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QUOTAÂ Â  NOTES
Newsletter
of the Proportional Representation Society of Australia
QN63
September 1991
www.prsa.org.au
·
Polls in Singapore's City State Show How Badly a Single-member
Electorate System Would Work in the ACT
· ACT Appeal Reminder
· Nominations for Election of
National Office-bearers for 1992-3
· National Seminar of
Independents and Balance of Power MPs
· Colin Ball Retires
· Local Government
· The NSW Branch's NRMA
Campaign May Yet Bear Fruit
· Query by WA Readers
· Seventh Senator Not
"Directly Chosen by the People"
· The Commonwealth
Constitution's Protection of Direct Election of Individual Candidates at
Federal Polls
· Back issues of Quota Notes
Polls
in Singapore's
City State Show How Badly a Single-member Electorate System Would Work in the
ACT
Parliamentary
elections in the City State of Singapore show how the
fundamental inability of single-member electoral systems to give fair or
reasonable representation is highlighted in compact voting populations that
have a fairly uniform geographic distribution of voter attitudes.
The People's Action Party has had
a large majority of Singapore MPs since 1959. In 1980 the PAP gained 78% of
the vote, and won all seats. By 1988 the party's share of the vote had fallen
to 63%, yet its MPs gained 80 of the 81 seats, even though there were
opposition candidates contesting each of 70 electorates.
In mid-August 1991 a snap poll,
two years earlier than required, was called for 31st August. When nominations
closed on 21st August opposition parties had nominated for only 40 seats -
less than an absolute majority of the seats. This was said to be so the 1.7
million voters could elect an effective opposition without any fear of the
PAP losing its majority of seats.
This time the PAP vote fell to
61%, which won it 77 seats. The remaining 4 seats were won by two opposition
parties, which intend to form a coalition. Such a skewed result, with the
system prompting parties to drastically curtail the choice offered to voters,
would not have occurred with multi-member districts and quota-preferential
PR.
At the ACT Advisory Poll in
February 1992 voters will choose a system, either like Singapore's or like
Tasmania's, as the replacement for the discredited Consolidated d'Hondt
procedure.
ACT Appeal Reminder
We
remind everybody that donations to the PRSA's National Appeal for Campaign
Funds for the February 1992 ACT Advisory Poll (letting all ACT voters choose
between Hare-Clark and single-member electorates for the ACT) are still
needed.
The PRSA Treasurer, 3 Bohun Place
MOANA SA 5169, has so far gratefully received 35 donations. At least $50 was
received from each of:
PRSA Victorian Branch, PRSA NSW
Branch, Tax Reform Australia, D.R. Davies, C. Aitken, Lew Ellis, N.G. Ellis,
G. Goode, J.H. Mitchell, F.M. Pillinger, A. Richter, R. Stapleton and H.
Southcott.
Nominations for Election of National Office-bearers for 1992-3
Under
the PRSA Constitution, it is the turn this year for the Returning Officer for
the above PRSA elections to be the Secretary of the Western Australian
Branch, Mr Norm Cox. Nominations, for President, Vice-President, Secretary
and Treasurer, which need to be signed by the candidate only, as consent to
nomination, should be received by Mr Cox at PO Box 512 CLAREMONT WA 6010 by 31st October 1991.
Any candidate may submit a
statement of up to one hundred words to the Returning Officer, who shall
submit it to voters with the ballot-papers.
The two-year term of each office
begins on 1st January 1992. If any poll is required, ballot-papers will be
posted on 7th November 1991 and the poll will close on 14th December 1991.
Results will appear in December's Quota
Notes.
National Seminar of Independents and Balance of Power MPs
Australia's first
National Seminar of Independents and Balance of Power MPs was held in Adelaide on 7th August
1991. It was convened by the SA Democrat, Hon. Ian Gilfillan MLC.
Discussed were common concerns
such as how such MPs are working together in their own parliaments to
introduce legislation, to participate in select committees, to draft motions,
and generally to work towards realizing the principle of parliamentary
supremacy.
