Brenton Best Crosses the Floor!

 [Admin note to readers: unless something exceptional happens, I'll be taking a brief break so don't expect anything new here from May 27-31.]

I was going to write a pretty standard number-crunchy thing about prospects for the Tasmanian Senate, given that the Greens have just polled below a Senate quota in state-level polling on the EMRS headline rate for the first time in a very long time.  (In short, this is some cause for concern, but probably not a major one at present).

However that can wait a bit because on Thursday we saw something very unusual in Tasmanian politics, when Labor backbench lifer Brenton Best crossed the floor to vote with a Liberal motion of no-confidence in Corrections Minister (and Greens Leader) Nick McKim.  It was not just a once-off, with an unrepentant Best on Friday repeating his critique of Nick McKim and extending it to the whole Labor-Green coalition. 

While I wasn't watching live at the time, it's quite clear from the footage and also even from the bare bones Votes and Proceedings that there was a party keen for Mr Best to have his say, and it wasn't his own:

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 7              POINT OF ORDER RAISED. – The Honourable Member for Lyons Mr Hidding raised a Point of Order claiming that he had sought to give the remaining speaking time of Ms Archer to Mr Best

8              MR SPEAKER RULES. – The Speaker ruled that he was going to give the call to the Attorney-General and that it is the prerogative of the Chair to allocate the call.

9              DISSENT FROM RULING. – And the Honourable Member for Lyons, Mr Hidding, rising in his place took objection from the ruling and moved to dissent therefrom.

A debate arose thereupon.

10           SUSPENSION OF SITTING. - At Forty-six minutes past Twelve o'clock, the Speaker announced that he would resume the Chair at the ringing of the Division Bells.

At Fifty-two minutes past Twelve o'clock the Speaker resumed the Chair.

11           DISSENT FROM RULING. –And the Question being put;

It passed in the Negative.

12           WANT OF CONFIDENCE IN MINISTER FOR CORRECTIONS. – And the Question being again proposed;

The House resumed the debate. 

13           MEMBER NOW HEARD. - Ordered, That pursuant to Standing Order 156, the Honourable Member for Braddon, Mr Best, be now heard. (The Minister for Health)

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It's also notable that large chunks of Mr Best's speech are not even relevant to the matter over which the motion of no-confidence was moved, the departure of former Prison Director Barry Greenberry. 

Interpretations have run the gamut from:

(i) that this is an astute move by Brenton Best who realises the government is very much on the nose in his electorate, and probably thinks his chances of survival are highest if he is either kicked out and forced to run as an indie, or else at least engages in some really serious product differentiation.

to:

(ii) that Best is a career backbencher for some very good reasons, not capable of that sort of level of strategic nous, and that what we see here is his personal resentment about the inclusion of Greens in cabinet keeping him in his lowly place.

Whatever, this is a very strange thing to happen, given that no-confidence motions moved by Oppositions are nearly always a pretext for grandstanding parliamentary theatre that wastes time and gets voted down along party lines.  It is especially strange because the party discipline of the ALP is stronger than that of the other parties in the parliament.  

The Greens do not have any firm requirement that elected party members follow the line on anything.  This was recently seen with Kim Booth voting against his colleagues over the forestry "peace deal", but it is not the first time he has done such a thing.  In the proto-Green days of the "Green Independents" there was no party discipline (eg Gerry Bates voted against his colleagues on petrol rostering) and on the floor of the Hobart City Council the three elected Greens vote with each other less predictably than some members of the opposing cluster of "independents".  

The Liberal Party also allows a degree of freedom federally, but this has become reduced in recent decades (through firm discouragement rather than an explicit policy of throwing offenders out of the party. In the recent same-sex marriage debate, it appeared that any minister crossing the floor on the issue would be sent to the backbench.)  State examples of Liberals crossing the floor include Peter Gutwein on a child abuse enquiry proposal in 2003, and Bob Cheek in 1998 on the size of parliament. (Cheek may have been disciplined, but he wasn't kicked out of the party.)

The ALP is different because its members agree to vote in accord with party and Caucus policy except where determined otherwise.  Crossing the floor on a matter that is Caucus policy typically leads to expulsion from the Parliamentary Labor Party, as happened when Terry Martin crossed the floor in the Legislative Council to vote against the Pulp Mill Assessment Bill in 2007.  Martin was explicitly warned by then Premier Paul Lennon that he was going to be booted.

Expulsions from the PLP and indeed the ALP were once fairly common events, in the days of the Lang Labor, the DLP splits and conscription.  There were even amusing cases in which rival sectors of the party "expelled" each other.  These days they are rare, and when Terry Cameron and Trevor Crothers crossed the floor to vote for electricity privatisation in the South Australian Legislative Council in the late 1990s, both spoiled the fun by resigning from the party before they could be (and were about to be) expelled.  

When Is A Free Vote Not A Conscience Vote?

Brenton Best's behaviour immediately raised the question of whether he would be expelled from the PLP.  Of course, had it been a "conscience vote" on a so-called moral issue, there would have been no problem, but it was clearly not a vote designated in advance as a conscience vote.  However, nor was it a vote that had been the subject of a binding caucus resolution. So there is an available concept of a technically "free vote" that is not a designated "conscience vote".

The claim (so far) is that that's the end of the story: he has broken no rules, so no action.  Premier Giddings was quoted as saying:

"He has exercised his right on the floor of the House to vote in the way his conscience has led him to to vote [..]"

