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QUOTA Newsletter of the
Proportional Representation Society of Australia
QN1997A
March 1997
www.prsa.org.au ·
Winston
Peters, New Zealand Deputy PM, to Address a PR
Society Meeting ·
General
Elections for Both WA Houses ·
Electoral
& Constitutional Polls to Involve PR ·
Queensland
"Affirmative Action" ·
Port
Lincoln Municipal Elections · List of issues of Quota Notes "Australia Consults"Over
two hundred public meetings were held around
Australia Day as part of the Australia Consults
program developed by the National Australia Day
Council (see www.telstra.com.au/nadc/) and the
Australian Local Government Association, with the
support of Telstra as principal sponsor. Those
attending were invited to discuss appropriate
Centenary of Federation celebrations,
constitutional reform including possible changes
related to the Head of State, and reconciliation
between indigenous and other Australians. ACT
Branch Committee Member, Julie McCarron-Benson
attended the Canberra forum on Saturday 25th
January, taking the opportunity to question both
monarchists and republicans about why they were not
addressing the more basic issue now facing an
educated mature independent nation, the reform of
processes for proper democratic representation. Ms McCarron-Benson
called on those present to support the PRSA's
efforts to secure the Hare-Clark electoral system
for the House of Representatives. In the light of
the ACT's positive experience with effective
voting already, there were no negative comments.
Change of the electoral system to proportional
representation was included as an important part
of the communique
issued at the conclusion of the forum, and
forwarded to the National Australia Day Council. Forum on Electoral
Fraud
The Honourable Henry Samuel
Chapman authored the world's first secret ballot
law, for Victoria in 1856, which by combining
secrecy with limited vote-tracing,
both protected the elector, and detected fraud
where election results were in dispute. Last November, several members of the PRSA's NSW Branch attended a Forum on Electoral Fraud, which was the first major public activity of the newly-formed H S Chapman Society. After a keynote address by Senator Nick Minchin, Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister, there were sessions exploring the presence and extent of electoral fraud: presentations, often by speakers with past or present Liberal Party affiliations, examined the electoral roll and its integrity or otherwise, fraud and forgery in postal ballots and especially those involving trade unions, and the potential for systematic fraud through rogue computer programming or exploitation of the flurry of unchecked last-minute changes that occur just before the close of the rolls once an election is called. While
commending the speakers on the thoroughness of
their investigations, long-time New South Wales
Branch member Syd
Gilchrist raised the unfortunate absence from
their presentations of work on the important fraud
of single-member electorates, where perhaps 70% of
the seats might be safe for one party or another,
leaving voters in those areas virtually
disfranchised. Party attention always focuses on
the swinging or marginal seats that determine
government, and voters in those seats are clearly
seen as more valuable than those in safe seats. Mr
Gilchrist pointed out that the only way in which
democracy would be improved would be through the
adoption of quota-preferential methods in
electorates largely returning seven or nine
members. The
PRSA commends NSW members for their efforts to
have fundamental questions addressed by a wider
audience that professes concern about electoral
fairness. PRSA Conference
Presence
This year's National
Conference of the Australian Democrats held in
Canberra in January was structured around
academic papers examining the party's role and
influence in its first twenty years, to be
collated as a book for publication later this
year. PRSA
National President Bogey Musidlak attended much of
the proceedings. He placed numerous copies of
various publications on a literature table being
picked over by activists, and ensured that
academics present were handed Society submissions
and other materials of use to them and their
students. When important electoral matters were
raised personally with sitting MPs and other
prominent figures, much was learnt about strong
personal commitments to electoral reform. Following
this experience, a stronger presence by the
Proportional Representation Society of Australia
can be expected at future academic or political
conferences where promotion of effective voting
may bear fruit. Winston
Peters, New Zealand Deputy PM, to Address a
PR Society Meeting
The
Hon. Winston Peters MP, Deputy Prime Minister
and Treasurer of New Zealand, has accepted an
invitation by the PRSA for him to address
members and other interested people on New
Zealand's MMP system, and proportional
representation in general. Mr Peters will speak
to us on Friday 25th July 1997, at 6 p.m. in the
Council Chamber at the University of Melbourne.
Those proposing to attend, particularly those
bringing a prospective member, should inform the
Victorian Branch (Fax number on Page 4: other
details in Melbourne White Pages). General
Elections for Both WA Houses
WA Branch
President, John Taplin, begins his report on these
general elections by reminding us that WA has a malapportionment, between
metropolitan and country electorates, of about 2
to 1 for its 57 single-member Legislative Assembly
electorates, and 4 to 1 for its four Legislative
Council electorates. Two of those Council
electorates elect 5 MLCs and the other two elect 7
MLCs.
