Australian Politics Forum - which senators get 6 year terms?

freediver

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Re: which senators get 6 year terms?
Reply #15 - Aug 14^th, 2016 at 2:25pm

freediver wrote on Aug 14^th, 2016 at 12:27pm:

I urge everyone to write to their local federal MP and state senators to complain about this.

Find your local MP here:

http://apps.aec.gov.au/esearch/

Find your local MP and state senator contact details here:

http://www.alp.org.au/people/#filter=.mp
http://www.alp.org.au/people/#filter=.senator
https://lnp.org.au/our-team/federal/

What I have sent in:

Senate debacle

LNP:

What your party has done in the Senate is wrong. Your party supported the changes to the electoral act in 1984 to adopt a new, fairer method. Your party passed resolutions in 1998 and 2010 to adopt these changes. Your party has reneged on your promise to the Australian people, in a greedy move to get your senators a bigger share of the full 6 year terms, at the expense of other candidates. Your party can not be trusted with this most fundamental aspect of democracy. Your party has deligitimised the senate of Australia. The spin your party has attempted to put on this grubby move in the media is dishonest.

I ask you to do the right thing and change this decision. If you have any backbone at all, you will call out your colleagues for supporting this despicable act.

Labor:

What your party has done in the Senate is wrong. Your party passed changes to the electoral act in 1984 to adopt a new, fairer method. Your party passed resolutions in 1998 and 2010 to adopt these changes. Despite this, your part reneged on this promise to the Australian public in 1987, in a greedy move to get your senators a bigger share of the full 6 year terms, at the expense of other candidates. Your party reneged on your promise yet again just two days ago, for the same greedy motive. Your party can not be trusted with this most fundamental aspect of democracy. Your party has deligitimised the senate of Australia. The spin your party has attempted to put on this grubby move in the media is dishonest.

I ask you to do the right thing and change this decision. If you have any backbone at all, you will call out your colleagues for supporting this despicable act.

Make sure you sign off with your name and suburb.

From another thread on this topic:

Bam wrote on Aug 14^th, 2016 at 1:25pm:

freediver wrote on Aug 14^th, 2016 at 10:32am:

Labor and the Coalition have renegged on a change to the electoral act and two resolutions since then to use the new fairer method of allocating 6 year terms. Instead they have chosen once again to vote to give themselves more six year terms and screw over the other parties. They have tried to pass this off as the will of the people.

I encourage everyone to write to their local federal MP and complain about this.

I posted a quantitative analysis in another thread where I showed that the recount method in section 282 of the Electoral Act produced a fairer outcome. The recount method produced a split for the Coalition 15-13, ALP 12-12, the Greens 4-5 and Hinch 1-0 (the first number is the number of 6-year terms). The results for the first-elected method were Coalition 16-12, ALP 13-11, the Greens 3-6 and Hinch 0-1. So the Coalition and ALP have given themselves one additional long-term Senator at the expense of the Greens and Hinch.

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freediver

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Re: which senators get 6 year terms?
Reply #16 - Aug 14^th, 2016 at 3:21pm

Bam wrote on Aug 6^th, 2016 at 2:23pm:

longweekend58 wrote on Aug 6^th, 2016 at 11:40am:

I think you will see labor and liberal combine to force to historical method.

I'm not so sure. The order of election method would favour the Coalition.

ORDER OF ELECTION (states)

NSW: 3 Coalition 3 ALP, 2 Coalition, 1 ALP, 1 Grn, 1 ON, 1 LDP.
VIC: 3 Coalition, 2 ALP, 1 Grn, 2 Coalition, 2 ALP, 1 Grn, 1 Hinch.
QLD: 3 Coalition, 2 ALP, 1 ON, 2 Coalition, 2 ALP, 1 Grn, 1 ON.
WA: 3 Coalition, 2 ALP, 1 Grn, 2 Coalition, 2 ALP, 1 Grn, 1 ON.
SA: 2 Coalition, 2 ALP, 2 NXT, 2 Coalition, 1 ALP, 1 NXT, 1 Grn, 1 FFP.
TAS: 2 Coalition, 2 ALP, 1 Grn, 1 Lambie, 2 Coalition, 3 ALP, 1 Grn.

