At the time, the alternate-vote seemed like the best option for getting us out of the usual two-party politics in the UK. It’s not a common system, but it is used elsewhere. Australia was used as the main example of a western modern nation that used it for electing their representatives.
And now they have Tony Abbot in power. A man who sounds like yet another example of someone more Disney Villain than politician on the world stage. A man who won the election and mere days later had an approval rating of what? 20%? A man who is literally pushing to destroy the Great Barrier Reef in order for coal and oil freighters to get easier access to a port. Whose track record over gender and sexual equality sounds like someone doing donuts in a pig stye.
AV was sold under the idea that it’d undermine tactical voting, protest voting, and allow election of those the majority of people didn’t mind having. Australia seems to have undermined that idea with their current PM.
Am I missing something here? Was there an unmentioned way of exploiting the AV style system? Is it not used in the main elections of Australia and only in some lesser ones?