*To simplify
presentation, adjustments were made for the 2
country Legislative Council
electorates where these parties had a joint ticket. If malapportionment were a
dominant cause of disproportion between seats and
votes the largest departure from a value of 1.00 in
the Ration column above, for the major parties,
should appear in the Council table. Instead it
appears in the Assembly table, where the Liberals
alone gained an absolute majority of the seats with
less than 40% of the vote. The Council table shows
the much more proportional result that PR gives,
despite the much greater malapportionment
for that House. Electoral &
Constitutional Polls to Involve PR A most significant
referendum should be held in the United Kingdom if
the British Labour Party achieves Government as a
result of the General Election to be held on 1st May
1997. The following is an extract from the policies
of the Labour Party: “Labour has
been keen to ensure wide and informed debate on
the future of our electoral system. We are
committed in government to holding a referendum on
voting systems for the House of Commons.” [http://www.labour.org.uk/policy/ch5.html] The promised
referendum was Labour’s response to those party
members and Liberal Democrats that are campaigning
for the UK’s deplorable system of single-member
electorates with relative majority (first-past-the-post)
counting to be replaced by a proportional
representation system. It is to be hoped that our
fellow society, the Electoral
Reform Society of Great Britain and
Ireland, will succeed in having quota-preferential
PR as one of the referendum options, and that,
unlike the case in New Zealand, a preferential
ballot will be used in the referendum if there are
more than two options. In Australia the Federal
Government has introduced the Constitutional
Convention (Election) Bill 1997, which
details the proposals for the electoral system for
that half of the membership of the Convention that
is to be directly elected by the people. There are
to be two elected Convention members for each
internal Territory (33.3% quota). Each State’s
representation is shown below.
The Government is
to be greatly commended for proposing that the
votes be counted by quota-preferential
proportional representation with optional marking
of preferences. The next issue of Quota Notes will
cover certain unusual aspects of the electoral
arrangements. ACT
Assembly Countbacks
Two
new members were sworn into the Australian Capital
Territory Legislative Assembly this year,
following the resignations of Ms Rosemary Follett,
ALP MLA for Molonglo,
who was recently, for nearly seven years, either
Chief Minister or Leader of the Opposition; and Mr
Tony de Domenico,
Liberal MLA for Brindabella
and Deputy Chief Minister since the change of
government in 1995. Ms Follett stunned party
colleagues with her resignation on 13th December
1996 to take up an appointment as the Territory's
Discrimination Commissioner later in the month.
After the placing of newspaper advertisements on
20th December 1996, six consenting candidates were
declared ten days later. Only one of those was
from the Australian Labor Party - Simon Corbell, who worked for
Fraser MHR John Langmore
before the latter's departure to take up a
high-level United Nations appointment. In counting
that took just under two days, Mr Corbell initially received
78% of Ms Follett's quota (next came exhausted
with nearly 7%). He was declared elected without
need for exclusions or transfers of ballot-papers. Mr de Domenico resigned on 30th
January 1997 to take up a lucrative private sector
position. Applications from defeated candidates
were invited the following day, and again six
consented before the expiry of the ten-day period,
three of them endorsed Liberals, namely Sandie Brooke, Louise Littlewood and Brian Lowe.
As Ms Brooke had just married former Leader Trevor
Kaine, public
speculation was rife in some quarters about what
changes the outcome of the countback might bring. In the event, Ms Littlewood's election was
confirmed within two days, albeit by a rather
narrow margin of 177 votes over Ms Brooke.
Subsequently, Gary Humphries, who had been
instrumental in having the key Hare-Clark principles
entrenched, was elected unopposed as Deputy Leader
of the ACT's parliamentary Liberal Party. In a
published Letter to the Editor of The Canberra
Times, ACT Branch Convenor
Bogey Musidlak contrasted the timely,
straightforward and inexpensive replacement of Mr
de Domenico through countback with the costly,
and to many, farcical
Fraser federal by-election, which had taken place
at about the same time. The table below indicates
progress totals at key stages of the countback at which the
three endorsed Liberals together obtained 89% of
Mr de Domenico's
quota.