Try imagining how that one would go down federally, with the current very delicate balance of numbers there, if a Labor MHR in Federal Parliament voted for one of Tony Abbott's no-confidence motions in, say, Wayne Swan.  It is hard to see that it would be treated smoothly.  At the very least, the dissenter would be quietly disendorsed sometime close enough to the election to prevent them bringing down the government in retaliation.  (If only it was that easy in this case, but a disendorsed Brenton Best would be a much greater nuisance in Hare-Clark.)

The broke-no-rules defence is a bush this site's been round before with another errant (now ex-) Labor figure.  Brenton Best broke no formal party rules in crossing the floor to vote against his coalition colleague because no rule against doing so had been made for him to break.  The Premier is publicly refashioning this as a virtue and normal practice and "not done anything wrong" post hoc, but it's not (and I suspect that behind closed doors the story is very different).  The reason no rule exists is not that it is a natural and laudable state of affairs for backbenchers to act this way.  Rather, it's exactly the reverse - that it is so obvious that government backbenchers should not act in this way, that the party has never bothered to codify a rule against it.  

(That's not to say Best needs to be muzzled from speaking out.  But merely speaking out and actually voting for a motion of no confidence in one's own government's minister are two very different things.) 

Indeed, party rules are frequently shaped by things that have actually happened, and looking for state and federal examples that serve as precedents for this situation, I've been struggling to find any!  Even in the classic cases where Labor splinter groups brought down Labor governments, they had generally left the party before doing so.

I have found one modern precedent for a state/territory Labor party splitting on a vote of no-confidence thus far, but it's not a very applicable one.  In 1990 in the ACT, Abolish Self Government MLA Dennis Stevenson moved thus: "That this Assembly has no confidence in the [Liberal] Chief Minister of the ACT in view of his lack of integrity, lack of credibility and extreme hypocrisy as demonstrated by his intention to have the Alliance 'Government' introduce a bill to tax X-rated videos, in absolute contradiction of his statements in the House on 21 November 1989, in total condemnation of such a tax.''

Four of the five ACT Labor members of the time supported this no-confidence motion against the Kaine government, which was defeated 11-5.  But one, Ellnor Grassby, refused to support it, stating that she had no confidence in the government but would support nothing moved by Mr Stevenson because she considered him to be linked to the League of Rights.  Mrs Grassby was retained as a Labor member and re-elected at the next election.  The case is very different from the Best example because the split was over whether to support a motion of no-confidence while in opposition (as distinct from one relating to one's own government's Minister) and because it was a motion that came from a third party and had strings attached in terms of reasoning cited for the motion.  (Also Labor had had its own failed no confidence motion against the same government not long before.)

I've also been able to find one example of Labor members crossing the floor without being kicked out of the parliamentary party.  In 2007 three Indigenous Northern Territory Labor MLAs crossed the floor over mining legislation in emotionally loaded circumstances.  Expelling them all from the PLP would almost certainly have caused the government to collapse immediately, and perhaps the legislation successfully passing with Country Liberal support (17-5) made it all seem not worth the fuss.

Novel situations make for novel scenarios, and the Labor Party being in Cabinet coalition with another party is certainly something unusual.  But I can't find another remotely recent case of a government backbencher supporting a no-confidence motion in a government minister moved by an opposition.  (Peter Patmore was effectively sacked by the Green Independents and Liberals as Education Minister in 1991 but the Greens were formally just crossbenchers by that time).

If you're aware of anything remotely similar to this that has happened before in any Australian state or territory, or federally, please let me know.

McKim's Free Pass?

One of the things I have wondered about the situation of having Greens in Cabinet is this.  Suppose a Greens minister is genuinely incompetent and/or misleads the House, but has their own interpretation of events and refuses to resign.  It does not seem that they are in the same situation as those Labor ministers who had to be given their marching orders in the previous majority governments.  The sacking of a Greens minister would have to be so carefully handled in stability terms - even assuming the Greens accepted it at all - that the Premier would probably not want to even think too much about going there if it was avoidable.  It might be manageable (eg via the transfer of that responsibility to the other Green or to another Cabinet minister, or by replacing that Minister in Cabinet with another Green) but it would be more complex than just booting a Labor Minister and pondering the delicate question of who to promote as the replacement.  ("Hmm, I've got three options, so ... Rebecca, Rebecca or Rebecca?")

As to whether Nick McKim is the serial failure that the Liberals and now Brenton Best allege, McKim has seen at least twice his share of ministerial controversy, and has even now and then attracted the dreaded word "embattled".  But this is partly because in Corrections and Education he has managed to get himself saddled with two portfolios that are long-running sores in Tasmanian politics, roles in which any Minister would be likely to encounter some problems.  I do wonder, every time yet another McKim controversy breaks out, whether it is even possible for his performance to be assessed by the same standards as a Labor minister, and whether a Labor minister carrying the same load would have survived so much of it without at least a reshuffle.  When the coalition was originally formed I suspected the Greens were being given some difficult ministries so that they would either succeed and help the Government to thrive or else be seen to fail and thus discredit mainly themselves. 

The Best Doctrine

Brenton Best's defence of his action, beyond typical Braddon-electorate views about the Greens over forestry and mining (see also ABC News), includes:

"I mean let's remember that the Green members of Parliament don't always vote for the government and have crossed the floor on a number of occasions [..] I just believe I'm entitled to exercise my position and I don't have confidence in the Greens Minister Nick McKim."

