Posts Tagged ‘Australia politics’

Politicians still don’t understand the internet

Just over a year ago, I wrote a post outlining how far too many politicians simply don’t understand the internet in general, and social media in particular. Sadly, the situation hasn’t improved much.

Recently, a point of privilege was raised in the provincial legislature of the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador, over one Member’s alleged membership in an anti-government group on Facebook. Several comments on the group’s page involved death threats against the Premier of the province. In his point of privilege, the Government House Leader noted that the Facebook group had a membership list and among the listed members was the MHA for St. John’s Centre. The Government House Leader argued that online, as in public, one would join a group “because you support the values and you support the objectives of the group and you support what the people of the group are doing.” He added:

I submit to you, Mr. Speaker, that the group and the members of that group of which there is a member sitting in this House today, who is endorsing and supporting that – threats to her [the premier's] life and threats to her home, implicit in that are threats to her family, to her children and her grandchildren. Mr. Speaker, that, in my view, is reprehensible and totally, totally unacceptable.

The Government House Leader finished by calling on the House to suspend the Member for St. John’s Centre because of her public support for and participation in the Facebook group and its activities.

The Member accused was not given an opportunity to speak. The Speaker recessed briefly, then returned with a ruling in which he reminded Members that should they choose to engage with social media, they had a responsibility “to use them wisely” and that they should hold themselves “to a higher standard than would be accepted and acceptable for the general public.”

He did admit that, upon examining the Facebook pages in question, while the Member for St. John’s Centre was listed as a member, it was impossible to determine “how this participation was initiated and accepted” nor was there any evidence that she made any comments on the site that would connect her to the offensive statements:

It cannot be clearly and unequivocally stated that the Member for St. John’s Centre was herself carrying out an implied or actual threat; therefore there is no prima facie case of privilege.

Despite this fact, the Speaker still found a contempt against the House and asked the Member to apologize, which she refused to do: “I will not apologize for something that I have not done. I am sorry; I cannot apologize to the House.” She was asked twice more times to apologize and refused to do so each time, forcing the Speaker to suspend her for the remainder of the day.

Then, a week later, the Speaker in turn apologized to the Member, noting that after having the finer points of how Facebook actually works explained to him – notably that individuals can “find themselves attached to a group without their explicit consent”, his finding of contempt was “erroneous”.

This is not the first ruling the Speaker has made on a matter involving social media. Almost a year ago, a similar point of privilege was raised in the House of Assembly, this time over a comment made on Twitter. A Member had tweeted the previous night, after the House had adjourned, that another Member – whom he did not identify – had lied in the House during that day’s debate.

As in the case above, the Speaker heard the point of privilege and then ruled immediately. The ruling was somewhat contradictory. On the one hand, the Speaker seemed to accept, or at least recognize, that comments made outside of the House are beyond the Speaker’s power to act on. He stated that had an accusation of lying been made in the House during debate, he would have immediately demanded that it be withdrawn. If the Member had made the comments while outside the House, perhaps on an open line radio program, it would have been regrettable, but the Speaker would not have been able to act on it since it was outside of his jurisdiction – in other words, not a proceeding of parliament. However, the fact that the tweet was made after the House had adjourned seemed to be the only factor preventing the Speaker from acting:

had this accusation of lying been sent while the House was sitting so as to escape being sanctioned for unparliamentary language while still making the accusation, I believe it would be a prima facie case of privilege.

In other words, had the tweet been sent while the House was sitting, even if the member himself made it from outside the Chamber, the Speaker would have found a breach of privilege, meaning he would have considered the tweet a proceeding of parliament.

A number of Speakers in other jurisdictions have been called upon to rule on comments made on social media, or have issued statements on the use of social media by Members. In these cases, the general consensus is that anything said on social media is not part of proceedings of parliament, therefore the Chair should not be expected to rule on allegations of improper conduct on social media. Also, comments made on social media are not protected by parliamentary privilege, consequently, Members should conduct themselves accordingly.

The Newfoundland and Labrador social media incidents are reminiscent of a Twitter-related incident which occurred in the Legislative Assembly of the Australian state of Victoria in November 2011. In that instance, a Member had made critical comments about the Speaker on Twitter, and those tweets were then brought to the Speaker’s attention. The Speaker demanded that the Member in question apologize, but wouldn’t specify what the apology was for because he didn’t want to read the offending comments into the official record. The Member consequently refused to apologize. The ensuing debate was quite spirited and raised some important points, including:

  • If the Speaker ruled on a comment made outside of the chamber, that would set a precedent;
  • There weren’t any standing orders or previous Speaker’s rulings what would support the Speaker’s position. Forcing members to apologize every time they offended another Member on social media would set a dangerous precedent;
  • The Speaker couldn’t seek an apology since the comment wasn’t made in the House. Had it been made in the House, he could ask the Member to withdraw the comment;
  • Demanding a Member apologize for something without specifying what the Member must apologize for would again set a precedent;
  • Without knowing the seriousness of the alleged insult (since the Speaker wouldn’t explain), how could appropriate sanctions against the Member be applied?

The matter ended up referred to the Legislative Assembly’s Standing Orders committee, which released an interesting report in December 2012 on the use of social media in the Legislative Assembly and reflections on the Speaker, which you can read here.

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The preferential ballot favours the party with the most first preference votes

I have written several posts looking at the growing popularity of the preferential ballot/the alternative vote (AV) here in Canada – see this recent one, for example. I even attempted a redo of the 2011 Canadian federal election using the preferential ballot rather than our current FPTP. As I explained in that post, and in others, the big problem in attempting to forecast how the election would have played out using AV was the absence of data concerning voters’ preferences. Some polling firms would (and still do) regularly ask people which party was their second choice, but no one ever looked at voters’ potential 3rd, 4th, etc. choices.

However, a new poll by Abacus Data has done just that. According to Eric Grenier, in this article in the Globe and Mail, the poll asked respondents to rank seven parties from 1 to 7 (in other words, it used full preferential rather than optional preferential). I cannot find this data on the Abacus website. Mr. Grenier examined the numbers and posits that using a preferential ballot “would limit the ability of the Conservatives to win elections”:

With a preferential ballot, however, the Conservatives would come out further ahead. They would lead in 147 ridings on the first ballot (after distributing the marginal support for the smaller parties), compared to only 108 for the New Democrats, 76 for the Liberals, four for the Bloc Québécois, and three for the Greens (primarily due to an anomalous result in the poll in Atlantic Canada).

The Conservatives would have majority support in 60 ridings and win those automatically, while the NDP would win 23 seats on the first ballot and the Liberals 11. But that Tory advantage would disappear once the instant run-off was conducted.

