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QUOTA Newsletter
of the Proportional Representation Society of QN63
September 1991 www.prsa.org.au
Parliamentary
elections in the 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, 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 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
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 As a group, those MPs at the
seminar (from The next National Seminar of
these MPs is to be in Colin Ball Retires
The article described Mr Ball as a strong booster of He believes a vital solution to "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 Most PRSA members
would probably agree. Mr Ball's experience was tapped internationally when his advice was
sought for 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. Local Government
The biennial local
government elections were held throughout 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 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 The NSW Branch's NRMA Campaign May Yet Bear Fruit
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. Query by WA Readers
Quota
Notes has received queries
from readers in 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 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 Seventh Senator Not "Directly
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