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QUOTA Newsletter of the
Proportional Representation Society of Australia QN2012B June 2012 www.prsa.org.au Two Greek
National Elections a Month Apart
PR for Two-councillor Wards in NSW Tasmanian Assembly Supports Return to 35 MHAs Passing of Two Long-serving Proportionalists List of issues of Quota Notes Two Greek
National Elections a Month Apart
Greece
attracted world attention for the inconclusive
outcome of elections for its unicameral
300-member Parliament in May 2012, as that
outcome augured badly for European and possibly
global financial stability. The seven different
parties that won seats, including some on the
far right and far left, could not agree on
forming a majority coalition government.
Like most party list systems, Greece’s system of so-called “re-inforced
proportional representation”
has changing features designed to achieve
additional political effects. A 3% national
qualification threshold for parties started at
the 1990 elections, and a bonus of 50 seats
(up from 40 at the two previous polls) goes to
the single party with the most votes
nationally. The
qualifying parties each receive at least the
integer part of their proportion of the total
represented votes out of the 250 available
seats. As many of the highest fractional parts
are then converted into an extra seat as are
needed to obtain a total of exactly 250. The
party with the most votes is awarded a further
50 seats. A number of
rules then govern exactly how each party’s
seats are apportioned into available seats at
the individual electorate level largely
following prefecture boundaries except around
Athens and Thessalonika. Nearly 19%
of the formal vote was wasted on parties
failing to achieve the threshold, including
more than 2.9% for two different parties.
Turnout was a good ten percentage points lower
than usual at just above 65% (those aged under
70 are obliged to enrol and to vote), with
1.8% of votes invalid and 0.6% blank. All the new
Parliament’s MPs except those of the
previously dominant New Democracy and PASOK
parties – amounting to a narrow majority –
opposed in varying degrees the second
austerity agreement made by the outgoing
non-party government. As successive
negotiations to form a government proved
fruitless, the Greek President called a new
election for 17 June. Fast-rising
Syriza on the radical left ceased being a
coalition of ten parties and therefore became
a serious candidate for the 50-seat bonus.
Some small parties chose not to stand, or
formed alliances in the hope of achieving the
3% threshold. Late in the campaign,
representatives of several countries insisted
that Greece’s remaining in the eurozone was
incompatible with rejection of austerity
measures agreed upon at the time of extensive
bailouts.
Turnout fell slightly to
62.5%: 0.6% of voters cast an invalid vote and
0.4% a blank one. The Democratic Left party took
up a changed role as part of Greece’s new
three-party coalition government, as it supported
remaining on the euro while seeking to ease the
severity of some of the austerity measures.
Neither it nor PASOK accepted ministerial
responsibilities. The four parties elected that
still opposed the austerity agreements gained
45.8% support and 48.4% of the seats allocated
proportionally, so New Democracy did not need the
statutory 50 bonus seats to claim a democratic
mandate for the new
government.
Most of the
152 NSW councils have long had elections by quota-preferential
proportional representation in
electoral districts in which the (same, if there
are wards) number of positions to be filled ranges
from three to fifteen. At the 2008 general
elections, all but twelve councils reflected, in
varying degrees, the diverse range of opinions in
their municipality that way. In the
Sydney metropolitan area, two councils, Botany Bay
and Ku-ring-gai, long elected their councillors
from two-councillor wards under what was a multiple
majority-preferential system, as
was used for Senate polls from 1919-48. With that
system, once one councillor was elected – after
distribution of preferences if needed – all the
ballot-papers cast for the ward were re-counted,
including ballot-papers with a first preference
for the first councillor just elected deemed at
the second count to be a first preference vote for
the candidate marked as second preference. The second
count then proceeded until an unelected candidate
gained an absolute majority of all the votes after
any required distribution of preferences bypassing
the name of the candidate already elected. Both
councillors were usually elected from the same
party, group or background. Monopoly of
representation by a group can, and does, lead to
the broader exclusion of all dissenting opinions. In 2008,
none of Botany Bay’s 3 wards was contested. The Mayor,
first elected 31 years ago, was the only unopposed
directly-elected NSW Mayor. One
ward was uncontested in 2004.