While cases of the Greens voting with the Liberals when it matters have actually been vanishingly rare in this term (one of them stripping Best of the Deputy Speakership) there is a big difference between not voting with the government and not voting for the government (or its ministers).  And in that sense, despite Kim Booth's sporadic threats, there has been no case in this term in which even one of the Greens has voted for a no confidence motion in the Government or in one of its Ministers.  Indeed, Nick McKim and Cassy O'Connor are obliged by their initial agreement with then-Premier Bartlett to not support any no-confidence motion against the Government or its Ministers, on pain of immediate sacking from Cabinet.

If Best is allowed to get away with this repeatedly, then that means there is a confidence-and-supply agreement between Cabinet Labor and the Cabinet Greens, but that backbenchers are free to cooperate with the Opposition on motions against Ministers as they like. So in theory any three backbenchers drawn from Labor and the Greens, in cooperation with the Liberals, could force the Premier to reshuffle Cabinet however they pleased.  The idea that a government backbencher can freely vote with the Opposition on a confidence vote against the Minister implies that the government delegates the formation of the ministry to the Parliament rather than relying on its own combined numbers to choose its ministry itself.

I think the only reason no-one is thinking through just how radical and unstable such an idea is is that everyone assumes it is only Brenton or maybe Kim Booth who will do it (and not both on the same issue) and therefore nothing but solitary grandstanding will happen.

McKim's response is even more radical still.  I am rather deaf but I do think I heard this correctly:

"Well, the Government is the Cabinet so, no, I don't accept that Brenton is a member of the Government"

Yikes.  Might be about time to change this place's colour scheme, because with stuff like that I can start to see why the Liberals call this regime an "experiment"!

Ancient History

Lastly, it is useful to review some posturings from just after the 2010 election.  At that time Best indicated he didn't support having Green ministers, and Jeremy Rockliff said Best should either resign or cross the floor.

It seems, three years later, that Best has now taken that advice.

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Further Reading: Conscience Votes During the Howard Government 1996 2007 (APH Research Paper by Deirdre McKeown and Rob Lundie)  Includes a rundown of votes on which "conscience votes" have happened at federal level since 1950.  Note that confidence motions are not given as an example of motions on which "conscience votes" occur.  Indeed, the authors argue:

"One deterrent to granting more conscience votes is the Westminster system of government where every vote is seen as a vote of confidence in the government of the day."

A vote on confidence is, of course, especially likely to be seen as a vote on confidence!

EMRS - Greens hit new low

EMRS: Lib 54 (-1) Labor 28 (+5) Green 14 (-4) Ind 4 (+1)
Interpretation: Lib 53 Labor 33 Green 11 Ind 3
Outcome: Comfortable Liberal Majority Win (Approx 14 seats)

The May 2013 EMRS poll has been released and the trend graph for the headline figures is here.  The headline figures have a history of overestimating Green support so there is a possibility that this poll is pointing to an even worse result for the party than indicated.

During the last polling period the Tasmanian forestry peace deal passed parliament and the party split on this major legislation on the floor of the House of Assembly, with four members voting in favour of the version returned by the Legislative Council and Bass Green MHA Kim Booth, long the least Labor-friendly and forestry-friendly of the five, voting against.

The poll shows the Liberal vote largely unaltered from the soaring levels of the last two polls, but what is interesting here is that the Labor vote is up to its highest headline level since November 2010 (not that 28% is any great triumph) while the Green headline rate is the lowest of this term in office, at 14%.  The core Green vote, counting only firmly supportive voters, is shown at a ridiculously low 9%.  I cannot remember it being this low for a very long time and suspect it would be necessary to go back to the earliest EMRS readings from the late 1990s to find a similar figure. 

However the news is not entirely good for the Liberals.  In the February article I noted that the party was making great progress in terms of the percentage of secure support (Table 2), which had hit its highest level in EMRS history at 46%.  In this poll that figure has gone back down to 40%, and in the more useful Table 3 (which includes voters leaning to a party, as do other pollsters) it is down four points from 48 to 44.  Both the "undecided" figure without pressing for a response (30%) and the "undecided" figure after pressing for a party response (19%) are at what I believe to be their highest levels in EMRS history, and certainly their highest levels in this term.  Once again these very high claimed indecision results call the usefulness of EMRS polls into question, since major pollsters do not get "undecided" rates that are nearly so high even when using the comparable (and lower) of the two undecided figures.  This is a pet rant that I have covered many times in previous articles but if EMRS cannot find better ways of getting meaningful responses out of respondents then there is a gap in the polling market waiting to be filled by someone who can.

As I noted last time, converting EMRS polls into likely state-level results is very difficult because of the paucity of electorate-level data; the distribution of votes between the different electorates makes a big difference.  Again, I suspect that Labor's vote will hold up better in Franklin than in other electorates, as outlined in my Uneven Swing to Liberals article.  However as the data used in that article age, with no new electorate-level data available (beyond a ReachTEL for one Legislative Council electorate) it gets harder to have confidence about the possible electorate level picture.

Anyway we should certainly not assume a uniform swing against the Greens from this poll, as that would leave them with only a handful of votes in Braddon.  This is what the uneven-swing model looks like if applied to my "interpretation" figures above (with the 3% for unknown independents reallocated) :  (Note that these "interpretation" figures rely on a history of EMRS understating Labor support and overstating the Greens.)

