UPDATED: Miracle in Brindabella: Nuttall rides preferences to claim victory

There’s no above-the-line voting, preferences are chosen by the electors, not the party. Therefore the electorate got their preferred choice. The system is working fine.

If the Liberals had performed better or more Indis had gotten up they could have formed government with the Liberals.

What we’re not talking about is the fact that the Liberals ran a terrible campaign, what’s not working is the Liberal Party changing to meet the electorate.

@bj_ACT
“… they can collaborate at the voting booth by flowing preferences down the ballot …”
How can the parties collaborate when the voter determines: a) to whom they allocate their preferences; and b) how far, beyond the requisite 1-5, they go in numbering candidates – thus allocating preferences?

Your, and ABC’s, guesswork over Parton’s substantial first preference is pure fantasy. Parton did not have the option to “spread” his primary vote – that was determined by electors.

Similarly, your assertion that had the Greens run 5 candidates, “Nuttall likely would have lost votes earlier”, is also baseless. It is equally likely, that the preferences from “lesser favoured” Greens candidates (as happened with the total of 3 that run) would have favoured Nuttall – presenting a similar outcome.

You seem to be trying to blame the Liberal outcome in Brindabella as an issue with the Hare-Clark system, rather than simply accepting that ultimately, Greens-leaning voters went further than other voters in specifying their preferences – hence the final seat in the count went to Nuttall.

No conspiracies – no fault in the system … it worked as designed.

I’ll have to leave it to some better election system analysts than me to explain how the voting flows work.

But I’m definitely no Liberal supporter and I mixed up my votes with Carrick first in my electorate followed by a mix of Liberal, Labor and not Hanson or Steel. I’ve been on this site long enough to show I’m no right winger.

But maybe I worded my comment poorly or didn’t understand what the election experts were saying.
But 43% to earn 2 seats compared to 9%, for 1 seat, and add to that Daniels getting a higher first vote than Nuttall, highlights quirks in the vote flows compared to other preferential voting systems.

Surely you can’t in good faith believe that most voters have any idea at all how the Hare-Clark system actually works JS. It seems like a huge portion of voters, probably even the majority, seem believe that preferences are allocated by parties/candidates.

I’d say the much more likely reason was that she fluked it in because people don’t understand how Hare-Clark works.

@Ken M
I never said “most voters most voters have any idea at all how the Hare-Clark system actually works” … I clearly stated that Greens-leaning voters went further in numbering their preferred candidates on their ballot papers, which is a fact, and hence Nuttall won on preferences – prima facie evidence that those voters did understand how Hare-Clark (well at least allocation of preferences) worked.

What you say is the “likely reason” is irrelevant speculation.

It’s no more speculative than “greens leaning voters went further in numbering”, because when there is clearly a fundamental lack of understanding of how the system works. Because of that, you have a portion of people just numbering boxes to put their least wanted candidate last. A number of preferences would have gone to her unintentionally in that case. It’s not a hard concept to grasp.

Justsaying,
Where is there evidence that Greens leaning voters went further in numbering their ballots more than others?

The result doesn’t actually say that, it just says that Nuttall received higher preference flows than the Liberal to not be excluded and get to the quota first.

Not that vote exhaustion or the number of boxes ticked became an issue for other candidates.

@bj_ACT
Apologies if offended you by misinterpreting your post and inferring you were a Liberal supporter.

I take your point about Daniels getting more first preference votes than Nuttall, but that would only be relevant if there was 1 seat available. The fact that there are 5 seats available. I think means, to be totally accurate, that we should count how many 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 votes were cast in total for each candidate – and, given the current preferential nature of the voting system, that would only be of interest as a statistic.

I don’t see how you can call it “quirks in the vote flows compared to other preferential voting systems” when it is comparable – especially for the House of Reps, which is electorate based. If no HoR candidate gets above 50 per cent of the votes on first preferences, the candidate with the lowest number of first preference votes is excluded and the preferences on those ballot papers are distributed to remaining candidates. When one candidate has at least 50 per cent of the vote from their own first preference votes and preferences transferred from excluded candidates, that candidate is declared elected.

Voting for the Senate is different, especially for preference allocation, and in particular because it allows ‘above the line’ voting, whereby the voter surrenders their preference allocation to the party to determine. While it certainly makes it “easier” to vote, I personally think it is a less fair system than Hare-Clark, as unless the voter checks the party’s “How to vote” card, they have no idea where their preferences will be allocated.

