SUNDAY 6 MARCH 2016 | NATIONAL POLITICS | CITIZENS’ PRESS

✔ Scrutineers predicting Labor to lead government

Counting is in progress, and scrutineers predict that the Australian Labor Party (ALP) will win around half of the 15 seats (7 needed for outright victory). So far, 2 blank votes have emerged—hopefully this is not an error.

With the remaining seats split among other candidates, Labor has the strongest argument to ask the Governor-General /u/phyllicanderer to appoint /u/General_Rommel as Prime Minister, with his choice to attempt a minority government, alliance or coalition with other winners (parties or independents). Players from the previous model are likely to continue their dominance of the executive and legislative systems.

At this stage, other parties and newcomers seem unlikely to win enough seats to challenge Labor’s strong first-preference polling. This is due to a significant number of unflaired voters giving their first preference to Labor.

Labor and the Greens were the only parties to publish campaign material, and Labor was the most visible party for swinging voters. It is also the largest party by flair, and dominates the mod team, having written many of the new rules itself.

In general, the results seem to be tracking similarly to the voter turnout statistics previously reported by Citizens’ Press. Questions remain about the allocation of the last few seats to winners, as well as other voting discrepancies during and after the election.

Another key question is whether the Government will face effective Opposition. The National Liberal Party or Greens could become the official opposition, with the LDP seemingly unlikely to secure enough seats. However, the Greens could side with the government, even to the extend of forming a Coalition agreement to get Ministries. In that, case the NLP (merger of National and Liberal parties) could be the Opposition. However, it’s been largely absent from the election campaign. Few of its voters or candidates turned up, despite a long candidate list after the merger of the National and Liberal parties, and it remains to be seen if it can be an active parliamentary player. Depending on the election results, a de-merger is also possible.

Changes to the structure and standing orders of the Parliament are expected to favour government dominance of system. Previous parliaments saw various levels of weak opposition, and the 3rd parliament was dominated by Labor thanks to its coalition deal with the Australian Progressives party who won the previous election. De facto opposition consisted of less than a handful of mavericks in the lower house. The same looks likely here.