Well, it has been quite an eventful few days in the world of Australian politics. Noone really knows who our Prime Minister will be. All the analysts are currently saying that the coalition will have 73 seats to Labor's 72. On first glance this points to a coalition victory, but it isn't as simple as that!

Enter the independents - or more technically correct, the crossbenchers! Three of them - Bob Katter, Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott - are sitting independent MPs from regional seats in Queensland and New South Wales who have be re-elected by their elecorate. They are all from rather conservative National Party backgrounds. The other two (Adam Bandt and Andrew Wilkie - noting Wilkie's position is not confirmed) - are from a different background - both representing urban seats in Melbourne and Hobart, and both from the left side of politics - Bandt being the first Greens representative in the lower house, and Wilkie being a former Green member.

On face value it could be assumed the first three would side with the coalition and the last two with Labor. It is never that simple! After all you would assume that the four independents are no longer members of their party for a reason.

Which brings me to what I personally believe was the only policy in the election that clearly separated the two major parties - telecommunications.

While watching the television coverage over the weekend, as expected there were live crosses all over the nation including the three conservative members. And a picture spoke a thousand words - or rather, no picture. The live crosses were just a still image with audio provided by a grainy mobile phone call. Even though the members pointed out that telecommunications was a big issue in their electorate, the fact that the current situation was being clearly demonstrated only served to reinforce this!

The Greens and Wilkie also ran on a platform of supporting the National Broadband Network so it could be assumed they would side with Labor in this regard - not to mention the fact that the Greens and Liberals are polar opposite ends of the spectrum.

The other factor that gives hope to Labor is that the crossbenchers have indicated that they want to support a stable government. It is not in their interest to see the country go to another election in six months time. These comments have made specific reference to the Senate. After the massive surge to the Greens - their number of Senators will increase from 4 to 9 - perhaps the independents think that a conservative government would not work with a left leaning upper house? It is worth mentioning that the Senate does not change until 1 July 2011. Until then, a Labor Government will need the approval of either the Coalition, or all Greens senators, Family First senator Steve Fielding, and Independent Nick Xenaphon, to pass legislation. After the new senate term starts, only the Greens will need to be appeased. Probably not an issue for a Labor government but it could be a challenge should the Liberals form government.

(As I write this, news has come to light that Wilkie may be not as likely to win Denison as first thought. If it did go Labors way, it may put it at 73-73 for the major parties. That's probably a sign that I should stop writing this, every few hours there is something new!)

The Hare-Clark voting system as used in Tasmania's multi-member electorates, is one of the fairest political systems in the world. In the recent Tasmanian election, five members are elected from each of the five electorates, which make a total of twenty-five members in the House of Assembly.

One of the benefits of this system is that the end result is very similar to the will of the voting public.

Take a look at Australia's federal lower house, the House of Representatives. This system uses single member electorates. Each of the 150 seats nationally elects a single member using preferential voting. But look at the last federal election - over 16% of voters chose a member outside of the major parties (ie. Greens, Democrats, Family First, another smaller party or another independent) as their first preference - but in the final makeup of the house, only 2% of the seats are represented by a non-major party.

In the recent Tasmanian election we see how the system *should* work. The first preference votes received were split between Labor 37%, Liberal 39% the Greens 21% and other parties 3%. The final distribution of seats is Labor 10 (40%), Liberal 10 (40%) and the Greens 5 (20%). A much more accurate representation of the choice of the people.

However, people need to know how to work the system to their advantage! As you can see above, the result was very close - particular in Denison where the fifth seat was between Liberal Elise Archer and independent Andrew Wilkie. The graph below, originally from Antony Green's Election Blog (an excellent resource) demonstrates it well. (Note this particular graph was originally from this post.)

Along the bottom of the graph, you see each candidate as they (or in the case of those who secured a quota, as their excess votes) are eliminated. When one of the coloured lines goes to the bottom of the graph, it means they were the last candidate for that party. The dark grey line near the bottom shows "exhausted" votes. Voters were only required to enter numbers 1 to 5 - anything above that was optional. When one of the ballot papers "runs out of numbers" so to speak, it becomes an "exhausted" ballot.



Notice the rather small difference between the final Liberal candidate (Archer) and the independent (Wilkie) at the end of the count.

Now, notice by how much the grey bar rose when the last Labor candidate (Bacon's excess) and the last Green candidate (Burnett) were eliminated! It seems these were people who voted 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 for either Labor or the Greens, and no-one else. These votes are often wasted (as it is very unlikely that one electorate will elect five members from the one party) as the votes often "flow" onto other parties.

Without making predictions as to who would vote for who, I'd say it would be likely that most Labor voters would put any other party above the Liberals, and most Greens would put Wilkie before any other party. The second point in particular can be demonstrated by the large gain Wilkie received when Burnett was eliminated.

If only a small fraction of the the 1-2-3-4-5 Labor or Green voters had've put #6 as Wilkie, we would be looking at a parliament with 10 Labor, 9 Liberal, 5 Green and 1 Independent - which clearly would have a massive effect on who makes the next government!

Are you a Tasmanian with an opinion? Specifically, a Tasmanian who uses the internet to post your opinion on the upcoming state election?

Be careful - since 6pm tonight (Friday, February 19), any online commentary about the state election must include your full name and address.  This is according to section 191 of the Tasmanian Electoral Act.

This is a completely impractical situation.  The law covers all kinds of internet activity including Facebook status updates and Twitter posts.  For obvious reasons, many people are not comfortable with their full home address being linked publicly to either of these accounts.  Some reasons, such as privacy and risk of stalking or assault are obvious, but there are also some less obvious reasons.

Digital Tasmania, supported by groups such as Electronic Frontiers Australia and the Australian Privacy Foundation, has written to the electoral commissioner requesting to not enforce this particular law, and for the leaders of the political parties to review the legislation when parliament next resumes after the election.  (Media coverage: ABC, iTWire, The Examiner)

The lack of practicality of this law was demonstrated by (or lack of) by iBleeter on Twitter who has started a drinking game - take a drink each time you see an example of the law being broken.  He was probably off his face after the first couple of hours, after breaches were spotted on the Facebook or Twitter feeds of David O'Byrne, Lisa Singh, Daniel Hulme, Will Hodgman, Jeremy Rockliff, ABC News Tasmania, The Mercury, Kim and Dave, Bob Brown, Forestry Tasmania, David Bartlett and Nick McKim.  Clearly if the Electoral Commission don't want to have a mockery made of this law they should prosecute all of the above.

Lisa Singh's breach is particularly amusing as she was on Stateline tonight - along with Cassy O'Connor and Brett Whiteley -where they were asked about the s191 law, and all of them supported it in its current form.

Even Mercury cartoonist Jon Kudelka has stated he will not be publishing his cartoons online until after the election.

One Western Australian has come to our rescue - just enter anything you want at his site at http://s191.org and he will automatically generate an authorisation for you - with his address way over in WA attached to the end.  No risk of vigilantes who disagree with your stance on the pulp mill, the Polytechnic, or water reforms egging your house!

And on that note - http://s191.org/56.