With an election just around the corner a young Australian’s fancy turns lightly to wondering how to get a piece of that hot democracy for themselves. Sorry, that should read “represent their community in the highest elected office in the land.”
And it’s a fair question too, since being a pollie is a pretty sweet gig. It’s well paid, you get a bangin’ pension, you get to travel to Nazi-infused rallies and shooting awards at the public’s expense, and people pay attention to you no matter how objectively mad the things you say may be.
A dramatic reenactment of Fraser Anning’s debut speech last year.
Getting into the House of Representatives (ie: the lower house where governments are made) is challenging for those without a major party’s financial and organisational backing – although perhaps never more easy than now! – there’s still a place for opinionated chancers to get a six year job where they don’t even technically have to show up: the senate!
The easiest – realistically, only – way to win outright is simple: run in a largely empty state.
What electoral victory looks like.
Demographically speaking, you’re probably reading this from our popular eastern mainland states.
And if so, you can pretty much give up on winning a senate berth in your own right unless you’re a genuine mainstream celebrity that’s game to make some shockingly eye-catching promises.
See, each state has 12 senators, half of which are voted in at each election (unless it’s a double dissolution like last election, in which case it’s all of ’em).
In theory, to get a “quota” and therefore a seat you’d need to get one-seventh of the voters in your state to vote for you. (In practice it’s less but let’s not get sidetracked.)
Wh… why is this seven farting?
In NSW there are 5,211,182 registered voters, meaning each senator needs to get around 745,000 votes to win. In Tasmania, conversely, there are 381,837 voters in total, meaning you just need 55,000 for a berth.
You could probably door knock that in Hobart if you were motivated enough, and it’s why the future of Australia’s micro parties is almost certainly going to be in Tasmania and SA.
However, there’s an even easier way to get into the senate these days, and it requires barely any effort at all. You don’t even need anyone to actually vote for you in any meaningful way, as such celebrated senators as One Nation’s Peter Georgiou, the Liberals’ Lucy Gichui, independent Tim Storer and the aforementioned rally-enthusiast Anning can attest.
And that is to get added at an unwinnable spot on a party’s ballot, wait for section 44 to chuck the elected senators out, and get elected by default.
Section 44 of the Constitution is the bit which says what disqualifies people from serving as pollies, whether for being bankrupt or convicted of certain crimes or – most of all in the last 18 months – being a citizen of another country. And if #1 on the party’s ballot is eliminated, #2 automatically gets the gig.
And all those tiny parties want to have at least two candidates so that way they get their own column and logo on the ballot paper. Otherwise they just get lumped into the miscellaneous grab-bag of no-hopers in the final column.
Mmmm, voting!
But who to join? The realistic options aren’t wide, admittedly.
Aside from the left-leaning Reason Party and the centre-right Centre Alliance most of the plausibly electable micro parties are strong-to-hardcore right wing: Australian Conservatives, Shooters Fishers and Farmers, Liberal Democrats, and One Nation. Do any of these sound like people you’d want to hang out with between now and the election?
Still, if you get in there, that’s an easy $200k+ for six years before perks – and more if you join a few senate committees. And hey, you might even get a Sky News gig out of it!
So what are you waiting for – get nominating!