The Conservatives would lose their first ballot lead in 30 ridings, and be reduced to only 117. The New Democrats would move ahead in 18 more seats and take 126, while the Liberals would win 17 more ridings and increase their total to 93. The Greens would hold on to two of the three seats in which they led, while the Bloc Québécois would lose all four.

I am not entirely certain how he comes to that conclusion. The last paragraph quoted above is particularly confusing to me.

Despite Mr. Grenier’s assertions at the outset of the article that the preferential ballot “is used in many jurisdictions around the world”, the only really comparable example available to us is Australia. Full preferential (where voters have to rank every single candidate on their ballot for the vote to count) is used at the federal level to elect the House of Representatives, and in some states, while a couple of states use optional preferential, where voters can choose to rank as many or as few candidates as they want. Indeed, many opt to rank only one candidate and optional preferential becomes a de facto FPTP ballot. This is what happened when AV was used in some provinces here in Canada in the past.

What Mr. Grenier seems to overlook is that the preferential ballot, in particular optional preferential, always favours the party which receives the most first preference votes – at least going by Australia’s long history with this form of voting. Grenier rightly notes that the Conservatives “would have majority support in 60 ridings and win those automatically”. However, things are a bit more complicated after that. Going by Australia’s experience, Conservative candidates would not, as Grenier posits, “lose their first ballot lead in 30 ridings” based on second preferences. It all depends on how close those Conservative candidates are to the 50%+1 needed to win the seat under AV. The closer they are to that mark, the fewer votes transfers they require. Consequently, a Conservative candidate with 45% of the vote on the first ballot count, would most likely still win the seat because they need far fewer votes to boost them over the 50% mark. Even if they were further from the 50% target, say at 40%, but the 2nd place candidate was well behind, say at 30%, the Conservative would still most likely win. Only in instances where two candidates were quite literally neck and neck on the first ballot count would the outcome be up in the air.

Readers interested in preferential voting should regularly read Antony Green’s Election Blog. Green is an Australian elections expert who blogs about both federal and state elections in that country, which, I reiterate, is really the only jurisdction at all comparable to Canada which uses the preferential ballot. As Green explains in this post:

At the 2010 Federal election, 64 of the 150 seats were won by a candidate with a majority on first preferences, and a further 75 won by the highest polling candidate at the start of the count after the further distribution of preferences. Optional preferential voting would have had little impact on these 139 contests.

However, in the 11 contests where the candidate leading on first preferences did not win, optional preferential voting could have changed the result.

(…)

The lesson here is that optional preferential voting always advantages the party with the highest first preference vote.

In other words, in the 2010 federal election in Australia, a majority of seats (139 out of 150) were won by the candidate who was ahead after the first count. Sixty-four were won by a majority on the first ballot, and 75 were won on subsequent ballots – by the candidate who’d been in first place on the first count. That is using full preferential. Only in 11 instances did the candidate who’d been leading on the first ballot fail to actually win the seat. Had optional preferential been used instead, in only 3 cases would the candidate in the lead after the first ballot have failed to win.

It is good that a polling firm here in Canada has finally started to explore voters’ preferences beyond their 1st and 2nd choices, but I don’t think Mr. Grenier fully understands how AV tends to play out – at least based on what happens in Australia.

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Preferential voting isn’t the solution some think it might be

There have been a growing number of columns and articles in various Canadian media over the past few months bemoaning the state of our parliamentary democracy and proposing various changes which might improve the situation. More often than not, electoral reform is mentioned – either in the column itself, or by a reader commenting on the piece.

There does seem to be a growing recognition or acceptance that the First-Past-the-Post voting system doesn’t quite work the way people would like. I won’t say it doesn’t work the way it should because it works exactly as it should. It simply isn’t the ideal system for multi-party democracies.

Inevitably, in these discussions, someone proposes some form of proportional representation, usually Mixed-Member-Proportional, where most MPs would be elected the usual way, but then each party’s numbers would be topped up with list MPs to more closely reflect the party’s actual percentage of the vote. And also inevitably, many other people chime in denouncing any form of PR because it leads to coalition government which is of course completely unstable – just look at (insert name of favourite basketcase country here).

The voting system change that seems to garner (or be garnering) the most support is the very one the UK rejected in the 2011 referendum – the Alternative Vote (AV), or preferential voting. As I’ve explained in the very, very many posts I wrote during the lead-up to that referendum, under AV, voters rank the candidates in order of preference. To be elected, a candidate has to get over 50% of the votes cast. If no candidate tops 50% after the first count, then the candidate with the lowest vote total is dropped from the ballot and the votes for that candidate are redistributed based on the second preferences indicated by voters. This process continues until someone ends up with over 50%. See this post I wrote back in 2011 to explain to British readers how the vote would work.

AV isn’t used in a lot of places. Australia is the best example available of a western democracy which uses it. At the federal level, they use “full prefential voting” to elect the House of Representatives (a completely different system is used to elect Senators – see this handy guide to voting systems used in Australia). That simply means that voters have to rank every single candidate on the ballot. I believe they can leave one candidate unranked, and that will be counted as their last choice, but if they leave more than one candidate unranked, the ballot is rejected. At the State level, some states also use full preferential to elect their Legislative Assemblies, while others use “optional preferential”. Under this variant, voters can rank as many or as few candidates as they want – this was the model proposed in the UK. Under optional preferential, voters can treat their ballot as a FPTP ballot if they so desire – voting for one candidate and one candidate only.

The Alternative Vote appeals to many because it is fairly simple (not quite as simple as FPTP, but certainly far less complex than other voting systems out there), and it would address the issue of MPs being elected with minority support. As I’ve also repeatedly blogged, the majority of MPs in Canada win their seat with less than 50% of the vote cast in their riding – sometimes a lot less. AV would put an end to that, in theory, at least.

It is really important to understand that this is the only advantage or benefit AV has over FPTP. In many ways, it can lead to even more distorted results than FPTP currently does, e.g. a single party winning even more seats than it might have under FPTP. It is not at all proportional, so it won’t put an end to majority governments formed by a party with much less than majority support, meaning many voters will continue to feel as if their votes don’t count.

Each form of AV also presents other problems. Full preferential, where a voter would have to rank every single candidate on the ballot paper, would force many – probably most voters -  into making what can only be described as artificial choices. Some voters simply don’t have a second choice – they vote for one party and one party only, and would have no desire to even attempt to rank any other candidates. Other voters might have an easier time ranking the two or three major parties on the ballot, but here’s the big problem. Most ballot papers in Canada have several candidates listed, often as many as 10 or so. Apart from the candidates representing the three or four major parties in the country, there are also a large number of candidates representing fringe parties most people have never heard of, as well as candidates running as independents. Leaving aside the one-party-only people, for everyone else, it would be a very trying experience, if not even a complete joke, to try to rank the fringe and independent candidates. And never mind trying to rank candidates you’ve never heard of, what about having to rank candidates you dislike equally? Think about this for a minute, about how many candidates were actually listed on your ballot the last time you voted. Now imagine having to rank every single one of those individuals in order of preference in order for your ballot to count.

