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QUOTA Newsletter of the
Proportional Representation Society of Australia QN2011C September 2011 www.prsa.org.au · Disappointing 2010 federal elections report · UK Government proposes using Quota-Preferential PR in House of Lords reform · Antony Green speaks on UK’s referendum and NZ’s November 2011 plebiscite on MMP · Melbourne University abandons Nanson’s pioneering PR for a plurality system · Call for Nominations for Elections of the four PRSA Office-bearers for 2012-13 · List of issues of Quota Notes Disappointing
2010 federal elections report On 7 July 2011, the tabling
of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters report on the
conduct of the 2010 federal elections
brought profound disappointment to advocates of
effective voting. No attention was paid to
the distorting effects on the campaigning and other
political behaviour
attributable to the plethora of safe single-member
electorates, nor to the high levels of wasted votes
and regional and statewide winner-take-all
distortions of voters’ wishes. For instance, Labor won
26 of the 48 NSW House of Representatives seats (54%)
with just 37.3% of the first preference vote, and just
48.4% of the two-party-preferred vote. Rather than making it
simpler to cast a formal vote, the Committee again
endorsed the prevailing requirement for full marking
of preferences for House of Representatives polls,
without any below-the-line easing
for Senate polls. It recommended increased deposits to
deter frivolous candidates for both House and Senate
nominations. A Committee majority
expressed alarm that about half the House informal
votes were most likely unintentional, and suggested
that as many as possible of those be “saved”
through the South Australian Assembly mechanism of
candidates being allowed to register how-to-vote
tickets. Although it would be illegal to advocate
anything but the marking of all preferences,
incomplete ballot-papers would be deemed to follow a
ticket order whenever their numbering
(usually just a single “1”, tick or cross in
practice) remained consistent with the start of
that ticket. Coalition members of the
Committee raised constitutional doubts about such
deeming provisions qualifying as direct election by
the people when ticket deeming
information could not be presented to voters, and said
that the most straightforward way of just saving votes
would be through optional preferential voting. The same Committee majority
recommended that administrative data including that
from the Australian Taxation Office be automatically
used to update enrolments when individuals leave an
address but fail to lodge a new form, and that
individuals be allowed to notify new particulars as
late as election day instead of being allowed to
advise changes only until the close of the rolls. It
also suggested that postal vote applicants not be
allowed to send their forms through political parties,
which usually ensures they are sent just that party’s
how-to-vote
material. Although submissions and evidence, including No. 85, from the Electoral Reform Society of South Australia, pointed out the unsuitability of the unweighted approach to defining transfer values in Senate elections, this matter did not even get mentioned in the report. It appears that only a clearly iniquitous outcome will prompt the remedial action or consciousness of the problem already achieved in the Western Australian and Victorian Parliaments. UK
Government proposes using Quota-Preferential PR in
House of Lords reform Following consideration of
possible reform by a cross-party committee, the United
Kingdom Government released a White Paper and House of Lords
Reform Draft Bill on 17 May 2011 that proposes the use
of quota-preferential proportional representation for
electing members of a reformed House of Lords, and
also seeks to completely remove the connection between
the hereditary peerage and membership of the House of
Lords. No change is proposed to the constitutional
powers and privileges of the House once it is
reformed. The Bill proposes that there be
240 elected and 60 appointed members, although the
Government is not ruling out a wholly elected House of
Lords, nor PR systems
other than the quota-preferential Single Transferable
Vote in the Bill. The Bill proposes that those elected
or appointed receive a salary and normally serve a
single non-renewable term equal to three Commons
terms, a third of the House usually being renewed
concurrently with the Commons. The Bill provides for the 5 most
senior Church of England
bishops and eventually just 7 other
bishops selected by the Church at each periodic
election to sit as ex officio
unsalaried members. At present all 26 of the Church’s
bishops sit as Lords Spiritual.
The remainder of the present 789
members of the House are entitled to sit as Lords Temporal.
Nearly all the latter are life peers, as a 1999 Blair
Government law left the House with only
90 hereditary peers, elected by all hereditary peers. The appointed members will be
recommended to the Queen by the Prime Minister, after
nomination by a statutory Appointments Commission, and
are expected to participate in a non-partisan manner.
