The Motoring Enthusiasts Party elected its first senator this week. That’s the Australian Motoring Enthusiasts Party, and they elected Ricky Muir to the Australian Senate representing Victoria. To earn that seat, Muir attracted a total of 11,390 votes, or 0.5 percent of voters.
How does someone become a senator with just 0.5 percent of the vote? This is partly a result of Australia’s preferential voting, which allows voters to enter their first, second, third, and more preferences. This leads to instant run-offs: if no one gets 50 percent of first-preference votes, then the second-preferences are counted from voters whose first-preference candidates did not come in first or second.
That alone would not be enough to elect someone with 0.5 percent of first-preference votes. But the Australian Senate decided to set aside six seats for micro parties. Other micro parties that elected senators this election included Palmer United; Australian Sports, whose goal is to get every Australian involved in sport and recreation; and Family First.
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Such microparties make sense in a parliamentary system in which elections are based more on parties than on candidates. The Antiplanner has always felt that such systems, in which the executive and legislative branches are the same, lack the checks and balances that our government has leading to what amounts to serial dictatorships. Unfortunately, our checks and balances haven’t worked too well lately either.
Micro parties can provide a check and balance that could work as well or better than the American system of separate legislative and executive bodies. The Australian Senate has 76 members; dedicating six to micro parties reduces the chances that any one party will achieve a majority, thus requiring coalition building to form a government. The coalitions can provide a check and even while they minimize the gridlock that our country sometimes suffers, not that anyone has noticed it lately.
Not being a motoring enthusiast myself, I probably wouldn’t vote for the American Motoring Enthusiast Party. (How about a User Fees First Party?) But it is great that both motoring enthusiasts and housing advocates will have a voice in the next Australian senate.
Why can’t a party-based legislative branch found in the UK be combined with the wholly-separate executive branch found in America?
I often joke that we set-up countries with parliaments so that they can’t challenge our power in the world. Anything to give thought diversity to those countries is a good thing. It really shows you that the moronic city ideas would prevail if we had that system. Everyday I ride the bus, I wonder why are they pursuing cheapskate commuters, instead of the poor.
I am surprised the AntiPlanner likes the idea of these single-interest micro-parties. The main purpose of these parties is to become the last tiny part needed for a majority, and then they can extract huge special-interest monies and laws for the cause totally disproportional to the national interest.
So your saying they’re exactly the same as macro-parties?
^^^ Beat me to it.
Good point, bennet and MJ. But the macro-parties are always available to the highest bidder.
Government that exists ti redistribute wealth is available to the highest bidder. Government that exists to protect individual liberties (does that form of government even exist?) is not.
“does that form of government even exist?”
On paper, but alas, theory and practice never work out the way the theorist envision.