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QUOTA Newsletter of the Proportional Representation Society of Australia QN2006A
March 2006
www.prsa.org.au
Conservatives
return to government in Canada Almost thirteen
years after the Campbell Progressive Conservative
government was reduced to just two MPs,
a re-united right was led back into minority
government in Canada by Stephen Harper on the back
of the AdScam scandal
within the governing Liberal Party. For nearly ten years,
the Liberals under Jean Chrétien dominated the House
of Commons because they swept most of Ambitious long-time
Finance Minister Paul Martin, credited with turning
the economy around in the 90s, went to the backbench
before becoming Prime Minister in December 2003. His
popularity started extremely high, but in February
2004 the Auditor General reported serious
irregularities in a program set up to promote the
federal government in Quebec after a secession
referendum there was narrowly lost in 1995. Martin called an early
election in June 2004 before a united new
Conservative Party could integrate two strands of
predecessor policies and ran a fairly effective
scare campaign to finish with 135 seats out of 308
(44%: 36.7% of the votes), down 37 on their outcome
in 2000. The Conservatives won 99 seats (32%:
29.6%), the single-province Bloc Québécois 54 (18%:
12.4%) and the New Democratic Party (NDP) 19 (6%:
15.7%). The government’s first
Budget survived only on the casting vote of the
Speaker after days of drama and agreement to $C4.6
billion of social spending to win NDP support. A key
was the defection of Martin had wound up
the promotional activity in In early November, the
interim Gomery Commission
report was released, highly critical
of "a blatant abuse of public funds" marked by
"carelessness and incompetence” and “a culture of
entitlement". Financing rules for political parties
had already been changed to limit levels of personal
donations and prohibit any by corporations, and the
Conservatives promised to go further, as well as to
prohibit former politicians, staffers and senior
public servants from acting as lobbyists for five
years. Both the Conservatives
and Bloc Québécois quickly indicated that a no
confidence vote was appropriate, and after being
turned down on health system matters, the NDP agreed
to help bring an end to the government. Following a
vote of no confidence on 28 November, elections were
set for 23 January, the eight week campaign period
punctuated by Christmas one of the longest on
record. After a founding
policy conference in May, the Conservatives put down
a blueprint for government and developed momentum
with regular new policy announcements. They took the
lead in polls late in the year following reports of
police investigating whether news about a government
backdown over unit trust
taxation matters was improperly leaked to the stock
market, and the fatal shooting in The Liberals sought to
limit likely losses with advertisements again
alleging an extreme social agenda of their
opponents. However, these were all released on the
one day, and attention focused on the most
outlandish claim. On the other hand, the
Conservatives ran a disciplined campaign free of
2004’s single-issue outbursts by individual
candidates, but their support started to recede from
40% near the end of the campaign. Overall the turnout
was 64.9%, up four percentage points on 2004, but
ten below levels of the 70s and 80s. Just 0.6% of
votes were invalid. The Conservatives increased
their vote nationally by 6.6% and won 25 more
ridings than in 2004, but did not have a single MP
elected from the three largest cities of Although the
advertising scandal revolved around The Liberals lost
nearly 5% support in The Conservatives
dominated the prairie provinces, winning all 28
seats in Alberta (including defeating the Deputy
Prime Minister) on 65% support, 12 of 14 in
Saskatchewan on 49% support (the Liberals gained a
seat despite slipping 5% to fall behind overall NDP
votes) and 8 of 14 in Manitoba (43% support). They
also again won most seats in British Columbia where
they have been a minor force in provincial politics,
17 of 36, down five even though their support rose
slightly to 37%: the NDP doubled its seats to ten on
2% extra support to nearly 29%, and the Liberals
fell 1% to 28% but picked up a ninth seat. On the other hand,
Liberal percentage support in the four Outgoing Prime
Minister Martin announced his immediate resignation
as Liberal leader, and former Defence Minister Bill
Graham was elevated as a stop-gap for most of 2006,
until a new leadership (for which he would not be
nominating) convention process could be finalised.
