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QUOTA
Newsletter
of the Proportional Representation Society of Australia QN1998B June 1998 www.prsa.org.au VICTORIA - ON THE MOVE The
above slogan began to appear on car number plates issued in the State of
Victoria in the early 1990s, not long after the election of a Liberal-National
Party Government, with the Hon. Jeffrey Kennett MLA as Premier. Municipal
Elections This period
has seen, for the first time in Victorian history, the gradual appearance, in
several stages, for some areas of local government, of legislation providing
for some quota-preferential proportional representation at municipal polls. To be fair it
must be recognized that the Bill introduced by the then Australian Labor
Party Government, to repeal the Local Government Act 1958 and replace
it with the present Local Government Act 1989,
would have allowed councils to choose a PR electoral system. The Legislative
Assembly passed that Bill effectively intact, but the Legislative Council,
where the ALP lacked a majority, deleted the PR provisions in the Bill by the
combined vote of the non-ALP parties. Those parties included the Opposition
Liberal Party, which was being led by Mr Kennett. The gradual
move towards the first appearance of quota-preferential proportional
representation in a Victorian statute was helped by a call from Ms Elizabeth
Proust, the then Chief Executive Officer of the Melbourne City Council, for
legislation for PR for her city (QN63). The
Council followed with public hearings by a Council committee, at which a
submission and appearance by the then PRSA President, Geoffrey Goode, was
well received, and remarked upon favourably in a subsequent 1993 published
report recommending PR for the city (QN69). Section 10(4)
of Victoria's Local Government Act 1989 achieved its present form,
which requires quota-preferential proportional representation for five of the
nine members of Melbourne City Council, in 1995 (QN78).
Unfortunately countback was not enacted for filling casual vacancies. That
resulted in the filling, in early 1998, of a single casual vacancy by a poll
of the whole municipality. That cost nearly as much as the original general
election for five members, and unnecessarily inconvenienced citizens. From 1997 (QN1997D),
Section 10(6) of the Local Government Act 1989 stated that an
Order-in-Council could require that proportional representation must apply to
other specified councils, in whole or in part, although that power has not
yet been exercised The final,
and a most welcome, move to date has been the introduction by the Government
of a current bill that would provide that casual vacancies from PR municipal
polls shall be filled by countback. If that bill is passed as
expected, Victoria's Local Government Act 1989 will contain a new
Section 37A requiring countback - even using that name to describe it
in the Act (that term of distinctly Tasmanian origin does not appear in
Tasmania's Electoral Act 1985). The Victorian Act will also have a new
Schedule 3A, which will specify the detailed countback procedure. The
countback will be along Hare-Clark lines rather than the method used for
casual vacancies in the Legislative Council of Western Australia. The
Schedule 3A will also allow the use of an electronic database for the
countback procedure. Legislative
Council Elections The ALP
Government had also tried, in accord with its recently adopted party policy,
to legislate for PR for the Legislative Council rather than maintaining its earlier
goal of abolishing that chamber, but its bills for PR there were also
rejected by the Upper House. Those PR bills for Upper House polls
unfortunately not only incorporated all the undesirable features that make
the stage-managed Senate-style PR much inferior to Hare-Clark PR from the
voters' point of view, but also added a more serious defect, whereby it was
proposed that casual vacancies should be explicitly filled by party
nomination. At the
well-attended 1998 Annual General Meeting of PRSA's Victorian Branch in April
the Guest Speaker, the ALP Frontbencher, Mr Peter Batchelor, gave an
informative account of the Party's policy for the electoral system for the
Legislative Council. The policy is for each house to have a General Election
on the same day, and for each to have fewer MPs - a reduction from 44 to 35
for the Upper House, and from 88 to 85 for the Lower House. The 35 Upper
House members would be elected from five 7-member provinces, and the 85 Lower
House members would be elected from 85 single-member electoral districts. The
principle of the present feature of Victoria's electoral system, introduced
by the Cain ALP Government, where each Upper House province is contiguous
with four Lower House electoral districts would be maintained by each new PR
province being contiguous with 17 Lower House electoral districts. Mr
Batchelor said that he was interested in the Society's proposal that countback
be used to fill casual vacancies, and that could still be considered further.
