3.7 Electoral systems in Australia with Antony Green

About this episode

Nivek Thompson interviews Antony Green about the Australian electoral system and the Vote Compass tool.

In this episode, I'm talking with Antony Green about the Australian electoral system and Vote Compass, a tool which allows voters to explore how their views align with the major parties. Antony is an Australian psephologist and commentator. He is the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's election analyst. As well as being an Adjunct Professor University of Sydney in the School of Social and Political Sciences. I spoke with Antony about how he came to be Australia's best-known election analyst - he said he was in the right place, at the right time, with the right skills. He identified three institutions which define Australian politics: Compulsory voting Preferential voting Bi-cameral Houses of Parliament And highlighted a couple of institutional challenges in Australia The power of our Senate undermines the mandate given to the House of Representatives to implement the policies they took to the election Strict rules around what counts as a validly completed ballot paper results in around one-third to a half of all votes being considered informal. I also asked Antony what he thought of the idea of a Citizens' Senate. He noted that it would be difficult in practice due to the need…

People in this episode

Host: Nivek Thompson

Guest: Antony Green

Topics covered

• electoral systems
• Australia
• politics
• Vote Compass
• psephology

Keywords

• electoral system
• Vote Compass
• compulsory voting
• preferential voting
• Senate
• House of Representatives
• informal votes

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Australian Broadcasting Corporation, University of Sydney

Places: Australia, Australian Constitution

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