Australian elections
A vote for continuity

By Dr. Stanley Kalpage
Two years ago, Australia's Liberal Party under the leadership of John Howard, had trounced Labour when his Liberal/National Party coalition won a record majority unseating the former Labour government. While in office and despite the Asian crisis, Howard's conservative coalition managed to turn the A$ 10.5 billion deficit it inherited in 1996 into a surplus.

Two years later, John Howard's popularity had fallen dramatically. His majority, if not the coalition's very existence, was under threat. In these circumstances and in order to meet the economic currents swirling around him in neighbouring States. Howard decided on an early general election hoping to avoid the worst of the rising voter anger at the economic fallout from the Asian crisis.

The contestants
The three man contenders in Australia's general election on 3 October had strikingly different backgrounds. John Howard (59), the son of a Sydney garage owner, started his career as a suburban lawyer. A champion of family values, Howard chose to live in Sydney rather than the capital, Canberra, after his 1996 victory. He did not want to disrupt the life of his wife and children.

Kim Christian Beazley (49) hails from a political family. His father, Kim Beazley Sr., was long-standing member of Parliament from Western Australia who served as a Cabinet minister in Gough Whitlam's 1972-75 Labour government.

Beazley Jr, cut his teeth on student politics and through a range of positions within his party. He earned a masters degree, and won a Rhodes Scholarship. He worked briefly as a university lecturer before being elected to parliament in 1980.

After its 1996 defeat, Labour turned to Beazley to help rebuild the party. He was considered a uniting force that could calm often bitter intra-party factional rivalries. Beazley claims that today's Labour Party is different from the party ruled by the former prime minister, Paul Keating, routed in the 1996 election.

Pauline Hanson phenomenon
Pauline Hanson, a former fish-and-chip shop proprietor was a third strident voice in the election. She stood as a Liberal candidate in the previous election two years ago. She won instant notoriety by complaining in a letter to her local newspaper that Australia's aborigines enjoyed too many privileges. She was accused of being a racist, refused to apologise and went on to win her seat as an independent.

In her inaugural speech in Parliament in 1996, Pauline Hanson warned that Australia was in danger of being swamped by Asians and urged lawmakers to scrap welfare benefits for aborigines. This helped her rise to political prominence.

At the Queensland state election in June this year, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party won 11 seats and 23 percent of the primary vote. But analysts believed the sizable vote was more of a protest against economic rationalism and globalisation than opposition to multiculturalism.

In fact her support fell as the recent election advanced, and she was struggling to win her own seat. Towards the end of the campaign, came a devastating rebuke from Steven Hanson, her 23-year-old son, who dismissed his mother's claim to be 'the mother of all Australians' saying 'I can't remember the last time she spoke to me.'

A convoluted election process
Australia's 12 million registered voters were all expected to vote, those who do not vote are fined. Candidates for the 148-member House of Representatives, which chooses the government, are elected using a multiple-preference voting system. The complicated voting process does not necessarily yield the voters first-choice for office.

All candidates in each electorate are listed on the ballot card. Voters mark the card with a number next to each candidate in the order of their preference. If a candidate wins more than 50 percent of the 'I' votes, he or she is declared elected.

If no candidate has more than half the votes, the candidate with the fewest votes is excluded and that person's votes are transferred to the other candidates according to the second preference on those ballots. This process is repeated until one candidate passes 50 percent and wins.

In the Senate the upper house of Australia's Parliament, 40 of the 76 seats were up for election. Senators are elected under a system of quota-based proportional representation. Candidates who reach a required quota are elected.

The electoral system favours the two main political parties: the Labour Party and the Conservative Liberal/National Party coalition. It also means that a government can be formed by a party that does not attract more than 50 percent of first, or primary, votes.

Election issues
John Howard believed the election would be fought over economic management and taxation reform. Kim Beazley, on the other hand, insisted the issues would range far wider and include health, unemployment and the threat that One Nation could hold the balance of power in parliament.

Besides the budget surplus and low inflation, Howard's achievements included tighter gun control laws and a promise of a referencoum next year on whether Australia should become a republic under a president in 2001.

Howard won a burst of support in mid-August after he announced a sweeping plan to reform the tax system . The centrepiece was a 10 percent consumption tax, or a goods and services tax (GST) on almost everything including food and drink, with lower taxes for those on higher incomes and the abolition of the existing sales tax. But when welfare groups and churches campaigned against the decision to tax spending on food and drink, voters seemed to be going lukewarm on the Howard plan.

Kim Beazely's Labour Party put forward a less radical tax reform plan that did not include a consumption tax. Sol Lebovic, the managing director of Newspoll, predicted that whoever won the controversial tax debate during the campaign would have the best chance of forming the next government.

Both leaders said they would not join forces with Pauline Hanson after the election. That resolve would have been put to the test only if the One Nation had won a fair number of the lower house's 148 seats which it eventually failed to do.

The Asian factor
Howard refused to directly condemn the anti-Asian One Nation Party and disappointed many Asians who left the Liberal democrats and formed the Unity Party. Indeed, such was the anger among voters at Howard's refusal to take on the Hanson phenomena that Unity became the fastest growing political party during the election.

Australia, invaded and colonised by the British in 1788, has had a long and often controversial history with its regional neighbours. Believing itself to be a 'vulnerable white' outpost in a 'hostile' Asia, Australia enacted the anti-Asian Immigration Restriction Act in 1901 which had the foundation for the infamous. White Australia policy.

However, by 1973 with the traditional sources of immigration from Europe no longer satisfying the country's need to 'populate or perish', the Labour Party abolished the racist policy and both sides of the political spectrum adopted a new immigration programme. Based on the Canadian model on immigration which avoided discrimination on any grounds of skin colour or nationality, this programme became known as multi-culturalism.

Howard wins: Hanson is wiped out
Only one Australian government since 1917 had lost power after one term, and that was during the depression of the 1930s. In the results as announced so far, John Howard's government had its majority sliced from 44 in the 148-member house of representatives to an expected 8 after waging a bitter battle to beat Labour. The complex counting of preferential votes and the high number of postal votes meant that 12 seats were still in doubt. There was a 5 per cent swing against the government during the count on the night of 3 October. And John Howard at one stage thought he would lose.

Actually, the Labout Party won the majority of votes a provisional 51.5 per cent against the conservative coalition's 48.5 per cent in an assumed distribution of preference votes but not enough seats to form a government. The swing against the Liberal and National parties, which make up the coalition, was not consistent enough in key marginal seats.

Pauline Hanson's party did not win a single seat in the lower house and she herself was defeated in her own constituency. Her One National Party has insisted that they would carry on even though their leader is not in parliament.

Mandate for continuity and stability
Prime minister John Howard's victory is one that will bring much needed stability to Australia as the effects of the Asian economic collapse begins to lap around Australia's economy. He struck courageously to his unpopular theme of tax reform and achieved a rare electoral feat in persuading the country to accept a change previously rejected and used as the main weapon in Labour's populist campaign.

John Howard has now received a mandate to build on his credible economic stewardship in making those changes that will keep Australia competitive while at the same time tackling the obstinately high 8 percent level of unemployment. He will also have the honour of presiding over the 2000 year Olympic games. Howard expressed satisfaction at One Nation's defeat which he says is critically important not only to achieve harmonious social and race relations within Australia but also to boost the country's image overseas.