Never let the facts get in the way of a good story

Paul Sheehan’s latest diatribe on the UK elections really highlights the decline of journalism in the Fairfax empire.

… despite the resounding rejection of the Labour government, with the Tories winning 306 seats … their 36 per cent of the primary vote does not make a mandate. This is the basic problem with a first-past-the-post voting system. It is also why Australia’s proportional representation system is a far more supple, equitable and practical way of expressing the electorate’s intentions.

The mandatory distribution of preferences under this system creates, by the end of the voting process, a two-party system. Under the Australian system, this British election would still have been a knife-edge but it would also have delivered a mandate to govern.

Firstly, Australia’s House of Representatives does not have a proportional voting system. The Senate does, but since we’re talking about electing government here, and government comes from the lower hours, I think we can assume that Sheehan is trying to refer to the House of Reps.

Secondly, I have run some primitive numbers on the UK election, assuming that they did have proportional representation. Here are my results:

Clearly, fringe parties win out under a system of proportional representation, making it harder for on major party to form a stable government. This is obvious from looking at Tasmania, which has proportional representation in its lower house, and ended up with 10 Labor, 10 Liberals and 5 Greens.

Now let’s compare Sheehan’s earlier comment:

Australia’s proportional representation system is a far more … practical way of expressing the electorate’s intentions.

With this, from later in the page:

… proportional representation [is] the least practical in practice.

Is their something in the desalinated water supply down in Pyrmont, or do Fairfax journalists and editors simply get higher grade drugs than the rest of us?

Anyhow, if you read down further, Sheehan’s solution to all our problems appears to be to weight everyone’s vote based on their contribution to society. Maybe giving people a free subscription to The Sydney Morning Herald in return for forfeiting their vote will have the same effect, eh Paul?

Damn you, Calibri!

Why?