Australia has a strong history of innovation at the electoral level. The states have been the incubators for this innovation with Tasmania being one of the leaders. The Robson Rotation gets it name from Neil Robson's bill to the Tasmanian Assembly in 1979. The Tasmanian Assembly uses a preference voting system. One of the inefficiencies of the preference system that skews the outcome is the "donkey vote". The Robson Rotation limits the effect of this.

Random Ordering

The Robson Rotation requires that candidates be ordered randomly on a ballot paper. This gives voters pause, as they search for their preferred candidates and then order them accordingly. It also stops the skewing of electoral outcomes by donkey voters. This is where a voter orders the candidates by top to bottom or bottom or top. Previously candidates that were on the top of the ballot would get a boost to their electoral fortunes as donkey voters rated them with high preferences.

The relevant section from the Tasmanian Electoral Act that contains the statutory language supporting the Robson Rotation;

89. Election with poll

(1) If the number of candidates for an election exceeds the number required to be elected, the returning officer for the division concerned is to announce that a poll will take place on the day fixed by the writ for that election.
(2) As soon as practicable after the announcement of candidates under section 87, the returning officer is to -
a) for the purposes of Schedule 3 determine, by an approved method, the random order in which the names of candidates are to appear in each column on the first batch of ballot papers; and
(b) in the case of an Assembly election, for the purposes of section 97(6) determine, by an approved method, the random order in which the columns mentioned in section 97(2) and (3), if any, are to appear on the ballot papers.

Another positive outcome of the Robson Rotation is that it minimizes the effect of party "how to vote" cards. The voter still has to deliberate and find the candidates on the ballot, rather than just following a pattern, or an above the line vote. Just for good measure, the Tasmanian Electoral Act also includes penalties for handing out "how to vote" cards within 100 metres of an Electoral Booth;

177. Offences within 100 metres of polling place

A person must not, within 100 metres of, or within, a polling place which is open for polling -

(a) canvass for votes; or
(b) solicit the vote of an elector; or
(c) induce or attempt to induce an elector not to vote for a particular candidate or particular candidates.

These innovations have served to defray the influence of parties on elections. Tasmania does not hold by-elections either. If an Assembly seat is vacated for whatever reason, the preferences for the candidates in the previous election are consulted. The candidate with the most number of votes then occupies that seat. Consequently parties often have several members contesting seats. This defuses the number of votes for the party as well, as block voting for a party is not guaranteed and those that choose to vote along party lines still have a choice of different candidates within their preferred party.

Australian Capital Territory

The Australian Capital Territory uses the Robson Rotation on its ballot papers. The Robson Rotation was entrenched, by name, in the Hare-Clark Entrenchment Act of 1994;

(g) ballot papers shall be-

(i) prepared and collated in accordance with the method known as the Robson Rotation; and

The Hare-Clark system of voting is a single transferable vote (SVT) named after Englishman, Thomas Hare and Tasmanian, Andrew Inglis-Clark. Tasmania has been using the Hare-Clark voting system since 1909. Andrew Inglis-Clark's other achievements include writing the original draft of the Australian Federal Constitution.

Judy Jackson, Tasmania's Attorney General, has announced that Tasmania will join New South Wales and Western Australia in challenging the constitutionality of the Howard Government's IR laws. I think this a good thing. Anything that can stall the rampant anti-federalism emanating from Canberra is a positive. The States need to be more diverse and heterogeneous in their economic policies. Canberra dictating from afar is not a good thing.

I could not find any statement directly by Judy Jackson. So I am dependent on the ABC political feed and the Mercury internet site for any scrap of news on the issue . Note to Judy Jackson; you can speak to me, and anyone else directly by either posting it on the MHA website, a personal website, or a blog. Coverage by both the ABC and Mercury is pretty poor. I couldn't find anything in the Examiner's website . Which is even worse in terms of usability than the Mercury's. Tasmania's politicians and news outlets need to become more internet friendly.

From the Mercury article ;

Ms Jackson said the reforms would create uncertainty and insecurity and "will guarantee that workers will be exposed to bullying, coercion and harassment".

Women in the workforce would be especially vulnerable, Ms Jackson said.

She said the laws would remove all protection against unfair dismissal for most women in Tasmania and there would no longer be any compensation for redundancy for most women workers.

She said new state laws -- to take effect from February 1 -- would, in part, help to protect existing conditions of employment for many.

Nothing there about the IR laws being illegal and unconstitutional federal encroachment on state rights and responsibilities. I presume the law case is not about whether Tasmania or the Federal government can be "fairer".

Rene Hidding, Opposition leader in Tasmania offered;

"The state Liberal team fully support the Howard Government workplace relations reforms to provide higher wages, more jobs and a stronger economy and the Lennon Labor Government needs to stop scaremongering on this issue."

Anti-federalism and unitary government was never a Liberal platform. Since Gorton embraced the federal system as the sole authority for policy making, and the states simply being to disburse the funds in support of federal policy, the Liberal Party has become anti-federalist.