He said that a firmly set feature of the policy was for a Senate-style
ballot-paper, without Robson Rotation. Analysis of the 1998 Queensland Legislative
Assembly Elections The results
of the General Election on 13th June 1998 for all 89 seats in Queensland's Legislative
Assembly have understandably produced strong reactions, some of approval and
some of disapproval, to the surprising success of Mrs Pauline Hanson's One
Nation Party. That the party has made Australian history by being the first
party founded by a woman to win seats in an Australian Parliament, and
furthermore that it has done so on a scale of some significance, in a Lower
House with a winner-take-all electoral system, is an aspect that has been
lost in the general all-round shock. Although it had
no candidates in 11 of the Assembly's 89 seats, the One Nation Party gained
some 23% of the first preference votes State-wide. The single-member
'winner-take-all' electoral system translated that level of voter support
into a share of the seats of some 12.4%. The State-wide minority of One
Nation voters is represented by a disproportionately small minority of MPs.
Many voters for larger parties favour that penalty for small parties, but the
price paid can be dangerously high as explained below. If the party
had stood a candidate in every seat, the fraction of the vote it gained would
have come even closer to the highly significant level of 25% State-wide. That
level is significant in a single-member system, as a 25% State-wide vote is
the threshold value above which it is rapidly becomes possible, as the vote
level increases, for a single party whose supporters are regionally
concentrated to win an absolute majority of seats even though it gains well
short of an absolute majority of first preference votes State-wide, and even
though it may be put last in preference by all other parties and voters. This is
possible in single-member systems as only half of the votes (plus one vote)
is needed to elect each MP in each seat. Thus if One Nation polled from 51-55%
in 50 Queensland seats and in the 39 other seats variously polled very low,
or did not stand, it, or any other party that polled that way in its place,
would win more than 50% of the Assembly seats, with less than 30% of the
State-wide vote, despite every other candidate and party putting them last in
their order of preference. This is a serious and unavoidable consequence of
single-member electorate systems, and applies even when the traditional
faults of such systems, malapportionment and gerrymanders, are absent. It is
made even worse where first-past-the-post counting applies. In sharp
contrast a major quality of proportional representation electoral systems is
that minority parties are restricted to minority representation. Of course
the 'price', as some would term it, for that important democratic safeguard
is that minorities are not denied representation in proportion to their
electoral strength. The single-member system only blunts the strength of
minorities - it does not necessarily prevent all representation, as One
Nation has shown, but its far more serious and potentially tragic failing is
that, unlike PR, it can, because it gives effectiveness to so few votes,
allow a distinct minority to gain an absolute majority of seats in its own
right. Canada's
Reform Party, which has much in common with Australia's One Nation Party,
became in 1997 (QN1997B) the Official
Opposition in the Canadian House of Commons with just a 19.4% overall vote.
Experience as the Official Opposition can lead a party to moving on to
Government. The analysis
of the 1998 polls on Pages 4 and 5 (online version here) shows that under
a Hare-Clark PR system there would have been some 21% of the Assembly elected
as One Nation MLAs, given the 23% vote for that party, compared to the 12%
elected under the present system. A feature of
the analysis is the extreme over-representation of the ALP in the Brisbane metropolitan
area. The ALP's average first preference vote for the three notional
nine-member PR divisions 1, 2 and 3 there was 47.49%, but it won 23 of the 27
seats there (85%). Also, Mansfield , a pivotal seat now being contested in
the Court of Disputed Returns, was so narrowly won by the ALP that the donkey
vote must have been a major factor, one that Robson Rotation would have
eliminated! The shaded
boxes in the analysis table mark the 71 of Queensland's 89 seats (80%) where
it was necessary for preferences to be distributed to determine which
candidate gained the right to be elected. One Nation could have won seventeen
seats if ALP voters had given it preference over the Coalition, but as few as
three if Coalition voters had put it last - graphically illustrating the
inherent instability of winner-take-all systems. Division into Two Classes of Senators after a
Double Dissolution The Senate
Hansard of Monday, 29th June 1998, records that the Senate has acted
positively in supporting a sounder basis than the customary rule for deciding
how State senators elected after a double dissolution will be divided into
long-term (6 year) senators and short-term (3 year) senators. Section 13 of
the Constitution requires that division to be decided by a resolution of the
Senate after its first meeting following a dissolution of both houses, but it
is silent on the basis to be used. Since Federation the custom has been to
use the order in which senators in each State are elected as the basis - the