So go with optional preferential – problem solved. Indeed. But let’s remember that the only advantage AV has over FPTP is that it is supposed to ensure that the MP elected is elected with over 50% support in that riding. While most think that means “50% of the votes cast”, if you’re using optional preferential, what you end up with is someone elected with 50% of the votes still in play, which may be a very different number from the total number of votes cast. Under optional preferential, voters can choose to cast their vote for one candidate only, and indeed, many do just that. This is a phenomena known as “plumping”. Optional preferential has been used in Canada in the past, in three different provinces, and I have a post looking at what happened in those provinces during the time they used optional preferential. As you can see, the plumping rate was quite high – sometimes over 60%. That means only a minority of people were actually ranking more than one candidate. I am willing to guess that at best, most voters who do bother to rank will rank only two or three candidates. If the majority of ballots can’t be transferred after the first count, the one advantage AV has over FPTP pretty much disappears.

As well, optional preferential can end up costing parties seats because of voters treating their ballot as a FPTP ballot. See this post by Australian elections expert Antony Green on the recent election in Queensland. There is also evidence that optional preferential disadvantages smaller parties (and independents) – just as FPTP does. As Green points out in this post, wherein he re-does the 2010 Australian federal election using optional preferential rather than full preferential, “optional preferential voting always advantages the party with the highest first preference vote.”

It may interest some proponents of AV to know that the State of Queensland is currently conducting an inquiry into its electoral law, and an important focus of that is whether optional preferential should be retained (discussion paper PDF here). From page 37 of that discussion paper (emphasis added):

A key issue with OPV is that it has the potential to become a de facto ‘first past the post’ system. Preferences can be quickly exhausted where a large number of voters choose to vote ‘1’ only. This is particularly problematic where a large number of candidates are contesting a seat. In such a circumstance, it would be possible for a candidate to be elected with only a small proportion of the vote, which could leave the majority of the population unrepresented.

As part of its analysis of a survey of ballot papers from the 2009 state election, the ECQ found that approximately 63.03% of ballot papers were marked ‘1’ only. At the 2006 election, 62.15% of surveyed ballot papers fell into this category. Up until the 2001 election, the number of ballot papers marked ‘1’ only had been significantly lower (20.7% in the 1995 election).

Meanwhile, others in Australia are calling for a move towards proper proportional representation.

While I agree with most that AV/preferential voting might be the easiest electoral reform to implement here in Canada because it isn’t that different from FPTP, there are some very important issues associated with it that need to be carefully considered. It won’t be the panacea many seem to think it might be.

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Election Watch 2013

There will be some noteworthy elections coming up in 2013.

AUSTRALIA

Unlike most parliaments in the UK and Canada, which normally last 4 to 5 years, the Australian House of Representatives sits for a three-year term.The next election will be held on 14 September 2013. The 2010 election resulted in a hung parliament, with both Labor the the Coalition tied with 72 seats each. Labor ended up forming a minority government, with the support of Green and Independent MPs.

Recent polls (12 December 2012) have Labor trailing the Liberal-National Coalition in terms of overall popular support, 36% to 54%, and in terms of first preference votes among committed voters, the Coalition leads there as well, 46% to 32% for Labor. However, when asked who would make the better PM, Liberal Party leader Toby Abbott trails incumbent PM Julia Gillard 34% to 43%.

For all things pertaining to elections in Australia, both at the federal and state level, I strongly recommend following Antony Green’s blog. For a general overview, you might find this article interesting.

CANADA

There won’t be another federal election until October 2015, but there are a few provinces which may be heading to the polls this year (one definitely will be).

British Columbia

British Columbia will be electing a new parliament in May of this year. The incumbent Liberals are not doing well at the polls, and Premier Christy Clarke’s decision not to hold a fall sitting probably won’t help matters.

Ontario and Quebec

Ontario’s last election was in October 2011 while Quebec’s was in September 2012 but both resulted in hung parliaments. Ontario ended up with a minority Liberal government, but Premier Dalton McGuinty unexpectedly prorogued the Legislature in October and simultaneously announced his resignation as party leader. The Liberals chose a new leader on 26 January 2013. The House will return on 19 February 2013. While the new leader has stated she is determined to make the minority parliament work, one can never rule out an election.

Quebec ended up with a minority Parti québécois government. The government’s budget passed by one vote in late November. Polls show a close three-way race between the PQ, Liberals and Coaliation Avenir Quebec. Minority parliaments rarely last much more than a year, so the situation in Quebec bears watching.

Nova Scotia

Nova Scotia’s last election was in 2009. It is one of the few provinces which does not have fixed election dates, but since the government is coming into its fourth year in office, an election is likely in 2013. An election must occur by June 2014.

Nunavut

The last election in Nunavut occurred in October 2008, and so the current parliament is entering its 5th year. Nunavut does not have fixed election dates, so an election will be held some time this year, no later than October 2013.

UNITED KINGDOM

UK local elections

The 2013 United Kingdom local elections are due to take place on Thursday 2 May 2013. Elections will be held in 35 English councils, including all 27 non-metropolitan county councils, the 5 unitary authorities covering ceremonial counties, and 3 other unitary authorities, and to a single Welsh unitary authority. What will be interesting to watch for is how the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) performs. The party has surged in recent polls, often polling ahead of the Liberal Democrats, and recently finished 2nd in two by-elections for parliamentary seats. In the 2011 local elections, UKIP took control of Ramsey town council, and maintained its seven councillors across England, and one in Northern Ireland.

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The length of two swords

Recently, the brilliant UK actor Philip Glenister (Life on Mars, Ashes to Ashes, State of Play, Mad Dogs, Hidden, etc.) was interviewed on the Andrew Marr show in connection with his latest role, that of Chief Government Whip in the play “This House“, which is set in 1974, when Labour had a shaky minority government.The discussion turned to the innately adversarial nature of politics in the UK House of Commons, with Marr noting that the play was in some ways an attack on the British parliamentary tradition, that of two sides against each other, and that underneath, there was a dream of a better way of doing things, a call for politics to be more consensual. Glenister noted that UK was “one of the few democracies, just by the layout of our parliament… it’s in a rectangular shape as opposed to in the round. It’s only one of two in the world.”