The projection based solely on this poll suggests 13 Liberal, 9 Labor, 2 Green and the last seat in Bass is anyone's.

In this distribution Labor gets off light with a relatively small swing against it and might conceivably even hold all its seats.  However the Greens lose seats to the Liberals in Braddon, Lyons and possibly Bass (unless Labor loses there instead) and so the Liberals still win government.  In this simulation the Liberals are actually diddled by being close to a fourth quota in two seats and a third quota in two.  On the figures above they would probably not get any of those extra seats and hence end up only winning by one.  However, it's more likely that in reality they would be up on the above in some electorates and down on the above in others, and hence that they would get at least 14 seats, perhaps more.

In the above simulation the Greens might still hold Bass, but with a vote well below a quota Kim Booth would be at the mercy of the dreaded Ginninderra Effect and hence might lose.  I have reservations about projecting Booth's vote given that he would be seen as having "kept the faith" with the hardliners while the other Greens would not.  However we only have to consider the forest peace deal scenario to see how hard and confusing things are going to be for the Greens and their voters at the 2014 election.  Voters will want to know whether given Green candidates are for or against the peace deal, since if the Liberals do fall short of majority government, which Greens get elected to parliament could determine the fate of this major policy legislation.  Booth could be targeted as a potential supporter of Liberal attempts to rip up the deal.  It will be interesting to see if the Greens can even keep all the dissenting forces in-house without the party actually splitting and greener-than-thou candidates running as significant Independents.

I also don't believe the 2.17 quotas projected for Labor in Denison in the model above as they will be going to the next election with a fairly weak candidate team. One of their incumbents is Graeme Sturges, who was massively thrashed at the last state election only to return on a recount.  This projected second Labor seat is very ripe for being picked off by an independent.  If Andrew Wilkie loses Denison (which is possible though at present he is favoured to retain it) he would probably win that seat very easily.

As this poll gives extreme results in the context of the last few years for both Labor and the Greens, and given the uncertainties created by the high undecided rate, I've taken a cautious approach in projecting where the parties are at in the sidebar, and considered the results of the previous poll as well. 

I will very probably add more comments in coming days in response to articles on the poll and so on and as I analyse the results further.

Postscript (22 May):  Checking old records I have found that:

* The last result worse than this for the Greens in an EMRS poll was in August 2001 in which the party polled 7% of firmly decided voters, which was extrapolated to 9% with undecided voters redistributed.  The party's vote in December 2001 and May 2002 with undecided voters redistributed was the same as it is now (14%) but off a higher committed vote in both cases.

* I cannot find any previous instance of an EMRS poll with a raw undecided figure as high as 30%.  Indeed during the early 2000s, EMRS raw undecided rates were typically much lower than now.


Some people may wonder why I put EMRS polls through such contortions to try to get something resembling a meaningful result.  It's worth remembering the situation in November 2005 in which, with an election only months away, EMRS released a poll claiming that Labor under Paul Lennon held only a 40:36 lead over the Liberals.  This was widely interpreted as pointing to a 10-10-5 result in 2006 (the result we actually got at the election after).  Paul Lennon retaliated by releasing selective details of internal polling, on which basis he claimed that the party would not lose a seat.  They didn't; in fact they went within a very thin whisker of winning one.

The vagueness of the latest poll makes it a choose-your-own-adventure for just about everyone (Green triumphalists excepted) and apart from the predictable over-focus on the "undecided" rate there hasn't been too much to see in public commentary on this poll and I haven't noticed any spectacular or novel howlers so far.  The Libs have copped a bit of stirring for dropping on the base rate from 46 to 40.  But the smaller drop when the question is asked in the form used by major pollsters (48 to 44) is not even a statistically significant change (unlike the drop in the Greens vote on the same indicator) and against the backdrop of such a high undecided vote, it is hard to know whether to even make anything of it at all.  There is often pressure on analysts to provide reasons for polling shifts and sometimes the best thing to do is just to say you don't know if it's real, and if it is real you don't know what has caused it.

A little while ago it was put to me (by someone who just might have a small stake in the outcome) that the Libs were deliberately gaming the EMRS polls by timing ad releases just before them (something they would not have needed to do this time because the LegCo election campaigns and results did the job for them.) I would think that if this was systematically the case and it was working and having a major effect that there would be internal polls floating around getting very different results to EMRS.  To my knowledge there are not, and I have seen bits and pieces of a few.  But it is something that is worth noting and testing, because Tasmanian elections can have a snowball effect in which a party that appears to be winning majority government gains supporters for that reason.  So it's understandable if a party would try it - overrated as the impact of political advertising often is.

I have also heard that some Greens are even clutching for the same straw being clutched at by Labor supporters federally, the mobile vs landlines issue.  Polling is difficult for pollsters that only call landlines because, proverbially, hardly anyone under the age of 40 has one and answers it.  However, people who think this means that the result is going to be massively skewed because the poll sample will include virtually no young people, and hence the result will be very conservative, are underestimating the pollsters.  Australian pollsters are not completely dumb and employ demographic scaling, so that even if the proportion of young people in their sample is small, they can still scale the youngsters so that their combined opinions carry as much weight as their share of the vote suggests.  This is why federal pollsters that do poll mobiles, federal pollsters that don't poll mobiles, and federal pollsters that don't even use phones at all are able to get very similar results.