first half elected became long-term senators, and the others short-term
senators. The order of
election as a basis of dividing senators into two classes was credible enough
under the Senate's two previous electoral systems, first-past-the-post block
vote till 1919, and multiple majority-preferential until 1948, but not under
proportional representation, where the mere order in which candidates are
elected is not necessarily related to the relative degree of support they
received at the poll. Happily, a well-founded rational basis has been
recognized. This year,
1998, marks the fiftieth anniversary of the present Senate electoral system -
quota-preferential proportional representation - which has now survived longer
than the combined life of the two previous systems. The new basis is in Section 282 of
the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918, introduced in 1984 as a
facilitator for use by the Senate in allocating long-term positions. Section
282 requires the Australian Electoral Commission to conduct a further count
of ballots cast at an election for the whole Senate, in which the aim is to
show which candidates would have been elected if only half the full number of
senators had to be elected. It is easily seen as an obvious and precise
indication, for each State, of its voters' priorities in regard to which half
of the senators elected should have the highest priority to be made long-term
senators. Coalition and
ALP senators, and the Greens Senator Bob Brown voted for the successful
motion below, but the Australian Democrats repeated their stance of the 1980s
by opposing the motion. Their opposition to the fairer basis is consistent
with the fact that it would yield them fewer long-term senators, whereas it
would benefit the major parties. The Senate
Hansard record on 29th June is as follows: Motion (by Senator Faulkner)
agreed to: That the Senate is of the view that, in the event of a
simultaneous dissolution of both Houses under section 57 of the
Constitution, the division of senators into two classes for the
purposes of rotation should be in accordance with the results of a re-count
of the Senate vote under section 282 of the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918
to determine the order of election of senators in each State. Senator
BARTLETT (Queensland) (4.19 p.m.) - I would like leave of the Senate to give
a brief explanation as to why the Democrats do not agree with this motion,
rather than dividing on it. Leave granted. Senator
BARTLETT - I just wish to indicate on behalf of the Democrats that we opposed
this motion because we believe it is inappropriate for this Senate to be
expressing opinions to a future Senate which, as has been widely noted, may
be of a vastly different composition from the one that currently sits here.
If we are going to start doing that on issues such as this, we may as well
start doing it on issues such as how to appoint the President or the Deputy
President after the next election. For that reason, we feel it is
inappropriate to support a motion which expresses an opinion so different
from that which has been expressed by the Senate on every previous occasion
this century. Senator BROWN
(Tasmania) (4.20 p.m.) - by leave - The one matter that concerns me about
this motion is that this is not a principle that is a permanent one. What is
wrong here is that the Senate has the ability to change from one option to
the other or to make a determination after the election which is different to
the one which was made before the election. The history
of the debate on which option should be taken here is one that is a studied
effort in political advantage. When it comes down to it, it is very slim, but
there is at the margins the possibility that one senator who would have got a
three-year term under the alternative means of counting will end up with a
six-year term. I think there is fairly wide agreement, including from people
like Malcolm Mackerras, that the half Senate counting form should be adopted
throughout and that it is the most democratic form. I notice that the
Proportional Representation Society of Australia agrees with that. Therefore, on
the advice of that society, I support this motion, but I think we ought not
leave open the option of twiddling it--of having the next election according
to the interests of various parties. If this is the most democratic way of
determining which senators become six-year senators and which senators become
three-year senators after a double dissolution election, then we should reach
for a means of making that a standard way of behaviour. Senator
Robert Ray - Change the constitution. Senator BROWN
- No, not change the constitution, Senator Ray, but at least legislate so
there has to be great deliberation and an obvious act of political
self-investment before the country can overturn it. I agree that changing the
constitution would be very difficult for a minor matter like this. Most
people in here do not understand the matter, so how would you convey it to
the wider electorate? They simply want to know that there is a fair formula
which is agreed on and which is permanent, and that is what we should be
aiming for. Northern
Territory Statehood Convention A Statehood
Convention was held at Parliament House in Darwin between 26th March and 9th
April 1998. The Northern Territory Government appointed 27 delegates. A
further 27 were chosen by various groups and organizations in the Territory.
