I have voted, I will be speaking

Orderly queueing in an effective electoral system. From slaves to lords.

So, Saturday 3 May was the Australian Federal Election. I expected the Albanese Labor Government to be re-elected, the Peter Dutton-led Liberal National Party (Coalition) having failed in much the same way as Pierre Poilievre and the Conservatives did in Canada. They did not cope with Trump’s disruptions. Nor did they articulate an alternative vision that tackles issues that resonate with the public but much of the media is not keen on.

I suspect in both cases much of the issue is the “empty staffer” problem: young staffers who have little experience of life, but take too many cues from university and media because that is their life experience and then end up with groupthink by “training” each other.

Hopfer, Daniel (ca 1470-1536): Etching, Three Mamelukes with lances on horseback. Wikimedia commons. (The image makes sense if you keep reading.)

I walked down to the local Primary School to vote. The polls open at 8am, I arrived at 8.30am to join a long queue: lots of folk clearly had the same idea as myself.

The queue was quiet, calm and very orderly. It was also something of a microcosm of humanity, reflecting the local area—South Asians, East Asians, Pacific Islanders, Anglo-Celts, East Africans … The seat I am in is “safe” Labor—the Labor candidate has won in every election since the seat was created in 1949. There were “poll workers” handing out how-to-vote cards for the Labor (the ALP) and the Greens but not for the Coalition, nor any other Party or candidate. From entering the queue to voting and exiting the polling place took an hour.

Australia has adopted the US system of a House of Representatives of single-member electorates allocated to States (and Territories) by population, except that Tasmania—as an Original State—is guaranteed at least five seats, which is more than its population would otherwise warrant. The electorate boundaries are drawn to have—as much as practicable—equal numbers of voters. The Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) conducts the elections and periodically re-draws electorate boundaries by a draft->public responses->final version process.

Voting is compulsory, which reduces the polarisation in Australian politics and means that the working class cannot be driven away from voting, as happens to varying degrees in the UK and US. Voting is by preferential voting: you number all the boxes on the House of Representatives ballot paper in order. If no-one gets a majority from the first (“primary”) votes, the lowest candidates are eliminated in order, with their votes being re-allocated to surviving candidates according to how they numbered their ballot paper (their “preferences”) until someone achieves a majority. Thus, the ALP and the Coalition both have to appeal beyond their bases to achieve a majority in the House of Representatives.

Australia also adopted the US system of an equal number of Senators per State: currently twelve. Both the Northern Territory and the Australian Capital Territory (our equivalent of the District of Columbia) get two Senators each.

Half the Senators in each State and all the Territory Senators are up for re-election each normal election, held every three years.¹ You vote either by numbering at least one-to-six “above the line” (Party tickets) or at least one-to-twelve “below the line” (individual candidates). All Senators who achieve the relevant “quota”—the number of votes such that no candidate could achieve it beyond the number of Senators up for election—are declared elected. Once again, the lowest-primary-vote candidates are eliminated in order, and their votes are re-allocated to surviving candidates according to the numbered preferences, until all the quotas are filled. Senators who more than achieve a quota have their votes re-allocated, weighted by how many over-quota votes there are.

The Senate is therefore elected by a form of proportional representation. As Governments usually do not have a majority in the Senate, that means they have to negotiate with other Parties or independent Senators to get legislation passed. It also means that Senate Committees—particularly the Estimates Committees—are not controlled by the incumbent Government. This gives them a certain robustness of enquiry that keeps the Australian Federal executive under rather better scrutiny than the US Congress can apparently manage—and much better scrutiny than in the UK or Canada. Moreover, any Executive Agency that wishes to issue a regulation has to table them in Parliament and any such regulation can be knocked out by a simple majority vote of either House.

Australia is simply better governed than the other Anglosphere countries, and our electoral system is a very big part of why.

[Helen Dale has an excellent essay on Australia’s constitutional borrowings from the US and elsewhere. Also, sadly, there was no democracy sausage at the polling booth. Elsewhere there was https://x.com/hashtag/democracysausage?src=hashtag_click.]

From slaves to lords

On Monday 5 May, at 6pm, Australian Eastern Standard Time, I will presenting a paper by Zoom to the University of Melbourne Medieval Roundtable. The title and abstract is:

Escaping the Kin-Group Trap: Slave Warriors of Islam

Slave warriors were used at a scale and duration by Islamic rulers from the 800s to the 1800s far in excess of their use within any other civilisation. There is, however, something of a paradox in this. While the scale of the systematic use of slave warriors is distinctive to Islam, many Islamic polities either did not use slave warriors, or their use was peripheral, transitory or otherwise marginal.

In his PhD dissertation—later published as a monograph (1981)—Daniel Pipes argued that slave warriors were a response to Muslim rulers not being able to live up to the moral aspirations of Islam, so rulers came to use slave warriors due to the unreliability of local recruits. Pipes over-estimated how extensive their use was across the regions of Islam.

This paper argues that slave warriors were adopted when Islamic rulers—in areas where kin-groups were significant—could neither use local kin-groups to organise their military forces nor suppress kin-groups. In doing so, the paper explores the farmer versus pastoralist divide, why the Middle East is the incubator of monotheism, and how Christianity sanctified the (Roman) farming social synthesis while Islam sanctified the (Arabian) oasis-pastoralism social synthesis.

If you want to join in, let me know.

References

Daniel Pipes, Slave Warriors and Islam: The Genesis of a Military System, Yale University Press, 1981.

1. In a “double dissolution” election, all Senators are up for re-election. Normal elections are “half-Senate” election, but sometimes there is not a House of Representatives election at the same time.