Scaling does have risks attached to it (and it also means that a lot of stuff said by pollsters about their polls' margins of error is a bit dubious).  One risk is that because so few young people use landlines, those young people who do use them may be politically unrepresentative.  But scaling greatly reduces the risks associated with landline polling, and means that while those polling landlines only might get burnt to the level of a point or two, they're not going to miss the result by an amount so large as to render their readings totally invalid. 

Lastly for now, there have been a few vibes around in response to the effect that Labor is fine in Denison and not at risk of dropping to one there (at least, assuming they don't get gouged by an indie).  On that basis, if the Libs are not doing as well there as my uneven swing model suggests, this raises the rather scary prospect (for their opponents) that they might be doing better somewhere else.

Julia Gillard: Same-Sex Marriage Enemy #1

Advance Summary

1. This article addresses comments recently made by Prime Minister Julia Gillard concerning the Coalition's unclear statements on whether it will allow a conscience vote on same-sex marriage.

2. Gillard's comments are misleading in that she takes credit for ensuring a conscience vote on the issue, when in fact she did so in order to avoid all Labor MPs being required to vote for same-sex marriage legislation.

3. For this reason, Gillard's actions removed any chance of same-sex marriage passing last year.

4. Claims that a conscience vote for both sides is the determining factor in a successful push for same-sex marriage are misleading.  Comparisons with New Zealand and the UK show that in those cases, the personal support of leaders on both sides, and the overwhelming support of the main centre-left party, were essential.

5. Gillard's own statements on her reasons for opposing same-sex marriage do not stand up to scrutiny.

6. As I find both Gillard's claimed reasons and several other proposed explanations unconvincing, I suspect her motive is connected to internal ALP power plays.

7. Gillard's criticism of the Coalition on this issue, while warranted in isolation, is hypocritical.

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Perhaps the Liberal Blue colour scheme is starting to infiltrate my thought processes, but I feel a sudden desire to defend Tony Abbott from unfair criticism!  And I'm going to do it on a subject on which the Opposition Leader is completely indefensible, namely gay rights.  (As readers may have guessed from the title, I am strongly supportive of federal same-sex marriage, and I consider the arguments against it to be nonsense.  For a longer statement of my position see the disclosure at the bottom of my article on the Tasmanian LegCo same-sex marriage debate.)

The unfair criticism in question came from Prime Minister Julia Gillard, and it came in veiled form in comments about the prospects of same-sex marriage legislation a few weeks ago.  Here are some of the things Gillard told the ABC:

" What I can do here, and I've already done it, is ensured that there will be a conscience vote in the Labor Party.

[..]

But when we look around the world and those countries that have moved towards same-sex marriage, the key factor is that politicians have had conscience votes including on the conservative side of politics.

Look at New Zealand, Prime Minister Key, I know him well, a conservative sister political party of the Liberal Party here.

[..]

Well this does matter to many Australians. I think you have an obligation to be clear with them. I'm clear about my position and about how my members are allowed to vote. I think the Leader of the Opposition owes people the same courtesy."

In discussing the above, I'm going to start with the numbers on the floor.  The House of Representatives rejected same-sex marriage by a vote of 98-42.   Four crossbenchers voted for the change together with 38 Labor members, and 26 Labor members voted against together with two crossbenchers.  Seven Labor, two Liberal and one Independent (Slipper) did not vote, mostly because they were not able to do so for some reason or other.

A conscience vote peeling off even a third of the Coalition (an unlikely estimate if one was allowed) would not have caused the bill to pass.

The implied comparison with New Zealand and the UK is misleading.  In the UK Parliament, the Conservatives may well be the government, but they hold only about a third of the seats, compared with ours where they hold nearly half.  It is a socially progressive parliament.  In the NZ Parliament, the conservative government holds a similar portion of seats to the Coalition here, but an important factor was the almost-unanimous strength of support from the Labour opposition.  With 30 NZ Labour MPs voting for same-sex marriage, and only 4 against, only 11 National votes out of 59 would have been needed to carry the bill.  (In the end with the Prime Minister's support there were an impressive 27 votes from his own side.)

So to suggest it is all about a conscience vote on the conservative side is just misleading. It could just as easily be argued that strong support from the progressive side and its leader for same-sex marriage, and a balance of power that does not greatly favour the conservatives, are crucial elements.  The latter is important because if the opportunity to pass same-sex marriage in this Australian parliament has indeed been missed, then the prospects for getting it passed in a parliament with, say, 100 Coalition members to 50 Labor/Ind, are not looking too flash.

(Curiously, Sportsbet are now taking bets on when Australia will legalise same-sex marriage, with 2020 or later leading at $2.30 followed by 2016 at $6 with this year a distant last at $21.  Thanks to the reader who told me about this.)

When A Conscience Vote Isn't A Triumph

From the tone of Gillard's comments one might get the impression that Gillard had done her best to get a conscience vote for Labor members and that the alternative would have been Labor voting against as a block, and that she had therefore done her bit to give the reform a fair go although she was personally opposed to it.

The facts are very much the reverse.  Official ALP policy is to support same-sex marriage and has been since the 2011 ALP national conference.  The decision to allow a conscience vote was in order to allow members opposed to same-sex marriage, such as PM Gillard, to vote against the will of the majority of their party.  The motion to allow them to do so passed narrowly, 208-184.  Considering that Gillard herself opposed same-sex marriage and that a policy mandating a vote for it would have been seen as a humiliation and a blow to her leadership, it is hard to escape the conclusion that had the party had a leader who supported the reform, the conscience vote issue would have gone down very differently.  Either a conscience vote would not have been allowed at all, or else it would have been allowed but much more sparsely used.  There is a glaring discrepancy in that 9% of UK Labour MPs voted against same-sex marriage, 12% of NZ Labour MPs did so but in Australia the figure (of those voting) was a massive 41%.  That although there is little difference in popular support levels for same-sex marriage between the three nations.