The only invited speaker was
Deane Crabb, Secretary of the SA Branch of the Proportional Representation
Society of Australia. He led the discussion on a fair electoral system
for all, and spoke about the need to cater for both elector and party
representation and how that can be achieved by using Tasmania's Hare-Clark system of
proportional representation. Although such a system does improve the chances
of independents and minor parties being elected, that is not an unfair
advantage, but instead remedies the glaring defects of winner-take-all
procedures so that all voters and candidates are treated as equally as
possible.
As a group, those MPs at the
seminar (from NSW, WA,
SA and Tasmania)
expressed support for proportional representation in principle. Under PR
their main concern was not about getting elected, but how to service a large
electorate. This is a particular problem for outstanding, relatively
irreplaceable MPs, which many independent and smaller party MPs often have to
be to rival the larger parties. An example is the Green Independent Dr Bob
Brown who, as an MHA for Denison, was elected in 1989 with just over 1.7
quotas of first preference votes, compared with the next most popular
individual, the then Deputy Liberal Leader, the Hon. Ray Groom, who gained
just over 1.4 quotas. Deane was asked to pursue this issue, and would welcome
suggestions from PRSA members, who should write to him at 11 Yapinga Street PLYMPTON SA 5038.
The next National Seminar of these
MPs is to be in Tasmania.
Tasmania's Chief
Electoral Officer, Mr Colin Ball, has just retired. An interview with him
formed a major feature article in The Mercury of 6th September 1991.
The article described Mr Ball as a strong booster of Tasmania's Hare-Clark
electoral system, who said it is one of the fairest and most accurate for
expressing the community's will through the ballot box.
He believes a vital solution to Australia's widespread ignorance and
apathy on electoral matters is to make Australian politics a compulsory
subject in Years 10 to 12 of secondary school. The article quoted him as
saying,
"You may say a
lot of things about the American education system, but they do know their
politics, because they are taught it in school all the time. It is not some
optional system they can duck. They have a more sophisticated understanding
of the political process, even though they have an unfair, and far less
sophisticated political system. In Australia we have one of the most
sophisticated and fair political processes, yet most people have a very
unsophisticated understanding of it, and most of them couldn't care
less."
Most PRSA members
would probably agree.
Mr Ball's experience was tapped internationally when his advice was
sought for New Zealand's
Royal Commission on the Electoral System, and when he visited Namibia to
assist with the UN-supervised elections there. Those elections used
proportional representation, but unfortunately it was a party list rather
than a quota-preferential system.
Colin Ball has always been very helpful when the PRSA has approached
him for his advice on technical aspects of the Hare-Clark system. When the
PRSA National President, who had been appointed to the Synod Voting System
Sub-committee of the Anglican Diocese of Melbourne, was recently advocating
the inclusion, in the Synod Elections Bill being examined, of the Tasmanian
Assembly method of filling casual vacancies in the House of Assembly, Colin
responded to a request for advice by very persuasively describing the
rationale and merits of that extremely sound and sensible method of direct
election.
The PRSA wishes Mr Ball well in his retirement from official duties.
Perhaps he may emerge as a campaigner for the merits of the Hare-Clark
system. He could do that well, and would certainly be listened to.
The biennial local
government elections were held throughout South Australia in May this year. Since
1985, there has been a choice between two electoral systems, both of which
are applied in multi-member electoral districts.
One system is quota-preferential PR, and more councils are adopting
it. Some 50% of councils use PR now, whereas only 25% used it in 1985. As
most councils have a fairly small number of seats, they quite wisely often
abolish wards as well.
The other system available is officially called the optional
preferential method, although that is really only a description of the
fact that only the first preference is required to be marked. This
idiosyncratic system appears to be peculiar to SA, and is aptly described
there as the bottoms-up method.
In counting the votes, the candidate with the fewest first preference
votes is excluded, and those votes are transferred to the continuing candidates
until the number of candidates remaining in the count equals the number of
vacancies. The procedure appears to be peculiar to South Australia. It is advocated by SA's
Electoral Office, and is used to elect SA's Superannuation Board.
In the UK the term single transferable vote is taken to mean
quota-preferential PR, but Australia's electoral tinkerers have blurred that
description by using, in multi-member electorates (the Senate 1919-48, and
now the City of Melbourne and some other Victorian municipalities) an STV
with election by absolute majority only, and in SA's bottoms up, using
an STV with election by relative majority after distribution of preferences.