Proceedings are at www.nt.gov.au. In December 1996,
a Final Draft Constitution for the Northern Territory was published by the
Legislative Assembly's Sessional Committee on Constitutional Development.
Three electoral alternatives were outlined: single-member electorates,
single- or multi-member electorates or equal multi-member electorates. The PRSA
President, Bogey Musidlak, assisted Territorians that wanted to update and
circulate material about proportional representation. This included simulated
quota-preferential elections based on the 1997 poll (QN 1997C), which left
the Country Liberal Party with 18 of the 25 Assembly seats. Distributions
into five five-member electorates, or mixtures containing one or two
seven-member electorates in the wider Darwin-Palmerston area, resulted in the
CLP winning 14 or 15 seats: there was no longer a major distortion between
votes and seats around Darwin, and both Labor and the CLP would have obtained
representation in all parts of the Territory, although the delegate Margaret
Clinch presented an excellent case for five five-member electorates, the
majority of delegates remaining after a partial walkout over some aboriginal
rights issues on 8th April 1998 voted that single-member electorates be
specified in any Constitution. As the body of
resolutions passed by the appointed Convention included many items over which
there was strong disagreement, it is quite uncertain whether anything will
come of them. Former Labor Senator Bob Collins warned delegates at the outset
that passage of enabling legislation through the Senate would be unlikely
unless a spirit of reasonable compromise and consensus prevailed throughout. European Parliamentary Elections Bill On 12th
December 1997 the UK Home Secretary, Rt. Hon. Jack Straw, delivered his
Second Reading Speech on the above Bill, which provides for the retention of
STV (quota-preferential PR) for Northern Ireland seats in the European
Parliament, but the substitution of a closed d'Hondt party list form of PR
for the remaining UK seats, which have been filled by first-past-the-post
counting until now. Country
No. of No. of
Electoral
Electoral MEPs
System
Regions England
9 71 Closed
d'Hondt Wales
1 5
Closed d'Hondt Scotland
1 8
Closed d'Hondt N.
Ireland
1 3
STV PR The House of
Commons passed the Bill in March. It is now being debated in the House of
Lords. Members of the Electoral Reform Society
there moved an amendment (No. 12) to substitute STV for the closed d'Hondt
party list proposed, but the Government appears unmoved. A closed party list
is the most restrictive PR, where voters are only allowed to mark a vote for
one party, with no option to indicate their preferences between parties or
any of the candidates within any party. Debate on 24th June 1998 included the
following speeches by ERS members. Earl Russell:
'... I am most grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Alton of Liverpool, for
introducing this amendment. In supporting it, I must declare a non-pecuniary
interest. I am president of the Electoral Reform Society, by which I am in
large measure advised. I entirely endorse the noble Lord's tributes to Peter
Facey and Enid Lakeman. STV is also
the policy of my party. It has most recently been reaffirmed at the Southport
Conference last March. The arrangement we reached in Scotland was a
compromise. But the smaller party in a negotiation must necessarily consider
compromise. That is what it is. The first
thing we do if we adopt STV is to introduce a uniform electoral system for
the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. As the noble Lord,
Lord Alton, said, STV has been in use for a long time in Northern Ireland.
Mr. David Trimble in another place and my noble friend Lord Alderdice in this
Chamber have paid glowing tributes to how well it works. At this
juncture, it would be most unwise of us to convey the impression that in
Northern Ireland they are lesser breeds without the law and what is good
enough for them is not good enough for us. I simply do not agree with that. There are two
functions in an election: it should give victory to the most popular party
and to the most popular candidate. It is the first which first-past-the-post
is most often reproached for not doing. The reproach is valid. It does not
always do that well in relation to the other. ... ... Because
so much of the propaganda for proportional representation has been in terms,
perfectly justified terms, of striking the right balance between the parties,
we have tended to lose sight of the real importance of having individual
candidates who are accountable to the electorate and acceptable to them. Both
of those are responsibilitiesof an electoral system. It is my
contention that STV is the only one that does both. It is also the one which
is most likely to be made acceptable to the voters. That is not a negligible
consideration. At our party conference in Eastbourne last September, one
speaker said that before the referendum - I know that is wide of the present
Bill but it is nevertheless of interest - we should consider what is the most
powerful argument that might be used against proportional representation. I
think the most powerful argument by far will be the one which I have heard
and respected from the Benches on my left; namely, the extent to which other
systems of proportional representation tend to increase the power of party
patronage. Mr. Andrew Rawnsley writing in The Observer last Sunday
reported that the Jenkins Commission through its research had found an
overwhelming extent of public reaction against the growth of party control of
the electoral machinery. I do not know whether that is true but it certainly
coincides with my own experience. ... ... The point
about STV is that it restores the choice of who the member is to the voter.