It's probably not the case that a compulsory vote in favour of same-sex marriage for Labor MHRs in Australia would have carried the day alone, but it would have been extremely close.  With Slipper not voting, Burke in the chair and Katter and Windsor against, the vote on the floor with all present would have been tied 74-74 and Anna Burke would have been obliged by convention to declare it lost. 

In practice it is unlikely it would have happened exactly like that.  Variables that could have affected the vote would have included any members who might have been absent if unable to obtain a pair, and the attitudes of each party towards those in their number who tried to buck the party line.  Most likely Labor would have had to allow some degree of conscience vote for the fervently opposed, but this then would have created much more pressure on the Coalition to do the same.  Furthermore, Coalition backbenchers had an effective conscience vote anyway; it was just the case that in the circumstances little use was made of it.  Liberal Senator Sue Boyce stated she would have crossed the floor if it had made a difference, and eventually abstained.

The temptation to cross the floor on this issue would have been much stronger if by doing so a handful of Coalition MPs could actually make a difference, and those in strongly pro-same-sex marriage electorates would have come under a lot more pressure from their constituents to do so.  A close vote on the floor on same-sex marriage would have placed Malcolm Turnbull in a much more interesting position than one that was a foregone conclusion.

What can be said is that had the Prime Minister not opposed same-sex marriage, there is a realistic possibility it would have been passed in this term of parliament, irrespective of the Coalition's position and its leader's position.  This only doesn't apply if it is assumed the Coalition would have applied strict party discipline even to its backbench, something which it typically doesn't do and prides itself on not doing as a point of difference. 

On the other hand, given that 41% of Labor MHRs voting were against same-sex marriage, it is unlikely that any position that realistically could have been taken by Abbott or the Coalition on the issue would have resulted in same-sex marriage passing.  Even in the most generous scenario (leader suddenly supportive and full conscience vote) the numbers would not have been there, as there are not enough Coalition MHRs who are even close to in-principle support, and there was no likelihood of party policy supporting the move.

In summary of the above, Julia Gillard was far more directly responsible for the first vote on same-sex marriage failing than Tony Abbott was.  Gillard effectively ensured the vote's failure; Abbott merely blew out the margin (as in my view did Adam Bandt, with his poorly-judged and patronising stunt of forcing MHRs to consult with their electorates on the issue). In drawing this conclusion, I add that Abbott bears indirect responsibilit, because of a very long career of prominent and at times explicit public homophobia that he has yet to adequately recant and apologise for.

When You Eliminate The Impossible ...

Julia Gillard, so far as I know, has never said anything remotely homophobic in her life.   (And no, I don't agree that opposing same-sex marriage automatically makes someone a homophobe.)  But this only deepens the mystery: why is Julia Gillard opposed to same-sex marriage?

It's a mystery in the first place because Gillard ticks so many identity-politics boxes as someone who should be liberally minded on the issue. The first female Prime Minister, who attacked judgemental attitudes on the basis of gender in her famous misogyny speech.  Atheist, no children, never married but currently partnered.  All of these are individually indicators of support for same-sex marriage in polling breakdowns, with the mild exception of "no children".  However being partnered without children is a combined indicator of support.  Throw in that Gillard is a Labor voter and she is ticking at least four boxes for strong support and on that basis a pollster would be pretty hard pressed to find a voter who resembles Julia Gillard (but without being a politician) and is anti-SSM.  I'm thinking the "Gillard demographic" would split something like 85-15 on the issue.

I could get really silly on this and throw in things like Gillard's hair colour (just ask Adriana Taylor MLC who brought up redheadedness as a grounds of social discrimination in her speech on SSM!) and being born in Wales as reasons why Gillard should be even more likely to empathise with a minority group.  However, there's no polling that I have seen on such aspects.

I am going to run down some of the possible reasons that are offered for why Gillard opposes same-sex marriage and comment on them.  The one that I think is the real reason is at the bottom, but it's not something I claim any degree of certainty on and it's all one of the great political mysteries of our time.

Gillard's Own Words

Here are some examples of Gillard's own comments on the issue:

Daily Telegaph March 21 2011

"Ms Gillard said she was "on the conservative side" of the gay marriage issue "because of the way our society is and how we got here", [..]

"I think that there are some important things from our past that need to continue to be part of our present and part of our future," she said. "If I was in a different walk of life, if I'd continued in the law and was partner of a law firm now, I would express the same view, that I think for our culture, for our heritage, the Marriage Act and marriage being between a man and a woman has a special status."

The Australian, same date

"I had a pro-union, pro-Labor upbringing in a quite conservative family, in a sense of personal values. I mean we believed in lots of things that are old fashioned in the modern age," she said.

ABC Radio National 18 Nov 2012:

"I do believe that in our society, with our heritage, with our traditions, with our history, that marriage has a special place and special definition, so I've been very clear about that, but I will also being saying to party members at our national conference that it is the right forum to be debating ideas about this topic and more broadly."

