The papers are full of stories, but they’re all missing the point. This is what the election really shows us.
So, looks like we got the ‘messy’ election result I was calling for on Friday. Up you go Aussies, you’ve done yourself proud. Seems you got the result you were calling for: none of the above.
Looks to me like political parties could be on the way out. A lot of people are talking about how it’s going to be impossible to get anything through parliament now. Won’t somebody think of business confidence?
It might be true. Canberra might become a difficult place to get anything done, but that’s it’s mostly because whoever is in opposition will line up in a unified block and try and frustrate the governments attempts to do anything. Since Abbott gave us a lesson in how to ‘no’ like a boss, it’s the new playbook for oppositions.
So what’s the problem here? Is it that there isn’t a majority government? Or is it that there is an obstructionist opposition? If there wasn’t a opposition party, and rather just a bunch of individuals representing their electorates, would it be as difficult to get stuff done?
It wouldn’t be easy. Each policy would have to be played on its merits. But even if you didn’t get everything through, you’d still get more than you would with an opposition determined to be a turd.
So the solution to me is to ban political parties. Force parliamentarians to represent their constituents and nobody else (you know, as if we were living in a representative democracy.)
Then let them thrash it out. If a majority agree, then go for it. If not back to the drawing board. It’d be messy and exciting. Maybe a little unpredictable.
You might not like those things, but what choice have you got now? The current system isn’t working. We woke up on Monday without a Prime Minister.
And it looks to me like we just don’t like the parties anymore. They’ve lied to us, ripped us off, diddled us into wars or construction contracts that benefited their mates. They suck.
In fact, the only thing we like about them is that they keep the other party on some sort of leash.
And so all we get are protest votes. All we get is big “F-you”’s written on the ballot papers. And no sooner than power changes from one party to another, we remember that, actually, we hate this party too.
Protest votes are the new normal. Big swings are the new normal. Hung parliaments are the new normal.
We’ve got to get used to it.
The other factor here is something no one is talking about: the science of persuasion.
I’ve been reading a lot of stories. Pundits all over the shop have lovely stories helping explain the result we’ve got. The Mediscare campaign worked. People didn’t trust the government. Voters were disillusioned with divisions in the Liberal party.
But its all bullsh!t.
Seriously, it’s all just stories.
Ever wonder why parties hand out how to vote cards? If people are making rational decisions based on an objective evaluation of the policies, why would you need to stick pieces of paper in the hand at the last minute?
But people aren’t rational.
I once knew a fellah who was involved in the Greens in the early days, back when they didn’t have enough vollies to staff every booth.
That meant they had a natural little experiment on how effective the HTV cards are. The result? HTVs would increase the Green primary vote about 2 percentage points – from like 6% to 8%.
That might not sound like a lot, but that’s a 33% increase. And you know, it’s a pretty big step. It’s not like the Greens are all that similar to Labor and the Coalition. It’s not a jump I’d imagine most rational people would take lightly.
But we tend to imagine people to be more rational than they actually are. And the truth of it is, a lot of people haven’t decided who they’re going to vote for until they’ve gotten into the booth.
And the real story of this election is at the level of persuasion, not the level of rationality. (I can say this because I’m a person and I know that I’m not purely rational).
And at the end of the day, both campaigns came back to identity plays.
It didn’t matter that the Coalition didn’t have plans to privatise Medicare. Medicare wasn’t the issue. Mediscare worked because it reminded people that it was the kind of thing the Coalition would do. It reminded people of the hollow baby-hating darkness that lies in the heart of the Liberal party.
Likewise with Bill Shorten’s “War on the economy”. It didn’t matter that there was no such war. It reminded people that Labor has a good heart but gets a bit muddled in the head when it comes to the economy.
And it doesn’t matter that neither of these characterisations hold much water over any length of time. They’ve become a heuristic. It’s just how busy people think about politics.
And in that sense, you can’t combat them. The more the Coalition shouted down Mediscare, the more it reminded people how they’re the baby-hating party.
The facts were, and always are, irrelevant.
Persuasion is all that matters. It’s how people feel about the election, and which heuristics get activated.
The major parties know this. They’re trialling messages on target groups all the time. They know what works. And they know it’s not reasoned arguments about the facts.
And what happens when you have two, more or less equally resourced parties, working the persuasion angle?
You get what happens in any competitive system – you get a knife-edge equilibrium. (Remember Giaan's Law of Knife Edge Equilibriums? Go back and read that in light of the weekend’s result.)
Hung parliaments and dead-heats are exactly what you should expect. Because it’s not about who’s got the best policies. It’s about who is most persuasive – and both parties have the exact same set of tools.
But everyone’s freaking out because we keep getting these ‘no results’.
I keep telling ya people, the system’s broken.
What’s your take on the election result? What’s it mean for Australia? For Property?
Wendy Underwood says
Dumb question but if we have got no government for a week does that mean we will save a weeks wages?
Jon Giaan says
That’s a very good question, Wendy. 🙂
Stuart says
I kept waiting for Liberal ads to debunk the Mediscare ‘campaign’ (aka ‘lie’) via their own ads – but it never happened. Turnbull would declare it for the lie that it was in press conferences but not in TV advertising – and I suspect the numpties that got duped by the endless Labor Mediscare ads probably don’t read newspapers let alone watch the news to know the truth (i.e. the back-end payment function being done by the private sector saving about $2b which could have been put back into the health system – but it is a real twist to say that this equals “privatising Medicare”). And then the Libs chickened out and dumped the plan anyway (say goodbye to that $2b saving).