Labor won all seats in both years. Only via an ALP
councillor can electors raise issues in Council.
The first election of 6 of the 7
present councillors was at least 15
years ago. A winner-take-all
system will remain, as Council will be elected
from six
single-councillor wards in 2012.
The former
Wollongong
and Shellharbour
Councils, replaced by administrators before the
2008 polls, had also used multiple
majority-preferential voting with two-councillor
wards. That is not unconnected to abuses that led
to the dismissal of
those councils. Those reconstituted
municipalities’ 2011 polls for five-year terms, in
four-councillor and undivided districts
respectively, used proportional representation. In
2008, the eight other municipalities with
two-councillor wards were Cabonne,
Carrathool,
Conargo,
Guyra,
Tenterfield,
Wakool,
Walcha
and Weddin
Shires. Most of those rural wards were uncontested
(Wakool alone had each ward contested), and the
rest had either three or four candidates. Although
the two candidates with most first preferences
tended to get elected, that did not always happen.
The counting system for those eight councils will
be proportional representation in 2012, in some
cases without wards. The PRSA
President, Bogey Musidlak, has written to the NSW
Minister for Local Government to applaud this
substantial electoral improvement, to urge that
single-councillor wards be no longer permitted,
and to suggest either the immediate foreshadowing
of countback
to fill casual vacancies wherever possible, or a
commitment to its introduction following the 2016
local government elections.
Moves reported in QN2012A
about a possible
return to 35 MHAs went further in
the light of Professor Peter
Boyce’s 2011 report on the history
and merits of the proposal tabled in Tasmania’s
House of Assembly following an opportunity for
public submissions. The House passed, on 18 April
2012, by 13 votes to 9, both a Greens amendment “… House supports
restoring the number of members in the House of
Assembly to 35 at an appropriate time” to replace the Opposition
motion “That the House agrees that
the next State election for the House of
Assembly be conducted on the current 25-seat
model”, and
also the amended motion itself. In
May 2012, Launceston’s The Examiner
reported Tasmania’s 1982-89 Liberal Premier, Robin
Gray, as saying that the Hare-Clark system is not
appropriate for the 21st
Century. PRSA’s Victoria-Tasmania Branch contacted
Tasmania’s 40 State MPs to point out that changing
to a winner-take-all
system would not be reverting to the 20th Century,
but to the 19th, and that the next Liberal
Premier, Ray Groom, had praised Hare-Clark in a media
statement addressed to all
ACT voters before the 1992 advisory poll at which
there was 65% support for adopting Hare-Clark.
Maurice
Fabrikant, who was a member
of the Council of the PRSA’s
Victoria-Tasmania Branch, and served as the
Branch’s Treasurer from 2004 to 2011, died
on 16 May 2012 after a short illness. A friendly
man, Maurie was popular with
Branch members. His thorough and reliable
work as Treasurer matched his good work as a
PR
Accredited Vote-counting Officer. Major Henry Kitchener, the third
Earl
Kitchener of Khartoum, a former
member of the UK Electoral
Reform Society’s Council, died on
16 December 2011. He and Dr David Hill
worked to promote the Meek system
under which all papers with a next preference
are transferred after a candidate’s election and
the quota adjusted downwards if necessary. Lord
Kitchener - in Canberra
in 1995 - helped in the PRSA’s
campaign to entrench Hare-Clark in the ACT. He
followed Earl Russell in an important 1998 House of
Lords debate for an open rather a
closed PR list for electing Members of the
European Parliament.
© 2012 Proportional
Representation Society of Australia National President: Bogey Musidlak 14 Strzelecki Cr. NARRABUNDAH 2604 Editor, Quota Notes: Geoffrey Goode 18 Anita S. BEAUMARIS 3193 Tel: (02) 6295 8137, (03) 9598 1122 Mobile 04291 76725 quota@prsa.org.au |
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