Q&A June 12 2012:

"I think you can have a relationship of love and commitment and trust and understanding that doesn't need a marriage certificate associated with it [..]
That's my life experience - so I'm speaking from that life experience."

Live chat 21 June 2012 - especially useful as post-Conference:

I don’t think that heterosexual relationships are more valued than same-sex relationships. I think people who are in loving and committed relationships – all of those relationships should be valued. I think my relationship should be valued, and I’m not married. So I don’t see, through my eyes, the discriminator about whether a relationship is valued being whether or not a couple, heterosexual or same-sex, is married.

I’ve got a view about the cultural status of marriage in our society, so it’s not about my view about valuing relationships, it’s my personal view about the cultural status of marriage in our society. You don’t agree with me – a lot of other people don’t agree with me. And you’ve pointed to opinion polls about all of this. But for me, politics isn’t about making decisions based on opinion polls, it’s about making decisions you feel are right. And we wouldn’t have done some of the big tough things we’ve done as a government if we just got out the opinion polls every morning.

But this issue, it goes to some deeply personal questions – for some, deeply personal questions about their religious views; for some, deeply personal questions about what they want to do with their own lives. For you, it’s about presumably what you want to do in your own life, so these are very individual, personal perspectives on the world.

(Gillard also told Marie Claire magazine in Dec 2012: "...we should find other ways of recognising the value of other relationships...").

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Ah yes, such "deeply personal" questions that the Prime Minister is happy to personally vote for deeply personal decisions to take away other people's ability to make deeply personal decisions that will never affect her, but that will affect them.  Just another example of what is wrong with the institution of "conscience voting" as practiced in Australian politics. It's especially interesting that the PM defends religion as a "deeply personal" excuse for policies that tell other people what to do (which it isn't) but doesn't even have that pretext herself.

Gillard's position is intellectually very weak indeed.  It's all very well to argue that male-female marriages have great significance in society and should continue to be valued.  But that is just an argument for continuing to recognise and value male-female marriages.  It is not an argument for denying the right of same-sex couples to get married, and it is especially not an argument that the exclusion of same-sex couples is an aspect that "need[s] to continue to be part of our present and part of our future".  This is for the usual trivially obvious reason that allowing a small number of same-sex couples to marry does not stop people from having mixed-sex marriages, and does not stop people from valuing mixed-sex marriages, and that anyone who fears that it does has no more support for their position than those who fear the sky falling, impending Armageddon, black cats on Friday the 13th and so on.

Another very evident weakness in Gillard's arguments is that her argument that same-sex and mixed-sex relationships are equally valued is that she thinks they are equally valuable.  But whether two different relationship types are valued is not about whether Julia Gillard values them; it is about whether everyone else does as well.  And likewise, the issues in the SSM debate have nothing to do about whether couples can trust and love each other without a marriage certificate, and much to do with how such relationships are perceived by others, and particularly to do with the constant attempts by homophobes to argue that same-sex relationships are intrinsically unstable.

The combination of the weakness of Gillard's position (not that any position against same-sex marriage is strong) and the identity-politics incongruity created by her taking it, has caused a lot of people to suspect that her stated reasons aren't her real ones.

The Ghost Of The Groupers?

One defence I have seen concerning the PM's position supporting a conscience vote rather than a compulsory vote in favour of SSM is the fear that social radicalism will split the party.  On this view the ALP is seen as a coalition of anti-conservative forces, not all of which are socially progressive - a broad amalgam of social democrats, liberals, progressives and traditional unionists.  You have to throw the socially-conservative trade-union types the odd bone by letting them have "conscience votes" otherwise they'll spit the dummy, join the DLP and keep Labor out of office for more or less forever. 

There are a lot of things wrong with this argument.  The biggest one is that it either ignores or refashions the event that led to the mid-1950s Split in the first place.  It was not a case of a bunch of social conservatives taking their bat and ball and going home because they didn't get their way on a social issue.  Rather, the proto-DLP elements were the the subject of a purge of sorts led by the Labor leader at the time, Dr Evatt.  To argue that a series of actions in which dissenting members (in that case mainly over the issue of communism) were either expelled or marginalised (and not just for policy reasons either), forms a precedent for dissenting members quitting the party over a social issue while still otherwise having access to normal power mechanisms, is silly.  Especially given that Julia Gillard did so much to deliver those power mechanisms back to the usual players after they were briefly nicked by Kevin Rudd.

The proportion of Labor supporters who are fanatically against same-sex marriage is, in any case, very small.  It's doubtful that even if they did leave it would harm the party as badly as it was harmed by the 1950s split- or as badly as it has proved so good at harming itself in so many other ways.

The Fear of the Wedge?

The external version of the above.  This is the view, dating from that ancient period in which her government was briefly competitive in polling, that Gillard did not support same-sex marriage because she thought it would lose votes.  Of course, the party would have been well aware that polling showed voters generally support same-sex marriage, but that doesn't mean a lot if those who don't include a few percent of swing voters who will shift their vote to the Coalition over the issue. Since the Australian bill was defeated in mid-September 2012, we've seen Barack Obama take to the polls with a pro-same-sex marriage position (potentially a much riskier proposition in the USA because of the even greater degree of political religiosity there) and get re-elected without problems.  So any currency that sort of concern might have had seems to have disappeared.  Furthermore, the ALP has modernised its attitudes on social issues before without copping such backlashes just on account of doing so.

Not Just Anti-Same-Sex Marriage, Anti-All-Marriage?