That is surely where in any democratic system it belongs. ... The Earl
Kitchener: 'The main difference between the two voting
systems we are considering is that STV gives power to the voters rather than
to the politicians and that nearly all voters will have a link to one or more
candidates whom they have helped to elect. It also has the merit of
simplicity. With the proposed number of MEPs per region being about 8, the
proportionality of party votes to members would be much the same as that
given by the system proposed in the Bill. STV has been
used for many years in the Republic of Ireland, where voters have twice
rejected attempts by politicians to abandon it. I think that that tells us
something about the system. The longest user of it is Tasmania, and it is
also used in many other Australian elections. The only
serious objection that I can see to STV is that it may encourage a sitting
member to devote too much time to his constituents at the expense of his
wider duties because he is vulnerable to being replaced by a member of his
own party who has cultivated the voters. The remedy for that lies in the good
sense of the electors, who should give full weight to the work the member is
doing outside his constituency. This objection has been raised mainly in the
Republic of Ireland, where members do much of the work which in this country
is done by local government councillors and by the citizens' advice bureaux. An objection
has been raised that STV is complicated, but it is not complicated for the voter,
and the effort involved in the counting has been much reduced by
computerization. The Minister referred to the need for the voter to express
50 choices. It is true that in a very close contest any vote that does not
include at least all candidates except one may be partly wasted. In practice
it is the early preferences which will count, unless they are for very weak
candidates. The Committee is in a particularly strong position to put the
interests of the voters before those of the politicians. A vote for this
amendment would at least stimulate a careful examination of the many virtues
of the single transferable vote.' Vale David Bernard Vigor, former Senator for South
Australia An
enthusiastic initiator, always full of ideas, and never afraid to question
orthodoxy, David Vigor played an important role in galvanizing Australian
political alternatives in the 1970s and 1980s. Gregarious by nature, he
nurtured long-term networks of friends whom he invited to join him in
changing the world. His sudden death of a heart attack on 9th April 1998 aged
58 is a major loss to supporters of proportional representation. An only
child, born in France of an English mother and French father, he was aboard the
last ferry to leave for England before the 1939 declaration of war. Back in
France when seven, he reached Adelaide at twelve. The background of two
cultures and sets of expectations was influential in his embrace of
multiculturalism and diversity. Preselected
to lead the South Australian Democrat Senate team in 1984, David's maiden
speech emphasized new thinking for a post-industrial economy. For two and a
half years, he worked prodigiously to develop a 'strong self-reliant
Australia, in technology, in trade, in defence and in spirit', drawing up
Private Member's Bills on a wide variety of subjects, including electoral
reform, and becoming known for his tenacious probing of government
administration in the Estimates Committees. In 1986's
dark days for the Special Broadcasting Service, he gave hope and courage to
those being misled into believing it could be dismantled by 'administrative
action'. He protected liberal trading hours in the ACT and quickened the
advent of airline travel free from tobacco smoke by introducing legislation
that embarrassed a tardy government. His
insistence on effective voting that could not produce lopsided Assemblies in
the ACT led to plans for self-government being temporarily shelved in 1986.
It inspired the subsequent introduction and entrenchment of the Hare-Clark
system of proportional representation after the abominable experience with
the 'Modified d'Hondt' system that was imposed by the Federal Parliament for
the 1989 and 1992 elections. In the
Senate, David spoke regularly on the need for electoral reform that empowered
voters. His 1986 Private Member's Bill for effective ACT self-government
detailed the operation of the Hare-Clark system, while another sought to do
away with House of Representatives by-election polls through a system of countback.
