that list. You may infer that most of the voters would have been opposed to the Processed Food Only Party, yet they win if there’s no preferences. The second is that I can’t add up as the total is less than 100%.

Of course some of you will remember that it was also outrageous in the UK when Labour won so many seats with such a low percentage of the votes – the problem was the FPTP voting that enabled MPs to win with less than fifty percent of the votes.

I’m waiting for some Coalition MP or independent media personality to argue that votes for the Liberal or National Party should be worth two because the people who vote for them are clearly more intelligent and informed and not swayed by misinformation from Labor or their partners the Greens. (Yes, yes, I know that Labor and the Greens aren’t partners, but I heard many, many times about how they were working together to turn the country communist…)

As Tim Wilson wrote, Labor will be “balancing the budget with the blood they can extract from my wallet.” This makes me very happy to know that the budget will be balanced and that it can be done with the blood that’s in my wallet. Personally I don’t know how the blood got there but I’m more than happy to see it go and I much prefer them to be using that than taking money out of my wallet…

Of course Timmy was engaging in a little bit of hyperbole. This is rather typical of the Lazarus of Goldstein. If you remember he was a strong campaigner against Bill Shorten’s plan to get rid of franking credits…

Actually, Mr Shorten never had a plan to get rid of franking credits as such. Shorten only intended to stop the double dipping where someone who was paying no tax could still claim back the tax that the company paid before sending out the dividends. In simple terms, the idea behind franking credits was that you shouldn’t be taxed twice, so if the company had already paid the tax then you shouldn’t have to pay tax on your dividends. John Howard decided that it wasn’t fair that people who paid no tax missed out on this refund, so he changed the rules so that some people weren’t taxed at all.

I wonder what the whiners would do if we changed to a first past the post system and then we organised to stand nine candidates named Tim Wilson in the seat of Goldstein and between them they got 40% of the vote but split between them in such a way as to ensure that none of them actually won.

Outrageous… surely we have to change to a preferential system where it’s clear that you don’t end up with the conservative vote being split…

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