TOTALS: 16 Coalition, 13 ALP, 3 Grn, 2 NXT, 1 ON, 1 Lambie, 12 Coalition, 11 ALP, 6 Grn, 3 ON, 1 LDP, 1 Hinch, 1 FFP, 1 NXT.

This split would strongly favour the Coalition 16-12, the ALP slightly 13-11 and heavily disadvantage the Greens 3-6. Sum of these differences is 9.

The s282 method would give Hinch and a NSW Green 6-year terms instead of a Victorian Liberal and NSW Labor candidate. This would give much fairer splits of 15-13 for the Coalition, 12-12 for ALP and 4-5 Greens. Sum of differences is 3 - clearly the s282 method is MUCH fairer.

longweekend58 wrote on Aug 6^th, 2016 at 11:40am:

We get rid of Hinch and at least one hanson senator quickly. That cant be bad.

Hinch was elected 10th, so under the order of election mwthod he would get a 3-year term. Hinch would get a 6-year term under the recount method.

The same for the One Nation candidates - I think three of them would end up with 3-year terms under both methods. Hanson herself may get a 6-year term under both methods.

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freediver

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Re: which senators get 6 year terms?
Reply #17 - Aug 15^th, 2016 at 9:45pm

Got a response from one senator. Guess which party? No response from the others.

Thank you for your email. There have been a range of decisions about the process for elelction . We did not need to have a double dissolution this year;it was a waste of money and has not provided any further stability in the senate. The decision which will be voted on in the senate this month allows for the terms to be determined on order of election…the first 6elected will get 6years and the second 6. 3years. This is fair

I wrote back:

It is unfair and undemocratic. It is a self serving backflip on your party's repeatedly stated policy. It is a lie to try to spin it any other way. Do the right thing.

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Aussie

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Re: which senators get 6 year terms?
Reply #18 - Aug 15^th, 2016 at 9:51pm

freediver wrote on Aug 15^th, 2016 at 9:45pm:

Got a response from one senator. Guess which party? No response from the others.

Thank you for your email. There have been a range of decisions about the process for elelction . We did not need to have a double dissolution this year;it was a waste of money and has not provided any further stability in the senate. The decision which will be voted on in the senate this month allows for the terms to be determined on order of election…the first 6elected will get 6years and the second 6. 3years. This is fair

I wrote back:

It is unfair and undemocratic. It is a self serving backflip on your party's repeatedly stated policy. It is a lie to try to spin it any other way. Do the right thing.

Tell us, FD ~ when you wrote to that Senator, did you state you were owner/admin of this Forum, and did you, in your own words, describe how significant you thought this Forum was in the Australian Body Politic?

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freediver Gold Member Offline www.ozpolitic.com Posts: 49836 At my desk.	Re: which senators get 6 year terms? Reply #19 - Aug 15^th, 2016 at 10:04pm no
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Aussie Gold Member Offline OzPolitic Posts: 38963 Gender:	Re: which senators get 6 year terms? Reply #20 - Aug 15^th, 2016 at 10:15pm freediver wrote on Aug 15^th, 2016 at 10:04pm: no Okay, I'll take you at your word. Why the Hell would you get a specific response to an email when mere mortals like me get a fro forma robot reply telling me nothing other than thanking me for my email?
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freediver Gold Member Offline www.ozpolitic.com Posts: 49836 At my desk.	Re: which senators get 6 year terms? Reply #21 - Aug 15^th, 2016 at 10:17pm That is a pro forma response Aussie. There is more detail there because they are getting a lot of complaints and questions about this. If they had actually read my email, they would have known not to send me such transparent BS.
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