Resolution?

The Independents have spoken (Mr Oakeshott at great length) and we now have a Labor minority government with Julia Gillard confirmed as Prime Minister (and Mr Abbott, despite his disappointment, graciously acknowledging this).

Expert opinion is divided as to whether the government will last a full three year term. Mr Windsor has stated that a major reason for his decision to support the ALP was that he thought a Coalition government would be more inclined to call - and to win - an early election. We can therefore assume that he and his locquacious colleague Mr Oakeshott's survival instincts will prevail. Whether the new regime (or "paradigm")'s conditions such as weekly meetings with the PM will, as the ALP's election campaign mantra put it, enable the country to move forward is another thing.

Election 2010

I'm not trying to be the last Australian blogger to comment on the election which Prime Minister Gillard has called for 21 August (or "August 21" as she called it, North American fashion, on Saturday). I'll follow the campaign with interest though expect that most of my comments (and I'm not proposing to make many) will be in short form ie Twitter (@Pathfinder79).

For now I'll just say (and I'm certainly not the first to do so) that it's a long time between now and then yet on present indications, viz opinion polls and today's decision by the Greens to direct their preferences to Labor, the government will be returned.

Labor likely to be able to govern in own right after SA election

The ABC reports

South Australian Premier Mike Rann is in a strong position to deliver the Labor Party a third term in government despite a voter backlash. Mr Rann and Liberal leader Isobel Redmond both said the result was too close to call on the night. But Mr Rann is the frontrunner with the ABC's election computer predicting Labor is set to hold 25 seats in the 47-seat House of Assembly. The Liberals are forecast to hold 18, with four Independents.

In a hubristic echo of (or cribbing from) Paul Keating Mr Rann said he hoped to be able to claim the "sweetest victory"

Election eve

I've followed the ups and downs of the state election campaign probably more closely than most voters, though nowhere near as closely as those who post regularly and sometimes argumentatively on blogs and websites such as The Poll Bludger. I have tweeted a few times @Pathfinder79, usually with links to articles and, space permitting, sometimes a comment.

The consensus among the experts (both generally acknowledged and self-appointed) is that Labor will scrape back in, without having to negotiate with independents or other parties (read National) . Here'san example

For a succinct summary of some of the wider issues see this by Peter Van Onselen in The Australian

Along with Tasmania, SA lags behind other states on most national economic indicators. Its share of the national economy has declined from the levels Labor inherited in 2002. Its share of gross domestic product is below the national average. Business investment is relatively sluggish and its population share is declining, with growth rates slower than all other states except Tasmania. On the face of it, this sounds like a recipe for removing a government.

The Liberal Party wants to use these indicators to condemn Labor as having failed South Australians during its eight years in power. As is often the case in politics, the situation isn't that simple.

On each of the above indicators the rate of decline in SA was substantially higher eight years ago than it is now.

In other words, while Rann hasn't managed to transform the state from an economic laggard to a miracle economy, he has made important headway to improving long-term prosperity.

I and, I suspect,.many other voters think that Labor has overdone the spin. As an example consider the matter of Lance Armstrong and the Tour Down Under in 2009. It took the New York Times ,not a local media outlet, which revealed that the fee paid to Armstrong was not donated to charity, as the government had claimed, but pocketed by the great man (I'm not referring to the Premier).

The US Boulder Report explained how something which could have been handled positively backfired and added to the growing public perception that the government was being economical with the truth:

It’s less the donation than the secrecy surrounding it that seems strange and excessive. As Adelaide Now reported, the South Australia Tourism Commission just got a $1.506 million boost to its budget from the state government, even as Rann said that wasn’t related to Armstrong’s appearance fee.

Armstrong has every right to ask for personal appearance fees. And just as he has every right to solicit donations to his foundation, (most) donors have every right to keep those donations private. But ones made with taxpayer dollars, in an ostensibly democratic and open government, fit a different standard of disclosure. And, a governmental partnership of any kind is the thing you’d think they’d be proud to discuss, particularly since the money may end up right back in the Australian public health system. There shouldn’t be anything about this that’s shameful, but the tight-lipped approach creates needless drama.

The Liberal campaign has not been gaffe-free either but Ms Redmond seems to have been able to put most of her messages across. It's a very tall order for the Liberals to make up all the ground they've lost at the last two elections, but the evidence of polls etc suggests they'll make up a lot of it. We shall see.

Important South Australian anniversary overlooked by government

Peter Brent, speaking on ABC RN's Perspective on Friday, drew attention to a significant anniversary: 150 years since South Australia's first election under self government. As Brent explains, the event has an added significance: it was the first election in the world run by a chief electoral officer, W R Boothby.

The transcript (click the link to read it) is brief and well worth reading, Here's an extract describing some of the Boothby-driven innovations:

Boothby also changed the ballot paper. The Victorian version had voters crossing out the candidates they did NOT want; under Boothby's alteration they now put a cross in a box next to the candidate they DID want. By the end of the century this system had swept much of Europe and America, where it is still often called the Australian Ballot.

Perhaps even more importantly, he re-invented the way electoral rolls were constructed. Previously it had been left to electors to enrol, now the government door-knocked every house in South Australia.

As the decades rolled by, Boothby's power, and the organization below him, continued to grow, and eventually his enrolment procedure, other reforms and the very structure of his electoral fiefdom, were adopted around the globe.

After his death in 1903, a federal electorate was named after him. As far as I can tell, nowhere else on the planet has named an electorate after an electoral official.

Yes, they took their elections seriously in South Australia in the second half of the nineteenth century.

Nowadays in South Australia we don't seem to take our history very seriously. True, last week there was a conference "The Politics of Democracy in South Australia"arranged by the History Trust of South Australia and the State Electoral Office. The History Trust also has an exhibition "The Voice of the People: Democracy comes to South Australia" which runs until 31 August, but there's nothing about the anniversary on the Premier and Ministers' website, which you may think, as I do, is a pity.