UK Election

I have been keeping track of the UK election results as they come in via http://www.guardian.co.uk/. As I am looking at the current and predicted vote and seat tally among the various parties or groupings I am increasingly stunned by several things.

One is the heavy weather being made by the Tories of what should be a shoo-in election. The second is the un-representativeness of the electoral system where 58% of the vote has been given to the two major parties and they will get nearly all the seats. Three cheers for our system on several grounds. Turn-outs run at about 95% (but then voting is compulsory). Secondly, we have multiple transferable votes (so that we can rank candidates in order of preferences and the votes of the candidate with the smallest number of first preference votes are then redistributed to the second preference candidates; this goes on until some candidate reaches >50% of the votes cast). Such a system acknowledges that we may have varying degrees of preference for all the candidates and that we can weight our support in an appropriate way. Thirdly, this procedure can lead to strong local independents being elected to parliament quite regularly, something that is virtually impossible in the UK. Finally, the often short shelf-life of governments - Federal elections are held every three years - keeps the bastards honest.

My home region of New England in NSW is an independents' paradise. At both Federal and State levels we have no ALP, no Liberal, and no National Party members: just two independents in the State parliament and one Federal member. This is not accidental, but the result of highly effective local members earning the right to represent us and garnering extraordinarily high personal support. Armidale's State member, Richard Torbay, has 83% two-party preferred support (after the distribution of preferences) and is the nation's most popular politician. My friend Tony Windsor holds the Federal seat of New England with a well over 60% two-party preferred vote. In my view, a bunch of independents is a great check on the power of major parties; moreover, we have substantial numbers of truly independent and effective members of parliament made possible by not having a silly first past the post system.

Modern society is highly pluralist and cannot be effectively represented in a heavily two-party system. Of course, the outcome is that coalition governments frequently result because individual parties cannot win sufficient seats to govern in their own right. Even that is not a bar to good government in most jurisdictions. Parties have to hone their debating and negotiating skills to win arguments. And the evidence of the last 25 years points to successive Federal (and even some State) governments being in the global vanguard of innovative, efficient and effective reform that has created a strong and vibrant economy / society. This is despite the short electoral cycle! I'd much rather be here than in Europe, Japan, and the US right now.

AS it happens, I suspect that whichever combination wins office in the UK will have an uphill battle to take any of the radical surgery that Britain needs in financial regulation, welfare services, taxation, infrastructure and service supply. All these are on the table here with several revolutionary proposals in the melting pot. For example, the recent Ken Henry (Secretary to the Treasury) report on taxation reform is the latest episode in almost 30 years of continuous fiscal improvement which has given Australia low government debt, low taxation, efficient taxes, and high self-provision of welfare by the standards of developed countries.

AS