If Glenister is correct, and there are only two democracies in the world with rectangular Chambers which force government and opposition to face off against each other on opposing sides, then the Canada is the other one. The Canadian House of Commons, the Senate and most of the Canadian provincial and territorial legislatures are also rectangular, the exceptions being the Legislative Assembly of Manitoba, the Legislative Assembly of Nunavut and the Legislative Assembly of the Northwest Territories.

What is being implied here is that layout of the Chamber, government on one side, opposition parties on the other, makes our politics more adversarial because it imposes an “Us vs Them” feel from the outset. This is the same argument put forward by architects in this very interesting article, “The Shape of Debate to Come“.

However, it is debatable to what extent the shape of the chamber might influence how adversarial or consensual debate will be. As Professor White notes in the above article, countries which end up with a more consensual approach to politics also tend to use some form of proportional representation rather than First-Past-the-Post:

But, in an email, he said there was “pretty much zero” chance of more co-operative behaviour in Canadian legislatures. And he put the differences in approach in legislatures such as Wales and Scotland more down to mixed electoral systems, not just first-past-the-post.

He said: ”Unquestionably the opposing rows of benches in standard Westminster parliaments reinforces the adversarial nature of the place; for my students I liken it to opposing armies or sports teams squaring off. At the same time, I see seating arrangements as very much secondary to underlying political culture and prevailing political norms.

“The Manitoba [legislature], which is semi-circular, has exceedingly nasty, adversarial partisan politics, and the US Congress these days is hardly a paragon of non-partisanship.”

Because PR makes it very difficult for any one party to form a majority government on its own, this means that coalition government tends to be the norm in countries which use some form of PR, and that reality alone will require parties to work harder to find some sort of consensus. As Prof. White points out, despite sitting in the round, politics in both Manitoba and the US Congress are very partisan and adversarial, and both jurisdictions use FPTP. The Australian House of Representatives is horseshoe-shaped, and politics Down Under is every bit as partisan as it is up here, particularly in the current minority parliament. Australia uses the Alternative Vote to elect its MPs, a voting system which requires voters to rank the candidates on the ballot in order of preference, and to win the seat, a candidate must gain over 50% of the vote, either outright, or through transferred preferences. AV, like FPTP, is not at all proportional, which may explain why political debate in the House of Representatives is partisan and adversarial.

This summer, it was reported that the UK Parliament could be closed for five years for extensive refurbishment, with MPs and Lords “convened in a replica chamber or a conference centre for the duration of the repair work, which could start in 2015.” This immediately alarmed some. The Spectator’s Fraser Nelson raised the threat of some advocating that a new, refurbished chamber would be “a chance to move the MPs to a lifeless, European style semi-circular chamber that supposedly encourages them to co-operate.” Fraser comments on how deathly boring debate is in the Scottish Parliament, which is circular. He does not mention that Scottish Members of Parliament (MSPs) are elected using Mixed-Member Proportional representation (MMP).

But is the electoral system alone enough to determine how consensual or adversarial politics will be in a given jurisdiction? Thomas Carl Lundberg, in his paper “Politics is Still an Adversarial Business: Minority Government and Mixed-Member Proportional Representation in Scotland and New Zealand“, concluded that while both nations introduced MMP in part to bring about a “new politics”, in the end, “the impact of institutional engineering upon the behaviour of politicians has been limited.” New Zealand adopted MMP in 1996, Scotland in 1999. New Zealand has seen the formation of mostly minority governments under MMP (albeit minority coalition government rather than single-party minority government) supported by other smaller parties through confidence and supply agreements, while Scotland has experienced two terms of majority coalition government, one term of single-party  minority government, and most recently, to the surprise of most, a single-party majority government.

The reasons why MMP has had limited success in curbing adversarial politics in Scotland and New Zealand, according to Lundberg are varied. Long before New Zealand adopted MMP, it had a very strong two-party system (Labour on the left and the National Party on the right) and a long history of single-party majority government. With the introduction of MMP in 1996, that didn’t really change. Politics remained quite adversarial between Labour and the National Party, but both of the main parties learned to work with the much smaller parties in order to form governments.

Scotland on the surface may appear more consensual, but there are other tensions at work. Scotland has a true multiparty system, that is one in which “there are three to five relevant parties which are not separated (polarised) by a large or intense ideological distance” (which isn’t the case in New Zealand). Rather, Scotland’s party system “is characterised by two significant cleavages” – class divisions and “the process of building the UK (with England at the centre dominating the periphery composed of Scotland, Wales and Ireland) in the latter.” The two largest parties in Scotland are Labour and the Scottish National Party – both are centre-left, and they have a long, adversarial relationship dating back before devolution, or to quote the former leader of the Scottish Liberal Democrats: “there is a level of visceral hatred between the Nationalists and Labour to this day. So, it just transferred from London to Edinburgh … we just so massively underestimated how important it is for people to have good, personal relationships across all parties.”

Simply put, how adversarial or consensual politics might be in a given democracy will depend on many factors. While the shape of the debating chamber and the voting system used to elect members undoubtedly play a part, changing one or both will not necessarily bring about more polite politics.

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Australia’s Labor Party’s revolving door leadership

In June 2010, Australian Labor Party leader and Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, was ousted by his caucus in a leadership challenge won by Rudd’s Deputy Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, who then became both party leader and Prime Minister. Less than two years later, history appears to be repeating itself, with Rudd now challenging Gillard’s leadership of the party. Gillard announced a ballot for the party’s leadership would take place Monday, February 27. Mr. Rudd’s challenge failed, and Ms. Gillard successfully held off the challenge, winning by 71 votes to 31 votes for Rudd.

If Rudd’s challenge had been successful, he would have replaced Gillard as party leader, but not necessarily as Prime Minister of Australia.

The Australian Labor Party leader is elected by the party caucus in Parliament, that is, the elected members of that party in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. In contrast, Canadian political party leaders are chosen by party members. The rules are different for each party, but essentially, whenever there is a leadership race, anyone who is a member of that party can run as a candidate for the leadership, even if they aren’t a sitting MP, and anyone who is a member of the party has the opportunity to vote for the party leader at a leadership convention. This is more or less the same process used by the main political parties in the UK. In some instances, certain groups may also have voting rights, for example, the trade unions can vote to elect the leader of the UK Labour Party. While slightly more democratic, even in these instances, the party leaders are not directly elected by the general population.

There are pros and cons to each approach. In the case of party leadership decided by the party caucus, this strengthens the role of individual MPs and makes the party leader more responsive to his or her MPs. A party leader elected in a more democratic way, by party members, may be able to more easily exert pressure on his or her MPs, rendering MPs more docile and submissive to the party leader, since they can claim support that extends beyond the caucus and to the party as a whole.