Queensland
"Affirmative Action"
Following Ms Fiona
Bucknall's
appointment as Equity Officer of the Queensland
Branch of the Australian Labor Party late last
year, the Convenor
of the PRSA's Queensland Branch, Chris Tooley, wrote to offer
his congratulations, and to draw attention to
the fact that women's parliamentary presence
under proportional representation systems tended
to be at levels double those achieved under
single-member electorate systems. Replying,
Assistant General Secretary Peter Shooter
explained that the ALP's "Affirmative Action"
rule does not refer to quotas in winnable seats,
but seeks to make the
system fairer within its constraints. He said that the
rule indicated the need to
establish a plan to ensure an outcome of 35%,
and that this
would be achieved through merit in individual preselections. Mr Shooter
conceded that the ALP's holding of only two
federal Divisions (both by men) made the
situation more problematic, but he said that the
Queensland Branch was "committed to achieving an
outcome at the next federal election where women
are selected to contest the required number of
winnable seats to reach our objective". Tasmanian
Developments
When the Tasmanian
Parliament resumed in March 1997, the continuing
impasse over Legislative Council boundaries
assumed renewed importance, as Tasmania's Constitution Act 1934 requires periodic
Legislative Council elections to be held in May
of each year. While new boundaries with 10%
enrolment tolerance have been drawn, agreement
on transitional provisions has not been reached,
and wider questions are being posed about the
Legislative Council's current powers. The Tasmanian
Electoral Office will not begin to produce rolls
for the next election until the Governor
issues the writs. Government sources
have stressed that the old boundaries will be
used if no agreement is reached. Labor is
seeking an immediate election for the entire
Council (rather than for just three or four
Divisions). The Tasmanian Greens want a future
referendum on various
of the Council's powers and Hare-Clark State-wide as
recommended in December 1994 by Mr Justice Morling During
early January's media silly season, the Tasmanian
Chamber of Commerce and Industry's chief
executive, Tim Abey,
called for scrapping of the Hare-Clark system and
even more remarkably, replacing it with first-past-the-post methods in
single-member electorates. Labor's John White, one
of Denison's seven MHAs, promptly denounced the simplistic idea, but the
Liberals' Bob Mainwaring, one of the seven MHAs
for Lyons, declared himself in favour of single-member
electorates. Later letters in The Mercury
strongly supported Hare-Clark. Whenever
anyone expresses frustration at minority
government, there needs to be an understanding
that, in five of the past eight Tasmanian
elections, any system of single-member electorates
would have left little or no trace of an
Opposition. In such unchecked circumstances, major
Government excesses could be expected. In
contrast, Hare-Clark, which always offers all
parties fair representation, produces majority
governments when voters are convinced that one
party's policies and candidates are superior. When
voters are not persuaded by Labor or Liberal
offerings, from time to time the Assembly itself
will act as a brake on the Executive. In the
ongoing constitutional debate, Hare-Clark
supporters would do well by pushing for the
entrenchment of key principles as was achieved in
the Australian Capital Territory after it had
adopted the Hare-Clark system. That would avert
the prospect of surprise deformations such as the
failed attempt, begun in 1993, to revert to
six-member electorates Port
Lincoln Municipal Elections
By-elections in
all five wards of South Australia's Port Lincoln
Council, each of which has two councillors, received
national publicity last year. Nine of the ten
ward councillors
(the whole municipality elects the
Mayor separately)
resigned in protest at the Mayor's alleged racist comments and
support for Pauline Hanson MHR. All nine
anti-Mayor councillors
re-contested the vacancies their resignations
had produced, to try to show popular opposition
to the Mayor's statements. There was a poll in
each ward, but only Boston Ward had enough
candidates to let both resigning ward councillors lose - a
classic defect of ward systems. Only four of the
nine resigning councillors
were re-elected. The five newcomers to the
Council were pro-Mayor. The result was blamed on
the low turnout of only 30%, but the total of
1548 votes (57.3%) for pro-Mayor candidates
clearly exceeded the 1155 votes for the
anti-Mayor candidates. The electoral
system is commonly called bottoms-up. In Australia, it
is peculiar to South Australia, probably because
SA's Electoral Office favours
it, when up to three positions are to be filled.
It is one of the two systems that SA's Local
Government Act allows for municipal elections.
It is officially called optional preferential,
as it allows voters to vote for as few or as
many of the candidates as they wish. That is
perhaps the system's only worthwhile attribute -
one that all electoral systems should include.
Once the first preference votes have been
counted, the candidate with the fewest votes is
excluded and those votes are distributed to the
other candidates. The process continues till the
number of candidates remaining equals the number
of vacancies to be filled, at which point those
candidates are elected Bottoms-up
is
claimed to discourage tickets. That is considered
important in SA, as political parties do not
officially endorse candidates in municipal
elections, but that supposed advantage has worked
against bottoms-up, as large majorities
of votes can be locked up with popular
candidates, allowing candidates with minimal
support to also be elected. Using at-large PR,
four of the original nine councillors
would still have been elected, but voters would
have had much more choice.
* Asterisk denotes councillor that had resigned on the issue of his or her opposition to the Mayor, and stood for re-election. Names in bold type are those of the councillors elected. © 1997 Proportional Representation Society of Australia National President: Bogey Musidlak 14 Strzelecki Crescent NARRABUNDAH ACT 2604 National Secretary: Deane Crabb 11 Yapinga Street PLYMPTON SA 5038 Tel: (02) 6295 8137, (06) 295 8137, 04291 76725 quota@prsa.org.au Printed by PANTHER PRINTING 97 Pirie Street ADELAIDE SA 5000 |
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