During debate on electoral legislation in May 1987, he unsuccessfully moved a
raft of amendments seeking to introduce the quota-preferential method of
proportional representation for the House of Representatives. He also
placed on record deficiencies in the definition of the transfer value adopted
for Senate elections in 1983, and criticized the Australian Electoral
Commission for responding with gobbledegook when asserting that there was
nothing untoward with the possibility of transfer values increasing during
the course of a scrutiny. Caught up in
ongoing turmoil within the South Australian Democrats, David joined John
Siddons outside the party, but was unsuccessful at the 1987 double
dissolution poll. He returned to computer consultancy and software
development, actively supporting proportional representation by his
continuing membership of the Electoral Reform Society of South Australia that
included vice presidency between 1993 and 1995, and by his holding office in
the Association of Former Members of the Parliament of Australia. He is
survived by his widow Susan, seven children and seven grandchildren. A.C.T.
Polls: New MHAs, but Stability in Party Numbers Voters
experienced a 50% increase in the number of candidates nominating for the
ACT's election on 21st February 1998, with 28 and 31 in the two five-member
electorates and 49 in Molonglo. Nearly half of this increase arose because
the Australian Democrats (17 candidates) and ACT Greens (15) decided to stand
much larger teams, and a further quarter came from ungrouped candidates (17)
- once again all unsuccessful. Of
the 91 unsuccessful candidates, 65 lost their deposit, as they did not
achieve one-fifth of a quota at exclusion. They included 15 ungrouped
candidates, 14 Democrats, 11 Greens, 3 ALP team members and 2 Liberals.
Independent Paul Osborne organized two-candidate teams in each electorate,
emerging with the third-largest ACT-wide voting support. Colleague Dave
Rugendyke was comfortably elected in Ginninderra at the expense of the ACT
Greens after nearly 45% of the last Democrat's votes became exhausted upon
her exclusion. This
was the first election at which distribution of how-to-vote material was
prohibited within 100 metres of any polling place during voting. Turnout was
up around 3% to 93%, and informal voting dropped by one-third to about 4%,
most of it deliberate. Because of official material mailed to voters before
the 1992 plebiscite, ballot-papers ask voters to mark at least as many preferences
as there are vacancies: nevertheless, voters are free to choose how many
preferences they mark. Liberal
leader Kate Carnell alone achieved a quota of first preferences, polling over
one-third of the vote in Molonglo. Her Deputy, Gary Humphries, was elected
once her surplus was distributed. A series of exclusions therefore dominated
the early part of each scrutiny, with a flurry of quotas achieved right at
their end.The Liberal, and ALP, vote fell by some 4%, to 37.8% and 27.6%
respectively but, as shown below, the Liberals retained 7 seats and the ALP
6. The Osborne Group and ACT Greens each won 9.1%, taking two seats and one
respectively. Independent Michael Moore retained his seat in Molonglo after
the Democrat vote fell sharply from the 10% shown in some opinion polls
during the campaign.
PARTY Brinda-
Ginnin- Mol-ong ACT
bella derra lo
(7
(5 (5
seats) (17
seats) seats)
seats) Liberal
Vote % 37.1 33.2
41.5 37.8
Seats 33.3 33.3
42.9 41.2
%
Seats 2
2
3 7
ALP Vote % 28.5
29.6 25.6 27.6
Seats 33.3 33.3
28.6 35.3
%
Seats 2
2
2 6 Osborne
Vote % 16.2 9.6
3.7 9.1
Group Seats 16.7
16.7 - 11.8
%
Seats 1
1
- 2 Greens
Vote % 8.1 8.7
10.1 9.1
Seats -
- 14.3 5.9
%
Seats -
-
1 1 Australia
Vote % 6.1
7.2 5.1 6.0
n Democrats
Seats -
- -
-
%
Seats -
-
- -
Moore Vote % n.a.
n.a. 7.0
2.9
Group
Seats
14.3 5.9
%
Seats
1 1 OTHERS
Vote % 4.0 11.7
7.1 7.5
Seats -
- -
-
%
Seats -
-
- -
Quota Votes 9042
8406 9459
-
% 16.7 16.7
12.5 - Candid-
1995 21 20
31 72
ates 1998
28 31
49 108
Lost 1995 11
8 17 36 deposits
1998 16 18
31 65 Despite
the surface stability in party numbers, the Assembly will have five new MLAs.