There will be a minimum allowable of three members per
district for those elected,
and electoral districts in England will usually have
from five to seven members. Electoral boundaries will
not cross any border of the UK’s four constituent
countries. The Bill proposes fully optional
preferential voting, as did Australia’s original 1902 Bill for PR
for its Senate. Where a vacating member stood as
a party member, the casual vacancy will be filled by
the available unsuccessful candidate from that party
whose final progress total was highest during the
original scrutiny, and otherwise the available
unsuccessful candidate with highest final progress
total. The person filling a casual vacancy will hold
the seat only until the next periodic election, with
that seat being added to the number to be filled then,
rather like Australia’s original provision
for filling Senate casual vacancies. The UK Government expects the
two Houses to establish a Joint Committee to report on
the draft Bill, and it is committed to introducing a
Bill for enactment in time to provide for the first
elections in 2015. Antony
Green speaks on UK’s referendum and NZ’s November 2011
plebiscite on MMP In late August, Antony Green,
the popular Election Analyst for the Australian
Broadcasting Corporation, was the Guest Speaker at the
2011 Annual General Meeting of the PRSA’s
Victoria-Tasmania Branch. Mr Green spoke firstly about his
experience of visiting the United Kingdom to observe
its May 2011 referendum
on whether the House of Commons’ longstanding plurality voting
system should be replaced by the alternative vote,
which is equivalent to the fully optional
preferential voting used to elect MLAs
in New South Wales and Queensland. He noted the oddity that preferential
voting in single-member electorates was a compromise,
and was not the first preference of any of the
political parties, as their members tended to want
either the status quo or a
proportional system, and said that made YES votes hard
to achieve. His talk on that, and on November’s NZ
plebiscite, can be heard via a hyperlink on the PRSA home page.
Mr Green also explained the background
to the present New Zealand National Party Government’s
desire to put the Mixed Member Proportional system’s
future to voters, and said it is hard to forecast the
outcome of either plebiscite question. The first is,
“Should New Zealand keep
the MMP voting system?” The second asks voters to
choose one of four replacement systems if New Zealand
decides to change from MMP; first-past-the-post in
single-member electoral districts, preferential voting
in single-member districts, the
single transferable vote in multi-member districts for
3-7 MPs, and a supplementary member system (with a 25% list component that does not
attempt to correct single-member distortions). If a majority votes NO to keeping MMP,
the Government may, on or before the day of the next
general election, hold a referendum to choose between
MMP and the alternative option that has received a plurality
of votes. If a majority votes to continue MMP, the
appropriateness of its current features will be
assessed by the NZ Electoral Commission. PRSA notes that STV is used for hospital
board and some municipal polls, but NZ appears to lack
an organized campaign for STV as a specific
replacement. A self-styled Vote for Change group, some of
whose prominent members support a supplementary member
system to minimize the prospect of coalition
negotiations following a general election, was quickly
embarrassed by revelations
that one of its founding members was a white
supremacist, followed by early resignation of another
with a Labour background. In view of the vast amounts
that business interests poured into unsuccessful
television advertising at the referendum that adopted
MMP, there is a spending limit on plebiscite
campaigning. Reported
public opinion
polls have generally shown support for
MMP’s retention at around 50%, with 10% of voters
still undecided. Melbourne
University abandons Nanson’s
pioneering PR for a plurality system A great campaigner for proportional
representation using the single transferable vote for
Australian elections was Edward Nanson,
Professor of Mathematics at the University of
Melbourne from 1875 to 1922. Professor Nanson was, for
a long period, Secretary of the Proportional
Representation League of Victoria (PRLV), and was an
active member of the University’s Senate, later
renamed the Committee of Convocation and, in 2011, the
Alumni Council. Nanson campaigned for PR-STV before
and after Australian federation. His 1899 booklet, Electoral Reform,
was most influential at various levels. He, with the
PRLV’s President, Sir
James Barrett, convinced the University’s Senate
that it should use PR-STV for its polls. Its PR-STV
system stayed until it was replaced this year by a
system of filling prescribed single vacancies by
a first-past-the-post system.
As the flawed first-past-the-post
(plurality) count was
what Nanson strove to
replace, the PRSA’s Victoria-Tasmania Branch wrote
stating its concerns. The University’s Secretary, Dr
Christopher Stewardson,
replied that the University Council approved the
change after consulting the Committee of Convocation
and others, but he gave no reasons why proportional
representation was abandoned. Call
for Nominations for Elections of the four PRSA
Office-bearers for 2012-13 The Returning Officer is Mr Martin Dunn of the PRSA's ACT Branch. Under the PRSA Constitution, the Returning Officer rotates among the Branch Secretaries. The order, by precedent, is VIC-TAS, NSW, SA, WA, and the ACT. Nominations, for President,
Vice-President, Secretary and Treasurer,
need be signed by the candidate only, as consent to
nomination, and must be with Mr Martin Dunn, at dunnmj@ozemail.com.au
or 41 Benaroon Circuit,
AMAROO ACT 2914 by 14 November 2011. © 2011 Proportional
Representation Society of Australia National President: Bogey Musidlak 14 Strzelecki Cr. NARRABUNDAH 2604 National Secretary: Dr Stephen Morey 4 Sims Street SANDRINGHAM 3191 Tel: (02) 6295 8137, (03) 9598 1122 Mobile 04291 76725 quota@prsa.org.au |