Australian Labor Party – never letting the truth get in the way of a good story since 1901.
Peter says
I don’t vote and never will. I’m too busy getting on with life to worry about who is telling me lies. Both sides do it all the time. The old joke holds true… How do you tell a politician is lying? His mouth is moving.
Instead of getting worked up over the current debacle I look to what I can keep doing to move forward inspite of the mess, promises, non core promises and the like. (Oh by the way… “non core promises” is a liberal idea)
MickyG says
I’m with you Peter. If you vote for the corrupted, doesn’t that make one corrupt also? I don’t want to be complicit in ongoing white collar crime. Also if you check the Australian Constitution, you will find no provision for 1/ A Prime Minister; 2/ Political Parties; or 3/ A two party preferred basis…(Preferred by whom????)
Kathy says
For a long time now I’ve said that we need to not just get rid of state governments (a useless level of government if ever there was one), we also need to get rid of political parties altogether. Exactly as you’ve stated here. We elect a person to represent our area alone, everyone is an independent and belongs to no party. I wonder how that scenario would work for political donations?
The sad thing is I don’t think that this is likely to happen as the parties would be most unwilling to give up their power.
Island fisher says
The idea that each candidate for each electorate is an independant and is in government to represent their local constituency seems to work pretty well in Switzerland. It would certainly put paid to the political hacks that both parties nominate to represent us
Felicity Walker says
I remember many moons ago being at RMIT and being hassled about voting in the student union elections. Even at that level the candidates identified as Labor, Liberal etc. I flat out told one candidate that I would vote for someone who represented ME, not a political party. Didn’t go down well.
Noelene Turton says
The problem is that both parties are controlled by a core group of people who look after their own interests and the power groups that fund them not Australia’s. The rest of those in the party are what Keating would call swill. OK they may be elected but they have no say.
joe c says
Australia needs an inspiring, understanding, caring leader, none of these exist!
bazza says
Hi John,
I worked on two election campaigns in the 90’s and all it did was make me so cynical about politics. It is so strategic and the truth is it is all about perception. These parties are like puranah’s amongst themselves let alone to their opponents. The levels of lying these people will stoop to are beyond me. So much so that last Saturday when I went into that little booth to vote in I added my own candidates and voted for them. In the House of Reps.(the white sheet) I gave my vote to…..Ronald McDonald and in the senate(green sheet)…….. The colonel sanders got my vote.
Darren Jakobsson says
Hi Jon,
The reasons why both parties weren’t over whelmingly popular was for the following reasons;-
– Both runners aren’t truly great leaders.
– For a party to win successfully, the party that would have promised to put the $50 billion back into the health sector, put Gonski back into the education system and really promoted opening up the Renewable Energy Markets would have won hands down.
– And for South Australians and Australians that know both parties want to go down the Nuclear Fuel industry road would have voted for the Greens and other parties etc.
Kind regards
Darren Jakobsson
regular-me says
Hi Jon,
Have you had a look at some of the things being spoken about by Adam Kokesh on youtube? This is exactly what he’s saying. The time will come when people realise that governments are a big group of fraudsters all working for their own benefits. The time will come when the people vote out the governments and vote in freedom, independence, and free markets.
Fundamentally, people aren’t stupid. We know what we want and we know how to talk with other people. This means that we know how to get by in our daily lives without bogus governments shoving their lives and thievery down our throats.
Time to end government and begin to live freely.
regular-me says
shoving their lies**
Tom says
With the amazing power of computers, surely the Electoral Commission could come up with a secure system of computerised voting. The results would be known at the close of the polls.
Some secure form of pre-arranged online voting could be arranged, with a Password & PIN provided for the occasion, to replace international, postal, absentee votes etc. There would be no need to have any pre-polling.
Preferences could carry points – if a candidate gets a ‘one’ vote in a field of five, they get five points; while the candidate with a ‘five’ vote gets one point. In the Senate, we would be required to number at least one to six, (or one to twelve in a DD election), with the option of voting further down the list. The candidate with the highest score is elected.
Automated alarm messages could alert the voter to any errors in counting.
The final scores directly reflect the wishes of the public, including everybody’s preferences.
In the House, with only one position to be filled, voters should be able to decide how many extra candidates they vote for, because there are often candidates whom one could never support, with others considered tolerable, or worthy of support.
To minimise the number of crank candidates in the Senate, there could be a very large monetary ‘deposit’ paid by the hopefuls. This would be refundable only if a certain proportion of the total score is attained. Only wealthy cranks would be able to afford to pester their long-suffering fellow citizens. The weighting resulting from larger fields would magnify the scores of the publicly favoured, relative to the pests, further deterring nuisance aspirants. The current mile-long Senate papers are ridiculous.
With computerised ballot papers, a rotating order for the ‘Parties’ would be a simple way of avoiding any impact from the donkey vote.
‘Compulsory Voting’ would be very easy to police; and double dipping would be immediately blocked and reported.
The arguments formerly put forward by civil libertarians opposing a National ID Number now look very flimsy. With SIM cards and GPS telling authorities our location, minute by minute and the enormous, interlocked databases with all our most secret personal information, kept by Government and Industry, there is almost nothing to be gained from avoiding an ID number.
To all intents and purposes, we are already just numbers in those systems. Why not acknowledge the fact and have an official ID number?