I’m sure that the system of voting can be improved, but short of making every voter number every candidate, I don’t see how it can be fairer.

Just as an aside – I wonder how the results would have fallen, if we adopted a “Brownlow” 3-2-1 style voting system – where candidates receive 5 points for a #1, 4 points for #2, 3 for #3, and so on. There would still be a need for a tie-breaker, probablye some form of preference distribution – but it would give greater “credence” (weighting) to primary votes.

Ken M
Perhaps you should stop digging that hole, as you are clearly one of those voters to which you refer, and don’t understand the concept of preferential voting.

It doesn’t matter why people put a number in a particular box – for example, their number one candidate could be the ‘best of a bad bunch”. Nobody, counting the votes, knows or cares.

What matters, is that the voter is numbering their “preferred” candidates in order. So, as candidates who are “higher” on their list are excluded their vote is allocated to the next candidate … and so on until their numbered candidate list is exhausted or all positions are filled.

As counters go down the list, obviously the voter’s least wanted candidate is put last – it’s why it’s called a preferential voting system!!!! *face palm*

The idea the outcome is unfair to the Libs is true on first preferences (LIB 2.58 quotas v GRN 0.55), but not when considering the broad left-right split. Labor + Greens + Independents for Canberra + Animal Justice + First Nations = 3.21, versus Liberals + Family First + Independent = 2.78. While obviously not a realistic representation, the point is there were more left-leaning candidates, which naturally suggests the Greens would do better from preferences than the Libs. Indeed, the Greens almost always win from behind due to preferences. Lastly, the point about Parton is correct (due to the complexities of Hare-Clark), however it simply suggests the Libs need to put forward better support candidates, or run a better campaign.

Bj, It’s not a first-past-the-post system, people vote knowing their preferences matter as you did.

Funny how so many voters including those who voted independent and “put their least wanted candidate last” and the ACT Liberals turned out to be amongst them Ken.

PS. Our parents and grandparents have always voted in a preferential system…the suggestion that people don’t know what they’re voting for is desperate hopium…thanks for the laugh.

@chewy14
Perhaps I was a bit loose in my terminology.

By “Greens-leaning”, I meant those who numbered sufficient boxes as to eventually put a number next to Nuttall, as a Greens candidate, for the last distribution of preferences in the count, and because of that she emerged the final seat winner on preferences.

I’m aware of how the system works, genius. I’m diaputing your assertion, which is purely speculative with absolutely zero evidence to back it up besides “Trust me bro!”, that she won because green leaning voters numbered more boxes.

Jack D was incredibly accurate for once, Mr Cranium.

@Grosby
Other than Jon Stanhope’s Labor government, following the 2004 election, no party has been able to ‘manage Canberra on their own’ … every other election, including those after which the Liberals formed government, has delivered a minority government or a coalition (Labor/Green or Libs/Moore Ind).

So the point you are trying to make is meaningless.

Suspiciously costed? I take it you’re talking about Labor’s obviously overblown costings that were released in an attempt to scupper the Libs stadium policy, and their failure to even estimate a construction cost for the next stage of light rail. All you have to do is multiply the stage 2A cost by 6 to account for the longer stretch and add $400m+ for a new bridge. That’s about $4b or more than all the Liberal promises combined. Anyone with a rudimentary understanding of the state of the budget knows it’s unaffordable. Even Labor knows that, which is why they keep pushing it back.

Urban sprawl in Kowen? Its not further away from the city centre than southern Tuggeranong and with the number of dwellings proposed it would have been its own satellite city with limited need to commute.

Buses clogging streets? buses are the only way to get public transport that’s fast enough to get Tuggers residents out of their cars. Stage 2B will add another 15 minutes to journeys to the city and points north when they already made those journeys 15 minutes longer 5 years ago when Tugger’s bus services were cut when stage 1 started on the north side. Similarly, I don’t think Woden residents will appreciate their public transport travel time to the city being doubled if it ever gets built.

All the expert independent commentary on stage 1 was that the cost did not justify the benefits. That included the ACT public service as revealed from cabinet papers last year and the auditor general. Stage 2 is much more costly for what it will do than stage 1 ever was. The thinking that it will somehow be good for Canberra is the real magic pudding economics.