With much tighter limits on donations and personal
expenditure, campaigning for delegates was expected
to be harder and quite a few prominent Liberals
quickly announced that they would not be candidates. Prime Minister Harper
representing The following table
summarises the relationship between House of Commons
votes (% in the first line) and initial seats
(number and % in the second line) by province in
both 2006 and 2004.
Source: Elections Under the current
system, unbalanced representation for the larger
parties around the nation will continue to be a
serious obstacle to good government and any sense of
national unity. Some of the distortions would be
worsened by preferential voting unless part of a
move to proportional representation. Prince Edward Island MMP plebiscite
fails It has had
first-past-the-post elections since 1773, becoming
unicameral with a dual assemblyman/councillor
structure in 1893 (a property franchise applied for
the latter until 1965) until the level of rural
weighting (boundaries barely changed in 100 years)
was struck down as unconstitutional in 1993. Since
1994, it has had 27 Assembly electorates with
typically 3-4,000 enrolled voters in each. Turnouts
above 80% are the norm. There has been a long
history of unbalanced parliaments with government
alternating at intervals between the Liberals and
Progressive Conservatives. A small third party
existed briefly towards the end of World War II and
for a few further years, and the New Democratic
Party has had limited support since the 1970s,
including having one MP elected briefly. The
governing party’s support has usually been 50-60%
but the vote for both large parties was in the 40s
when the Liberals lost office in 1996. Only four elections
since 1900 have had close outcomes. In the past
sixty years, all but two have seen the opposition
presence reduced to around one-third or less. On
four of the past five occasions, that has been
between one (1993 and 2000) and four (2003) MPs,
prompting a significant degree of persistent public
disquiet. When the sole opposition MP has been ill
in sitting periods, at times the media have been
allowed to submit questions. In 2001, a Special
Assembly Committee on the Electoral Act asked the
Electoral Commission to review systems of
proportional representation in use around the world.
The Speaker received a report in April 2002
outlining electoral arrangements in small
jurisdictions and focusing largely on list and mixed
systems: the level of understanding of the single
transferable vote can be gauged from an assertion
that it was in use in France and an alleged
detriment that the vote
is counted several times. The report outlined
several top-up options to limit imbalances between
votes and seats and stated that Prince Edward
Islanders should be involved in the development of
any new arrangements. At the start of 2003,
a retired Chief Justice was appointed to head a
Commission on Electoral Reform and reported at
year’s end after taking submissions and hearing
evidence. While he thought that a mixed member
proportional (MMP) system had greatest chance of
being adopted as it involved less change than a
quota-preferential approach, he recommended that
more public meetings be held and there be a process
of public education and debate. He presented four
models for allocating list seats in parallel with
mainly single-member contests. Instead, at the end of
2004, the Assembly called for an eight-person
Commission on Prince Edward Island’s Electoral
Future (one from each of the registered parties and
five from respondents to newspaper advertising) to
develop a public education program and a plebiscite
question on whether the current system was preferred
to a mixed member proportional alternative it was to
specify. The system finalised in mid-October for a
plebiscite on 28 November 2005 involved the outcome
in 17 single-member electorates being gradually
tempered by applying a d’Hondt
“highest average” province-wide allocation to
determine 10 additional seats from set party lists
(see www.electionspei.ca/electoralfuture/finalreport.pdf) Premier Binns announced the twin
success hurdles of 60% of votes and majorities in at
least 16 electorates in late October. Only one-fifth
of the usual polling places would be open and the
previous list of voters would be set aside. As a
result, the customary information about where they
could vote was not sent to individual voters and
they were required to answer five standard questions
before signing the poll book and being issued with a
ballot paper. The turnout was around
one-third and the MMP option won just 36% public
support, carrying only two electorates in the
capital Many voters were
suspicious that they would lose their current close
links with local members and the parties would
control the additional list component. Nearly all
Assembly members opposed this change along with some
party activists and former politicians. While the Premier, who
had once expressed sympathy for proportional
