QUOTA
NOTES
Newsletter of the Proportional
Representation
Society of Australia - NSW Branch
Number 24
December 1981
When nominations for the
office bearer positions under our new Constitution
closed on 15 October, there was only one
nomination for each of three of the
positions, with two for the position of
Vice President. Those nominated were
A ballot is being held for
the position of Vice
President.
The State election in
September produced a striking contrast
in the results for the two Houses. The
Legislative Council election, with 15
elected by the quota-preferential
method, resulted in a record 97.1% of
voters seeing the election of their
first-preference candidates. The
Legislative Assembly election, with 99
single-member districts, left 1,072,105
voters without the representation they
wanted and gave the highest level of
distortion of party representation in
any lower House in Australia at present.
With 55.7% of the votes, the ALP won 69
of the 98 contested seats, that is,
70.4%. We have written to the Premier
reminding him of his assurance in his
Policy Speech of the Party's commitment
to the concept of one vote, one value
and suggesting that the credibility of
the Party will be in question unless the
Government legislates for the use of the
quota-preferential method.
In March, soon after the
release of the final figures for the
October 1980 House of Representatives
election, the Society wrote to the Prime
Minister pointing out that the results
showed that the method of election is
inconsistent with the International
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights,
which was ratified by Australia in
August 1980. Article 25 of the Covenant
specifies that all citizens should have
freely chosen representatives and that
elections should guarantee the free
expression of the will of the voters. In
the 1980 election, the choice available
to voters was limited; 3,863,180 voters
did not get the representatives they
wanted, and the numbers of seats won by
the parties were inconsistent with the
votes for their candidates. In a reply
received in June, the Prime Minister
informed us that he had been advised
'that the present method of electing the
House of Representatives is not
inconsistent with the provisions of
Article 25 of the International Covenant
on Civil and Political Rights'.
In a further letter, we
stated that we could not accept the
unsupported assertion in the reply, and
that more detailed study of the results
had shown that, of the 46.5% of voters
who did not see the election of their
first preferences, 3,523,643 voted in
districts where their later preferences
were not taken into account so that
their votes had no effect on the outcome
of the election. With votes of no value,
these people certainly do not have
freely chosen representatives. In his
reply to this letter, the Prime Minister
said 'I refer to my letter of 11 June
1981 concerning this matter and advise
that I have nothing further to add'. We
have now brought the inconsistency
between the method of election and the
Covenant to the attention of the Senate
Standing Committee on Constitutional and
Legal Affairs.
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