As for conservative politics, that’s the scare campaign of the century. The Liberal party always has a conscience vote on issues like VAD and abortion. There will never be the required majority in the Assembly to change anything for the worse in that space as far as progressive voters are concerned.

Well said. Not only do the Liberals need to do some soul searching and come up with some policies, not Lee refusing to explain the $700m Civic Stadium costings whilst presenting a policy that amounted to little more than an artist’s impression of the stadium but real vision to move Canberra forward.

The Liberals also need to come to the middle on social policy or at the very least genuinely assure voters that a Liberal government isn’t going to be an attack on the rights of the dying, the Indigenous and the LGBT communities or the rights of women to health care. I don’t believe they will because too many of them are cooked.

PS. I agree, that Labor and the Greens will need to lift their game to avoid losing more seats to the Indis.

Thanks for your thoughts Garfield. People in the inner South are extremely keen on the tram, I can tell you. I understand your concern about the cost – it is a lot – but you need to understand that there’s a bigger picture here. The financial benefits will be felt by generations. Big ticket infrastructure will only get more expensive, and now is the time to invest. I suggest you do some research into long term cost/benefit analysis. The VAD/abortion issue is a distraction, but the more conservative end of the Liberals and fringe parties would do well to steer well clear of rumblings around that.

“Like it or not, the light rail will bring enormous financial and productivity benefits to Canberra, just like it does worldwide when this type of infrastructure is added. Look at the new Metro in Sydney: a huge game-changing success. Telling the voters of Murrumbidgee their tram was going to be cancelled hurt the Liberals.”

Strange then that no cost estimate for future stages of light rail have been released, nor a business case.

If the benefits are so obvious, it should be relatively easy to provide the economic justification to support that position but so far all we have is *crickets chirping*.

And what actually has been released shows that future stages almost certainly won’t provide the benefits you’re claiming to justify the expenditure.

As for the voters of Murrumbidgee, they voted in 2 ALP, 2 Libs and an independent, Fiona Carrick.

Carrick’s position on public transport is mode agnostic, she wants to see independent assessment prior to choosing solutions. Hardly aligns with your claims on what voters wanted in that electorate.

The Auditor General found that previous claims of benefits from light rail did not stack up. Further, the benefits flow to developers and not to ACT ratepayers.
The majority of Murrumbidgee voters supported candidates opposed or neutral on Light Rail.

If voters didn’t want it they would have resoundingly defeated the incumbent. The Liberals campaigned very hard against the tram and were unsuccessful. The economic justification is development housing and business along the corridor. Woden is booming, and a lot of development there has been shrewdly considered based on future public transport usage. Again, you have to consider the long term, not just electoral cycles when looking at major infrastructure like this.

“The economic justification is development housing and business along the corridor.”

Sorry, this is absolutely meaningless. There are well defined economic assessment methodologies to put specific numbers to these benefits, which is exactly what would typically be put in a business case to justify the enormous expenditure that this project will cost.

Which would also include options assessments to determine the best solution.

None of which has been done.

“it will provide economic benefits” doesn’t cut it.

“Again, you have to consider the long term, not just electoral cycles when looking at major infrastructure like this.”

I am.

Which is exactly why there should be robust supporting information for the project. You’ll note that the first stage has not yet met public transport patronage targets for 2021, despite higher population growth than expected.

The supporting information should also look at various funding mechanisms to ensure equity, as an overall system in Canberra is unlikely to be completed for many decades based on the government’s own stated timeframe (1 leg per decade).

Long term planning is desirable. Making infrastructure decisions for political or populist reasons, far less so.

Your chosen candidate lost, so tuggeranong residents clearly disagree

Thank you for confirming that people are disagreeing facts. You’re helping prove the point in my last sentence.

The AMA is a Doctor’s advocacy group, please stop pretending that they’re a peak health body…it would be like saying the “…rated the worst transport system by the TWU”.

The AMA ranks all the nations health systems on a consistent basis that goes beyond how its members are treated. Even if it were otherwise, doctors are the most essential personnel in a health system, so if they’re ranking it last then we’re not likely to get the best doctors choosing to work here.

I could have also said, ranked last in the country by Stanhope, the only ACT chief minister to ever win government in his own right.