PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION SOCIETY OF AUSTRALIA
	www.prsa.org.au	18 Anita Street,  BEAUMARIS	VIC 3193
	info@prsa.org.au	Tel + 61429176725	2015-12-12

Letter published in The Canberra Times on 2016-01-14

Abolish party boxes

Senator Nick Xenophon ("Let's empower Senate voters to make it fair", Times2, January 1, p 5) had most of his Senate electoral history wrong and is dreaming if he thinks his revised convoluted proposal is "broadly based" on the ACT's Hare-Clark arrangements, under which the absence of party boxes is entrenched, and voters' wishes are respected even if they number fewer candidates than there are vacancies.

Compulsory indication of all Senate preferences was first enacted in 1934, replacing the previous arbitrary minimum of twice the number of vacancies plus one, under which informal rates usually exceeded 8 per cent. The 1983 changes complicating the ballot-paper did not have bipartisan support. The Coalition voted against party boxes. The Australian Democrats demanded being allowed to lodge two group voting tickets as part of their price for allowing Labor's proposals through. They also introduced the remarkable below-the-line dispensation that at least 90 per cent of the squares be marked with no more than three departures from sequential numbering.

While Senate informality dropped markedly in 1984, House of Representatives informality trebled at that election because many electors misunderstood advertising about new arrangements that applied only to Senate voting.

After the 2013 elections, Senator Xenophon introduced legislation to treat marking a single party box vote as formal, or six preferences below the line as enough. Now he suddenly wants a minimum of three party boxes or 12 first two or three during the scrutiny?

We could expect an explosion in the number of candidates if 12 preferences were demanded for a formal vote. As above-the-line and below-the-line requirements would have to be co-ordinated in some way, smaller groups and parties would endorse at least four candidates and perhaps even as many as 12, rather than the current usual two. Electoral officials would have to waste most of their advertising budget explaining the arbitrary new formality requirements, quite different from those applying for the House of Representatives, instead of concentrating on alerting electors that they are giving a simple instruction about the order in which continuing candidates can have access to any part of their vote that still hasn't been used.

The onus is on Senator Xenophon to explain why he wants to make an uncomplicated ballot paper more cluttered, rather than adopting the ACT's simple Hare-Clark approach to layout and formality or that of the Menzies opposition in 1948.

He has yet to advance any credible arguments about why his proposed additional complexity in formality requirements is in electors' interests when the abolition of party boxes would make their and electoral officials' jobs much more straightforward.

Bogey Musidlak, convener, Proportional Representation Society of Australia (ACT branch)