The usual suspects are at it again in Australia after Pauline Hanson refused to accept Acknowledgement of Country – a silly woke sop to Aborigines – and stormed out of the Senate chamber. It was brilliantly reported on the BFD by Lushington Brady on Thursday in an in-depth article.
In recent weeks, there has been this bizarre media contention that, by getting reelected, Senator Hanson knocked Amanda Stoker out of the Senate. The “Oh if only we still had Amanda in the Senate, this behaviour wouldn’t be happening” line, which various Australian outlets have run with in the last few days, implies that there is something “not quite right” about Hanson being elected (hint: “democracy” only applies to the ALP and Green parties and their voters, rather than anybody the left-wing media luvvies dislike).
Recently, Fordham ran that twaddle to his listeners (prompting me to write this essay) and one suspects this will be an endless dead horse the media and other parties will flog during Senator Hanson’s term; except there is just one ever so slight problem with this reasoning – it isn’t true. Either the ignorant media don’t understand how the Senate STV voting system works, or they’ve been too lazy to bother reviewing the Queensland Senate election results.
To briefly summarise: each Australian state elects six senators at election time. This is by the STV method, which means there is a quota of votes – if you receive that number of votes you get elected. In Queensland this year, it was 430,553 votes. Each party submits a party list of candidates (as we do in New Zealand) and when a party gets 430,553 votes its number-one candidate gets elected, then number two and so on. If you fail to receive 430,553 votes, then the preferences of minor parties are redistributed until six candidates do receive that number of votes.
One Nation received 222,925 first-preference votes and, as preferences were distributed when minor candidates were eliminated, ended up (i.e. at the point they ran out of losing candidates! haha!) with 428,718 votes. Pauline Hanson was therefore elected.
There are a couple of points to consider:
- Senator Hanson was the fifth Senator declared elected, not the sixth.
- Therefore it is illogical to suggest she had anything to do with Senator Stoker losing her seat.
- ALP nonentity Anthony Chisholm was the sixth senator declared elected; wonder why he is never accused of knocking Stoker out of the Senate?
- Chisholm ended up with 419,483 votes – far fewer than Pauline Hanson.
- Amanda Stoker ended up with 309,864 votes: out of contention by 110,000 votes.
Socialist logic has always bewildered me, so I have no idea how they join the dots and conclude that 419,483 (Chisholm’s final vote) is somehow more than 428,718 (Pauline’s final vote), but the media and coalition are trying to do so. Bizarre. What actually decided the final two Senate seats was the distribution of preferences of the Legalise Cannabis party. Hanson easily beat Stoker and basically tied with Chisholm when these were counted. Personally I find it hilarious to think 23 per cent of Queensland dope smokers favoured Pauline Hanson over Labor or the Coalition; in a New Zealand context, it’s hard to imagine a quarter of ALCP supporters having, say, Winston as their second choice!
(For distribution of preferences, see count 261 – 265, page 118, results.aec.gov.au.pdf)