representation, initially indicated the plebiscite
disposed of the matter comprehensively, the
Opposition Leader reserved the possibility of
revisiting it. Expanding Vote-counting Role for
PRSAV-T Since 1994, the PRSA’s
Victoria-Tasmania Branch has encouraged the use of
the quota-preferential system of proportional
representation by offering a vote-counting service
to organisations that use, or wish to use, the
Society’s PR counting
rules, as specified in the PRSA’s Proportional
Representation Manual. After instruction and
testing, six of the Branch’s members have become Accredited PR Vote-counting
Officers and are available to undertake PR
counts. Their particulars as well as the conditions
applying to the Branch’s conduct of counts appear on
the PRSA Web site (follow links from www.prsa.org.au/software.htm). PR counts are
undertaken either by calculations on the paper form
of the PRSA’s Quota-preferential
Counting Sheet, or using
software that PRSAV-T possesses. Most clients prefer
PRSAV-T’s Vote-counting Officers to use the
software, as the time taken, which is largely for
just data entry, is usually much less, and a prior
estimate of the time and cost is far more easily
given. The use of the
software alternative also has the benefit of
providing an electronic and printable record of the
preference order on each individual ballot. That
record can be readily checked against the
ballot-papers by those conducting the scrutiny and
others. PRSAV-T’s counting
service has been used on 16 occasions since 1994,
including in every year since 2000, by as diverse a
range of
organisations as the Australian
Conservation Foundation, The basic charge is
presently a modest $40 per person
hour. Separate surcharges of $10 per
person hour can apply if the written call for
nominations, the printed ballot-papers or the
written notice of the poll result, posted to all
members, do not all clearly indicate the counting of
the votes as being by the quota-preferential method
of proportional representation. Another such
surcharge applies if the detailed counting sheet of
each scrutiny involved does not appear for at least
one month in a reasonably accessible place on the
organisation's Web site, headed by the name of the
Society and with an interactive link to its Web
address. In both 2002 and 2004,
Oxfam Book Review: Ever Yours, C.H. Spence This book, edited by
Susan Magarey, is reviewed here by the PRSA National
Vice-President, Deane Crabb. It is published by
Wakefield Press, 392 pages, 2001, pp xv +256, ISBN 1
86254 656 8, $39.95, Hard Cover. Over the past couple
of years, there has been increasing interest in
Catherine Helen Spence, perhaps one of the most
remarkable women to have lived in Miss Spence was a
journalist, social reformer and a novelist. In the
vanguard of first-wave feminism seeking equality of
opportunity for women in Electoral reform was
Miss Spence’s primary political interest, and she
campaigned tirelessly for proportional
representation (or “effective voting” as she
preferred to call it) from 1859 to her death in
1910. In promoting electoral reform, she stood in
the public election for members of the 1897
Australasian Federal Convention, which was
established to frame the Constitution of the
Commonwealth of Australia, thus becoming the first
Australian woman to be a political candidate. This latest
publication is a re-issue of Catherine
Helen Spence An Autobiography
supplemented with extensive footnotes, together with
Miss Spence’s diary for 1894 and some of her
correspondence. Even for those that
have previously read Miss Spence’s autobiography,
the additional footnotes add a new dimension
particularly on the people, places and issues she
was so intimately involved with. The footnotes were
painstakingly prepared by Barbara Wall, who also
compiled the extensive bibliography of Catherine
Spence (see the State Library of From her late
twenties, Miss Spence kept a diary every year of her
long life. It was thought that all of those diaries
had been destroyed but, miraculously, Susan Magarey
has tracked down Miss Spence’s diary for 1894, and
for the first time this has been published. This was one of the
more momentous years for Miss Spence. She attended
the Chicago World Fair in 1893, and stayed in the She then travelled to
A bonus is the
inclusion of Miss Spence’s letters to two of her
many correspondents during the last ten years of her
life when, despite her advancing age, she still
continued her campaign for effective voting. Supporters of
proportional representation will be keen on this new
book, but Miss Spence’s wide range of other
interests should ensure that all readers will find
this detailed account of the issues and the people
in the nineteenth century to be most fascinating. © 2006
Proportional Representation Society of National President: Bogey Musidlak 14 Strzelecki Cr. NARRABUNDAH 2604 National
Secretary: Dr Stephen Morey 4 Sims Street Tel: (02) 6295 8137, (03) 9598 1122 info@prsa.org.au Printed by Prestige Copying & Printing, 97 Pirie Street ADELAIDE SA 5000 |
