Australia 2010 Election - Sex Party and More

Autralian 2010 election - they have a very weird system of preferential voting for the Senate which is somewhat proportional. Downside is that parties can make deals allotting their extra votes to other parties - if voters don't set their own preferences. Here you can see the Australian National/Liberal (aka conservative) party narrowly beat the Fishing and Lifestyle party for the last seat in Queensland with the help of votes from the Sex Party.

http://www.abc.net.au/elections/federal/2010/guide/sqld-results.htm

The Sex Party got over 2% in many Australian states, beating out the Fishing and Lifestyle party (sidenote: France also has traditional parties like hunting/fishing that tend to do fairly well in the first round).

Vancouver (Canada) had a municipal Sex Party as well, but I don't think they did this well.

In other news, the Labor government lost its majority and there is now a hung parliament where independents (and the one Green) hold the balance of power. The Australian's have a non-proportional preferential voting system for the parliament, which in this case managed to give Labor and the Greens a minority of seats, even though they got 52% of the vote. The Green party vote was up 3.7% to 11.5% - making the Australian Green party one of the strongest in the world (mostly thanks to the voting system for the Senate where the Greens have been able to win seats).

I was sad to read that both the Liberals/Nationals and Labor support Australia's continued involvement in the military occupation of Afghanistan - it looks like the Australian Labor party continues to move to the right (the proposed tax on excessive mining corporation profits was a great idea - but failed, and ultimately the party forced out the prime minister who suggested it), and disaffected people are going to the Greens.

It is interesting to see that Australia spells it "Labor", not "Labour" as in the UK and Canada. I thought Australia would be more British in its spelling than Canada.