WA election: "One vote, one value" yields unexpected results

The Nationals and the Greens were the star performers last Saturday in Western Australia, writes NORM KELLY WHAT an enthralling contest the Western Australian election is turning out to be. A variety of scenarios are being played out as to who will form government, and there has also been a significant shift in the upper house. A handful of tight seats will take days to decide, with the slow counting of votes - not helped by an 80 per cent increase in postal voting - adding to the confusion. The only certainty appears to be that there will be a minority government. The Nationals, with only a modest increase in voting support and just four seats in the 59-seat Assembly, are warming to the role of being kingmakers. Leader Brendon Grylls is making the most of the uncertainty, playing Labor off against Liberal, but it will be a huge surprise if the Nationals don’t ultimately strike a deal with the Liberal party. The most likely scenario at this point is a Liberal-National minority government, supported by one or two independent liberals. Another option for the Nationals would be to support a Liberal government on matters of confidence and supply in the parliament, but remain outside a coalition. This would allow them to maintain a more independent position on policy issues (such as electoral reform), without being seen to contribute to instability. This election is the first to be held after electorate boundaries were radically redrawn in line with the new laws for “one vote, one value,” which saw seven lower-house seats shift from country to metropolitan areas and a re-sizing of the six multi-member upper house regions. The Nationals were expected to be the big losers from the reform, but stability, sound campaigning and the collapse of the Labor vote has placed the party in a stronger position than it has been for years. It is unlikely that Labor will be able to form government, and this is possibly a good outcome for the party in the longer-term. It will allow the party to distance itself from the troubles of the past few years and present a fresh leadership team for the 2012-13 election. While the 6 per cent swing against Labor is not surprising, the fact that the majority of that swing appears to have gone to the Greens suggests that Western Australian voters aren’t particularly happy with the Liberal Party either - something the Nationals should keep in mind in its negotiations. The Nationals may be getting all the attention at the moment, but the performance of the Greens in this election is equally striking. In the lower house, their state-wide vote jumped from 7.6 per cent to 11.6 per cent. In some individual seats, the results were even more impressive. In Fremantle, for example, Greens candidate Adele Carles would have made sitting Labor minister Jim McGinty nervous for a few hours with her 27.4 per cent result, an increase of 11 per cent. The Greens have consistently performed well in Western Australia since 1993, when they won their first seat in the state parliament. But a 4 per cent swing to the party this time around, following increased support at each of the past three elections, shows that they are firmly established - if not as the third force in WA politics (the Nationals may also want to claim that title), then at least as an intrinsic part of the state’s political fabric. Results for the upper house have been slower to come through, but the Greens have had a similar increase in support to their lower house result, while the Nationals vote has doubled (partly due to running in all regions this time). The Greens can expect their numbers in the Legislative Council to increase from two to four - or possibly even five. The Nationals’ representation is likely to increase from one seat to five, and as a result they will have the balance of power. One of the more notable Greens results is in the Mining and Pastoral Region, where Robin Chapple is their lead candidate. Chapple won the seat for the Greens on the back of preferences in 2001, with only a 4.4 per cent of the primary vote. Without the same favourable preference flow, Chapple lost the seat in 2005, despite increasing his vote to 7.6 per cent. Chapple has continued to work and campaign in the region since 2005, consolidating his profile with action on issues such as protection of the Burrup Peninsula’s rock art. This time around, Chapple’s vote has increased further to 9.2 per cent (by mid week). One outcome of Labor’s electoral reforms is that the region now elects six members (previously five), resulting in a reduced quota of 12.5 per cent (previously 16.7 per cent). With Labor preferences, Chapple should be confident of winning back his seat. What makes this result so notable is that the Greens vote remained largely unchanged in the other non-metropolitan regions. So the real success stories of this year’s election have been the Nationals and the Greens. The Nationals have been able to overcome the significant disadvantages of Labor’s electoral reforms to increase their vote and number of seats in both houses (a notional increase in the Assembly) and, as fortune will have it, be in a balance-of-power situation in both houses as well. The Greens continue to consolidate their position, and while they will lose the balance-of-power role they previously held in the upper house, the increase to possibly five members will give them the resources and voices to maintain a high public profile. The Liberal Party, and more specifically Colin Barnett, can be seen to be big winners - especially if they do attain government - given the dire straits the party was in only a few months ago. But the election result, a mere 3 per cent swing when the Labor government was so on-the-nose with the electorate, is far from an emphatic endorsement. • Norm Kelly is a member of the Democratic Audit of Australia and a former Western Australian state parliamentarian (representing the Australian Democrats) Photo: Nationals banner at a polling booth in the electorate of Kwinana, photographed by Marian Sawe