Some parties seek to balance both approaches. For example, in 1998, the UK Conservative Party changed its rules for electing a new leader by opening up the process to party members. Prior to 1998, the party leader was chosen by caucus. However, while the actual selection of the party leader is more open, the party caucus still plays an important role. For example, the party caucus can potentially force a leadership review by calling for a vote of confidence in the party leader. To secure a confidence vote, 15% of Conservative Members of Parliament must submit a request for such a vote, in writing, to the Chairman of the 1922 Committee.

If the incumbent Leader wins the support of a simple majority in any such vote, they would remain Leader and no further vote could be called for a period of twelve months from the date of the ballot.  If the Leader were to lose such a vote (again, on a simple majority basis) they must resign, and they may not stand in the leadership election which is then triggered.  As well, it is the party caucus which decides on who the candidates for the leadership will be from among the current sitting MPs. If only one name is put forward, that person becomes the new leader, without party members having any say in the matter. If two names are put forward, then those names are put to the general party membership. However, if three or more names are put forward, a ballot is held within the Parliamentary Party. An exhaustive ballot system is used to select two candidates to go forward to the general membership of the Party.

Getting back to the situation in Australia, these internal Labor Party machinations have prompted some backlash in Australia, with calls for party leaders to be directly elected by the people. Indeed, even this blog has received hits from people based on those search terms. What is not clear is if people are calling for the Prime Minister to be directly elected, or simply for political parties to democratize the way they choose their leader by opening up the process to party members.

I stated at the outset that if Rudd’s leadership challenge was successful, he would replace Julia Gillard as Labor Party leader. One would assume that he would also automatically become Prime Minister, however, this was less immediately clear because of the current hung parliament situation in the Australian House of Representatives.

The Prime Minister is appointed by the Governor-General. This can only happen if there is a vacancy to fill, meaning Julia Gillard would have to resign. If she loses the party leadership, one would assume that she would then resign as Prime Minister as well. As Australian constitutional law expert Anne Twomey explains:

“A lot of people don’t realise that it’s actually a reserve power of the Governor-General; she has some discretion in making this decision, but it’s a discretion confined by some convention.

“The convention says she has to appoint the person who either holds the support of the majority of the Lower House or is most likely to hold that support.”

Professor Twomey says that is where independent MPs will play a key role.

“Can she feel certain that the independents will support Kevin Rudd and that he is the one who holds the support of the majority of the Lower House?” she asked.

“It might be quite difficult for the Governor-General. There’s two ways she could approach it.

“The first would be to ask the independents to come in or give a letter telling her which way they intend to vote – you saw that sort of experience more recently in Tasmania with the hung parliament there.

“Alternatively she could … wait for parliament to sit, and let there be a vote of confidence or no confidence on the floor of the parliament and whatever the House of Representatives chooses then that person [will be appointed] as prime minister.”

“And that would make sure she wasn’t seen to be in any way biased or influencing results – she could leave it to the House to decide.”

Labor currently governs as a minority government with the support of a Green and a few independent MPs. If these independents indicated to the Governor-General that they can’t support Labor with Mr. Rudd as party leader, but would support Opposition leader Tony Abbott’s party, the Governor-General could then ask Mr. Abbott to form the government. Or, if the independents indicate that they can’t support either Rudd or Abbott, they could indicate their preference for an election to be called:

“The independents can’t themselves advise the Governor-General and say ‘hey, call an election’, but what they can do is say ‘we will not give support to the new Labor leader, we will support Tony Abbott to the extent that when he comes into power, the first thing he’s going to do is advise the Governor-General to call an election’.

“So that would be the way of causing an election if the independents thought that was the way to resolve the matter.”

The Governor-General’s third option would be to dissolve parliament, which she can only do on the advise of the Prime Minister, meaning she would have to appoint someone Prime Minister first:

“So if the Governor-General is inclined to think this whole issue that should be resolved by an election, she would be able to appoint Tony Abbott who presumably would not want to be stuck dealing with independents and therefore would advise her to call an election – that would be the way to achieve it.”

The Rudd-Gillard contest presented a special dilemma for the Labor Party:

Gillard is well liked by the majority of her colleagues but disliked by the majority of the voters. Rudd is loathed, indeed hated, by the majority of his colleagues, but is vastly more popular than Gillard among the public.

Because of this, Rudd tried to by-pass caucus support for his leadership by appealing directly to the general public. As Geoff Robinson, a lecturer in politics at Deakin University explains:

“There’s a difference between Julia Gillard’s appeal, very much to the parliamentary party, perhaps the traditions of the Westminster system, whereas Kevin Rudd is mounting a populist, almost an American-style campaign to the mass of the electorate, potentially to Labor supporters.”

Recent polls showed Rudd to be more popular than Gillard, and also more popular than Opposition leader Tony Abbott, but while this may be the case, it is the Labor party caucus which will decide who the party leader will be, and by all accounts, there was great animosity towards Rudd among those he would have to work with day in and day out.

While there is certainly a case to be made for parties such as the Australian Labor Party to democratize how it chooses its leader (and indeed, some are making that case), in a Westminster parliamentary system, party leaders couldn’t be elected directly by the people.  It is not a presidential system. As I have repeatedly stressed in many other posts, voters in Westminster parliamentary systems do not elect governments, much less the Prime Minister, they elect parliaments. It is the party (or group of parties) which can command the confidence of the House which forms the government, and the leader of said party then becomes Prime Minister. A government may, in theory, be removed at any time, if it loses the confidence of the House. If the party in power wishes to change leaders at some point during its mandate, that is the party’s prerogative.

In most instances, e.g., when there is a single-party majority government in place, a change in the party leadership will not affect the governing party’s ability to command the confidence of the House. However, as discussed above, in a minority situation, where the government depends on the support of other parties to stay in power, or in again, perhaps in the case of a majority coalition government such as the one in the UK, a change of party leader might make it more difficult for the government to retain the confidence of the House. The Australian independent MPs might not have supported Labor with Kevin Rudd as leader – they had agreed to support the party led by Julia Gillard. Similarly, if the UK Conservatives ousted David Cameron for another leader, the Liberal Democrats might rethink their position in the coalition.

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Parliaments, PMOs and Social Media

On Tuesday, 31 January 2012, Education Secretary Michael Gove appeared before the House of Commons Education Committee. It is the Committee’s mandate to monitor the policy, administration and spending of the Department for Education and its associated arms length bodies, and having the Minister give evidence allows them to scrutinize his work, performance and policies.

This in and of itself is not remarkable. What is different about this meeting is that in advance of the session, the Committee asked the public to suggest questions via twitter. By all accounts, this rather novel approach was a huge success:

“We have been overwhelmed by how many there have been… For the last few days, there have just been hundreds and hundreds and ultimately thousands, I think, of questions.”