Liberal Brendan Smyth (immediately appointed a Minister) nearly obtained a
quota of first preferences in Brindabella, while Labor's Jon Stanhope (now
Leader of the Opposition), John Hargreaves, and Ted Quinlan (Deputy Leader)
ousted incumbents. Green Lucy Horodny did not contest the election. As
Labor's Left lost parliamentary control after a long period of factional
dominance, campaign leader Wayne Berry continually lashed out at the
Hare-Clark system, demanding party boxes so that affirmative-action programs
would put more women into the Assembly (only two were successful in 1998,
compared with five in 1995). While party boxes are inconsistent with the
Hare-Clark principles entrenched in 1995, some observers wryly noted that ALP
representation after this election would have fallen to four or five under
Senate-style arrangements. Higher
percentages of voters picked and chose deliberately among candidates:
typically 20-25% of next available preferences from lesser-supported
candidates of smaller parties were outside that column. Only about half of
those voting for the leading Democrat candidates continued to other columns:
the percentage going next to the ACT Greens fell from 40% to 25% in the
absence of the 1995 recommendation by both parties that supporters place the
other next in their numbering of preferences. That high rate of vote
exhaustion might prompt parties to think about how many candidates to endorse
in each electorate to maximize political effect. When
Labor and Liberal candidates with relatively few votes were excluded, there
was still a notable advantage to the colleague closest below when those
excluded appeared at the top of the column: this was influential in
Brindabella in the 45-vote defeat of Louise Littlewood by Liberal colleague
Trevor Kaine (who subsequently left the party and sought to register the name
Canberra Liberals) and in the ouster of short-lived former ALP leader Andrew
Whitecross by John Hargreaves. Liberal candidates Vicki Dunne and Jacqui
Burke were both unsuccessful by several hundred votes in circumstances where
the combined party-column vote from two exclusions was shared quite evenly
with the last of their colleagues to be elected. The
scrutinies in Brindabella and Ginninderra were both concluded within 3 days
of the striking of the quotas following expiry of the statutory 5-day wait
for postal votes (during which declaration votes are also processed).In Molonglo,
fewer than 400 votes initially separated five of the ALP candidates, and
their progress totals remained close together throughout the scrutiny.
Towards the end of the scrutiny, Steve Garth was 3 votes ahead of Marion
Reilly, ready to be propelled past Simon Corbell on her exclusion to take the
second ALP position: this margin was adjusted to 5 votes when checking
revealed over 100 miss-sorted ballot-papers. However,
a full recount granted at Ms Reilly's request placed her 3 votes in front of
Dr Garth. After his exclusion she remained 23 votes behind Ted Quinlan and 87
behind Simon Corbell. Over a week earlier, Mr Corbell had conceded defeat,
attacking the 'trench warfare' of the ALP's factional system over the
previous six to ten years, and calling the Hare-Clark system 'absurd' for his
likely failure despite starting with the most first preferences in his team. The
closeness of several scrutinies and the near-misses of several female
candidates might be reflected in greater attention to individual marking of
preferences on the third Saturday in October 2001 (the January-February
election period created problems for parties and electoral officials). A
committee of the fourth Assembly is expected to closely examine various
aspects of electoral arrangements: this process should strengthen the ACT's
position at the forefront of world best practice. [Please
note: The balance of 'A Brief History of the PRSA' promised in QN78 now
appears on the PRSA Web Site. - Editor] ---------------------------- ©
2005 Proportional Representation Society of National President: Bogey Musidlak 14 Strzelecki Cr. NARRABUNDAH 2604 National Secretary: Deane Crabb 11 Yapinga Street PLYMPTON SA 5038 Tel:(08) 8297 6441 (02)
6295 813 Editor: ggd@netspace.net.au Printed by Prestige Copying & Printing, 97 Pirie Street ADELAIDE SA 5000 |
NOTES