This one was offered up by one of the more irate posters that Poll Bludger has (or had? think she'd banned now) to suffer and I was quite surprised to see a few others then start supporting it.  The idea here is that Gillard is actually still secretly a radical feminist from her student politics days, and that she dislikes the institution of marriage and wants to get rid of it.  This is supposedly born out by her personal life consisting of unmarried partnerships and, in the distant past, marriage-wrecking affairs.

Now in a way it's not as silly as it sounds.  Some feminists, who see the institution of mixed-sex marriage as implicitly loaded with patriarchal baggage, do find it rather annoying that gay rights activists want marriage just when they feel they have completely exposed said institution's defects. And some mixed-sex couples who choose not to get married (like Julia Gillard and Tim Mathieson, at least so far) may feel that they have to fight very hard to get their own relationships treated as seriously as marriages.  Modern straight non-marrying couples who see modern gay couples wanting to get married might in some cases see this as something of a sellout of the whole case against heterosexist marriage norms and the stigma of supposedly "living in sin".

However, this is one where the identity politics play out in much the same way for me as they do for the Prime Minister (save that I have not wrecked any marriages that I'm aware of).  While I certainly still hear of heterosexual couples experiencing discrimination for not marrying (mainly from appallingly judgemental relatives) I don't think the social stigma against unmarried straight couples is anything like it used to be, and I have never experienced it from other individual people myself. 

Indeed, I think the vast majority of Australian society now treats unmarried mixed-sex couples a lot better than Australian governments do.  Examples of poor treatment of unmarried mixed-sex couples by governments include:

* the offensive term "de facto", which implies that a relationship is merely an informal and presumably slightly second-rate facsimile of marriage.
* the Centrelink practice of assuming that cohabiting couples can be treated as if they are economically married and share all finances (an assumption that is also offensive to some married couples who choose not to do this).
* discrimination, at least in some states, in the ease and costs involved in obtaining formal relationship recognition independent of marriage, compared to that of obtaining the same by getting married (this has also been an issue for same-sex couples)

I mention these not only to foreshadow possible future rants about the middle one but because there are many ways in which a person with an identity-politics concern about the status of unmarried mixed-sex couples might pursue this.  And I've not really seen any signs that PM Gillard is concerned about such issues generally or feels a pressing need to politically target the institution of marriage.  Indeed, why should she, given that her own parents were happily married for over 50 years and that her affection and respect for her parents is obvious. When she says that she's just decided marriage isn't for her, I believe that, and I don't think any more needs to be read into it.

Gillard Opposes Same-Sex Marriage Because Her Family Does?

Seen this one a few times too.  Apparently, even though Tony Abbott's daughters have enough brain cells to realise their father's position on same-sex marriage belongs in the distant past, Prime Ministers are not to be credited with the same ability to think independently of their parents. 

Internal Party Issues?

This is where I suspect it is really at.  I don't believe any of the other cryptic explanations I have seen so far, and to take Gillard's own words on the issue seriously is to conclude that the PM is an insensitive halfwit, which I do not believe to be true.  My hypothesis, then, is that Gillard's personal heel-dragging on one of the greatest social policy no-brainers of our time (even after opposition ceased to be party policy) has been motivated by political debts within the party, and perhaps even by fears that if she switched to supporting reform, some socially conservative elements within the party might have switched back to Kevin Rudd.

But it's not something I have any positive evidence for, simply what is left over when I dismiss all the explanations I find unconvincing.  Perhaps someone out there has a new and better reason that hasn't been canvassed before.

Whatever the reason for the PM's stubborn opposition to same-sex marriage, its impact has been clear.   Australia has missed a chance, and if we are headed for a couple of terms of comfortable Abbott-led majorities, there may well not be another for a while.  The main reason the chance was missed was nothing to do with whether or not the Coalition allowed a conscience vote, and everything to do with a PM who had a great opportunity to give same-sex marriage a real chance as part of a coherent personal platform, but instead chose to stay in the way. 

As the last chances to avoid being seen as completely silly on the issue in the sometimes inattentive eyes of history evaporate, our Prime Minister is playing minor games with the Opposition Leader on the question of whether or not he is clear with the people on whether or not he will allow a few of his members to vote more progressively than her.  She says "I think the Leader of the Opposition owes people the same courtesy".

Prime Minister, the people who are owed courtesy in this debate are those who are actually affected by it.  Those who are affected by it are same-sex couples who wish to marry.  You voted to illiberally and without any shred of a valid reason deny them the courtesy of allowing their decisions to be accepted by government.  You personally and directly caused dozens of your colleagues to be allowed to vote alongside you to deny same-sex couples that courtesy.  Having done so, you have no business telling Tony Abbott what courtesies he owes, since this is matter on which you have displayed less than no courtesy to those who are affected, and may in so doing have set back their valid cause more seriously than even Tony Abbott has or will. 

Of course, Abbott should stop the vague, untrustworthy hedging and issue a clear statement on whether or not all Coalition MPs will be granted a conscience vote on same-sex marriage issues in the next parliament.  It's just that the Prime Minister is the last person who should be berating him for not doing so, because the main good it might achieve is some small advance in an issue that the PM had an opportunity to massively advance, but chose instead to set backwards.  The principle subject of Julia Gillard's misogyny speech was Tony Abbott's rank hypocrisy on gender issues, displayed when he tried to attack Labor for propping up Peter Slipper.  This time, the hypocrisy is Julia Gillard's.