Over 5000 questions were received via Twitter, and the last hour of Gove’s appearance before the committee was used for questions submitted that way. You can watch the proceedings here, if interested. Both the UK Parliament and Government have embraced social media tools (defined as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, etc.) to a far greater extent than have parliaments in other Commonwealth jurisdictions. I would like to use this post to highlight some of these initiatives. Please note that I will be focusing here primarily on the use of social media by national parliaments and Offices of the Prime Minister/cabinet, but not on government departments. I will also look at the parliaments of sub-national jurisdictions, such as the Canadian provincial legislatures and Australian state parliaments, but not in as great detail, nor will I focus on the use of social media by individual MPs. It is highly possible that I may miss something, and if this is the case, I will update the post as needed, should such an omission be brought to my attention.

The United Kingdom - Parliaments

There is an official UK Parliament Twitter account (@UKParliament) which regularly tweets the upcoming business of the House of Commons and its various select committees, as well as other relevant news items. The House of Lords has its own Twitter account (@UKHouseofLords) which does much the same, but focusing only on the upper Chamber.

The UK Parliament also has a Facebook page, a Flickr account, and a YouTube channel. The UK Parliament has organized these videos in 10 playlists: PMQs (going back to 12 October 2011), Select Committees, Parliament Tours, 20 Years of Televised Commons, The Speaker, People and Parliament Inquiry, Virtual Tour of Westminster Hall, The House of Lords, Education Series, and Big Ben.

While not an initiative of Westminster, I would like to also mention Lords of the Blog, a collective blog authored by various members of the House of Lords. The blog launched in 2008 and is sponsored by the Hansard Society. You can also follow the blog on Twitter (@lordsoftheblog).

The Scottish Parliament has a Twitter account (@ScotParl), while the Welsh Assembly makes use of Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and YouTube, as does the Northern Ireland Assembly (Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and YouTube). The Northern Ireland Assembly also maintains a blog, Assembly Round Up, which is described as being “not just about Assembly business, but also about some of the events, or behind-the-scenes activities.”

And while they don’t technically count as social media, I will mention that the Scottish and Welsh parliaments have online petitions schemes, although the Scottish Parliament’s e-petitions system is currently being overhauled, and so not active at the time of writing. And of course, I have written several posts about the e-petitions scheme launched by the UK Government in August 2011.

The United Kingdom – Prime Minister’s Office

On the Government side, the UK Prime Minister’s Office has an official Twitter account (@Number10gov), which bills itself as “The official twitter channel for Prime Minister David Cameron’s office, based at 10 Downing Street.” The website link associated with the account is to the official website of the Prime Minister’s Office (http://www.number10.gov.uk).

Consequently, the UK Prime Minister Twitter account is what I will be calling a “generic” account. By this I mean that it is associated with the Office of the Prime Minister and not specifically with the current incumbent of that office. Thus, if PM David Cameron left politics tomorrow, there would be no need to create a new Twitter account for whoever took over as the new Prime Minister. I mention this only because it presents a sharp contrast with the Twitter accounts of other prime ministers, as will be discussed below.

Number 10 also makes use of Facebook and Flickr. While the Flickr account, like the Twitter account is that of the Prime Minister’s Office, the Facebook page is David Cameron’s Facebook page, not a more generic Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Facebook page. There is also an “Official Number 10” iPhone app available, for the really diehard fans.

Cabinet Office also has a strong social media presence. There is a Twitter account (@cabinetofficeUK), Flickr account and YouTube channel. Cabinet Office supports the Prime Minister and the Cabinet, helping to ensure effective development, coordination and implementation of policy and operations across all government departments. It is headed by the Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg. Clegg has a Twitter account, but it is Nick Clegg’s official Twitter account, not a generic Deputy Prime Minister Twitter account.

And while I stated at the outset that I would not be discussing individual MPs’ use of social media, I will single out one cabinet minister in particular, Foreign Secretary William Hague. Hague is an avid user of Twitter and frequently holds Q&A sessions on Twitter wherein he solicits and answers questions from people on various aspects of foreign policy and international events.

Canada – Parliaments

Overall, Canadian parliaments are lagging in their adoption of social media.

The Canadian House of Commons does not make use of any social media, however, the Canadian Senate recently launched a Twitter account, @SenateCA.

Three Canadian provincial legislatures have started using social media: Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia and Saskatchewan. The Legislative Assembly of Prince Edward Island has both a Twitter account and a Facebook page, as does the Legislative Assembly of Saskatchewan (Twitter, Facebook). The Nova Scotia House of Assembly has  Twitter account.

Canada – Prime Minister’s Office

In contrast to the Canadian Parliament’s notable absence on social media, the Prime Minister’s Office has embraced social media whole-heartedly. Some of the social media accounts are generic – meaning associated with the Office and not more personally with the current incumbent, while other accounts are official but personal (or partisan) and could not be used by the next Prime Minister. The Prime Minister of Canada website features links to Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, as well as Google+ and podcasts. The Twitter, Facebook and Flickr accounts are associated with the PMO and link back to the PMO website. However, the Prime Minister has another Twitter account (@pmharper) which is more personal and partisan as the associated link is to the Conservative Party of Canada website. Similarly, the YouTube channel is heavily branded by the individual, with Stephen Harper’s name dominant. It does link back to the PMO website, but would require a significant overhaul before it could be used by another PM. The Google+ account is clearly a more personal Stephen Harper account rather than an official, generic Prime Minister of Canada account.

Australia – Parliaments

There are four Twitter accounts associated with the Australian Parliament. The Australian House of Representatives and Senate both have Twitter accounts (@AboutTheHouse and @AuSenate). The Hansard services also has a Twitter account (@AUS_Hansard), as does the Parliamentary Library (@ParlLibrary).

Four of Australia’s six states and two territories have social media presence. They are:

Australia – Prime Minister’s Office

Most of the social media accounts listed on the website of the Prime Minister of Australia would appear to be personal accounts rather than generic accounts for the post of PM rather than the current incumbent. The Facebook page is Julia Gillard’s page, the Twitter account (@JuliaGillard) is associated with the website of the Australian Labor Party, not the website of the Office of the Prime Minister. The Flickr account is Julia Gillard’s photostream. The only social media account that could be a generic account for the Office of the Prime Minister is the YouTube channel, but even there, it isn’t very clear. The account links back to the website of the Office of the Prime Minister, but the channel is called PMGillard’s Channel.

New Zealand – Parliament

The New Zealand Parliament has a Twitter account (@NZParliament).

New Zealand – Prime Minister’s Office

Prime Minister John Key has a Twitter account (@johnkeypm), but like the Australian PM’s account, it isn’t a generic Office of the Prime Minister account. It links to John Key’s Facebook page, and to his political website.