The latter is little more than a poor palliative for first-past-the-post
multi-member systems, which are disastrous.
Two cheerful municipal notes were sounded recently. Melbourne City
Council's Chief Executive Officer, Ms Elizabeth Proust, proposed that
Parliament should allow the municipality to be a single electorate where all
councillors are elected as a group by quota-preferential PR. Also the
Vice-President of the PRSA's Queensland Branch, Alderman John Campbell, was
elected Deputy Lord Mayor of Brisbane.
In 1988 members of the
PRSA's NSW Branch formally but unsuccessfully moved at the Annual General
Meeting of the New South Wales National Roads and Motorists Association,
having given due notice, that PR should replace the longstanding common law
block voting electoral system used to fill periodic multiple vacancies on the
NRMA Council (See Quota Notes Nos 52 & 53).
Since then certain independent councillors such as the media
personality, Jane Singleton, have fortunately been elected and have queried the
electoral system. That and other concerns have caused the NRMA to have
established a committee to review such matters. Sir Laurence Street, the former Chief
Justice of NSW, has agreed to serve as Chairman of the committee. The NRMA
has written to the PRSA's NSW Branch inviting it to make a submission.
Quota
Notes has received queries
from readers in Western Australia about the
statement in the last issue that the Tasmanian Upper House is the only
one in Australia
that can reject supply without any MLCs facing election thereby. They
argue that all the WA MLCs now have a fixed concurrent four year term, and
that the WA Constitution Act allows the Legislative Council to reject supply
whenever it may be submitted to it during the MLCs' term. The justifications
given are correct - the Council is not dissolved, but its members' terms run
from the 21st May on which their terms began to the 21st May four years
later.
Nevertheless, the situation differs from that in Tasmania subtly but
significantly because, if a WA Lower House election is held in the last
twelve months of the MLCs' term, the Governor may cause an election for all
the Upper House seats to be held on the same day, although that election is
not to fill the seats of the current MLCs, but instead the seats of those
whose terms will begin on the next 21st May. By contrast, in Tasmania, there are
never more than 4 of the 19 Upper House seats subject to an election in any
year. Of the 19 seats, at least 9 always have three years to run before their
term ends.
A better wording in the article in Quota Notes No.
62 on
the Tasmanian Upper House would have been
"... despite the
(Tasmanian) Upper House being the only one in Australia that can reject supply
without any election of Upper House members possibly being occasioned
thereby."
The resignation of
Senator Paul McLean (AD, NSW) has led to his replacement, under Section 15 of
the Constitution, by Senator Karin Sowada (AD, NSW), a 29 year old
archaeologist. She was sworn in on 3rd September 1991. The party that Senator
McLean belonged to when elected (the Australian Democrats), and not the
electors of NSW that elected him, determined his successor. Those electors
are not even officially advised, even by a statutory newspaper advertisement
- no wonder the public is apathetic. Under the Hare-Clark PR system Senator
McLean's electors alone would have determined his replacement directly, at
the previous poll.
The 76-member Senate now has 7 senators, over 9% of its members,
unelected by their nominal constituencies. Victoria
and Tasmania
are the only States whose current senators were all directly elected.
Many readers may be
aware of the requirements of the Commonwealth Constitution that, at both
general and periodic elections, senators and MHRs are to be directly
chosen by the people (Sections 7 and 24 respectively). These requirements ought to,
but do not yet, extend to the filling of Senate casual vacancies.
Although the Constitution may appear to have a clear meaning, it is
the power the High Court has been given to interpret it (Section
76)
that ultimately matters. It is therefore pleasing that the Court has given
its view on this matter and that it has held that ... the Constitution
requires electors at a Senate election to vote for individual candidates ... The
extract from the Australian Law Reports shown on Page 4 explains
the Court's findings.
© 1991 Proportional Representation Society of Australia
National President: Geoffrey Goode 18 Anita Street BEAUMARIS VIC
3193
National Secretary: John Alexander 5 Bray Street MOSMAN NSW 2088
Tel: (03) 9589 1802, (02) 960 2193 info@prsa.org.au
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12 Pirie Street ADELAIDE SA
5000
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