This is obviously not set in stone yet, but putting together what the ABC website is predicting with the list of current senators who will be staying around until 2017, and always assuming that I’m adding everything up correctly, the picture looks like this:
33 Coalition
25 Labor
10 Green
2 Palmer
1 Democratic Labor Party
1 Family First
1 Liberal Democratic Party (oh, NSW, what were you thinking?)
1 Australian Motor Enthusiasts Party (oh, Victoria…)
1 Australian Sports Party (this would be WA’s contribution to the madness)
1 Independent (Nick Xenophon of South Australia, possibly the only state that hasn’t gone off its head this time around)
Good grief.
I need to take a few days off from politics, on the grounds that I do actually have a life outside this blog (even if I have forgotten what it is), but I’ll be back once the Senate is settled to take a closer look at the newer, madder parties joining us in the Senate.
Enjoy the rest of your weekend, if you can…
Pretty sure you’ve missed one of the Coalition senators, they’re supposed to be at 33. (Also, if you add up the numbers you have you’ve only got a total of 75 when it should be 76.)
These Liberal Democrats are really scaring me. Pretty sure the only way they (most likely) got in was because they were first on the ballot paper, and people mistook them for the Liberals.
Oops, probably! I was adding these numbers up in the last minute mad rush before being picked up for choir this morning! Thanks for pointing that out.
Good Lord. That’s going to be a Senate and a half…
Indeed.
Hi Cate,
I hope you have a lovely time resting from the politics. You have been so helpful to me. Even though I’ve been voting for decades, this blog has given me so much assistance. For the firt time I voted below the line. I voted according to my preferences for a representative in the lower house and not according to any party guidelines
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
.
You’re very welcome, Sandy, and thank you for your kind thoughts! I’m so glad you voted below the line for the first time – it’s very rewarding, I think, to take control of your vote’s destiny in that way!
Watching the votes being counted last night, I got the impression that there was a higher percentage than usual of below the line votes, but of course, it’s hard to tell from one booth. After all, if my booth were representative, we’d have a Labor majority and about equal numbers of Greens and Liberals in the Lower House…
(excuse me while I sigh wistfully in contemplation of that lost possibility!)
But it will be interesting to get the final stats on below the line voting this year.
As an LDP voter let me just say how satisfying it is to see that the socialists are running scared. What a wonderful victory for libertarianism in Australia. Hopefully we will now hamstring your ability to mooch on the taxpayer tit and grow the nanny state. The author of this blog has already made it clear she prefers to have her doctor paid with money that was taken from others by men with guns.
Guns only in the hands of the police who back up the tax collectors who back up your “free” healthcare paid for by strangers by force hey?
Proud gun owner. Proud LDP voter. Proud business owner. Proud supporter of individual rights and proud opponent of socialist greens and nanny state meddlers. The tide is beginning to turn back toward liberty in this country. A wonderful day.
A victory for libertarianism maybe, but would you say this is a victory for democracy?
In the NSW Senate, the LDP were fortunate enough to get the very first spot on the Senate ballot paper. The Liberals/Nationals made it to Group Y (25th column) on the ballot paper. On the most recent figures, the LDP polled 8.88% of first preferences, the Liberals/Nationals polled a low 34.59%. In the NSW House of Reps, the Liberals/Nationals polled 47.24% of first preferences.
Whilst major parties generally do poll lower in the Senate than they do in the House of Representatives, do you think it is reasonable to say that most of those who voted for LDP in NSW actually thought they were voting for the Liberals?
I really don’t think that 8.88% of voters support the LDP. I’ll ignore their vote in Victoria, where they didn’t submit a Group Voting Ticket (and hence no above the line box), but in Queensland where they did (and were positioned at Group N), they polled a measly 0.65% of first votes, which I believe is the extent of their support base.
Whilst I can relate to your happiness over a victory for the person you voted for, do you think it is really fair or democratic for someone to get in only because people thought they were voting for someone else?
PS: Catherine, congrats for getting the blog noticed by this interesting person. If you get more people from this side of politics reading, there should indeed be some very interesting and diverse comments!
Thanks Daniel – I was just thinking how sad it it was that you were missing out on all the fun over on your site… 😉
I actually did have a Shooters & Fishers voter drop by to say that I was absolutely right about the party and what it stood for and that was why he was voting for it, or words to that effect, which was kind of cool, actually. Obviously, I’m not making people feel mis-represented, at least!
Incidentally, while you are entirely welcome to engage, I’ve decided my policy on the more interesting comments of this nature is to approve them, but not respond. They are tending, I feel, to provide a certain level of corroborative support to my statements.
(Though I do reserve the right to delete comments down the track if I feel they are excessively unpleasant.)