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Some interesting links: rebel MPs, e-petitions, hung parliaments, and political disengagement

1. Rebels of the Chamber

Isabel Hardman has a fascinating piece looking at some of the most rebellious backbench MPs in the UK House of Commons:

Once an MP starts down the route of the serial rebel, it seems easier for the whips to leave them be. Islington North MP Jeremy Corbyn, is one such example. “A whip called me once, saying: ‘I just wanted to confirm that you will definitely be voting against us tonight’,” he says. “I replied, yes, your intelligence is right.”

2. Procedure Committee releases its report on e-Petitions

In an earlier post, I reported on a hearing of the UK House of Commons Procedure Committee into the Government’s e-petitions scheme. The Committee recently released its report. Among their recommendations:

  • Extra sittings: The committee’s report recommends that an extra sitting in Westminster Hall, between 4.30 and 7.30 pm on a Monday, should be created for debates on e-petitions. The sitting would take place only if the Backbench Business Committee had scheduled a debate on an e-petition. The committee proposes that this change should be introduced as an experiment and reviewed after a year.
  • Government website:The committee’s report also recommends changes to the Government’s e-petitions website so that the information provided to petitioners is clearer, fuller and more accurate.

 3. The Hung Commonwealth Parliament: the First Year

The 2010 Australian general election, held on 21 August, resulted in a hung Parliament, with both the Australian Labor Party and the Liberal/Nationals Coalition emerging with 72 seats each in the House of Representatives. The remaining seats were held by one Western Australia Nationals member (Tony Crook); one Australian Greens member (Adam Bandt); and four non-aligned independent members (Bob Katter, Rob Oakeshott, Andrew Wilkie, and Tony Windsor). This was Australia’s first hung parliament in 70 years. The Parliamentary Library of the Australian Parliament has produced a detailed overview of the this parliament’s first year and the various standing order changes that have been implemented to better deal with the situation.

4. The Real Outsiders

Samara Canada’s latest report looks at the politically disengaged in Canada:

First, whether they were engaged or disengaged, our participants universally condemned politics. Contrary to the notion that the disengaged are apathetic, we found that those less likely to participate were neither disinterested in nor uninformed about the system. Instead we found that their disdain for politics was driven by an intuitive understanding of how the political system functions and their previous interactions with it.

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On pairing

Pairing is a parliamentary practice whereby two members of parliament from opposing political parties may agree to abstain where one member is unable to vote, due to other commitments, illness, travel problems, etc. The rationale behind the practice is to maintain the relative distribution of seats in the House so that a party’s strength is based on who was elected, not which MPs are ill that day, or had their flight delayed.

There are slight variations in how pairing is organized in different jurisdictions.

UK House of Commons

As explained on the UK Parliament website,

Pairing is an arrangement where an MP of one party agrees with an MP of an opposing party not to vote in a particular division. This gives both MPs the opportunity not to attend. Pairing is an informal arrangement and is not recognised by the House of Commons’ rules. Such arrangements have to be registered with the whips who check that the agreement is stuck to. Pairing is not allowed in divisions of great political importance but pairings can last for months or years.

There have been times, however, where one or more of the parties have refused to participate in pairing arrangements. In December 1996, for example, Labour and the Liberal Democrats discovered that the Tories had been cheating by pairing the same three Conservative MPs with three Labour MPs and three Liberal Democrat MPs. Because of that, the two opposition parties decided to withdraw from all pairing arrangements beginning in January 1997.

It is not clear how long this protest lasted – perhaps only until the end of that parliament since in the 1997 general election, Labour were elected with a huge majority. Pairing is currently practiced by all three of the major parties in the UK House of Commons, but only, as stated above, for votes that aren’t of great importance (one or two line whips).

Canada House of Commons

In the Canadian House of Commons, pairing did not have any official recognition up until 1991. It was considered a private arrangement between Members. In 1991, the Standing Orders were modified to provide for the establishment of a Register of Paired Members, which is kept at the Table. The actual pairing arrangements are arrived at by the party Whips, and Members who will not be participating in any recorded divisions on a given day will have their names entered into the Register by their respective party Whips. These pairings Members are published in the Debates (Hansard) and in the Journals immediately following the entry for any recorded division held on that day.

While this process has formalized pairing to a degree, it still remains largely a private arrangement between the parties, and nothing can be done if a paired Member “forgets” that they were paired and votes. Also, unlike in the UK, the practice in the Canadian House of Commons is that pairings are agreed to on an ad hoc basis, that is, vote by vote. There aren’t any long-term pairing agreements which may last months or years, as occurs in the UK House of Commons. As well, since there is no distinction between one-line, two-line and three-line whips in the Canadian House of Commons, the parties can agree to pairing arrangements on any type of vote, including those of “great political importance”.

Pairing most commonly occurs in the Canadian House of Commons during hung parliaments, when there is a minority government in place. In such instances, the numerical balance between the parties matters far more, and it becomes far more important that the relative voting strengths of the parties is maintained. When one party forms a majority government, pairing is much less common.

Australia House of Representatives

As in the UK and Canada, pairing in the Australian House of Representatives is an unofficial arrangement organized by the party Whips. As in the UK, Members have at times been paired not only on particular questions or one sitting, but sometimes for extended periods. This has even included pairing the Prime Minister with the Leader of the Opposition. As in Canada, pairing is more common when the relative strength of the parties is much closer. Also like Canada, pairing is allowed on crucial votes, and arranging pairings on key votes can be a very protracted and disorderly affair. Parties might also pull out of pairing arrangements, for various reasons:

Pairs have been cancelled by the Government because of the need for an absolute majority to pass a bill to alter the Constitution. The Opposition has cancelled the arrangements for the remainder of the session as a consequence of its view on the manner in which the proceedings of the House were being conducted. (House of Representatives Practice, p. 279)

New Zealand Parliament

Pairing was abolished in the New Zealand Parliament in 1996, following the introduction of new Standing Orders to accommodate the change to the MMP voting system. MPs no longer have to be in the chamber at the time of voting. Parties declare their total votes including the ‘proxy’ votes of those away.

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On electing a Speaker

In an earlier post, I explained the role of the Speaker in Westminster parliamentary systems, and briefly touched on how the Speaker is chosen. In this post, I will expand on that topic since there seems to be a degree of interest in the topic, according the blog’s search statistics.

Canada: House of Commons

The Constitution Act, 1867 requires that the Speaker be elected by the House of Commons:

44. The House of Commons on its first assembling after a General Election shall proceed with all practicable Speed to elect One of its Members to be Speaker.