All the major parties in Australia are hostile to federalism, Liberal, Labor, Greens and Democrats - all see the states as being dissolved and there being no government between the federal and local council level. In reality the thin levels of government are supposed to be the federal and local levels with the state government carrying the most responsibility and weight of governance.

The federal and local levels of government are supposed to be focused on specific areas and problems of governance. If it does not have international significance, then the federal government should not be involved. For instance, foreign policy, international relations, defence, inter-state tariffs etc are natural federal responsibilities. Education, Health, and Industrial Relations are not.

Guy Barnett is quoted as saying;

This political stunt by the Tasmanian Government and other Labor state governments is doomed to fail, because they know that where there is a conflict between state law and federal law the federal law will prevail.

They are deliberately wasting taxpayers' money for purely political reasons.

Barnett is right. One of the most anti-federalist institutions in our country is the High Court of Australia. The Australian Constitution is a static document, almost impervious to change. Referendum's fail as a matter of course against it. Lionel Murphy changed the High Court from one of strict legalism, to one which saw the constitution as a living breathing document that could be moulded by Judicial decisions. Not the will of the people through referendums, but by High Court interpretations. Murphy wrote;

The Australian constitution does not express all that is intended by it: much of the greatest importance is implied. Some implications arise from consideration of the text: others arise from the nature of the society that operates the constitution.

Why don't we just admit the truth. The "Bearded Men" did a half-arsed job with the Constitution such that it is a pre-enlightenment view of government. Further, they made it so hard to change by referendum that politicians and judges run an end-game around it with implied intentions and meanings. This largely goes without approval of the people and ends up with a massive collapse of power to the centre - in this case Canberra. Australia was founded on federalism and the heterogeneous protections that gives from tyranny, political entropy and unitary outcomes.

The Robson Rotation is an electoral technology used in Tasmania which jumbles the order of the candidates within a party grouping on the ballot paper. it was developed as a challenge to the donkey vote, effectively dampening any skewing of the vote by voters ticking off the first five in the list. Does the Robson Rotation affect incumbency?

I took the years a member has served between 1946 and 1980 which is prior to the introduction of the Robson Rotation. I also took the number of years a member has served since 1980. I then averaged the years over the number of members.

Despite this clunky method, it appears that all average number of years a member serves since the introduction of the Robson Rotation is less for all electorates in Tasmania.

Does the Robson Rotation increase the churn rate and reduce incumbency? There appears to be some correlation that it does.

When Canberra cherry-picks responsibilities from the states it is anti-federalism. When the states take from the local councils there is no real name for it other than centralisation. Tasmanian Councils are defending their authority and responsibility over sewerage and water. It is a familiar pattern, a crisis appears, and a central authority uses that crisis or emergency to covet new powers. It has been a dominant force in Australian politics.

The issue is the State Government of Tasmania wanting to take over the power of water and sewerage; as the water crisis demands that the local councils can't be trusted with the responsibility in a time of emergency. Which isn't true. Decentralisation is a strength; especially in politics.

One of the reasons a representative democracy is stronger than a monarchy or dictatorship is because it decentralises political power. The opposing force is the desire of the executive to collapse all power into themselves - which leads to a monarchy or dictatorship, so representative democracy is maintained at a cost.

There was an op-ed in The Canberra Times by Greg Barns recently that argued for separation of service delivery between the feds, states and councils. One of the reasons a market economy is seen as superior to public sector service delivery is that it promotes overlapping services and products. We commonly call that consumer choice.

Yet we view overlapping public sector service delivery as waste. I would argue that the road system is an example of overlapping responsibilities providing a good outcome; Australia has federal, state, local and private roads. These go through all sorts of political boundaries and their overlapping regulations and laws. Probably the only way roads could be provided is through that method.

Barns writes:

And what of local government? Why is it, that there are, for example, 144 local councils in Western Australia, 68 in South Australia and 29 in Tasmania, when the total population for these states is just over three million people?

Again; decentralisation is a sign of political strength. In a modern state innovation bubbles up from the most innovative areas; rather than the capital intensive industrialised nation-state who spends on the slow areas with capital accrued centrally in order for them to catch up to the faster areas. Australia is a good example of the capital intensive centre - the federal government does 85% of all taxation.

Like South Australia, Tasmania has been pretty competitive other than one period of 30+ years of dominance between 1934 and 1969 by the Labor Party.

Aynsley Kellow argues that during Labor's hold on Tasmanian politics between 1934 and 1982 the politics were "distributive rather than redistributive in flavour, what Lowi calls patronage politics." State sponsored development for industrialisation, mineral extraction and hydro-electric power led to electoral success.

The Robson Rotation was introduced into Tasmania in 1980. It appears that this electoral technology may have an impact on incumbency. It could have played a part in reducing Labor's dominance of Tasmanian politics since 1982.