Prior to 1986, this amounted to the rubber-stamp approval of a Member nominated by the Prime Minister, and was usually, but not always, a Member from his or her own party. In 1926, and in 1979, Conservative Prime Ministers named Liberal MPs as Speakers.

In 1986, the Standing Orders were changed to allow for the election of a Speaker by secret ballot.

All MPs except for Cabinet ministers and party leaders are eligible to run for the Speakership. Any MP who does not wish to put his or her name forward must issue a letter withdrawing from the ballot by the day before the vote. All MPs who do not remove their name from the ballot as of 6pm the day before the election are listed as candidates on the ballot and are allowed a five minute speech to persuade their colleagues as to why they should be elected.

The election is presided over by the Dean of the House, the MP who is the longest continuously serving MP who is not in Cabinet.

After the first round of voting, if no candidate has received more than 50% of the vote, all candidates who received less than 5% of the vote are removed from the ballot. If no candidate received less than 5% of the vote then the MP with the fewest vote drops off. This continues, with a one hour break between ballots, until one candidate receives more than 50% of the vote. In the event of a tie on the final ballot, the ballot is taken again. This happened once, in 1993, when Gilbert Parent won over Jean-Robert Gauthier.

The Speakers of all of the provincial and territorial assemblies in Canada are also elected by their fellow Members, though the balloting system used may differ from one province to another. (See this post for a more detailed look at the election of the Speaker at the start of the 41st Parliament on 2 June 2011.)

The United Kingdom: House of Commons

Prior to 2001, a Speaker was elected through a series of divisions.  One candidate would be proposed as a Speaker in a motion and additional candidates would be presented as successive amendments to the original motion.  Each amendment would be voted on through a series of divisions until a candidate was finally chosen.  New procedures for the election of the Speaker were agreed by the House on 22 March 2001 (Standing Order Nos. 1A and 1B), but used for the first time only in 2009. This is because the UK has a tradition whereby if the Speaker from the previous parliament is re-elected and indicates that they are still willing to serve as Speaker, the Father of the House (the longest serving MP) calls on one Member to move the motion that the former Speaker should take the Chair as Speaker-elect.  This is the procedure that was followed after the 2001 and 2005 General Elections.

If a Speaker dies or retires, or does not return after a General Election, a new Speaker is elected by the House.  As part of the new procedures, put in to practice for the first time on 22 June 2009, an exhaustive secret ballot system is used.  Only Members of Parliament are able to vote for a new Speaker. Before voting begins, each candidate addresses the House, explaining why they believe they should be elected. At each round, Members are given a list of candidates and place an “X” next to the candidate of their choice. The votes are then counted. The candidate with the fewest votes is then eliminated, as are any candidates who received less than 5% of the votes cast.  Also, any candidate may withdraw within 10 minutes of the announcement of the ballot.  This process continues until one candidate gains more than half of the votes.

Unlike in other jurisdictions, once elected to the post, the Speaker resigns from his or her party. If he or she stands for re-election in the next General Election, they are listed on the ballot as “Speaker”, not as a member of any party, and the major parties in the House of Commons normally do not run candidates against the Speaker in order to better ensure that he or she will be re-elected.

Australia: House of Representatives

As is the case in Canada, the Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act requires that a Speaker be elected:

35. The House of Representatives shall, before proceeding to the despatch of any other business, choose a member to be the Speaker of the House, and as often as the office of Speaker becomes vacant the House shall again choose a member to be the Speaker.

The Speaker is elected by the House of Representatives in a secret ballot. The Clerk conducts the election. Candidates are nominated by other MPs, and then asked by the Clerk if they are willing to let their name stand. If only one MP is nominated, than they become the Speaker. If there are two or more candidates for the position of Speaker, Members vote by secret ballot. If no candidate emerges with over 50% of the vote, the nominee with the smallest number of votes is excluded from later ballots, and a fresh round of voting takes place. This process is repeated as often as necessary until one nominee receives a majority of the votes, and this nominee is elected Speaker.

The first Speaker, Sir Frederick Holder, sat as an independent after his election as Speaker, but since his death in 1909 the Speakership has been a partisan office and the nominee of the government party has always been elected. Unlike the Speaker of the House of Commons in Britain, the Speaker continues to attend party meetings, and at general elections stands as a party candidate.

There is no convention in Australia that the Speaker should not be opposed in his or her constituency, and three Speakers (Groom in 1929, Nairn in 1943 and Aston in 1972) have been defeated at general elections. Because the Speaker is always the nominee of the governing party, there is no expectation that a Speaker will continue in office following a change of government. While the Opposition sometimes nominates one of its own members for Speaker after a general election, this is understood to be a symbolic act, and party discipline is always followed in any ballot.

New Zealand: House of Representatives

Members of Parliament vote to elect the Speaker at the start of each new Parliament (after every general election). This is the first task of every new Parliament once members have been sworn in.

Interested MPs nominate themselves as candidates. If there is only one member nominated, the Clerk puts no question to the House; there can be no vote on the nomination, and the member is declared to be elected Speaker. If there are two members nominated, a personal vote is held to determine which one is to be elected. For this purpose the Ayes lobby is used for those voting for the member whose name comes first in the alphabet and the Noes lobby for those voting for the other member. In the event of a tie on the vote the Clerk calls for further nominations, which may include either or both of the members who were first nominated.

If more than two members are nominated for Speaker, members initially vote from their places in the House rather than by going into the lobbies as they do on a personal vote. The bells are rung for seven minutes and then the doors are locked. Working alphabetically, members are then asked by the Clerk individually to rise in their places and state which of the nominated members they vote for. Members may record an abstention. No proxy votes are permitted. If, at the end of this process, any candidate has obtained an absolute majority of the votes of the members voting (that is, excluding any abstentions), that member is immediately declared elected. Otherwise the member with the fewest number of votes drops out and the votes are taken again until only two candidates remain. If the two candidates with the fewest votes have the same number of votes, the entire vote is taken again. If the two candidates with the fewest votes still have the same number of votes, the Clerk determines which candidate is to drop out by drawing lots.

When, after this process, there are only two candidates remaining, the election is decided by a personal vote. Again, no proxies are permitted. In the event of a tie on the personal vote, nominations are called for again. After the election vote, the Speaker-elect visits the Governor-General to be confirmed in office. The Speaker almost always comes from the Government benches.

The Speaker of New Zealand’s House of Representatives is allowed to maintain links with their political party, but must not show political bias when chairing business in the House. From 1996 under the voting system introduced as a result of MMP the Speaker’s casting vote was abolished. The Speaker’s vote is now included with the votes held by the party. In the other jurisdiction mentioned above, the Speaker votes only in the instance of a tie (the casting vote). In New Zealand, if a vote results in tie, the motion is simply declared lost.

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